The sighting of a new moon determines the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In this video from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, follow the process of sighting a new moon for American Muslims.

In this video segment from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, an American Muslim family observes Ramadan, the month in which Muslims fast daily from sunrise to sunset in order to demonstrate piety and develop self-restraint.

An introduction to Shinto, one of Japan's earliest belief systems. Created by Asian Art Museum.

This video from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly features Timbuktu, one of the most remote and inaccessible places on the planet and a former thriving center of Islamic learning.

"This semester, we will read writing about travel and place from Columbus's Diario through the present. Travel writing has some special features that will shape both the content and the work for this subject: reflecting the point of view, narrative choices, and style of individuals, it also responds to the pressures of a real world only marginally under their control. Whether the traveler is a curious tourist, the leader of a national expedition, or a starving, half-naked survivor, the encounter with place shapes what travel writing can be. Accordingly, we will pay attention not only to narrative texts but to maps, objects, archives, and facts of various kinds. Our materials are organized around three regions: North America, Africa and the Atlantic world, the Arctic and Antarctic. The historical scope of these readings will allow us to know something not only about the experiences and writing strategies of individual travelers, but about the progressive integration of these regions into global economic, political, and knowledge systems. Whether we are looking at the production of an Inuit film for global audiences, or the mapping of a route across the North American continent by water, these materials do more than simply record or narrate experiences and territories: they also participate in shaping the world and what it means to us. Authors will include Olaudah Equiano, Caryl Philips, Claude L?vi-Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Jamaica Kincaid, William Least Heat Moon, Louise Erdrich, ?lvar N

In this video segment from Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, Imam Bashar Arafat, a scholar and interfaith leader in Baltimore, Maryland, describes __Œ‹í‹__zakaat,__Œ‹í‹Œ‹Ű_ an almsgiving tax that Muslims pay annually.

An introduction to Zen, a form of Buddhism that emphasizes seeking one's own Buddha nature through meditation.