Infidels Unite

December 2025:I am an Indian Buddhist, but let me make it clear: I do not belong to the clan of neo-Buddhists of Ambedkar, who believe in schism with their heritage and eternal grudge against Hinduism, and are held in scant regard by all genuine Buddhists—Theravada, Vajrayana, and Madhyamaka.

December 2025:Buddhism has historically been associated with non-violence, equanimity, and a unique emphasis on inner transformation. Yet the modern world confronts Buddhists with challenges that our predecessors also knew, though in a different guise, distinct from the forms these difficulties take today: global terrorism, the rise of ideologically motivated violence, and the politicization of religion on a scale that transcends borders.

December 2025:It is historically understandable that many Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar feel threatened: there have been violent Islamist attacks and demographic anxieties, and a Pew Research Center piece, “Buddhism, Islam and Religious Pluralism in South and Southeast Asia” (September 12, 2023),  shows religion is tightly woven into identity. 

December 2025:In the shadowed forests of northeastern Nigeria, where the line between hope and despair blurs like the Sahel dust storms, 21-year-old Leah Sharibu is still in chains. Abducted at 14 from her school in Dapchi, Yobe State, on February 19, 2018, by militants of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a brutal offshoot of Boko Haram, Leah Sharibu has become a symbol of unyielding faith amid unrelenting terror. Her crime? Refusing to renounce her Christianity, a defiance that has kept her from the freedom granted to 104 of the 110 schoolgirls kidnapped alongside her.

December 2025:“Infidel! Kafir! Heretic!” These are not merely insults; they are weapons forged in the theological anxiety of traditions that tremble before the presence of the other.

December 2025:How do you speak of a story that was never allowed to become a story? How do you describe a hierarchy that hides behind the word “brotherhood”? And, more importantly, how do you convince a world, so eager to believe in neat binaries of “Muslim vs. non-Muslim,” that the deepest fractures often run within, quietly, almost invisibly?

December 2025:For over a century, the Bengali identity within India has been synonymous with intellectual sophistication. The region has produced a disproportionate share of the nation’s poets, philosophers, reformers, filmmakers, and academics. Bengal’s cultural DNA carries a deep inclination toward synthesis of ideas, religions, aesthetics, and languages. This syncretic impulse historically enriched Bengal, giving rise to its unique literary traditions, devotional movements, and artistic experimentation.

December 2025:I was born and raised as a Druze in Israel, part of a small community that believes deeply in loyalty, service, and coexistence. Throughout my life, I grew up between cultures, languages, and religions. I learned to respect others, to help whenever I could, and to believe that every human life—regardless of faith or background—has value. As Druze, we are taught not to judge people by their religion, but by their actions, by who they truly are.

December 2025:Growing up as a Druze in Israel is not something you simply “experience”—it’s something you carry. It stays with you like a second heartbeat. On one side, you belong to an ancient, secretive faith that has survived a thousand years by staying small, loyal, and deeply rooted in tradition. On the other side, you are fully Israeli—shaped by democracy, by military service, by the chaotic energy of this country where everyone has an opinion and no one knows how to whisper.

December 2025:Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) unified Japan after a century of civil war. He governed as a builder, not a zealot: taxes were stabilized, authority consolidated, and public order placed above sectarian power. In 1587, he confronted a religious-political influx of Portuguese Catholics, expelling Jesuit missionaries while keeping trade on terms set by Japan. He also challenged Portuguese slave trafficking, which had entangled itself with missionary influence, and demanded redress for Japanese captives.

December 2025:A thousand years have passed since strangers came,Yet still my homeland bleeds from ancient wounds. The fire of our fathers dimmed,Our voice drowned beneath foreign storms. O Iran, rise again from sorrow—Your spirit is older than their swords.

December 2025:In the year 630, Prince Ukaydir was celebrating his 35th birthday when he rode out from Dumat al-Jandal for an early-morning hunt, carrying only a light spear and bow. A Christian Arab prince and ally of Byzantium, he led his brother and his most trusted retainers, men who had hunted with him since childhood.

December 2025:I was born in a village in southern Sudan, growing up without knowing that there was any other kind of society in any other part of the country—or any other religion. As a toddler, I didn’t know what Arabs were or that I, as an African Shilluk, looked different from them. But, by the time I learned how to speak, the first thing we children learned as part of becoming people who know the world was running from the Arabs.

December 2025:I served in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and Lebanon in the 1990s. I patrolled the alleys of Gaza, manned checkpoints across Judea and Samaria, cleared roads of explosives in Lebanon, and stood face-to-face with young jihadists who threw stones and firebombs at us long before the world demanded the creation of something called a “Palestinian state.”

December 2025:My name is Hooman Khalili. I was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1974—into a Muslim family, into a nation already trembling on the edge of collapse. By the summer of 1978, the cracks in the Shah’s regime were visible to anyone paying attention. My mother, like so many others, could see the writing on the wall. She knew that if we didn’t leave immediately, we might be trapped in a civil war that would redefine the country—and our lives—forever.