I was 13 years old when I first heard of the Sultan of Brunei. The absolute ruler of a tiny, oil-rich kingdom in Southeast Asia, Hassanal Bolkiah was the subject of a much-discussed TV documentary by the British filmmaker Alan Whicker in 1992. As a young teenager, sitting in front of the (...)
Editorial board says Vatican tried to discredit them after they denounced abuse of nuns
The founder and all-female editorial team of the Vatican’s women’s magazine have resigned over what they say was a campaign to discredit them after the publication of an article that lifted the lid on the (...)
One monk in attendance said he wanted to be a “21st-century monk”.
Geshe Thabke is a Buddhist monk at the Sera Jay monastery near Mysore, Karnataka. On the sidelines of a conference called ‘Science for Monks’, I sat down with him for a chat, during the course of which he mentioned a curious thing. (...)
’I don’t believe in God, I believe in science,’ atheists often argue. But that doesn’t mean their thinking is evidence-based.
British author Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, stands on a bus at the launch of an atheist advertising campaign, in London | Andrew Winning/Reuters
Many (...)
The Judeo-Islamic tradition has deep historical roots that Zionism and Islamism have tried to erase.
On the Gregorian calendar (so named after Pope Gregory XIII) this September, two of the holiest Jewish and Islamic high holidays coincide. On September 10, Jews around the world began their (...)
The Supreme Court in a 1995 judgement, blithely conflated ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindutva’. What’s more, it was drawing on a 1966 judgement that concluded that Hinduism “may broadly be described as a way of life” rather than a religion per se.
In 1966, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark judgment. (...)
John Gray’s new book explores seven types of non-belief in a creator-god but ignores ideas about atheism in India, China and the east.
The modern world is nothing if not plural in the number of possible world views it offers in terms of religions, creeds and ideologies. The profusion can be (...)
The outstanding intellectual Maxime Rodinson is known above all for his magisterial study, Islam and Capitalism (1966), and for his intense militant activity, notably with the Parti Communiste Français (PCF), of which he was a member from 1937 to 1958. In this article, Selim Nadi addresses the (...)
The Pope in Mexico Criticizes the Government, Big Business, and the Church Hierarchy, While Siding with Working People, the Poor, Migrants, and the Indigenous.
Pope Francis, during his six-day visit to Mexico in mid-February, criticized the country’s political and economic elite as well as the (...)
Do not ‘essentialise’ religion. Gandhi’s Gita and Azad’s Quran do not say the same thing as the Gita of Nathuram Godse and the Quran of Osama bin Laden.
Until recently, often in private and sometimes publicly, the complaint was voiced that moderate Muslims do not speak out or not loudly enough (...)
One of Paris’s most prestigious theatres was being protected by riot police and guard-dog patrols on Thursday after it became the latest target in a wave of Catholic protests across France against so-called “blasphemous” plays.
The head of the Théâtre du Rond-Point on the Champs-Elysées complained (...)
The Government of Lanka says that on Wesak day this year, 2600 years after Buddha will be completed. Of course there are those who dispute the calculations of advisers to the government. In any case it must be approximately true; and after so many years it is worth making an investigation into (...)
In the first year of the 21st century, Osama stretched the dominant Islamic thought of the 20th century to its extreme. A decade later, there is a growing body of books, lectures and pages of the World Wide Web propounding an Islam that is at home with the modern world and vice versa.
Behind (...)
The publication of a statement in the name of the Hungarian Social Forum SR praising the beatification of John Paul II called for vigourous answers, especially from Polish feminist movements. Hungarian Social Forum SR over the beatification of John Paul II In a Press Release published (...)
The enthusiasm for Islamified world at times assumes ironically absurd character. For instance, in 1996 the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain recommended that all mosques in the UK be wired up to the network in order to provide porn-free access to Internet and [to] establish places where (...)
Glenn Beck’s efforts to transform himself from Fox News demagogue into a religious leader for Tea Party America has a lot of commentators discussing the feasibility of a Mormon convert leading a wary evangelical and Catholic right in a faith-driven cause. While there are significant roadblocks (...)
I am an atheist with an affinity for non-fundamentalist religious believers whose faith has made room for secular knowledge. I am also a political liberal. I am not, however, a multiculturalist who believes that all cultures and religions are equally worthy of respect. And I find myself in a (...)
A veteran analyst of right-wing militancy notices a creeping maturity in the media’s ability to talk about the religious elements of terrorism—even when it’s Christian.
The arrest of the Michigan-based Hutaree Militia has drawn worldwide attention, and in so doing surfaced one of the knottiest (...)
Christian Soldiers of the Apocalypse have been running around the woods of Michigan planning attacks on federal law enforcement in their war against the Antichrist. How does the Hutaree Militia fit into the history of American militias and conspiracy theorists?
On Monday, the nine members of (...)
The visit to Sydney for World Youth Day (WYD), July 15-20, by Pope Benedict XVI and 300,000 Catholic pilgrims is set to become the scene for protests.
Ironically, the protests are being fuelled by the clumsy efforts of the NSW state government to suppress them — passing laws making it illegal (...)
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