mehreenkasana:

starryeyedmariam:

Badshahi Mosque

(Urdu: بادشاہی مسجد‎) or the ‘Royal Mosque’ in Lahore, commissioned by the sixth Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1671 and completed in 1673, is the second largest mosque in Pakistan and South Asia and the fifth largest mosque in the world. Epitomising the beauty, passion and grandeur of the Mughal era, it is Lahore’s most famous landmark and a major tourist attraction.

Capable of accommodating 5,000 worshippers in its main prayer hall and a further 95,000 in its courtyard and porticoes, it remained the largest mosque in the world from 1673 to 1986 (a period of 313 years), when overtaken in size by the completion of the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. Today, it remains the second largest mosque in Pakistan and South Asia and the fifth largest mosque in the world.

Read more: Badshahi Mosque

First Photo,

Second Photo

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One of the reasons why I love living in Lahore.

(via le-kif-kif)

vintagenatgeographic:

Macaws in the Peruvian rain forest

National Geographic | January 1994 

braiker:

tumblr, laying down some deep wisdom today

Well done:) now YOU my friend are someone I’d love to boogie with in GA East at MSG tomorrow night. Funk fiends unite!

yup, feels most familiar w/ @tumblr @phish @mrminer #psychology; #neuroscience; #tumblr #woop!

israelfacts:

Banksy’s Christmas Card

‘If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed’

If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be a little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room.

“If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,” says the priest of Bethlehem’s Beit Jala parish. “He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists.

“This really is the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?”

The Guardian

Since the writing of the above article, Israel has authorized the construction of more than 2,600 homes in Givat Hamatos which means that for the first time in the 2,000 year history of Christianity, Bethlehem and Jerusalem will be completely cut off by illegal Israeli settlements. Bethlehem is now surrounded by 22 settlements, all built on stolen Palestinian land.

More than 170,000 Palestinian Christians live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, without proper political representation, freedom of travel, equality before the law, and many other civil and human rights. The occupation does discriminate between Christians and Muslims — they both suffer the same.

Added here in consideration of religious belief used for political gains and water.

(via jonathan-cunningham)

curiositycounts:

I quite literally gasped when I saw this. The Selexyz Dominicanen bookstore in Maastricht, the Netherlands is housed in a renovated Dominican church dating back to 1294. “The infusion of old and new was brilliantly executed by architectural firm Merkx + Girod who managed to highlight the grandeur of the original church and preserve it’s majestic atmosphere by positioning a colossal walk-in steel bookcase asymmetrically in the church.” A necessary addition to the perpetually-growing travel list. 

(via)

Believe in books.

nprfunfacts:

That according to a survey conducted by anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann.

(via nprfreshair)

metaconscious:

SUPERSTITION is typically a pejorative term. Belief in things like magic and miracles is thought to be irrational and scientifically retrograde. But as studies have repeatedly shown, some level of belief in the supernatural — often a subtle and unconscious belief — appears to be unavoidable, even…

To find that healthy dose of delusional thought.

Christianity in Crisis, Andrew Sullivan

(via hana-no-hikari)

Is the story of Jesus just a tool to keep the masses in fear and to accept abuse by those in power over resources?

(via newsweek)

(via azspot)