NB: The Indian Army has always been the most visibly secular part of the Indian establishment; commanding maximum trust among the public in times of communal unrest. It is a tragic and extremely dangerous move on the part of the ruling party to try and influence the Armed Forces with their political ideology. It is… Read More The Indian Army’s Visible Adherence to the Majority Religion Can No Longer Be Ignored
Composed between the 10th and 12th centuries, these moral observations from old Kannada texts show great care about how to be properly charitable. Chandan Gowda ‘A person of understanding gives in charity without wondering, “What do I stand to lose?”, without hesitation, without the weight of self-doubt, and without any dampening of enthusiasm.’ “The one… Read More The grace of giving
Readers outside of India can donate hereto support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks: Books of Note https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16391.html
NB: I appreciate this author’s empathetic understanding of religion, especially this sentence: of my three particular political heroes, only one – Dr King – is a Christian. Gandhi was Hindu, and his colleague, the too-little-known Abdul Ghaffar Khan – was a Muslim. I learned something special in this line: Philoxenia is the Greek term used… Read More They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity
This article, The Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho; is an abridged version of The Bible: No Evidence on the Ground; by Zeev Herzog, Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. He participated extensively in collaboration with other archaeologists in excavations at ancient sites relevant to Biblical legends.… Read More Biblical Archaeology and the Judeo-Christian legends / The Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho
It’s worth recalling that the familiar biblical history of the Israelites’– the Exodus from Egypt, the conquest of the land and the rise of the empire of David and Solomon – is almost entirely fiction. It’s not history but mythology. Shaphan the scribe, a marginal figure in the Bible, was the ghostwriter who shaped the… Read More The Obscure Scribe Who Invented Judaism
Beena Sarwar Prominent Islamic scholar Shahab Ahmed, originally from Pakistan, was laid to rest on Saturday morning at the historic Mt. Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his adopted home. Born in Singapore on Dec 11, 1966, he passed away on Sept 17, 2015 in Boston. Dr. Ahmed’s former student Suheil Laher, currently a lecturer on… Read More Shahab Ahmed, prominent Islamic scholar (1966-2015)
pilgrimage journal the Great Beast From Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace: The Great Beast [society, the collective] is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself. It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence,… Read More the Great Beast
Siyavash Shahabi The struggle against religious superstition and the effort to sever the bond between religion and power have deep roots in Iran. Contrary to the widespread belief that secularism is purely a Western or modern phenomenon, Iranian history is rich with Enlightenment-driven efforts that have criticized religion not as a matter of faith, but… Read More Sadegh Hedayat on Religion, Power, and Manufactured Ignorance
NB: The last lines of this Communiqué read: The Latin Patriarchate remains steadfast in its commitment to the Christian community and the entire population of Gaza. They will not be forgotten, nor will they be abandoned. This the first time in nineteen months of genocidal mania unleashed by Israel that any religious institution has issued… Read More Communiqué issued by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem in Gaza
After the truth-shower 