This year, millions celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights celebrating the triumph of good over evil, had to adapt their plans amid various restrictions on gathering during the coronavirus pandemic. In Malaysia, Hindus attended temple for prayers for the first time in more than a month, as the government had closed houses of worship to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
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This weekend, millions are celebrating the Hindu festival Diwali, or the festival of lights. The holiday celebrates the triumph of good over evil and remembers several different Hindu mythologies.
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In an online broadcast to his followers, Rev. Sean Moon, son of the Unification movement’s founder, said America is threatened by totalitarianism and must fight back to ensure President Trump serves a second term, even if that means dying in “a gun fight with police.”
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Worldwide, religious leaders are making headlines in secular society for the realms where their faiths clash with the political.
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Cardinals, archbishops and other clerical leaders of the Catholic Church from around the world have penned a flurry of letters and official statements in the wake of the ground-breaking McCarrick report that concludes while many in the Vatican hierarchy had known for years about sexual abuse allegations against ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick and not removed him, Pope Francis was not complicit.
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(OPINION) Though factual evidence for the treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang is sparse, a recent Australian study recognized that mosques have been destroyed by the Chinese government.
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(ANALYSIS) In the biggest escalation in tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan since their war’s end in 1994, Armenia’s Christian clergy are standing firm with both soldiers and civilians, as they always have, while Azerbaijan’s troops continue to push back Armenia’s line of defense.
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Several leaders of Muslim countries have condemned France and President Emmanuel Macron for their response following the murder of a school teacher who showed caricatures of Prophet Muhammad during a class on freedom of speech. Muslims in Southeast Asia have called Macron’s statements Islamophobic.
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Seven months after deadly anti-Muslim riots in New Delhi, calm has been restored, and local Muslims have returned for prayers in the restored mosques. But those complicit in the 53 deaths, of which two-thirds were Muslims, remain at large.
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(OPINION) As a child in an exclusive Catholic Convent run by Irish missionaries, Jennifer was always told that the bedrock of the Catholic faith had to be compassion towards others. It's what guided her through some spontaneous decisions as a broadcast journalist in India.
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Father Joseph Pereira, a Catholic priest in Mumbai, is healing substance abuse addicts through yoga and meditation, which can be a controversial practice for Christians in India.
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Crimes against Dalits, a community marginalized for centuries in the complex Hindu social hierarchy, have increased by more than 7% in the last year, according to new government data. Experts and activists blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “politics of hatred” and say a law from the ‘80’s meant to deter the crimes has pervasively failed.
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(OPINION) Now, more than 25 years after the rather unclear resolution of a 1994 conflict—and emerging in the notoriously painful year 2020—the Armenia/Artsakh vs. Azerbaijan conflict has flared up again. And this time—tragically—Turkey’s Islamist President Tayyip Erdogan has powerfully entered the fray.
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Why a federal court has denied petitions from a Native American tribe to stop construction on land they claim their ancestors are buried, how two Chilean churches were set ablaze during protests against inequality and the latest world leader to demand a UN investigation of China’s abuses against Uighurs.
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(ANALYSIS) At a time of tense China-India relations, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates are advancing the Hindu nationalist agenda in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other hubs of Indian diaspora in East Asia.
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(ANALYSIS) What was a nominally a little-known conflict regarding the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region — also known as Artsakh — claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan has erupted into a full-scale war with an estimated thousands of soldiers on both sides killed in intense fighting.
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A Chinese church now operating out of New York claims Jesus returned as a woman in China, upsetting Christian leaders in India wary of the group’s appeal among young Christians.
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Zen, who recently returned to Hong Kong from a trip to the Vatican, has no higher authority on Earth to appeal to in his fight to save his country’s church from infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party.
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Popular pilgrimage destinations like Jerusalem and Rome have seen a massive drop in religious travelers, especially during Passover, Easter and this past summer.
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Kashmiris are welcoming the Indian government’s move to restore religious sites, including a Hindu temple, now in a Muslim neighborhood, vacated when Kashmiri Hindus fled the region’s armed rebellion in the 1990’s.
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