The University of Notre Dame, the Archdiocese of New York and 41 other Roman Catholic institutions sued the Obama administration in federal court Monday, the latest push against a requirement in the health-care-overhaul law that employers cover contraception in workers' health plans.

For Egyptian women, it was the most revolutionary image of all: male and female protesters spending days and nights together in Tahrir Square, bringing down a hated regime side by side — comrades in a country where women had long been plagued by masculine scorn and harassment.

Waking up early to attend the madrassa classes have always been a dull regimen for the 10-year-old Nazeem PV. But not anymore. For him the ho-hum religious classes at Hayathul Islam Madrassa attached to the Mohiyuddin Mosque in the city, which he attends before going to an English-medium school, now has loads of attractions.

The role of Islam in government is a big question in today's presidential election in Egypt.

There is a healthy struggle brewing among the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. A previously silent group, upset over conservative colleagues defining the church’s public posture and eagerly picking fights with President Obama, has had enough.

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said Wednesday that he would push for state legislation to add rabbis and other religious leaders to the list of professionals required to report allegations of sexual abuse to law enforcement authorities.

Supporters and critics of President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage agree on one thing: He may not be finished evolving on the subject.

When Marguerite Driessen, a professor here, entered Brigham Young University in the early 1980s, she was the first black person many Mormon students had ever met, and she spent a good bit of her college time debunking stereotypes about African-Americans. Then she converted to Mormonism herself, and went on to spend a good deal of her adult life correcting assumptions about Mormons.

People who attend religious services regularly are less likely than others in this country to develop diabetes or high blood pressure, a new study suggests, adding a Canadian dimension to the growing but contentious body of research linking faith and good health.

A major offensive aimed at clearing Somalia’s Al Qaeda-allied Islamist army from the world’s largest camp for displaced people began Tuesday, amid fears that civilians could end up in the firing line.

In the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine, Muslim reformer Mona Eltahawy called for a genuine revolution in the Middle East. Unlike the Arab Spring, this one would release women from oppression. "First we stop pretending," she said. "Call out the hate for what it is."

Muslim women may finally get their due share in family inheritance.

After Egyptian women stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak, many looked forward to a role in the revolution’s next steps.

It is fashionable these days for Western leaders to praise Indonesia as a model Muslim democracy. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has declared, “If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia.”

Malawi's President Joyce Banda has announced her intention to repeal a number of laws that have made Malawi into a pariah state, from its ban on homosexuality to broad police powers of search and arrest, to a law that allows cabinet ministers to shut down newspapers.

Sixty years after their country came under military dictatorship, Egyptians are for the first time freely electing their president.

When President Obama announced his support for gay marriage, supporters and pundits declared it symbolic of a historic shift in American attitudes.

He’s on the move again. Abdel Moneim Abou el-Fotouh has finished one interview in a suite at the Movenpick hotel outside Cairo and now he’s squeezing his six-foot frame into a Volkswagen Passat to get to the next thing.

As the first chief rabbi for the modern state of Israel, Isaac Herzog helped persuade Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to exempt 400 ultra-Orthodox men from the draft so they could study full time in yeshivas.

Christian groups in the Philippines have called for a ban on Lady Gaga's Manila concerts, alleging that her song Judas is an offensive mockery of Jesus Christ.