Someone defaced a Gap subway advertisement featuring a Sikh model with the caption, “Make love,” with the words, “make bombs,” and “please stop driving taxis.”  A senior editor for Islamic Monthly posted the defaced ad on his Twitter and Facebook accounts because, he said,  he wanted the world ” to see how millions of brown people are viewed in America today.” (see the photo below) Gap saw the ad and immediately changed it’s Twitter background to show the Sikh model... Read more

Take a tour of the Bamiyan statutes with Hal, Halla and David Linker’s 1973 television travelogue series, “The Wild, the Weird, and the Wonderful.” Here, they start out showing us the yurts in which they lived while exploring the Bamiyan Valley. But soon after that, they take us on a fascinating tour of the caves.  They show us the remains of perhaps the largest Buddha at 175 feet. The film clip is from the Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution... Read more

The Buddha may have been born earlier than most historians believe, according to the National Geographic. Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of a Buddhist shrine dating to around 550 BCE. The shrine is in Nepal at the Lumbini pilgrimage center where the Buddha was supposedly born and is the oldest ever found. Here’s another article about the discovery from CNN and one from the BBC. Read more

Mayam Mahmoud, who made the semifinals of Arab’s Got talent, explains why she thinks it important to express herself.  She says that her parents supported her as long as she sang  about things that had value. And here’s a good story about the rapper from the Guardian. Read more

Florida State University’s AcaBelles cappella group has already gotten more than 5 million views on You Tube as it performs Lourdes “Royals.” Read more

Teaching Sikhism? Here’s a 1997 BBC documentary along with a student worksheet for the first 20 minutes of the video. Read more

Here’s a great 13 minute radio broadcast about Taoism with religion professor and author, Stephen Prothero. Read more

How do the countries of Africa compare to each other on issues like education, health, rights, infrastructure, or HIV, to name just a few of the issues?  PolicMic has this awesome interactive map that allows you to click on any country and see its comparative stats. You can also view a scatterplot for each issue which allows you to see possible relationships between indicators. Thanks to Danielle Demarest for tweeting the link. Read more

Did you know that only the Bible has been translated more than the Tao Te Ching? Find out more about it in this 14 minute clip Read more

Huston Smith, the religious scholar and author of the widely read book, “The World’s Religion,” discusses Taoism and Confucianism in this 1996 Bill Moyers Special called “The Wisdom of Faith.”   He eloquently explains how the teachings–Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism influence the daily lives of the Chinese. For example, Smith notes that all Chinese call on Confucianism for state occasions and parades, on Toaism for illness because Taoists masters know about potions, and on the Buddhist tradition to prepare them... Read more