Berkley Center

by Daniyal Hassan, Naila Inayat and Salman Masood

Extremist groups have long made a campaign of attacking religious or ethnic minorities in Punjab. The attack on Sunday was claimed by Jamaat-e-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, which said it was targeting Christians who had gathered in the park for Easter. But Pakistani officials went to pains to say the toll was unselective, with Muslims and Christians among the dead and bereaved. Most of the victims were working-class, or poorer.

 

by Philip Pullella

Addressing thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Monday, a religious holiday, the pope said Pakistan had been “bloodied by a hideous attack that massacred so many innocent people, mostly families of the Christian minority”.

 

Hundreds of hardline Muslim activists in Pakistan set fires near parliament and clashed with police on Sunday to protest the execution of a man they consider a hero for assassinating a governor over his criticism of harsh blasphemy laws.

 

Iraqi Christians gathered in Baghdad this weekend to mark Easter but celebrations were tempered by fears Islamic State would eradicate their shrinking community, even as the army launched a U.S.-backed offensive to retake Mosul, their ancestral homeland. “We are threatened with extinction. This is a harsh word but every day we are being depleted. Our people are travelling, migrating,” said Father Muyessir al-Mukhalisi.

 

A ban on the sale of cattle for slaughter in India’s richest state is threatening to push millions of farmers into penury, deepening distress in the countryside and fanning resentment against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party. Slaughter of cows, considered sacred in Hinduism, has historically been banned in most states but was rarely enforced in India, the world’s largest exporter of beef.

 

Economist Blog

Here is one of the many paradoxical things about religion as a feature of human society. Its founders, administrators and gate-keepers have generally, with important exceptions, been men. But its most loyal practitioners, including and perhaps especially in times of adversity, have been women.

 

by Antonia Blumberg

“One very common misperception is that women who choose to become Buddhist nuns are somehow running away from life, whereas I found the opposite to be true,” says Christine Toomey, author of In Search of Buddha’s Daughters “Most of those who choose this path make it their business to deal on a daily business with some of the most profound and intractable problems of human existence.

 

Pope Francis urged the world in his Easter message on Sunday to use the “weapons of love” to combat the evil of “blind and brutal violence”, following the attacks in Brussels. “May he (the risen Jesus) draw us closer on this Easter feast to the victims of terrorism, that blind and brutal form of violence which continues to shed blood in different parts of the world.”

 

by Raymond Arroyo

When she died on Easter Sunday at 92, she was the only woman in the history of broadcast television who had founded and led a cable network as CEO and show host for 20 years.

 

by Mary Hui, Susan Svluga

Colleges across the country received hate-filled messages to networked printers; a white supremacist says the flier went to 20,000 devices, and he has plans for more.