Dwight Bashir, who is Deputy Director for Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) discusses the 2013 annual report released by his office that looks at the state of religious freedom across the world.
Category Archive: Religion
May 08 2013
A pope and a rabbi write a book …
So that is not the set up for a joke but just a way of introducing the idea that in 2010, current pope Francis (then cardinal Mario Bergoglio) co-authored with rabbi Abraham Skorka, an Argentine biophysicist and rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, a book titled On Heaven and Earth. In …
May 07 2013
The rights of the dead
The discussion in the comments following my post about the difficulty of finding a place to bury Tamarlan Tsarnaev raised some interesting issues. In that case, cremation was not considered an option since the family wanted to have a Muslim burial for him and the question was raised as to why they should have the …
May 06 2013
Religious rioting in Bangladesh
The Indian subcontinent is going through turbulent times as religious extremists try to demand that religious dogma drive each country’s legal system and social mores. Pakistan has been subjected to vicioius blasphemy laws. India has seen the rise of Hindu nationalists and Hindu-Muslim clashes, Sri Lanka has seen militant Buddhists, led by monks, attack ethnic …
May 05 2013
Film review: The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today
A few days ago I watched an excellent hour-long Peabody-winning documentary with the above title that tells the story of the lawsuit brought by Vashti McCollum. The daughter of freethinkers, she and her husband, who taught at the University of Illinois, were not religious and the family did not belong to any church or send …
May 04 2013
Harassment of atheists around the world
Atheists are becoming more open around the globe but this has also resulted in them being hounded for merely stating their nonbelief. The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) recently issued a report detailing such harassment.
May 03 2013
How hippie Christians became evangelical conservatives
I was not in the US during the time of the hippie movement and my knowledge of the Christian hippies, sometimes referred to as the Jesus People, is almost entirely shaped by the dopey 1973 musical film Godspell, not the most reliable source. It transported Jesus and his followers into New York City and portrayed …
May 02 2013
Some positive developments in China
There are some interesting developments in China. Andrew Stokols says that China’s LGBT community has made great strides in recent decades. China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, even before the U.S. removed all anti-sodomy laws in certain states. But today, there are no formal laws to prevent discrimination against LGBT Chinese, especially in the workplace. Since …
Apr 30 2013
Stumping the stumpers
Recently someone told me that a friend of his was a science teacher in the American south who was teaching his students about anatomy and said that apart from a few small differences, the form of male and female skeletons were identical. He was nonplussed when a student said that that was not quite correct …
Apr 27 2013
The menace of faith healing
Many religious practices are harmless. If people want to waste their time going to their church or mosque or synagogue or temple, praying, reading their holy books, or otherwise indulging in individual and group observances like dancing and singing and speaking in tongues, I say knock yourselves out. It keeps them off the streets and …
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