Free Republic

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana filed a lawsuit this week against a public school district in rural western Louisiana contending that school officials and at least one teacher harassed a Buddhist sixth-grade student for not adhering to Christianity. The ACLU filed the suit against the Sabine Parish school board in U.S. District Court in Shreveport on behalf of parents Scott and Sharon Lane, reports local CBS affiliate KSLA. One of the Lanes’ children, called “C.C.” in the suit, is a Buddhist of Thai descent. The parents claim that school officials began harassing him about his...

Jay Michaelson, a gay Buddhist of Jewish descent, has taken to the pages of the Forward to warn that if you don’t like Pajama Boy, you’re an Anti-Semite.Arguably the State of Israel is a better barometer for antisemitism than Pajama Boy, a creepy Obama-loving manchild. But considering that Jay Michaelson is not exactly a fan of Israel, you can see why he would rather use Pajama Boy as the measure instead.A few weeks before penning for “Leave Pajama Boy Alone” screed, Jay Michaelson wrote that Israel was worse than South Africa. By 1996, Israel and South Africa were on radically...

Renowned activist’s message of nonviolence, mindfulness suffuses Copley SquareWhen the 86-year-old Thich Nhat Hanh was introduced to his audience in Copley Square on Sunday afternoon, he began by saying nothing for 25 minutes. Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who is an internationally respected peace activist and author, was in Boston as part of a US tour. And as he sat in meditation in front of the crowd of about 2,000, he managed to do something seemingly impossible: He made the city center quiet along with him, to the point where any noise — a skateboard, a car horn, a...

Here is the latest from Fox News on Aaron Alexis, the Washington Navy Yard shooter. He’s been arrested a couple of times for shooting at construction equipment tires and shooting through his roof at his upstairs neighbor because she was too loud. And according to his former roommate, he’s a Buddhist. Watch:

YANGON, Myanmar — The local authorities in the western state of Rakhine in Myanmar have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists in the area and comes amid accusations of ethnic cleansing during earlier sectarian violence. ... It was unclear how the local government would enforce the rule, and the announcement could be as much about playing to the country’s Buddhist majority as about actual policy. It was also unclear what effect the new limits would have; there have already been restrictions on Rohingyas marrying, which analysts said were meant to...

Police in front of a Muslim-owned clothing store's warehouse in Colombo, Sri Lanka, after it was attacked by a mob. An angry mob of hundreds of people, led by Buddhist monks, attacked a warehouse belonging to a Muslim-owned clothing chain in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo on Thursday. This comes as Buddhist hardliners ramp up their campaigns against Muslims’ lifestyles. The scene was eerily reminiscent of attacks on Muslim-owned stores throughout the past week in Burma. One video shows a monk throwing a rock at a security camera in front of the warehouse, as policemen look on and the mob erupts...

Boston, MA (March 13, 2013) -- The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) welcomed the appointment of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy, following the sudden and unprecedented resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Foundation leaders expressed hope that the Catholic Church, under Pope Francis I, as he will be called, will respect and privilege pluralism and interfaith relations, based on earlier efforts with Nostra Aetete, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions. “As our Catholic friends, neighbors and colleagues celebrate the naming of their pontiff, we, as Hindu Americans, congratulate the Catholic Church and welcome Pope Francis...

Congress will become a shade more religiously diverse this January, after Tuesday’s (Nov. 6) election of the first Hindu representative and first Buddhist senator. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, will become the first Hindu-American congresswoman, after defeating her Republican rival on Tuesday. Ami Bera, a California doctor who was raised Hindu but now identifies as a Unitarian Universalist, according to the Hindu American Foundation, narrowly leads the race for California’s 7th congressional district. [...] Hirono, who is also the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate, was one of three Buddhists in the House of Representatives. The other two,...

The outrage and the violent protests organised by Islamists across the world have nothing to do with the supposed desecration of religion. Instead, these incidents are calibrated attempts by so-called religious leaders to firm up their politics, even at the cost of people’s lives Even before the crowd from the previous protest had returned home, a new mob had gathered on the streets. It had been gaining strength throughout the day as hundreds arrived loaded in trucks and buses, and more people from the outside kept pouring in. Over the next couple of hours, the crowd swelled in numbers and...

It's OK - a Buddhist insulted Islam so, of course, the Buddhists must pay. Reuters: Hundreds of Muslims in Bangladesh burned at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes of Buddhists on Sunday after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam, police and residents said. Members of the Buddhist minority in the Cox's Bazar area in the southeast of the country said unidentified people were bent on upsetting peaceful relations between Muslims and Buddhists. Muslims took to the streets in the area late on Saturday to protest against what they said was a photograph posted on Facebook that insulted...

An ancient Buddhist statue that was recovered by a Nazi expedition in the 1930s was originally carved from a highly valuable meteorite. Researchers say the 1,000-year-old object with a swastika on its stomach is made from a rare form of iron with a high content of nickel. They believe it is part of the Chinga meteorite, which crashed about 15,000 years ago. The findings appear in the Journal, Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The 24cm (9-inch) tall statue is 10kg (22lb) and is called the Iron Man. Origins unknown The story of this priceless object owes more perhaps to an Indiana...

This site is called Mes Aynak and is nothing short of awe-inspiring: a massive walled-in Buddhist city featuring massive temples, monasteries, and thousands of Buddhist statues that managed to survive looters and the Taliban. Holding a key position on the Silk Road, Mes Aynak was also an international hub for traders and pilgrims from all over Asia. Mes Aynak is set for destruction at the end of December 2012. All of the temples, monasteries, statues as well as the Bronze age material will all be destroyed by a Chinese government-owned company called China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC). Six villages and...

The Maryland priest who denied communion to a lesbian at her mother’s funeral is being stripped of his priestly faculties and “placed on administrative leave,” according to a letter from the Archdiocese signed by auxiliary Bishop Barry Knestout... According to a source close to the incident who spoke with LifeSiteNews, Johnson’s lesbian lover physically blocked Fr. Guarnizo from speaking further with Johnson when she abruptly left the sacristy following this introduction. When Johnson presented herself for Communion, the priest refused to give it to her, although she ended up receiving from an extraordinary minister. It was later revealed that Johnson...

(AFP) — At the Maldives’ National Museum, smashed Buddhist statues are testament to the rise of Islamic extremism and Taliban-style intolerance in a country famous as a laid-back holiday destination. On Tuesday, as protesters backed by mutinous police toppled president Mohamed Nasheed, a handful of men stormed the Chinese-built museum and destroyed its display of priceless artifacts from the nation’s pre-Islamic era. “They have effectively erased all evidence of our Buddhist past,” a senior museum official told AFP at the now shuttered building in the capital Male, asking not to be named out of fear for his own safety. “We...

Recently, there has been an uprising of protests by Tibetan monks over China’s occupation of Tibet and the exile of the Dalai Lama. The protests are not done with signs and chanting but with self-immolation or the act of burning oneself alive. Richard Gere has praised the actions of the Buddhists monks calling them “a pure act.” Gere, a long-time Buddhist, says, “It all really comes down to motivation. I mean none of these self-immolators have harmed anybody else. It is totally a self-sacrifice for their people, for others. So on that level it’s a pure act. But I think...

A group of Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka led a crowd that demolished a Muslim shrine last week. This incident took place on Saturday in Anuradhapura, an ancient Buddhist city and Unesco world heritage site.

A schoolboy was killed and two bystanders were injured when an unknown gunman shot the student before opening fire at people shopping at a market in Pattani yesterday morning. ... an attack by southern insurgents on a Buddhist religious day as the motive. Pattani Governor Nipon Narapitakkul said that he believed the attack was a result of the region's unrest, where insurgents harm Thai Buddhists to incite disunity and distrust between Thai Buddhists and Muslims in Panare district, which is made up of 60 per cent Buddhists and 40 per cent Muslims. More than 4,500 people have been killed and...

Thailand's army says suspected Islamic insurgents set off a roadside bomb in the country's restive south, killing two Buddhist monks. ... More than 4,200 people have been killed in predominantly Buddhist Thailand's three Muslim-dominated southern provinces since an Islamist insurgency erupted here in 2004.

A PERTH man who mercilessly bashed a Buddhist monk to death in a suburban park could be out of jail in under four years. Ian Samuel James McConkey, 38, of Coolbellup, was sentenced in the WA Supreme Court today to five and a half years in jail for the manslaughter of Buu "Paul'' Lieu , 48, on January 10 this year. McConkey, who could not explain why he attacked the defenseless monk, will be eligible for parole after three years and four months. Mr Lieu died in hospital two weeks after being bashed early in the morning at Bibra Lake...

Suspected Muslim separatists shot dead a Buddhist family of four in Thailand's deep south, police said on Tuesday, the latest attack in an escalation of violence in the region. The killings followed a bloody raid on an army camp and a big roadside bombing in the past 12 days that were believed to have been carried out by ethnic Malay Muslim rebels seeking autonomy from predominantly Buddhist Thailand. The bodies of the Buddhist couple, their daughter, 15, and 7-year-old son were found in a forest in Yala, one of three Muslim-dominated provinces bordering Malaysia where more than 4,300 people have...