Multicultural.co.uk is a website written for UK businesses, to help them work better with multicultural employees and customers. However if you’re just interested in learning more about how people of different cultures and religions think and behave, you will also find some useful information here.

In particular, you can follow short online courses to learn about the major faiths (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism) and country-specific courses on China, Russia and India. At the end of each course there is a downloadable pdf guide.

The country courses contain many cultural tips such as:

• Chinese people may find it difficult to say ‘no’ even if they mean it. It’s unlikely you’ll ever hear a Chinese person saying something like ‘speak your mind’
• Indian names often do not follow the same pattern as western names. Some Indians use their occupation, caste or even ancestral village as a sort of surname
• Russians prefer to eat a hot and substantial meal at lunchtime

An interesting read if you want to learn more about any of these cultures or religions, and will also come in useful for anyone planning to visit or do business in Russia, India or China.

An extremely comprehensive survey from the Pew Centre shows the religious composition and trends in American culture. The USA is predominantly (78.4%) Christian, which breaks down into 51% Protestant and 24% Catholic.

Of the remainder, 5% belong to other faiths and 16% say they do not have any religious affiliation.

The report also compares religion by region and demographic, and examines the number of people who change religion or who are married to a partner with a different faith. This article by the Economist also comments on the survey.

Last Friday was an unusual day - the celebration of 6 different religious festivals fell on the same day. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists each celebrated an important festival. Time magazine examines the odds, which are apparently very small.

To mark the occasion, All things Pakistan blog published a thought-provoking article highlighting the different religious groups who have been celebrating in Pakistan.

Rageh inside Iran: Rageh Omaar, a Somalian born former BBC reporter visited Iran over the summer of 2006. While there he filmed this fascinating documentary about what life is really like for the Iranian people of Tehran, whom he describes as “dynamic, energetic and warm”.

This trailer gives an idea of the content if you are short of time. The full length version of the programme lasts for 90 minutes and is unfortunately only available in installments. (there is a full version available on Google Video but the picture quality is quite bad) If you have the patience to load them all it is well worth the watch!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

Link is courtesy of Mr Behi’s Iranian blog. As an Iranian himself he knows what he is talking about when he describes this as “a truly fair report” of his complex country.

Rageh Omaar writes here about his quest to follow the lives of ordinary Iranians.

From the 8th Century, Muslim tradition and culture set trends in eating, music and style that still influence us today. Their experiments, discoveries and inventions with liquids, light and time opened the door to myriad new chemical compounds, measurements of time in precise and minute detail and devices used in space observation and deep sea exploration. Also a book has been published to collect this beautiful collection of information and images.

http://www.1001inventions.com

This blog is activated once per year, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, so that muslims all over the world can share their experiences.

www.ramadankareem.blogspot.com

Picture: Ramadan in Kolkata from www.asianage.com