Vivek Ramaswamy and Hinduism
Vivek Ramaswamy Leans Into His Hindu Faith to Court Christian Voters: Swami Vivekananda, who represented Hinduism at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893, took pains to depict his faith as monotheistic, in contrast to the stereotypes of its followers as “heathen” polytheists. Although the faith has many deities, they are generally … Continue reading Vivek Ramaswamy and Hinduism
More Sikhs in Canada than India proportionally
Seems like Sikhs are 2.1% of Canada’s population, and 1.7% of India’s population. Massive migration over the last decade to Canada…
How Christian Militarism slowed the spread of Christianity
In 1250 AD Mindauguas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, accepted Christianity. This was to be a “Clovis moment” for the Lithuanian tribes, but history took a different path. Mindaugas’ nobles […]
Hinduism will die, and Hinduism will live
Sometimes in these comments or on social media, I see Hindus bemoan the passivity and weakness of their religion in the face of faiths with greater vigor and asabiyyah. This is such a common occurrence that I don’t often comment on it. But I have to say ironically that these sorts of comments exhibit a … Continue reading Hinduism will die, and Hinduism will live
Being anti-Brown is anti-Hindu
In one section of the Washington Post piece Cal State banned caste discrimination. Two Hindu professors sued an activist professor states: Sundaram, who supports making caste a protected characteristic, said critiquing Hinduism — even in a country where Hindus are a minority — is not akin to promoting Hinduphobia. She said most discrimination against Hindus … Continue reading Being anti-Brown is anti-Hindu
American is more secular than it was a generation ago
The Wall Street Journal has an op-ed, Religion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It Many of the ‘Nones’ aren’t secular; they belong to minority faiths. The problem is how to count […]
Christian conversions in rural India
Arrests, Beatings and Secret Prayers: Inside the Persecution of India’s Christians: The Christians were mid-hymn when the mob kicked in the door. A swarm of men dressed in saffron poured inside. They jumped onstage and shouted Hindu supremacist slogans. They punched pastors in the head. They threw women to the ground, sending terrified children scuttling … Continue reading Christian conversions in rural India
The gay Muslim Roman Emperor
Last year I wrote The Myth Of Arabian Paganism, And The Jewish-Christian Origins Of The Umayyads. My overall contention is that Islam-qua-Islam was retconned in the 8th century back to […]
The rise of a Christian elite
The above plot from a Peter Turchin blog post, Easter, Early Christians, and Cliodynamics, illustrates a sigmoid curve in the rise of Christianity among Roman elites (elites are relevant since […]
Thinking in terms of millennia
Reading Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion has me thinking about the Pantheon. I visited Rome and stood outside (and inside) the Pantheon in 2010. I still remember the […]
God is back! (in Russia)
For over ten years I have been making fun of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s 2009 book God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World. […]
<em>The WEIRDest People in the World</em>
The argument put forward by Joe Henrich in his new book is audacious and surprising.
The religion of Hindus before Hinduism
India in the Persianate Age: 1000–1765 is a good read and I recommend it. But the author, Richard Eaton, is not a guru or a sheikh, and should not be taken as such. A comment Eaton makes offhand several times is that the conflict between Turks and Indians should not be understood in confessional terms. …
How Technology Drives Religious “Fundamentalism”
Since I’m a book-nerd I probably would put the printing press as one of the top five technologies of the period between 1000 and 2000 A.D. I’ve written before about how I think the printing press drove rapid cultural and social change. But in this post, I want to make explicit something which I’ve long […]
Getting beyond the nerd understanding of religion
Since about 2006 I’ve had to write the same post again and again due to the nature of my audience: religion is not the purview of technically oriented nerds, and technically oriented nerds just don’t “get” it intuitively. This is something that is relevant to me personally, because I am myself a technically oriented nerd, …
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Why Hinduism is not inchoate paganism
An individual, who I have come to conclude is a troll after further comments (they are banned), mentioned offhand that Hinduism and/or Hindu identity is reactive Islam and the British, and that its origins are in the 19th century. This is a common assertion and presented recently by one of our podcast guests. I myself …
Ram temple
Thanks to readers of this weblog I know something is going on with Ayodha in India today. Two stories I read. First, Slate, a liberal American publications, Why a Giant Hindu Deity Is Appearing in Times Square on Wednesday. Second, Al Jazeera, India: Modi to lay Ayodhya temple foundation to push Hindu agenda. I don’t …
Umayyad invention of the idea of Islam
A few months ago I wrote The Myth Of Arabian Paganism, And The Jewish-Christian Origins Of The Umayyads. Some readers suggested I look at Sean Anthony’s Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam. After finishing Muhammad and the Empires of Faith there are no major revisions I would make […]
Looking to the east: a different secularism than the West
Why Hagia Sophia, Turkey And The Charismatic Figure Of Erdogan Bristle With Resonances For India: The Hagia Sophia reconversion ultimately points to the failure of the Kemalist project of top-down secularism. Much like the state secularism of nationalist authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Iran, Iraq etc had failed to lead to the secularisation of the wider …
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On Being Hindu in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Most readers of this weblog will already know this story. Far more than I do at least: Construction work at Hindu temple site in Islamabad halted. This part jumped out at me: The Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), an ally of Prime Minister Khan’s ruling Tehreek-e-Insaf recently opposed the construction of the temple by claiming that …
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