Tag Archives: Global: Religious Freedom

The National: An expatriate who insulted Islam by cursing a mosques project he was working on has lost his appeal against his jail term. | Hat tip: Volokh Conspiracy

AP: The issue of who should appoint bishops has been a key obstacle to Pope Benedict XVI’s goal of improving relations with Beijing.

Religion Clause Blog: RT reports that the Russian Interior Ministry is investigating a controversial televised interview of Chechen lawyer Dagir Khasavov who told REN TV that authorities should legalize shariah courts or face violence and bloodshed.

Europe News: There was concern over the plight of several Iranian Christian asylum seekers in Sweden Tuesday, April 24, after Swedish authorities decided to deport them despite fears they may be jailed or even executed there, Christians said.

Telegraph: The Roman Catholic Church contacted its secondary schools in England and Wales asking them to enourage pupils to back the campaign against gay marriage.

AP: Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council issued a new law Wednesday that bans parties based on religious principles, the council spokesman said.

Christian Concern: A High Court judge has upheld a ban on a Christian radio advert, ruling that it was “directed to a political end.”

LifeSiteNews: Well over 20,000 demonstrators gathered in downtown Warsaw on Saturday April 21 to protest a decision by Poland’s National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT) to deny a new digital broadcast license to a Catholic television station, TV Trwam. A petition in support of the Catholic station has reportedly been signed by over 2 million Poles.

National Secular Society: The American religious right continues its advance into Europe. Our representative at the Fundamental Rights Agency Hans Christian Cars reports that Roger Kiska, Senior Legal Counsel at the Alliance Defence Fund, is based in Europe and disturbingly has been elected to the Advisory Panel 2012-2013 of the Fundamental Rights Platform (FRP).

Catholic Herald: A legal challenge will be launched against the building of two new Catholic schools in southwest London.

Catholic Herald: Neil Addison, the director of the Thomas More Legal Centre, said that the Prime Minister’s assurances to the Church that they would not be compelled to perform religious marriage for gay couples are worthless. He said two judgments by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg combined with a Court of Appeal ruling in 2010 clearly showed that the Government would be acting illegally if it legalised civil gay marriages without permitting them on religious premises too.

Religion Clause Blog: In a front-page story today, the New York Times reports that Egypt’s presidential race is increasingly becoming a contest over the place of Islam in the new Egypt.

Christian Science Monitor: The Russian Orthodox Church’s ties with the government are facing push back. Church leaders have decried recent incidents, including a punk band’s protest inside a church.

Boston Globe: The Carter Center is the most prominent of the eight groups denied permits. Some of the others are linked to U.S.-based churches.

LifeSiteNews: While most medical ethics throughout the western world has adopted the primacy of patient autonomy as its guiding principle, the psychiatric and psychological professions in the UK are becoming increasingly authoritarian in matters of sexuality, according to one would-be therapist.

LifeSiteNews: A Catholic nurse in the UK has won her case in a dispute with her employer, an NHS trust in the Midlands, that was demanding she work in an abortion facility. The Catholic Herald reports that the woman, who has not been named publicly, was being required to work in a “Termination of Pregnancy clinic” attached to the hospital, and had cited the Abortion Act itself as her defence.

Vatican Insider: It seems extraordinary to think that, in a Country which has three crosses on its own flag (the Union Jack, one star for England, one for Scotland and one for Wales), wearing one small cross around your neck at work could get you fired. And yet this is the reality in the United Kingdom in 2012

Boston Globe: A Muslim mob has set ablaze a Catholic church frequented by Southern Sudanese in the capital Khartoum, witnesses and media reports said on Sunday.

LA Times: The girls are forced to convert to Islam, rights groups say. In court, a few wives have chosen to stay with their husbands, but families say they were coerced.

Weekly Standard: Former Palestinian intelligence official Muhammad Abu Shahala has reportedly been sentenced to death by the Palestinian Authority for selling a Hebron home to Jews.

Catholic Culture: Catholics in Turkey are seeking the return of 200 properties that were seized by the Turkish government.

Baptist Press: Practicing a religious belief in nearly one-third of the world’s countries is increasingly difficult due to government restrictions and public hostilities, according to new data from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Telegraph: A rich businessman’s plans to build a 50ft-high Islamic tomb on his green belt land has enraged neighbours who say the domed mausoleum will be a blot on the landscape in their affluent village.

Christian Institute: School children in Cornwall are to be taught about paganism as part of their religious education classes for the first time.

Catholic Culture: Amid political turmoil in the west African nation of Mali, the nation’s bishops have expressed concern about the potential for the imposition of Sharia throughout the nation.

FIFE Today: Two Catholic midwives who lost a legal bid challenging a health board’s decision that they were not entitled to refuse to delegate, supervise or support staff involved in abortion procedures have launched an appeal against the decision.

RIANOVOSTI: Thousands of priests are expected to arrive in Moscow on Sunday for a nationwide prayer in defense of the faith and desecrated sacred objects, Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida said.

AP: . . . new media guidelines that some say require public TV and radio stations to be more religious.

AP: Islamists and liberals turned out together in force for the protest to show the widespread anger . . .

Religion Clause Blog: In London Christian Radio Ltd. v. Radio Advertising Clearance Centre, (EWHC, April 20, 2012), Britain’s High Court (Queen’s Bench Division) for England and Wales held that the ban on political advertising on radio broadcasts imposed by Communications Act 2003 (Secs. 319 and 321) does not infringe a Christian radio station’s free expression rights . . .

The Australian: “At the end of the day, people want to go and enjoy the footy as well as continue with their beliefs, and if it means they have to pray once a day at the footy, we’re not asking for much.”

NY Times: The Supreme Court had intervened in the three cases in recent weeks, “sequestering the women from their parents and their new husbands to consider their future without pressure,” Mr. Masood writes. “The court ruled on Wednesday that all three had freely chosen to remain Muslim.”

Reuters: A leading conservative politician said on Thursday that Islam did not belong in Germany, fuelling tension at a conference on integrating Muslims that also debated a controversial Salafist campaign to hand out copies of the Koran across the country.

LifeSiteNews: Homosexual groups are seeking the prosecution of a Spanish bishop after he gave a sermon repeating the Catholic Church’s teaching associating the gay lifestyle with the suffering of hell, and then an interview in which he endorsed psychological treatment for homosexual behavior.

AP: Nigeria’s president is vowing that his government will rein in the threat from a radical Islamic sect that has waged an increasingly bloody sectarian fight in the country.

LifeSiteNews: Bill C-279 (formerly Bill C-389) sponsored by NDP MP Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC) is a proposition to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” as prohibited grounds of discrimination.

AP reports.

Catholic Culture: Two Chinese bishops of the “underground” Church have been released by police after having been held for “political sessions” in which they were pressured to cooperate with the Catholic Patriotic Association.

Washington Post: Egypt’s presidential electoral commission permanently disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including three front-runners, on Tuesday, upending the election just weeks before next month’s vote.

Religion Clause Blog reports.

Kath.net (translation by Google): Former Bavarian Minister-President: “When Christians try in Islamic countries, especially where Salafis have the power, would be to distribute the Bible, the most serious of punishments would prefer to be – including the death penalty.”

Baptist Press: “After I became a follower of Jesus, my husband would always insult me,” Melesse* said. “I tried to share with him from the Word, but he said I wasn’t being a good wife and kicked me out. “Then one night when I was coming home late from work, he and five men followed me and broke down my door.”

BBC: A church has been banned from holding a weekly bookstall in Norwich following a complaint it was producing “hate-motivated” literature against Islam.

Christian Today: The Nigerian government must do more to protect Christians after another church was targeted over the weekend, an advocacy group has said.

Christian Today: The Bishop of Hereford has warned that the Government’s plan to introduce VAT payments on alterations to listed buildings could be the “straw that breaks the camel’s back” for many churches.

Christian Institute: Christians in Britain are being treated as “bigots” and sacked for expressing their beliefs, a former Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. Lord Carey, who served as Archbishop from 1991 to 2002, also warned of a “drive to remove Judaeo-Christian values from the public square”.

Religion Clause Blog reports.

One News Now: Chinese Christians have won a rare court victory following an incident last October when more than 10 house church members and a missionary were arrested by police in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

CNSNews: Nearly two months beyond the Feb. 25 date when it was required to by law, the State Department has still not sent to Congress nor made public the mandatory reports on how nations of the world fare when it comes to human rights.

Text at the Embassy of the Russian Federation to the United Kingdom

Wall Street Journal: Following a meeting in Washington, the statement of the G8 Foreign Ministers Meeting Chair said: “The ministers reaffirmed that human rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all individuals, male and female, including lesbian, gay, bisexual …

LifeSiteNews: Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party mayor of London, is being sued by a Christian organization whose bus advertisements for overcoming same-sex attraction he ordered pulled.

Examiner.com: In New Delhi, India, Islamic extremists storm a prayer meeting, resulting in the beating of a 65 year-old widow, another woman, and the mocking of attending Christians.  This all happened less than a month after they helped drive a young woman out of her home and village for her faith, Compass Direct Reports.

Piero Tozzi at Turtle Bay and Beyond: A word of caution is in order before adopting the framework and verbiage proposed by McCarthy in its entirety, however, for he throws out the baby with the bathwater, and his characterization of the “utopian” Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 fails to give a rounded appraisal of that landmark document. Moreover, his underlying premise of “freedoms” vs. “rights” is historically both incorrect and unessential to adopt in order to get to where the author wants to lead us. The concept of “rights,” properly understood, was very much part of the Founding Fathers’ vocabulary — as in the “bill of rights” (!!) and “unalienable rights” based on the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” The tension is thus not between “rights” and “freedoms,” but rather between “negative rights” and “positive” ones — a tension that is reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Raymond Ibrahim at the Gatestone Institute: While the MSM may report the most frugal facts concerning Christian persecution, they utilize their entire arsenal of semantic games, catch phrases, and convenient omissions that uphold the traditional narrative—that Muslim violence is anything but a byproduct of the Islamic indoctrination of intolerance.

AP: The press bus took a wrong turn Thursday. And suddenly, everything changed in the official showcase of North Korean achievement.

AP: German authorities say a planned distribution of millions of copies of the Quran by an ultraconservative Muslim group is legal but will be carefully monitored.

AP: More than 10,000 Egyptians marched from mosques and protested in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday in a show of strength by Islamists, demanding the country’s ruling generals bar Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief and other ousted regime officials from running . . .

AP: After the death of their spiritual leader, more than 2,000 Egyptian Copts have poured into the Holy Land for the Easter holidays, defying a ban he imposed on visiting Jerusalem and other Israeli-controlled areas.

Zenit: Hungary’s Ambassador to the Holy See is rather perplexed by the negative reaction of some European figures and institutions to his country’s new Constitution — a document he sees as offering a possible impetus to a “Christian renaissance” in Europe.

BBC: The UN Security Council has called for an immediate and unconditional end to fighting on Sudan’s southern border.

Christian Science Monitor: A tentative UN-brokered ceasefire does not settle Western concerns over Saudi intervention in Syria. While the US and its allies are wary of seeing Syria become a sectarian battleground, the power brokers in Riyadh seem to have been hurtling toward it – with a form of state-sponsored jihad.

Nina Shea at National Review: This violence comes out of the growing community of Salafi Muslims, adherents of the radical brand of Islam that is Saudi Arabia’s official doctrine and which Saudi Arabia exports throughout the Sunni world. We’ve also come to expect the willful blindness of the Obama administration about the religious implications of these horrific events. Last weekend’s Easter Sunday was no exception.

Christian Science Monitor: Sudan’s government vowed on Thursday to deal swiftly with South Sudan’s occupation of an economically vital oil field near the border but the south said it would not pull out until the threat of attacks by the northern army had gone.

AP: The leader of a radical Islamist sect in Nigeria has challenged the nation’s president, saying he could never destroy the group blamed for hundreds of killings this year alone, according to an online video posted Thursday.

Trudy Rubin at the Philadelphia Inquirer: Last week, a Muslim Brotherhood delegation from Egypt came to Washington to convince skeptics that Islam and democracy can coexist.

AP: Hosni Mubarak’s former vice president said he decided to run for president to prevent Islamists from turning Egypt into a “religious state.”

Fox News: Twelve Christians stood trial Easter Sunday in Iran, where they were called “apostates” in a courtroom and tried on multiple charges, according to sources close to Iran’s Christian community.

ASSIST News Service: A Christian leader has been beheaded and others are being threatened with similar treatment as Islamic militants run amok in Mali, West Africa.

LifeSiteNews: Alberta Premier Alison Redford says she is “frightened” by her political rival’s support for conscience rights, arguing that doctors should be forced to commit abortions and prescribe contraception even if it goes against their beliefs.

LifeSiteNews: After an Ontario Court of Justice judge erupted in a lengthy, angry tirade against pro-life activist Mary Wagner two weeks ago, telling her, “you’re wrong and your God’s wrong,” and sending her back to jail for mischief and failing to comply with probation orders, Wagner’s defense team has decided to appeal the decision.

Reuters: A leader of Germany’s ruling party has criticised plans of an ultra-conservative Muslim group to hand out millions of copies of the Koran, calling it a threat to religious peace.

Gatestone Institute: Islamic radicals in Germany have launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, with the goal of placing one Koran into every household in Germany, free of charge.

Mark Steyn at National Review: Melanie Phillips on an election in Yorkshire for the House of Commons in the Mother of Parliaments in the early 21st century: ‘All praise to Allah!’ he [George Galloway] saluted his victory through a loud-hailer — having previously told a public meeting that if people didn’t vote for him, Allah would want to know why.

AP: Militant leaders and foot soldiers from the militant group al-Shabab are fleeing to hideouts in a mountainous region of northeastern Somalia after facing increasing military pressure around Somalia’s capital, the prime minister said