(OPINION) The international community should brace for serious trouble if India continues to revoke citizenship of people who settled there after fleeing Bangladesh.
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After prayers at their mosque, hundreds of Kashmiris shouted slogans for India to leave Kashmir and prevented security forces from entering the area. Security forces responded with tear gas, pellet fire and chili grenades.
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The 22-year-old Catholic Agnes Chow and her evangelical colleague Joshua Wong were arrested and released on bail Friday on charges of unlawful assembly. This weekend marks five years since China restricted free elections in Hong Kong and pro-democracy protests dubbed the Umbrella Revolution brought the young activists to fame.
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The Dalit and indigenous Indians in eastern India who converted to Christianity were attacked by Hindu extremists in 2008. The survivors are still waiting for a government investigation and courts to hold the perpetrators accountable.
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(OPINION) Some of Israel’s most devout citizens are at the heart of a major political rift over the country’s compulsory military service. The issue could shape the elections next month.
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This Indonesian province has a rich history of a matrilineal society that’s shifting from its indigenous culture toward a more austere form of Islam. Cultural and theological divides are widening with less openness to discussion.
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(OPINION) The United Nations has established for the first time ever on Aug. 22 a day to draw attention to people groups around the world violently persecuted for their religious beliefs: Yazidis in Syria and Iraq, Christians in Nigeria, faith minorities in Pakistan, Rohingya in Myanmar, Uighur Muslims in China and others.
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After India’s unilateral decision to rid the Muslim-majority region Kashmir’s special autonomy from the constitution, some are angry and fear a rise in Hindu settlement, while others cheer the move as a way to help Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan and Kashmir.
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A group of village councils in North India decided to tackle caste discrimination by changing their names — stripping their postal addresses, name plates, social media accounts and vehicle windshields of caste markers.
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As the Indian government’s communication ban reaches two weeks, it announced that 50,000 landline connections have been restored for calls after crowds surged last week to the few phones available from government offices. Internet and mobile networks remain shut.
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Skeptics believe that the Sri Lankan president’s move is aimed at increasing his support in the approaching elections. After the Easter bombings that killed more than 250 people, President Maithripala Sirisena’s leadership has come under sharp attack.
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The Hindu nationalist-led Indian government has stripped Muslim-majority Kashmir of its agreed-upon terms of accession, a special status granting autonomy under the Indian constitution, and sent in more than 40,000 troops to the already heavily militarized region. Kashmiris there are living under curfews without access to phones, Internet or cable TV channels while elected representatives are under house arrest.
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After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election in 2014 and reelection this May, brutal mob attacks by Hindu nationalist groups against India’s Muslim and Christian minorities have continued to steadily rise.
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The Indian government is reportedly forming a new plan to resettle thousands of Kashmiri Hindus back to the Kashmir Valley, an army-occupied territory disputed with Pakistan. The plan would likely further inflame Hindu-Muslim tensions.
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The practice, enforced by some conservative Sunni clerics and condemned by others, requires a divorced Muslim woman to consummate a marriage with another man before she can remarry her first husband.
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Kashmiri classical music, which blends Sufi traditions from Persia with Indian classical music, is facing threat of extinction as fewer students have leisure or funds to study the art form and fewer maestros exist to teach them. Its musicians believe the genre could bring peace to the army-occupied region, following the ways of Sufi mystics who preached peace, tolerance, pluralism and universalism.
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This month, thousands of Indian Hindu pilgrims are visiting the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir — a region of armed conflict between Kashmiri Muslim militants and Indian security officials — to pray at the Amarnath cave and shrine. Thousands of Kashmiri Muslims are setting up shops and travel businesses to accommodate them.
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(NEWS ANALYSIS) Rodrigo Duterte has wasted no time going after clergy, particularly when the church began opposing his human rights record. His bloody war against drugs has shocked the church, but has been met largely with approval from his supporters.
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A bill to ban triple talaq, or Islamic instant divorce, is creating controversy in India. The bill could be unconstitutional in two ways: it would criminalize only Muslim men for deserting their wives and it trumps so-called personal laws meant to provide religious freedom in civil matters like marriage.
Read MoreSaudi Arabia, China, Russia and Myanmar are the world’s worst offenders of religious freedom in 2018, according to the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report.
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