Worldcrunch
The debate over the war in Israel is raging on social media. In this divisive atmosphere, it is impossible to call out anti-Semitism in Muslim communities or on the right wing without being applauded by all the wrong people. What Germans are failing to acknowledge is how much the country’s own history has to do with this.
At the moment, a two-state solution to end the conflict between Israel and Palestine seems impossible. But should a miracle occur, there is one example that, although not perfect, could serve as a model to build a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural federation: the ethno-federal democracy of India.
Both Hamas and Israel should stop manipulating the language of faith and morals to justify extreme and indiscriminate violence, writes Islamic theologian Marwan Sarwar Gill. Religion (in good faith) ultimately offers a way out of conflict the bad faith has fueled.
The flood of pro-Israel support from right-ring Hindu nationalists reveals more about the nature of their political project, its aspirations and ideological directions through the decades, than it does about Zionism.
As Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh are forced to flee their homes, is culture or corruption or something more sinister forcing a people to suffer so greatly a century after a genocide tried to wipe them out?
In this editorial for Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, former Polish Senator, Solidarność activist, Member of Parliament, and Environmental Minister Antoni Tokarczuk examines what he calls the “true motivations” of ruling party Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński, and warns against his use of the Church for his party’s gain, especially ahead of the upcoming Parliamentary elections.
Horror films have a complicated and rich history with christian themes and influences, but how healthy is it for audiences watching?
Followers of the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion in four traditional communities in the country’s northeast are resisting pressure to convert to evangelical Christianity.
New York Mayor Eric Adams has for the first time allowed the city’s mosques to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer over loudspeakers. A Turkish correspondent living in New York listens in to the sound of the call (“cleaner” than in Turkey), and the voices of local Muslims marking this watershed in their relationship with the city.
We tend to think of Buddhism as a religion devoid of commandments, and therefore generally more accepting than others. The author, an Australian researcher — and “genderqueer, non-binary Buddhist” themself — suggests that it is far from being the case.
Two different cases of hijab controversies in India show there is one thing that is consistent, which is to impose on people at the margins an idea of “uniformity.”
Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church has fully supported the Kremlin. Priests or members of the church that disagree with this politicization and militarization of the church face heavy consequences such as removal.
On this day in 1986, Desmond Tutu was named Archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa. What was Desmond Tutu’s role in the Anglican Church? Desmond Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and social rights activist. He became known for his vocal opposition to apartheid, a system of racial segregation and discrimination in […]
Death metal is considered the most soulless music of all. But the Taipei-based Buddhist death metal band Dharma is proving otherwise. Their music may also even be a secret weapon in the island’s stand-off with China.
In the long fight against HIV/AIDS, advancements in medicine mean that today, shame and stigma is often more deadly than the disease itself. One Zimbabwean pastor has been preaching a gospel of hope in one of the countries worst affected by the virus.
As advocates in Hong Kong work to spread the word that being LGBTQ+ is not an illness, conversion therapy centers like New Creation continue to harm and traumatize those who want to get “out of the gay life.” Members of the LGBTQ+ community struggle to reconcile their faith and their orientation in a society that continues to be institutionally homophobic.
On this day in 2016, an attacker drove a truck into a crowd gathered to celebrate Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds more. Who was responsible for the Nice attack? The attack in Nice was carried out by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian-born French resident. He […]
A patient has an extra-conjugal/religious question for our Naples-based psychiatrist.
Tadeusz Rydzyk, Poland’s “father director,” has commanded enormous political power through his Catholic media empire, despite his controversial support for priests entangled in the church’s child sexual abuse scandals — as well as support for Russia. Is his era finally coming to an end?
The hyper-inclusive queer world of fashion challenges the view that gayness is a “curable” tendency.
The author reflects on the emerging practice of signing a so-called relationship contract, which reminded her of when her Muslim boyfriend proposed a “temporary marriage.”
From ancient processions to family funerals, the powerful Calabrian organized crime syndicate ‘Ndrangheta is infiltrating into religious rites is present across the country.
In traditionally Catholic Colombia, Protestant preachers have learned to effectively combine marketing and religion to make themselves enormously wealthy. And thanks to political lobbying and religious freedom, they are exempt from the law and taxes.
The Vatican may soon canonize the Mama Antula, an Argentine woman who started a spiritual movement at a time when religious intellectualism was strictly the domain the men.
A confrontation between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches has been brewing for centuries. But a video showing a Ukrainian war veteran being beaten up in church shows that the standoff has become all-out war.
Atheists may not have been blessed with faith, but God has graced them with a mischievous wit and a love of the arts that has led to some of the most beautiful depictions of religion.
Christian Easter, Muslim Ramadan and Jewish Passover are coinciding this year on the lunar calendar — and it won’t happen again for three decades. It is a singular opportunity for the descendants of the prophet Abraham to come together in generosity and humility.
Media coverage of Iran’s mass protests of 2022 failed to truly show how most Iranians thought about the hijab or a general dress code for women. Centering the whole fight for justice in Iran around the headscarf has its risks.
An evangelic group has threatened to take legal action against a samba school because of its mix of religious iconography at the 2023 Carnival festivities. A Brazilian secular institute has a response.
One of the chief victims of radical clerical rule in Iran has been religion, historically a bulwark of Iranian society now seen as a tool of tyranny.
Russia has a complicated history with Islam, often built on Moscow’s repression of the religious minority. Now, Muslims in Ukraine are ever more committed to a project for a multi-religious society that Kyiv espouses. Ukrainian Mufti Said Ismagilov has taken up arms for that cause, and to defend his nation.
Several Muslim women who wear hijabs share their stories to highlight the discrimination, from disapproving looks to outright insults, they face everyday in India in both their personal and professional lives.
In an unusual challenge to Iran’s senior leaders from Shia clerics in the country, a group of theologians and jurists in Qom say the state has been incompetent and had no right to execute protesters. At least two Iranian demonstrators have been executed this month, with the latest publicly hanged on a crane.
Poland’s legislature is in the process of passing new “blasphemy” restrictions that would impose jail sentences for denigrating the Catholic Church, Warsaw-based daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported Monday. Parliament’s lower house has approved an amendment that—if passed into law—would impose “a fine, a penalty of restriction of liberty, or imprisonment up to two years,” on anyone […]
On his blog, Tenzin Peljor, a Berlin-born Buddhist monk investigates complex issues linked to his religion, including physical and sexual abuse in Buddhist communities.
Rishi Sunak, a Hindu of Indian origin, has become the UK’s prime minister. His religion has not factored at all into debates — a fierce contrast to a religiously divided India.
After a fire at a church in August killed 42 people, Egypt’s Christians are worried about the fate of their places of worship, which lack proper infrastructure and financial support to meet safety standards. But, as Egypt’s Mada Masr reports, this is not a new problem, and it is one that has been ongoing for years, during which Christians were not given permission to set up churches.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses in Chile have launched a Bible version translated into the native Mapudungun language, evidently indifferent to the concerns of a nation striving to save its identity from the Western cultural juggernaut.
The latest round of anti-regime protests in Iran is different than other in the 40 years of the Islamic Republic: for its universality and boldness, the level of public fury and grief, and the role of women and social media. The target is not some policy or the economy, but the regime itself.