Tag Archive for Islam

Freedom of Religion and the Right to Be Respected

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Ufuk Gokcen, Huffington Post, Jan.22
As the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, I have recently attended for the second year in a row a special commemoration event at the Park East Synagogue in New York in conjunction with the U.N. International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Every year, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, [...]

Muslim-Jewish marriages herald a brave new world

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Jonathan Romain, The Guardian – Comment is free, Jan.19
Muslims and Jews in the UK are beginning to get together – a living example to the Middle East peace process.
Something surprising is beginning to emerge in marriage patterns between members of different religions in Britain. In the past, “marrying out” was seen either as a religious [...]

Remember MLK’s Dream by Supporting American Muslims

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Rabbi Marc Schneier and Russell Simmons, Huffington Post, Jan.17
On Jan. 7, exactly two weeks before we are to simultaneously celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and inaugurate Barack Obama to his second term as President of the United States, sinister advertisements went up in dozens of subway stations around New York City, [...]

Muslims Demolish Church Building in Egypt

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Mary Abdelmassih (“Assyrian International News Agency”), WorldWide Religious News,  Jan.16
Hundreds of Muslims came out of mosques today with hammers and destroyed a social services building belonging to the Coptic Church while chanting Islamic slogans. Security forces arrived after the building was completely razed. The 100 square meters social services building in the village of Fanous, [...]

“American Taliban” Wins Prison Prayer Lawsuit

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Charles Wilson, Huffington Post, Jan.11
An American convicted of fighting alongside the Taliban must be allowed to pray daily in a group with other Muslim inmates at his high-security prison in Indiana, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Barring John Walker Lindh and his fellow Muslims from engaging in daily group ritual prayer violates a 1993 law that [...]

Fear and hope for indigenous Christians in the Middle East and North Africa

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Harry Hagiopan, Ekklesia, Jan.13
As a new year arrives, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) uprisings continue their relentless surge in different parts of the region. While Egypt and Syria have grabbed our attention throughout 2012, it is quite clear that much is also happening elsewhere.
From Tunisia and Libya to Morocco and Yemen, from Jordan [...]

A Guide to Finding (Interfaith) Spiritual Peace

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Susan Bloch, Huffington Post, Jan.10
It was midnight on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, when I, a Jewish woman, stood in front of the Church of the Nativity and brought myself to some spiritual peace that I could not have imagined.
My steaming breath glowed in the aura of the bright lights all around. Strains of [...]

Preacher alarms many in Egypt with calls for Islamist vice police

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Yasmine Saleh and Shaimaa Fayed, Reuters, Jan.09
Many Egyptian viewers were horrified when preacher Hisham el-Ashry recently popped up on primetime television to say women must cover up for their own protection and advocated the introduction of religious police.
That an obscure preacher could get publicity for such views was seen as another example of the confused [...]

Christians Banned From Using Word ‘Allah’ in Arabic by New Fatwa in Malaysia

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Daniel Blake, Worldwide Religious News, Jan.10
A Malaysian Sultan has issued a fatwa prohibiting non-Muslims from using the word “Allah” in Arabic.
The Sultan of the Malaysian state of Selangor, Sharafuddin Idris Shah, issued the prohibition on Tuesday, according to the Lebanon Debate newspaper.
Malaysian media have reported that the prohibition has been put in place by the [...]