Category Archives: Global: Religious Liberty

Christian Institute: The coronation of the next monarch will include other faiths besides Christianity for the first time in a thousand years of history, the Sunday Telegraph has reported.

France24.com: French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Thursday he is considering banning French Spring – a radical far right group opposed to the country’s legalisation of gay marriage. A major anti-gay marriage protest is set to take place in Paris on Sunday.

Paul Marshall at National Review: There is good news about the State Department International Religious Freedom Report, released on May 20. First, the report is, by and large an excellent resource. While slightly slimmer than in most previous years, it is still the most comprehensive overview of religious freedom and persecution on the planet.

Forum 18: Sharofat Allamova, a Protestant from Urgench in north-western Uzbekistan, has been given one and half years of corrective labour, after being convicted under criminal charges brought for the “illegal production, storage, import or distribution of religious literature”

RT.com: Youth gang riots in the Swedish capital Stockholm have entered fifth straight night. Hundreds of mostly immigrant teenagers tore through the suburbs, smashing windows and burning cars in the country’s worst outbreak of violence in years.

Washington Post: There’s surprisingly little data available on the subject. But a 2012 poll by WIN/Gallup International — an international polling firm that is not associated with the D.C.-based Gallup group — asked more than 50,000 people in 40 countries whether they considered themselves “religious,” “not religious” or “convinced atheist.”

Baptist Press: Iran’s treatment of its Christian minority has come under fresh scrutiny in recent months with some harsh reports on the country’s human rights record.

WorldNetDaily: The riots in Stockholm this week follow much larger and more devastating unrest in recent years seen in major European cities like London and Paris. In London, a horrific case developed Wednesday where two knife-wielding attackers allegedly beheaded a soldier. Both areas saw raging violence as immigrant youth, primarily Muslim, marauded through the streets wreaking havoc.

The Sun: Last night Muslim sources identified Adebolajo – who is claimed to be from a devout Christian family but converted to Islam in 2003 – as the man in The Sun’s video taken minutes after the soldier was hacked to death.

LankaWeb: According to our Press Department, U.K., on 18 May 2013, the Worldwide Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat and Fifth Khalifa, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, addressed a Special Reception held to celebrate the opening of the one of the biggest Mosque – Baitur Rahman Mosque in Vancouver, Canada.

Christian Institute: The Church of Scotland has voted to allow practising homosexual men and women to become ministers.

LifeSiteNews: As North America’s largest Catholic school board prepares to vote Thursday on a motion to ban homosexual activist groups in the schools, LifeSiteNews.com has learned that school officials tried to block the move when it was brought forward in April.

Fox News: The American pastor jailed in Iran for his Christian faith has managed to get a letter out to his global supporters, thanking them for their prayers while confirming the brutality of his conditions.

Andrew Harrod of Front Page at The Legal Project: Speaking at a conference in Milan, Italy, on May 8, 2013, that city’s archbishop, Cardinal Angelo Scola, called for the abolition of blasphemy laws worldwide.  Such a step would significantly help protect globally the freedom of speech and religion desperately needed by Christians in particular while countering Islamic fanaticism with freedom.

Volokh Conspiracy: Lenta.ru so reports. The bill would criminalize “actions in public, demonstrating clear disrespect to society and committed with the intent to insult the religious feelings of believers,”

The Observatory’s Report on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in the Year 2012 was released on May, 21st, 2013, at an OSCE high level conference on Tolerance and Discrimination in Albania.

Catholic Culture: In recent weeks, Islamist rebels who assumed power in the Central African Republic in March have kidnapped the rector of the cathedral in the nation’s capital as well as the archdiocesan chancelloor.

eNCA: A Methodist minister who was fired from her church for marrying her same-sex partner, has taken her fight to be reinstated to the courts.

AP: A Myanmar court sentenced seven Muslims to prison Tuesday – one of them to a life term – in the killing of a Buddhist monk amid deadly sectarian violence that was overwhelmingly directed against minority Muslims but has not led to any criminal trials against members of the country’s Buddhist majority.

Christian Institute: In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 17 ministers and one archbishop expressed their concern about the consequences if the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is passed in its current state

Catholic Culture: Italian President Giorgio Napolitano called for a “firm and constant commitment” to battling prejudice against homosexuals, as Italy observed “Anti-Homopobia Day” on May 17.

Breitbart: The United States on Monday denounced what it called a spike in anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe and Asia, pointing to restrictions and violence against Muslims including the faith’s minority sects.

CNSNews: As the State Department prepares to release its annual report on international religious freedom Monday, a key issue for many Americans concerned about religious persecution is whether it will blacklist a handful of particularly egregious violators – or, as in previous years, ignore the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

AP: Israeli police say vandals have spray-panted slogans on the home of one of the leaders of a liberal Jewish women’s group that has angered ultra-Orthodox communities over its demands for equality of worship.

The Independent: report published by the Office for National Statistics revealed that the percentage of people following a Christian faith dropped from 71.7 per cent in 2001 to 59.3 per cent in 2011. More than one in 10 under 25s in the UK now describe themselves as Muslim.

Fox News: An Egyptian Coptic cleric who was mistreated during Orthodox Easter services is threatening to sue.

Washington Blade: The Puerto Rican Senate on Thursday approved a sweeping bill that would ban anti-LGBT discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and government services in the U.S. territory. The 15-11 vote took place after lawmakers for several hours debated Senate Bill 238 that Sen. Ramón Nieves Pérez introduced in January.

Forum 18: China does not allow religious communities to run schools for children, even though regulations do not forbid the provision of religious education to minors. Nor is religious education provided in state schools. For students beyond school age, only state-approved religious groups affiliated with China’s five state-backed monopoly faiths are allowed to apply to set up institutions for the study of their faith or training of clergy, Forum 18 News Service notes. Restrictions are especially tight in Tibet and Xinjiang. The state limits the number of such institutions and their size. Establishing new colleges is cumbersome and long drawn out, even when successful. Their curricula must include “politics” and “patriotic” education, as defined by the state. The state also discourages religious activity on general university campuses. These restrictions reflect the authoritarian state’s desire to control religious groups, including by intervening in the training of their leaders and the level of education of their members.

Middle East Forum: The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.”

AdelaideNow.com: During consultation the council received feedback from 119 residents, through written submissions and a survey. About half (61) wanted the prayer to remain while 58 respondents wanted the reference to the “Almighty Father” removed.

Catholic Culture: Halki seminary, opened by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1844 and closed by the Turkish government in 1971, remains closed despite calls by President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and others to reopen it.

CNSNews: Two months after the Obama administration released $250 million in aid to Egypt in what Secretary of State John Kerry called “a good-faith effort to spur reform,” the country is witnessing a surge of anti-Israel sentiment, much of it stoked by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

Catholic Culture: During a visit to China, Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has been urging government officials to approve the Russian Orthodox Church as a “recognized religion.”

Catholic Culture: Islamists who recently marched on the nation’s capital wish to “topple the government” and “trigger chaos by means of violence,” the nation’s leading prelate told Aid to the Church in Need.

AP: Brazilian notary publics must register same-sex civil unions as marriages if the couple requests it, the country’s National Council of Justice said Tuesday.

Christian Institute: The Government is not going to offer armed forces chapels the same protections as the Church of England in its plans to redefine marriage.

AP: An Egyptian Christian teacher detained over charges of insulting Islam has been released on bail on Tuesday, her lawyer said.

Washington Post: Egyptian security officials say a Coptic Christian who stabbed his wife for converting to Islam has killed himself by jumping out of a fourth-story courthouse window.

Filistrucchi, Lapo and Prufer, Jens, Nonprofits are Not Alike: The Role of Catholic and Protestant Affiliation (April 26, 2013). TILEC Discussion Paper No. 2013-013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2259051 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2259051

Religion Clause Blog: Naharnet today reports that a court in the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar has sentenced two men for helping a young woman, identified only as “the girl of Khobar”, convert to Christianity and flee to Sweden.

Boston Globe: Amnesty International has called on Egyptian authorities to release a Coptic Christian schoolteacher held for contempt of Islam.

Christian Institute: Christian printer Nick Williamson explains why he is standing up to the bullies who are trying to force him to print a gay magazine.

Christian Institute: The Government thinks supporters of traditional marriage are just “dinosaurs” who should be “frogmarched” towards a new concept of wedlock, Lord Carey says.

Religion Clause Blog: In Israel today, Women of the Wall held their first prayer session since a court decision (see prior posting) vindicating their right to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall wearing prayer shawls (traditionally worn only by men).

Andrew Harrod at The Legal Project: Yet again depictions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad are causing controversy. The French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo has published a special edition released in January 2013 entitled La Vie de Mahomet, 1ère partie: Les débuts d’un prophète (“The Life of Muhammad, Part One: The Debut of a Prophet”; part two will follow in June 2013). Press reaction in both France and Germany, however, has not been uniformly welcoming, demonstrating once more a media aversion to open examination of Islam.

Public Discourse: Uncover and halt the activity of illegally functioning places of worship”; “Uncover and halt the distribution of religious literature and informational materials of religious content in non-approved locations”; “Uncover and halt the carrying out on the territory of the country of illegal missionary activity.” These are three of 74 measures in a draft Plan to implement Kazakhstan’s proposed new State Programme to Counter Religious Extremism and Terrorism for 2013-2017, in its final stages of preparation and seen by Forum 18 News Service. The State Programme with its Implementation Plan would require video-cameras in all places of worship and teaching on “traditional religions” to become a compulsory school subject. The General Prosecutor’s Office in the capital Astana – which is preparing the State Programme – refused to discuss it with Forum 18. “Religious activity across the board will be more and more restricted,” one member of a religious minority told Forum 18.

Christian Post: The mass exodus of millions of Christians from one part of the Islamic world to another as the result of persecution by Muslims has reached epidemic proportions, says a Middle East and Islam expert. In fact, Christians may completely disappear from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt, warns the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Christian Institute: A Christian-run GP surgery has been criticised for posting a notice saying some of its doctors do not prescribe the morning-after pill on grounds of conscience.

Big News Network: Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has decried Buddhist monks’ attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying that killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable”.

Globe and Mail: While the Christian faith continues to dominate Canada’s immigrant profile, its proportion has been steadily fading. Where more than 78 per cent of immigrants to Canada prior to 1971 identified themselves as Christians, that proportion has dropped to 47.5 per cent among those who arrived over the past five years, the survey found.

Rod Dreher at the American Conservative: Do, do, do read Andrew Doran’s TAC essay today about how US Mideast policy toward Iraq and others is destroying Christianity in the land of its birth. Note well this . . .

Baptist Press: More than 52,000 letters have been written to American pastor Saeed Abedini, commending him for his strong demonstration of faith as he languishes in an Iranian prison. The Web-based campaign was launched by the American Center for Law and Justice ahead of Abedini’s 33rd birthday May 7.

Reuters: Suspected members of the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram armed with machineguns laid siege on the north-eastern town of Bama on Tuesday, freeing over 100 prison inmates and leaving 55 people dead, the military said.

Christian Institute: A pro-family group in New Zealand has been notified that it will lose its charitable status because it campaigned in support of traditional marriage.

The Times of Israel: Jews are currently permitted to ascend to the volatile holy site, but police forbid them from worshiping there.

LifeSiteNews: An independent contractor was fired by RE/MAX on Thursday after the media took note of a real estate flyer he had distributed that included an excerpt of an article on the back about how children do best in a household with their married mother and father.

Fox News: A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway. Millions of Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the other. We are reliving the true history of how the Islamic world, much of which prior to the Islamic conquests was almost entirely Christian, came into being.

LifeSiteNews: New Zealand became the 13thcountry to legalise same sex marriage two weeks ago. This week the Anglican Bishop of Auckland is being taken to the Human Rights Tribunal over allegations he is discriminating against a gay man who wants to become a priest.

AP: Myanmar President Thein Sein, nearly one year after sectarian violence first exploded under his watch, vowed Monday his government would do everything it can to protect the rights of minority Muslims living in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

Andrew Harrod of Front Page Magazine via The Legal Project: A Bruges, Belgium criminal court convicted a man for shredding a Koran on March 6, 2013. The court imposed a four-month prison sentence and a 600 euro fine upon him. He now additionally faces a revocation of a previous suspension of an 18-month prison sentence for having set a fire in a wood. This case highlights yet again the greater restrictions on speech in free societies outside of the United States and how these restrictions can limit open debate about Islam.

Religion Clause Blog: Yesterday in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, three people were killed and at least 50 were injured in clashes between security forces and demonstrators who are demanding a blasphemy law with provision for the death penalty.

DW.de: A major study of attitudes towards religion says Germans approve of openness towards other religions. But many are still suspicious of Islam. Former German President Christian Wulff earned much praise but also much criticism when said in a speech during his tenure, “Islam is also a part of Germany.”

Washington Times: Gaza “modesty police” are out in full force, and have arrested more than 40 in April alone, driving fears that Hamas-inspired Islamic fundamentalism is taking over the region.

Religion Clause Blog: The Pew Forum yesterday released a 226-page report titled The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society. Based on surveys in 39 countries between 2008 and 2012, it examines the social and political views of Muslims around the world. Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary . . .

Reuters: Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries, but they disagree on what it includes and who should be subject to it, an extensive new survey says.

Tim O’Gorman at Iona Institute: This week’s ruling in Scotland which found in favour of two midwives who insisted on their right to conscientiously object to taking any part in the abortion process is one that should be welcomed by all who think this freedom is important, whatever their views on abortion itself.

AP: Despite significant improvements since the hard-line Taliban ruled Afghanistan, religious freedom remains poor, especially for minorities, and Afghans still can’t debate religion or question prevailing Islamic orthodoxies without fear of being punished, a U.S. commission said in a new report on Tuesday.

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom today transmitted to the President, Secretary of State and Congressional leaders its Annual Report on religious freedom around the world.

AP: Anti-Muslim violence flared anew in central Myanmar on Tuesday as angry mobs destroyed two mosques and set fire to hundreds of homes and shops in unrest that injured at least 10 people in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

Fox News: The American pastor jailed in Iran for his faith has been placed in solitary confinement and may now be suffering organ failure, according to family members in Iran who are increasingly alarmed at his deteriorating health.

Human Events: Christians throughout the Islamic world are under attack. Unlike Muslim attacks on Christians, which are regularly confused with a myriad of social factors, the ongoing attacks on Christian churches in the Muslim world are perhaps the most visible expression of Christian persecution under Islam.

LifeSiteNews: In 2010, high school science teacher Robert Haye was dismissed from his position at Deptford Green School after he responded to questions from high school students aged 15-16 by saying that homosexual activity is a “sin.” Teaching authorities subsequently banned him “indefinitely” from teaching at any high school in the country, a ban that was later endorsed by Education Secretary Michael Gove.

AP: Wirathu has become the figurehead of a virulent strain of religious nationalism being spread by some of the most venerated members of Burmese society: Buddhist monks. Their core message is that Buddhists must unite against a growing Muslim threat.

Reuters: The 60-year-old teacher, challenging his 2011 dismissal, had claimed his constitutional right to freedom of opinion trumped the Church’s right to employ only Catholics who agreed with the religious mission of their jobs.

Christian Concern: In an important development for the protection of ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has passed a resolution calling on its 47 Member states to . . .