pewforum.org Religion News on the Web

Religion News on the Web

Selected religion-related news from around the Web
Toronto Star: Politics, secrecy play role in selection of religious leaders around world
Roman Catholic cardinals will soon gather beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope to succeed Benedict XVI, who retired in February.
CS Monitor: Israel wields Bible's soft power as far afield as Brazil
On a crisp winter morning in Jerusalem, a group of American Christian leaders with Bibles under their arms walk the hilltop where many believe King David first established the Jewish capital some 3,000 years ago.
NYT: Interest rises in Islamic bonds
Islamic bonds, or sukuk, have long been popular with investors in the Middle East. Now they are being discovered in Europe and the United States.
CS Monitor: Egypt opposition vows to boycott parliamentary elections
Egypt's main opposition coalition announced today it will boycott upcoming parliamentary elections, deepening the political crisis in Egypt and practically ensuring that Egypt's next legislative body will be dominated by Islamists.
Reuters: U.N. told atheists face discrimination around globe
Atheists, humanists and freethinkers face widespread discrimination around the world with expression of their views criminalized and subject in some countries to capital punishment, the United Nations was told on Monday.
Observer: As Africa rises, Europe loses grip on Catholic power base
The muted light of an African sunset filters into the high, pointed roof of Christ The King church in Accra, a wide, understated building just metres away from the seat of government in Ghana's capital city.
AP: Experts: Tunisian government unable to stop jihadists from heading abroad
The cradle of the Arab Spring is increasingly looking like the birthplace of jihadists.
CS Monitor: Ethiopia airs jihadi film amid sensitive Muslim protest trial
Ethiopia, a US ally in the battle against Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Somalia, added to mounting worries about religious discord in the diverse east African state by screening a provocative documentary on Islamic extremism.
Reuters: Bahrainis divided as leaders start reconciliation talks
For Maryam Abdullah Jawad, a Shi'ite Muslim, grief at the loss of her son prevents her even contemplating the idea of solving Bahrain's political ferment by talking to its hereditary rulers.
LA Times: Anger is growing among Iraq's Sunnis
The call to prayer echoes across the quiet highway in western Iraq and a few hundred men gather along the roadside in the frigid night air.
Wash. Times: A Saudi-inspired all-faiths hub
The underappreciated power of prayer is a prime motivating force behind a new Saudi-inspired interfaith center in Austria that seeks to become the place for world religious leaders to meet, solve problems and melt the “mountain of fears” that exists between religious people, says the Saudi official who is championing the ambitious project.
NYT: Bringing ultra-Orthodox traditions to Israel’s Parliament, olive branch in hand
Dov Lipman’s introduction to the conundrum of the ultra-Orthodox in modern Israel began more than two decades ago, when he was a 19-year-old American student in a Jerusalem yeshiva.
LA Times: Iran urges young couples to have more babies
Thirty-eight-year-old Reza Ali Mohammadi, a typist, and his wife, who stays at home, recently had their second son and wouldn't mind having a larger family.
Wash. Post: Tunisian opposition leader shot dead
An outspoken critic of Tunisia’s Islamist government was shot dead outside his home Wednesday, underscoring a deepening political rift between newly empowered Islamists and their secular opposition in states across North Africa since the Arab Spring.
AP: Interview: Morocco Islamists warn of unrest
Morocco likes to project itself as unique in the Middle East in finding a third way between revolution and repression amid the uprisings of the Arab Spring.
AP: Interview: Egypt’s Coptic Christian pope delivers measured criticism of Islamist government
Egypt’s Coptic patriarch delivered a cautious but unusually sharp criticism of the nation’s Islamist leadership in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, dismissing the new constitution as discriminatory and rounds of national dialogues sponsored by the president as meaningless.
NYT: Academic study weakens Israeli claim that Palestinian school texts teach hate
An academic study of the contents of Israeli and Palestinian Authority textbooks, to be published Monday, finds that each side generally presents the other as the enemy, but it undermines recent assertions by the Israeli government that Palestinian children are educated “to hate.”
Toronto Star: Iraq’s Christians still searching for a home
Sitting in the living room of his home in Erbil, capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, 63-year-old Rostom Sefarian stops talking, struggling to hold back the tears.
NYT: Israeli secularists appear to find their voice
Speaking to a group of ultra-Orthodox men shortly before he officially entered politics, Yair Lapid, a proudly secular talk-show host, declared that in a century-long competition to define Israel’s character, “we lost and you won.”
NYT: Jihadists and secular activists clash in Syria
The tensions had been simmering for months in the northern Syrian town of Saraqib.
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