Time; July 1, 2013 (Vol. 182; ;No. 1; 2013)

A few interesting facts taken from Time magazine’s July 1, 2013 issue:

China:

Chinese authorities seized 213 bear paws from two smugglers in Chinese region of inner Mangolia; some in China consider the laws a delicacy. (Page 6)

Buddhism:

World religious population:

·         Christianity: 2.2 billion

·         Islam: 1.6 billion

·         Hinduism: 1 billion

·         Buddhism: 488 million

World Buddhist populations:

·         China: 244 million

·         Thailand: 64 million

·         Burma: 38 million

·         North America: 3.9 million

Three main traditions of Buddhism:

1.    Theravada: Popular in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka; emphasizes asceticism as the route to personal salvation.

2.    Mahayana: Popular in China, Japan and Korea; teaches that salvation lies in compassion and helping others.

3.    Vajrayana: Mostly in Tibet; offers a relatively quick, tantric path to salvation.

Wirathu, 46 year-old Buddhist monk says, “Muslims are breeding so fast that they are stealing our women, raping them. They would like to occupy our country, but I won’t let them. We must keep Myanmar Buddhist.” (Page 16)

One out of eight children ended up in a monastery because his parents wanted one less mouth to feed.

Among the country’s majority Bamar – or Burman – ethnic group, as well as across Buddhist parts of Asia, there is a vague sense that their religion is under siege, that Islam has already conquered Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan – all these formerly Buddhist lands – and that other dominoes could fall. (Page 18)

Iran:

Leaning against the wall in Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Tehran sitting room is a portrait of a young boy. A portrait of the Prophet Mohammad as a young boy, to be exact. How is it that this fire-tongued figure of radical Shi’ism, this thrower of fatwas, the face of political Islam, would permit something so sacrilegious as a portrait of the Prophet in his presence, when we all know that depicting the founder of Islam is a sin? The guard at the gate of Khomeini’s house and museum in Tehran just shrugged. “I don’t know. He just liked it.” (Page 24)

I often tell Americans that there are two ways to understand Iran. The first is to think of the most chauvinistic Texans they know and then add 5000 years of history. The Persians are surely among the world’s most prideful people. The other way is to consider the Cyrus Cylinder, a chunk of baked clay shaped like a rugby ball that is inscribed with one of the world’s earliest declarations of human rights. (Page 50)