Pew Forum Religious News Service, Aug.9, pewforum.org/Religion-News/RNS-Bahai-leaders-sentenced-to-20-years-in-Iran.aspx

Seven top leaders of the Baha’i faith who have been incarcerated in Iran since 2008 have each received jail sentences of 20 years after six months of court hearings that ended on June 14, according to the Baha’i World News Service.

Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations, said lawyers plan to appeal the verdict. “The allegations are pretty irrational and aren’t very reasonable,” she said.

Accusations against the seven include charges of espionage and propaganda activities against the Islamic state. “We really believe that they’re completely innocent,” Dugal said.

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Yonat Shimron, News & Observer, Aug.9, www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/09/620557/two-faiths-tackle-blacks-struggles.html

Few would deny the nation’s African-Americans have suffered. And few would deny they have looked to faith as a source of solace and comfort.  At a forum at UNC-Chapel Hill this weekend, a group of scholars and community participants pondered the age-old question of why God would permit such suffering.

Although Christian theologians have tackled the issue before – most recently during the civil rights era – the “Black Theodicy Forum” at the FedEx Center for Global Education brought together Christians and Muslim scholars to tackle the question jointly. The two faiths represent the twin strains of the African-American religious experience in the United States.

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Ekklesia, Aug.8, www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/12805

The judge presiding over the trial of seven Baha’i leaders in Iran has extended their detention by two months, it was reported late last week.  No verdict has been yet been handed down from the final session of the trial of the seven, which took place on 14 June 2010.  The seven were taken to the judge’s office on 28 July. The judge informed them in the presence of a member of their legal team that their detention had been extended for another two months as of 22 July.

Lawyers for the Baha’i leaders have submitted a written objection to the ongoing detention, making it absolutely clear that there is no legal basis whatsoever on which to refuse their request that the defendants be released on bail.

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Christopher Howse, Daily Telegraph, Aug.6, www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherhowse/7931106/Ramadan-in-an-Orkney-summer.html

Muslims in Orkney will be setting their alarm clocks with some care from next Wednesday. For it is the beginning of Ramadan (if the new moon is sighted). For the 30 days of Ramadan, no food or drink may be consumed during the hours of daylight. In Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney, sunrise is at 5.19 and sunset at 9.11pm.

There were eight Muslims in the Orkney Islands at the time of the 2001 census, and it is not clear how many of them will be there next week. By the end of Ramadan, the sunrise and sunset times will be something like 6.27 and 7.53, but even so it would make a long day’s fast.

“Eat and drink,” the Koran seems to say, “until the white thread is distinct to you from the black thread at dawn.” But when Ramadan falls in the summer, some people who live in high latitudes, with very long hours of daylight, adjust their hours of fasting to those in Mecca.

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Heidi Blake, Daily Telegraph, Aug.5, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/7928961/Julia-Roberts-Im-a-Hindu.html

Julia Roberts, the Hollywood actress, has disclosed that she is a practising Hindu who goes to temple to “chant and pray and celebrate”.   The 42-year-old, who married the cameraman Daniel Moder in 2002, said the couple worship at temple together regularly with their three children.   She added that she hopes to be reincarnated as “something quiet” after the stresses of celebrity.

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New York Times Editorial, Aug.3, www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/opinion/04wed1.html?ref=religion_and_belief

It has been disturbing to hear and read the vitriol and outright bigotry surrounding the building of a mosque two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. So it was inspiring when New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9 to 0 on Tuesday to reaffirm one of the basic tenets of democracy: religious tolerance.

Instead of caving in to the angry voices — many but not all of them self-promoting Republican politicians — commissioners paved the way for construction of the mosque and Islamic centre. It was not just the right thing to do, it was the only thing to do.  The attacks of Sept. 11 were not a religious event. They were mass murder. The American response, as President Obama and President George W. Bush before him have said many times, was not a war against Islam.

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Andrew Hough, Daily Telegraph, Aug.3, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7922920/Baroness-Warsi-burka-wearing-women-can-engage-in-everyday-life.html

The Muslim Conservative peer defended the right of women who wore a full face veil, saying it did not prevent them from “engaging in everyday life”.   The 39 year-old, who became a minister without portfolio in May, said many women operated successful businesses wearing the headwear.  Baroness Warsi, also the Chairwoman of the Conservative Party, said many Muslim women choose to wear the veil through their own free will and not under any pressure.

“Why should we tell women what to wear? What it boils down to is choice. If women don’t have a choice over what to wear then they are oppressed.”

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Mark Vernon, The Guardian – Comment is free, Aug.6, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/06/religion-islam-ramadan-tolerance-pluralism

We live in a plural age. But do we have an adequate philosophy for living together in our diversity? Tariq Ramadan, in his new book, The Quest for Meaning, thinks not.

Ramadan cites the familiar, pluralist parable about the blind men each feeling a different part of the elephant. It’s usually taken to mean that we each have a partial knowledge of the one, immense cosmos. But that’s not the point, Ramadan insists. Its basic message is that we are, at least in part, blind, or have been blinded. Accepting that is the first and fundamental challenge.

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Joseph Berger, New York Times, Aug.4, www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/us/04interfaith.html

When Steven Cohn, a Chicago-area lawyer, looked at photographs of Marc Mezvinsky, outfitted with a yarmulke and a prayer shawl, and Chelsea Clinton, luminous in a strapless gown and a 100-watt smile, he recalled his own interfaith marriage 30 years ago to Loreli Fritz-Cohn, a Methodist, on her grandmother’s farm in Ohio. He, too, wore a prayer shawl — though he recalled how hard it had been to find a Reform rabbi to perform the ceremony.

From the evidence of his own gratifying marriage, he considered the Clinton-Mezvinsky union a decisive plus for the vitality of his faith. “Loreli has joined the Jewish community,” he said. “She goes to synagogue with me.” And, he said, “Our children have stayed involved with the Jewish community.”

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Carlyle Murphy, Christian Science Monitor, Aug.3, www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0803/In-Saudi-Arabia-a-landmark-welcome-of-a-Christian-scholar

In a country that endorses Islam as the official religion, bans conversion to other religions, and forbids Christian proselytizing, Saudi Arabia’s recent welcome of an American Christian scholar is a landmark.

Leonard Swidler, a professor of Roman Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Philadelphia’s Temple University, is the first such scholar invited to exchange views with faculty at Al Imam Muhammed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh – the citadel of Saudi Arabia‘s ultraconservative brand of Islam.

Dr. Swidler’s visit in late June underscores a shift toward greater openness in some official Saudi religious institutions, which previously had been leery of contact with outsiders of different faiths.

“Maybe it’s not exciting for some people, but it’s a very big change in Saudi Arabia,” says Fahad al-Alhomoudi, a faculty member at Al Imam who helped arrange Swidler’s visit.

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