'Dog sacrifice' angers activists

"Bangalore: Animal lovers in Bangalore were up in arms after they read an invitation to a religious function at the Shaneshwara temple, which said 25 dogs would be sacrificed during the function on Friday. continue reading"

Vatican issues 10 Commandments for driving -- Faithwise Review of the Week

Message to motorists: watch your driving and your mouth, Nicole Winfield, Associated Press

Here are the "Drivers' Ten Commandments" as listed by the Vatican's Office for Mirgrants and Itinerant People:

1. You shall not kill.
2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
4. Be charitable and help your neighbour in need, especially victims of accidents.
5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.
6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.
7. Support the families of accident victims.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.
9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
10. Feel responsible toward others. source read also: Vatican issues '10 Commandments' for good motorists

New York City rewards poor with cash for good behaviour Read also: In God’s Name: Religion for Captive Audiences, With Taxpayers Footing the Bill, By DIANA B. HENRIQUES and ANDREW LEHREN

Chicken served to pundit; airline fined
Kuala Lumpur: A Malaysian court has ordered the country's national carrier to pay an Indian Brahmin Rs 2 lakh in damages for serving him chicken on a flight four years ago.

Hugs and handshakes? Not in school, please see also: 'We need no bans' 19 Jun, 2007 l 0000 hrs ISTlNIKHILA PANT /TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Online exclusive: A sacred space for immigrant rights

Interfaith Leaders Meet In Chicago Around the Issue of Labor Justice and Immigration
WASHINGTON, DC - June, 19, 2007 (MASNET) The Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) held its 2007 national conference on the campus of North Park University in Chicago. This year's theme focused on welcoming, struggling, and organizing for worker's justice. It highlighted the opportunities and challenges that people of faith have in America to make a difference in the life of working people.
The conference also focused on the challenges for working people in an American climate that has become increasingly xenophobic and anti immigrant. The Muslim American Society (MAS) was represented at the conference by its executive director, Mahdi Bray, who is also a board member of IWJ. At the conference, Bray served as a workshop leader, moderator, and speaker. Visit the Website: Interfaith Worker Justice

Miracle diet pill with teeny-tiny side effect

Buddhism new obstacle between India, China21 Jun, 2007 l 0030 hrs ISTlIndrani Bagchi/TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Don't scapegoat multiculturalism, Haroon Siddiqui @ The Toronto Star, Jun 10, 2007
"Immigration and multiculturalism are linked. One serves as a lightning rod for the other. Unease with either, or both, rises in times of economic and social insecurity."
"Too often these debates have been initiated by right-wing commentators as thinly disguised strategies for attacking immigrants, particularly Muslims, often accompanied by apocalyptic predictions about how Canada's experiment in multiculturalism is on the verge of collapse."
It isn't.
On the contrary, Wilfrid Laurier's dream of Canada as a Gothic cathedral is now an entrenched reality:
"I want the marble to remain the marble, the granite to remain the granite, the oak to remain the oak – and out of all these elements I would build a nation great among the nations of the world."

Religioustolerance.org: Web Analytics Series no.3

PS. On the left is a graph depicting religioustolerance.org's Aharef website-mapper. It reveals the structure of the Web sites' html, css codes. Here are my three websites.

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags
source: AHAREF

See also:

religioustolerance.org | Web Safety Ratings from McAfee SiteAdvisor

God.com: Web Analytics Series no.2

Beliefnet.com: Web Analytics Series no.1

Buddhist leader connects to followers with blog

His Holiness 17th Karmapa Trinlay Thaye Dorje. Calgary Herald, June 11, 2007 [info courtesy: Kevin's blog]

The Buddhist leader who loves tolerance – and The Simpsons Times Online, June 11, 2007 see also: American Buddhist Net

Freddie: The link between Budweiser and Buddha? 13 June 2007, Lancashire Evening Post

Buddhism Today, The View From Here, Jun 14, 2007

Little Mosque on the Prairie

"When a young lawyer from Toronto decides to become an Imam, he decides to move west to the prairies to pursue his true calling. As the new spiritual leader arrives in his new home, the Muslim community butts heads with locals. Watch the series"




See also

Watch all episodes at Google video, or @ YouTube.com

NBC honcho shows interest in Little Mosque The Globe and Mail,
GUY DIXON, June 14, 2007

Brazilian TV and Muslimness in Kyrgystan / Julie McBrien ISIM Review 19, Spring 2007

Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India:

By Ashutosh Varshney
From the Publisher
"What kinds of civic ties between different ethnic communities can contain, or even prevent, ethnic violence? This book draws on new research on Hindu-Muslim conflict in India to address this important question. Ashutosh Varshney examines three pairs of Indian cities—one city in each pair with a history of communal violence, the other with a history of relative communal harmony—to discern why violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs in some situations but not others. His findings will be of strong interest to scholars, politicians, and policymakers of South Asia, but the implications of his study have theoretical and practical relevance for a broad range of multiethnic societies in other areas of the world as well. The book focuses on the networks of civic engagement that bring Hindu and Muslim urban communities together. Strong associational forms of civic engagement, such as integrated business organizations, trade unions, political parties, and professional associations, are able to control outbreaks of ethnic violence, Varshney shows. Vigorous and communally integrated associational life can serve as an agent of peace by restraining those, including powerful politicians, who would polarize Hindus and Muslims along communal lines."

Contents: Preface. I. Arguments and theories : 1. Introduction. 2. Why civil society? Ethnic conflict and the existing traditions of inquiry. II. The national level : 3. Competing national imaginations. 4. Hindu-Muslim riots, 1950-1995: the national picture. III. Local variations: Aligarh and Calicut: internal and external cleavages : 5. Aligarh and Calicut: civic life and its political foundations. 6. Vicious and virtuous circles. Hyderabad and Lucknow: elite integration versus mass integration: 7. Princely resistance to civil society. 8. Hindu nationalists as bridge builders? Ahmedabad and Surat: how civic institutions decline: 9. Gandhi and civil society. 10. Decline of a civic order and communal violence. 11. Endogeneity? Of causes and consequences. IV. Conclusions : 12. Ethnic conflict, the state, and civil society. Appendices : A. Questionnaire for the project on Hindu-Muslim relations in India. B. Data entry protocol for the riot database. C. Regression results: Hindu-Muslim riots, 1950-1995. Notes. Index. [source: https://www.vedamsbooks.com]

From The Critics

Alfred Stepan
Varshney’s rich findings about what types of civil society organizations and activities help contain religious conflict – and which do not – open up a whole new agenda for theorists and activists alike.

David Laitin
Varshney has taken us a long way in understanding intra-Indian variations in communal violence,and he leaves a set of unanswered questions for future research. What more can be asked from a work of social science?

James C. Scott
A landmark synthesis. Varshney’s comparison of communal violence and tranquillity in urban India is lucid,theoretically self-conscious,original,and empirically convincing. It should launch a veritable flotilla of comparable studies of civil life in its admirable wake.

Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
South Asia scholars and social scientists will have to read Varshney,they will cite him,and they will learn from him.

Samuel P. Huntington
Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life is an outstanding work of social science,one of the most important studies of ethnic violence to appear in many years. This book will decisively shape future scholarly research on this subject and deserves to have an important impact on public policy concerning ethnic conflict. [source: www.bn.com]

The Punchline:
"This is a remarkably good book. The empirical research is impeccable; the analysis is careful; and the argument is persuasive. The issue is simple: Why is it that certain towns in India erupt into communal violence and others do not?" says kashif @ Indian Muslims and The Muslim World

"This is a must read book for leaders in civic socities, it is an eye opener for Muslims as well as Hindus.
I had interviewed Ashutosh about 3 years ago on Radio,he is a brilliant speaker and knows his research like the back of his hand."
I urge you to read the book. Mike Ghouse @ Indian Muslims

Thought for the day by Asghar Ali Engineer

Dr Engineer explained that religion can be divided into 4 parts-

Ritual system

Institution system

Philosophic system

Value system

He further stated that first three parts can be different but values is common to all religion. There were in all seven important values common to all religion and they were- Truth , Justice, Equality , Love, Compassion, Wisdom , Sensitivity to human sufferings among which three were most essential i.e.,
1. Search for truth
2. Love for all
3. Give to the society more than what we have received.
Continue reading: Workshop with police- thane

@ Workshop with police- thane
May 15, 2007
Target group - Police officers of all grade levels

Speaker - Dr Asghar Ali Engineer [Date - 15th may 2007 Total no participants -79]

See also:

Diversity Resources - Accommodation, Tolerance and Coexistence

Dr Asghar Ali Engineer @ Who is Who: Multifaith Hall of Fame of the 21st century

God and Climate Change - Global Environmental Perspective

The Green Rule: Do unto the Earth as you would have done unto you: Kashif Shaikh @   Faith & the Common Good

GOD is Green Part 1,

"Why are the world's religions so quiet on the subject of climate change? Inquisitive Catholic Mark Dowd takes a look at green issues through a religious prism and bemoans the lack of spiritual leadership on the issue."

See also:

God and Climate Change Watch the CBC TV Show

An Update on Renewing the Sacred Balance, Faith & the Common Good, Toronto

Revitalizing the Environmental Ethics in Islam Canadian Islamic Environmental Activism, Toronto.

Peace Is Possible - Peacemakers read the Golden Rule

Read before you watch the Video:
"Some people argue that the Golden Rule is the most consistent, moral teaching throughout history. Known also as the Ethic of Reciprocity, the Golden Rule is found in most religions and cultures. It can also be found in many ethical systems, indigenous cultures, secular philosophies and even in the physical sciences (the golden mean). Its omnipresence throughout history gives it tremendous moral authority." Source: Interfaith Dialogue

Peace Is Possible - Peacemakers read the Golden Rule, From: Tanenbaum Center

Baha'i: "The spiritually learned are lamps of guidance among the nations, and stars of good fortune shining from the horizons of humankind."
Abdu’l-Bahá , The Secret of Divine Civilization, page 33
Continue reading about other faiths' The Golden Rule: A Vision Shared: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism

see also video:

Be A Peacebuilder - United Religions Initiative
"Religiously motivated violence can end. This short films introduces the United Religions Initiative, whose purpose is "to promote enduring interfaith communication with the intention of ending religiously motivated violence in order to create cultures and communities of peace and understanding for all the living beings of Earth." Learn more at www.uri.org"

The Guiding Force of the Golden Rule, By Thomas Homer-Dixon, June 1, 2007; http://www.cbc.ca/thisibelieve/audio/ap_TIB_Dixon.mp3

THE GOLDEN RULE TWISTED ~ PART 1

Articles of Faith: Cleric offers tips to living in multifaith society - Faithwise Review of the Week

By ANTHONY B. ROBINSON
GUEST COLUMNIST

IT WASN'T all that long ago that what most Americans knew of religions such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism came from books, not personal encounter or experience. That's changed. Not only have travel and technology made the world smaller, but America has become a religiously pluralistic nation. Islam is now the fastest- growing religion in North America.

There are more Buddhists than Methodists in this country. Twenty-first century America is a land of many faiths. You are as likely to have a Muslim or Buddhist as a neighbor or co-worker as you are a Presbyterian or a Jew. continue

Brazilian President, Lula impressed with India's multi-faith heritage

Muslim author advocates multi-faith dialogue

Westminster multifaith pilgrimage

Japanese robot likes sushi, fears president:

TOKYO,Japan, June 5-- Kansei frowns when he hears the word "bomb," smiles at "sushi" and looks scared and disgusted when someone says "president" -- and he isn't even human.
Japan's latest robot, called Kansei and created by a university research team, can pull up to 36 different facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords.

Apocalypse now: Why extending religious discrimination laws to include personal philosophies exposes the flaws in protecting beliefs, 05 June 2007 00:00This article first appeared in Personnel Today magazine

Using science to question religious belief

Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief

Divorce increases risk of Ritalin use, study finds
Divorce increases risk of Ritalin use, study finds
Updated Tue. Jun. 5 2007 9:07 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Divorce puts children at a "significantly higher" risk of being prescribed Ritalin compared to kids whose parents don't divorce, finds new research by a University of Alberta sociologist.

Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus

Faith and Rights of Ownership

New Report Shows Rise in Religious Book Sales

Israel Displays Rare Religious Manuscript

The BJP and Muslims: The twain can meet by Sudheendra Kulkarni

Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism: Spiritual and Ethical Affinities, Reza Shah-Kazemi

The Founding Fathers and Islam: Library Papers Show Early Tolerance for Muslim Faith,By JAMES H. HUTSON, The Library of Congress, Information Bulletin, May 2002
With more than 55 million items, the Library's Manuscript Division contains the papers of 23 presidents, from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. In this article, Manuscript Division Chief James Hutson draws upon the papers of Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other primary documents to discuss the relationship of Islam to the new nation. ["Interesting to learn "The expressions of tolerence. " which dwindles now!" said: (late) Syed Aslam, Mysore.]

"Amateur" charge infuriates blogosphere

By Eric Auchard, Jun 5, 2007 9:06AM EDT,
BERKELEY, California (Reuters) - Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter.

Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favor of the amateurism of blogs, MySpace and other popularity-driven sites.

"Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys ... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity," Keen writes in a book published Tuesday. continue reading

see also what other bloggers are saying about this book: The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture

see also:

On the Web, 'ignorance meets bad taste meets mob rule'
Book review: "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture"
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI, New York Times July 8, 2007

Guruvayur priest bars non-Hindus - Faithwise Review of the Week

Karnataka HC admits petition against YouTube, Case pertains to defaming Mahatma Gandhi on the video portal, May 31, 2007

Taking oath in name of Allah Hindustan Times, Satya Prakash, New Delhi, May 22, 2007

Anti-dowry law: Is an amendment necessary? Sarika Sharma, May 20, 2007 (New Delhi)

No holds barred: Who defines morality? Akanksha Gupta, May 20, 2007 (New Delhi)

Edict against construction of Muslim shrines by army [Fatwa against Army, J & K: Fatwa against Army Plan to Renovate Mosques, Fatwa against army aid for Kashmir mosques finds support]