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News Portal Home  Religion & Politics (Asia) Religion & Politics (Asia)
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Friday, 24 April 2009 |
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The Malaysian government has decided that children should be raised in the religion which their parents had at the time of marriage, even if one of the parent later converts. The decision by the cabinet Thursday emanates from the case of Indra Ghandhi, an ethnic Indian mother of three. She separated from her husband who embraced Islam, The Star newspaper said. SOURCE ARTICLE |
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Sunday, 15 February 2009 |
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Greater spiritual freedom for women and a renewed dedication to world peace were the messages preached Thursday at a mixed-faith Buddhism and Hindu forum at Svay Pope pagoda in Phnom Penh. In a pledge at the three-day conference, titled "Giving Global Voice to Eastern Wisdom", nearly 100 Hindu and Buddhist leaders from India, Sri Lanka, Japan and Cambodia vowed to cooperate to promote international peace in a world of "greed and self-ignorance" and where Eastern ideals were seen to be "marginalised" by the West. SOURCE ARTICLE
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Sunday, 15 February 2009 |
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The small Hallmark shop in popular Lajpat Nagar market was crammed this week with Valentine's Day paraphernalia and young Indians showing it some love. They pored over sentimental red and pink cards, carefully considered whether to purchase the big teddy bear or the really big teddy bear, and pushed their way to the cash Valentine's Day is more popular here than ever, the shop owner said. Yet despite this display -- or perhaps because of it -- February 14 has been cast as a forbidden holiday in this quickly modernizing country by fundamentalist groups that call it "un-Indian," and threaten violence, or even enforced marriage, to those who dare celebrate it in public. SOURCE ARTICLE |
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Tuesday, 06 January 2009 |
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Protesters today blocked traffic to the world famous Pashupatinath temple, staging rallies in defiance of a ban in force, asking the Maoist government to keep off religion and respect the orders of the Supreme Court staying the sacking of Indian priests. Hundreds of people including priests, Bhandaris, aides to the priests, civil society members and local residents came out shouting anti-Maoist slogans asking the government not to interfere in religion. SOURCE ARTICLE
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Sunday, 30 November 2008 |
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The spectacular terrorist attacks in Mumbai are the latest in a series of assaults that are straining relations between Hindus and Muslims and threatening to aggravate tensions between India and Pakistan. While no one is certain yet exactly who is responsible, one possible suspect is the Indian Mujahedeen, a group that emerged about a year ago. It has claimed responsibility for a series of previous attacks, including one in the city of Ahmedabad on July 26 in which the attackers caused an explosion in the city's crowded old quarter, then set off car bombs at the hospitals where victims were being taken. Another attack in the Rajasthani city of Jaipur took 60 lives in May. Some of the bombs were carried on bicycles. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Sunday, 30 November 2008 |
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A Karnataka court Saturday handed out death sentence to 11 people and life imprisonment to 12 members of a banned religious sect for bomb blasts in several churches in the state in 2000.The 23 belong to a sect called Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman founded by Moulana Siddique in 1924 in Gulbarga district in north Karnataka. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Saturday, 08 November 2008 |
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The two-day anti-terrorism Muslim conference, being held in Hyderabad urged on Saturday not to link terrorism with any religion. The seminar to denounce terrorism is organised by Jamiat Ulmea-I-Hind, a Muslim organisation. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Friday, 17 October 2008 |
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At least 60 Christians have been killed over the past two months in eastern India in a brutal backlash to the murder of a revered Hindu holy man, a national bishops' body said Friday. The figure is nearly double the official toll of 35 given by government authorities in the eastern state of Orissa. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Sunday, 14 September 2008 |
The "deep regret" expressed yesterday by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak during a cabinet meeting has not quieted Buddhist groups. Conservative Christians are now joining in the controversy, with the risk that the dispute could become interconfessional, rather than political. FULL ARTICLE LINK
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Wednesday, 03 September 2008 |
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Korean Buddhists, fired by allegations of religious bias from the Lee administration, take to the streets but the real reason lies much deeper. South Korean Buddhists are up in arms, accusing President Lee Myung Bak and his administration of showing religious bias against Buddhists and favoring Christians. South Korea by law is a secular state, as clearly enshrined in its constitution defending the freedom of religion. It bars designation of any faith as state religion. Yet, a phenomenal rise in the size and power of the Christian community in recent decades has the Buddhist community here gripped by apprehension. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Wednesday, 03 September 2008 |
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Most anthropologists consider the Kalasha Religion to be polytheistic, because it has many deities. In Rumbur, however, where the people are more progressive and there is a stronger belief in the monotheistic concept of one single creator of the universe, Saifullah Jan, the official representative of the Kalasha, says the Kalasha do believe in one supreme god. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Monday, 11 August 2008 |
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Malaysian politicians wrangled Sunday about whether to curb sensitive debates on religious disputes in this Muslim-majority nation after protests halted a conference on Islamic conversions. Police told the Bar Council association of lawyers to abort the forum Saturday after more than 300 demonstrators rallied outside the conference hall and threatened to storm the event. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008 |
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Thailand has boosted its military forces on disputed land at the Cambodian border, an army official said Wednesday, after two days of simmering tensions over an ancient Hindu temple. Publicly, officials from both nations have called for talks to peacefully resolve the dispute over a 4.6-square-kilometre (1.8-square-mile) area near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple that is home to a small Cambodian village. But Thailand's army chief, General Anupong Paojinda, ordered 140 elite soldiers to the border to pressure Cambodia to the bargaining table, an army official told AFP on condition of anonymity. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Friday, 27 June 2008 |
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Thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of Indian Kashmir on Friday, protesting the transfer of state land to a Hindu shrine in what they charge is a ploy to build Hindu settlements and change the demographic balance in this Muslim-majority region. Police used live ammunition, tear gas and bamboo batons in an attempt to quell some of the largest protests against Indian rule since the outbreak of a separatist rebellion in the Himalayan region nearly two decades ago. Three people have been killed and hundreds wounded over the last five days of demonstrations. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Sunday, 08 June 2008 |
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On the northwest tip of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan's Nuristan province, the inaccessible Chitral district has long been thought to be a possible refuge for Osama bin Laden. With the high peaks of the Hindu Kush range and its narrow valleys, it's easy to dodge through secret mountain routes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Chitral is also the home of the Kalasha, a unique pagan civilization that's lived in the area for 2,000 years or more, now boxed in by an increasingly militant Islam. Thinly populated, Chitral covers 5,800 square miles, with war-torn Afghanistan to the north and west and the extremist strongholds of Swat and Dir to the south. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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