The Roma: Europe's Most Oppressed Mintoirty

Often viewed as gypsies, the roughly 12 million Roma are probably the most oppressed and excluded minority in Europe. According to the Open Society Foundation, some of the challenges they face include: "illiteracy, infant mortality, unemployment, segregation in education, hunger and malnutrition, squalid housing without plumbing or sanitation,and substandard health care."  Consequently "they have the shortest life expectancy in Europe."  Open Society is trying to change that through litigation, education funds, summer camps, involvement with the World Bank, health care initiatives, to name just a few of  the efforts. My thanks to Hind Makki for twitting the link to Open Society.

Islamophobia Increases Worldwide

Muslims, especially in Europe and Asia, are facing  more violence and tougher restrictions on dress, according to this report from OnIslam.   Much of the story here comes from a recent report on religious freedom from the US Department of  State.   Secretary John Kerry says  that it "... shines light on the challenges people face as they seek nothing more than basic religious freedom and the right to worship as they wish."

The Wesak Festival - The Full Moon of the Buddha

The Wesak festival is the most sacred Buddhist ceremony held every year in a hidden valley in Tibet. It celebrates the story of how the Buddha gained enlightenment and allows those seeking enlightenment today to think about the meaning of that path. Buddhists celebrate it in different ways in different counties. In Thailand, for example, the BBC says that people make special lanterns and in some ceremonies even release caged birds. In China, one might see dancing dragons during Wesak and in other other countries one might find ceremonies in which participants bathe Buddha statutes.  Here's the program for a Wesak festival in California.  And here is a nice introductory prezi on Buddhism. My thanks to Gary Abrahamian who tweeted the link to the video above and the prezi.

What the Western World can Learn from the Prophet Muhammad

Haroon Moghul's Ted Talk about the early development of Islam and American history is both excellent and entertaining.  Haroon Moghul is an associate editor at Religion Dispatches and a PHD candidate at Columbia and believes that Americans don't know enough about Islam and that lack of knowledge may keep them form understanding the spread of democracy in the Middle East.  

Meditation Guru Tara Brach

Washington Post Reporter, Michelle Boorstein, profiles Buddhist meditation guru, Tara Brach, in this Washington Post report, that includes a photo gallery. Brach is one of the most popular meditation teachers in the Washington metropolitan area. Her talks are saved as pod-casts and downloaded almost 200,000 times each month. Some Buddhists critics think that she secularizes meditation too much in an effort to appeal to a broader audience. In any case, Brach seems to demonstrate the popularity of meditation.  Sean Corn is another teacher who was profiled on Krista Tippett's show, On Being, a couple of years ago.  She also shows the popularity of meditation and yoga.

The World’s Most and Least Racially Tolerant Countries

Does economic freedom indicate a greater tolerance for race? This is the question that two Swedish scientists set out to answer. They did so by using something called a "World Values Survey." The idea, according to the Washington Post is this: "the more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society."

The scientists did not include all the data from the survey, so the story's author, Max Fisher, went back to the source and created this infographic --"If we treat this data as indicative of racial tolerance, then we might conclude that people in the bluer countries are the least likely to express racist attitudes, while the people in red countries are the most likely." The results:

• Anglo and Latin countries most tolerant. 
• India, Jordan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong by far the least tolerant 
• The Middle East not so tolerant.

Comedians as Activists, Challenging Prejudice

Maz Jobrani is an Iranian-American comic and one of the founding members of the Axis of Evil comedy tour. In this funny 10 minute clip on Ted Talks he pokes fun at stereotypes and challenges prejudice. I am covering Islam in my religions class and beginning to look at Muslim culture today and showed it to the students who found it entertaining. Here's a story from NPR about the comedy tour and here is a New Times review of the group.

Sufism Makes a Comeback in Somalia

Sufisim is making a comeback in Somalia, according to this Huffington Post story. It was outlawed for many years while Somalia was ruled by an armed militant Islamic group, called al-Shabab. But now this mystical branch of Islam is coming back.

How to Escape the Death Valley of Education

Here is Ken Robinson at his best, which I found on Open Culture. In this 20 minute talk, Robinson takes on the test-centric culture of American education and argues that it is destroying creativity and curiosity.

Face to Faith: Teaching Students to be Global Citizens

In our last Face to Faith video conference for the year, my religion students considered human rights issues important to their lives. One issue they considered with particular passion was women’s rights, especially the right of young women to be treated with the same respect as men when they drink. Why, some students wondered, is it always incumbent on women to be careful?

 Our facilitator challenged the students to consider what responsibility they had for human rights violations that don’t directly affect them, like the collapse of the textile factory in Bangladesh.

Our video conference was with just one other school, a Catholic school in a predominantly Mormon state, Utah. The conference facilitator, Jo Malone, skyped in from London and our technical engineer who helped us with sound and picture, Nonica Kochhar, was in India.

The conference lasted only an hour because the other school was on a 55 minute schedule but the discussion was good and could have continued for another thirty minutes. This conference was our fifth and over the course of the last few months, we tested the three different types of conferences that Faith to Faith offers.

• We completed a partnered conference with another school (this one was with a school in Ukraine).
• We participated in one special day conference—UN Malaria Day. Students from several schools listened to a speaker and then discussed the issues with her.
• Finally, we completed two multipoint conferences with several schools, one on community and values, and the most recent one on human rights.

We prepare  students for each conference with several lessons, usually provided by Face to Faith.  For example,  I showed a PowerPoint on malaria and several video clips on how it spreads.

My students enjoyed all the conferences and considered them a highlight.  They got to discuss important global current issues like the tragedy in Bangladesh, malaria in Africa, women’s rights, wealth and philanthropy, and the significance of community and values.  In some cases, they got to discuss the issues with experts or activists in the field.  But what they liked the most was talking to students in other parts of the world and discovering that while culture might differentiate them,  commitment to faith and community often serve as common bonds.

Next year, I plan to incorporate Face to Faith with my history classes.  Religion is an important component of those classes and will allow students to incorporate their knowledge of religion with current events. The program would also work well with human geography classes.

Catholic Population Surges Across The Global South

Catholics are making big gains in Asia and Africa, according to this Huffington Post story. In fact,  the story notes,  "Catholic growth in Africa and Asia was almost double the regions’ population growth."  In his book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Philip Jenkins discusses the implications of this remarkable expansion of Christianity into the global south.

Characteristics Associated with Westerners and Muslims

Here is a 2011 Pew research survey, which I saw on the On Being blog, that shows what Muslims in seven different countries think of westerners and then what westerners (from the US, Russia and four other western countries) think about Muslims.  Looks like we'll need a lot more interfaith dialogue.

The Brazen Bibliophiles of Timbuktu

Librarians in Timbuktu duped Al Qaeda and saved thousands of ancient manuscripts from destruction. The Associated Press picked up the story earlier this year and now the New Republic has published a more in depth story in its current issue.  

An Al Qaeda-linked group ruled Timbuktu for much of last year and, according to the New Republic, did so through terror--"cutting of hands of thieves, flogging women judged to be dressed immodestly, and destroying centuries-old tombs of local saints."  Residents like Abdel Kader Haidara worried that Timbuktu's library collection of 30,0000 manuscripts might be the group's next target. So, he and friends began loading them in metal lockers, like suitcases, and sending them to the homes of some of the cities oldest families.  As Al Qaeda tightened its grip on the city, destroying its major shrines, they began to look for new targets.  That's when couriers began to load the lockers onto boats traveling down the Niger.

That's how almost all of the city's 30,000 manuscripts made it safely to Bamako. But some of those boat trips were made with real drama. Gunmen captured some of the boats and threatened to burn the manuscripts unless they paid a ransom. They barely managed to pay it. The story reads like a trhiller and students might enjoy it when we study fundamentalist strains of Islam.

A Final Embrace: the Most Haunting Picture from Bangladesh

My religions class just completed a seminar on human rights. The collapse of the garment factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, came up. Sometimes a picture is worth so much more than words. Time Magazine printed the photograph which, it says, "has emerged as the most heart wrenching, capturing an entire country’s grief in a single image."

World Population Distribution

More than half the world's population lives inside the circle, and yes, most of the circle is water. But it also encompasses China and India. Thanks to Ryan Folmer for tweeting the link. You can read more about the map here. As a Reddit editor noted: "There are more Muslims in the circle than outside of it. There are more Hindus in the circle than outside of it. There are more Buddhists in the circle than outside of it..."

Book of Mormon: Party Bus Edition

A few boys posted this video of the song "Hello" from the Broadway hit, The Book of Mormon, on Twitter last week. It got over 30,000 hits, according to this Huffington Post story. The Twitter account for the Broadway show saw it  and urged others to create similar videos.

Here's the Broadway version that I found online. 

Why Are Buddhist Monks Attacking Muslims?

Aren't Buddhist monks, indeed all Buddhists, supposed to be non-violent?  In Burma and Sri Lanka, they are spewing hate and joining mobs.

This  great BBC article explains the trouble. In Sri Lanka, according to the BBC, the issue or flash point is the halal slaughter of animals. That has led to boycotts of Muslim businesses in Sri Lanka.  Fortunately, there has been no violence yet.  But in Burma, the situation is different. A somewhat crazy Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, who refers to himself as a  Burmese Bin Laden, incites religious hatred.

"Aren't the Buddhists supposed to be the good guys of religion?"  The BBC traces the history of Buddhist aggression and attempts to place it in context with the other major religions.

The Five Most Popular Posts in April

Here are the top posts for April. This timeline got the most page views.

• Timeline of World Religions
• Our Blogs Make the Washington Post
• World Religions Graphic
• Face to Faith/ World Malaria Day
• In Pictures: India's Parsi

The Gulabi Gang - Pink Indians

The Gulabi Gang are pink sari wearing women in India who brandish big sticks and go after corrupt public officials and boorish men. According to this BBC news article, they come from India's northern Uttar Pradesh state's Banda area. The leader is Sampat Pal Devi, who was married at 12, and is now fighting the system with like minded women. She describes her goals like this: "We aim to empower women, promote child education with an emphasis on girls, and stop corruption and domestic violence."  Here's a very good story about Sampat and the Gulag Gang and here is another.  Hind Makki tweeted a picture of the Gulabi Gang which prompted me to look them up. 

Is The Veil A Symbol Of Oppression? Great Infographic

Hind Makki tweeted this great infographic about the veil. It outlines the veil's history and even includes photographs of veil wearing women in public office. I would love to print this out as poster.