May 2019
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As India Saffronises, 9 Questions on her Za’faran sister (IranZamin) with Professor Foltz-
Starting from the etymology of saffron, the author laments the loss of India’s Islamicate and Persianate heritage as the country saffronises, with Urdu left to the Hindu majority’s mercy. He…
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Magic and advertising
Announces a series on another blog about Ioan Couliano’s argument that Renaissance magic was the art of conjuring desire through images, and that commercial advertising has revived it, illustrated with…
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Browncast episode 37: Arabian Linguistics, pre-Islamic Arabia
On Browncast Episode 37, Ahmed Al Jallad of Ohio State University discusses the origins of Arabic, probably in the north-west of the peninsula, the script’s likely Nabataean roots, and inscriptions…
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Moves in the Glass Bead Game
Explains how Hesse’s Glass Bead Game works by linking two shattered Catholic images, a statue of the Virgin Mary after the Sri Lanka church bombings and a chalice standing for…
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Pakistan of the Provinces
A short note on Bilawal Bhutto’s iftar, reading it as dynastic provincial parties pitting themselves against the military-backed Imran Khan, and observing that Baloch and Pashtun parties stayed away while…
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Genetic variation across many South Asian communities
Sharing percentages from a preprint on the genomic formation of South and Central Asia, the author cautions about sample sizes and urges readers to compare how ancestry varies across groups,…
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Pakistani Christian teen ‘raped, forcibly converted to Islam’
An extract from a ucanews.com report in which a 15-year-old Christian girl in Karachi says she was raped, forcibly converted to Islam and married off, with a note that about…
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Open Thread – Brown Pundits
An open thread asking commenters to keep other posts on topic and use this one for anything they like.
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Do they even pretend to care about BAME anymore?
The author complains that British adverts cast black and Asian actors in blue-collar roles, blames oblivious well-meaning white creatives, and says he asks for racial sensitivity rather than positive discrimination,…
