Religion News on the Web
Selected religion-related news from around the Web
April 25, 2013
- The Christian Science Monitor
CS Monitor: Boston bombing: US Muslims react with fear, frustration, and new resolve
When the bombs at the Boston Marathon exploded a week ago Monday, a familiar chain of events and emotions unfolded for many in the American Muslim community: shock and grief, followed by an unspoken dread that the perpetrators could be Muslim; condemnation of the attack; fear of reprisals – and of being conflated with the acts of violence; and quietly, an inward examination of what went wrong.
April 24, 2013
- The New York Times
NYT: Boston attack spotlights struggle half a world away
With an automatic weapon at his side and a black flag behind him, the Islamic rebel explained in a video why he had gone to war with his government. As is often the case in the broiling Muslim insurgency here in the North Caucasus, his complaints were intensely local: a police commander had announced a policy of harassing and threatening family members of suspected militants.
April 23, 2013
- The New York Times
NYT: New threat in Nigeria as militants split off
Nearly four years into Nigeria’s bloody struggle with Islamists in its impoverished north, a new threat has emerged with deadly implications, this time for Westerners as well as Nigerians: local militants who openly claim to be inspired and trained by Al Qaeda and its affiliate in the region.
April 21, 2013
- The New York Times
NYT: Search for home led suspect to land marred by strife
Tamerlan Tsarnaev had already found religion by the time he landed in Dagestan, a combustible region in the North Caucasus that has become the epicenter of a violent Islamic insurgency in Russia and a hub of jihadist recruitment. What he seemed to be yearning for was a home.
April 21, 2013
- National Public Radio
NPR: Danger in conflation: separating Islam from acts of terror
Host Jacki Lyden talks to Omid Safi, professor of religious studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Safi has blogged about the Tsarnaev brothers, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, and what it means to the American Islamic community that the brothers are Muslim.
April 13, 2013
- The New York Times
NYT: For Evangelicals, a shift in views on immigration
In the pews of the First Baptist Church of Orlando, where thousands of evangelical Christians gather on Sundays to worship and sing, a change of heart is happening on the once toxic issue of immigration.
April 11, 2013
- The Economist
Economist: High office, low church
It is hard to imagine a prime minister doing such a thing now, and even then it seemed rather surprising. In May 1988 Margaret Thatcher went to the General Assembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland and gave what would soon be called the Sermon on the Mound.
April 11, 2013
- The Washington Post
Wash. Post: Women challenge Orthodox practice at Israel’s Western Wall
A long-running battle over worship at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine , was rejoined Thursday as Israeli police arrested five Jewish women who wore prayer shawls at a morning service, contrary to Orthodox practice enforced at the site.
April 09, 2013
- The Associated Press
AP: Al-Qaida Iraq branch announces merger with Syrian militant group
Al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq said it has merged with Syria’s extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, a move that shows the rising confidence of radicals within the Syrian rebel movement and is likely to trigger renewed fears among its international backers.