Month: August 2011

Abuse in the Church

source/credit: spiegel SPIEGEL Interview with Top Jesuit Priest ‘We Kept Quiet about Sexual Abuse for Too Long’ A bishop at a meeting of the German Bishops’ Conference in February 2010. Jesuit priest Klaus Mertes, the director of Berlin’s Canisius College, sent shock waves through the German Catholic Church in January 2010 […]

Routine Periodic Fasting Is Good for Your Health, and Your Heart, Study Suggests

Source: Science Daily Fasting has long been associated with religious rituals, diets, and political protests. Now new evidence from cardiac researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute demonstrates that routine periodic fasting is also good for your health, and your heart. Research cardiologists at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute […]

Netanyahu Wishes Peace for Ramadan

Says he hopes the Arab Spring flourishes and succeeds. Israeli PM calls on Abbas to return to peace talks • Says “two peoples are waiting and yearning” for moment of peace • Jerusalem, August 1 – In a YouTube Ramadan holiday greeting to Muslims in Israel and beyond, Israeli Prime […]

Indonesia: Ahmadiyah Community Fears Burst of Violence Over Holy Month

As Indonesia’s Muslim majority prepares for Ramadan and Idul Fitri, the minority Ahmadiyah Islamic sect is bracing itself for more persecution. “Especially during Ramadan, there are more opportunities for [anti-Ahmadiyah] groups to mobilize masses and spread hatred [against us],” said Firdaus Mubarik, spokesman for the Indonesian Ahmadiyah Congregation (JAI). Fresh […]

Turning Israel in to a living classroom

Keshet educational tours interface with Israeli society so that visitors understand that the story of contemporary Israel is their story, too. At the offices of Keshet: The Center for Educational Tourism in Israel in Jerusalem, things are humming with activity. Every summer the organization’s staff of 33 swells three fold, […]

The moon and the maulvi

source/credit: Tribune The holy month is fast approaching and will no doubt approach in its usual fashion — in stages. That an Islamic Republic is so strife-ridden that it is unable to agree in unity on something as simple as the moon says much for the brand of religion it […]

The lethal son of Islamophobes

Source/Credit: Tribune If  the 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik had not published his 1500-page ‘manifesto’ just before embarking upon the killing spree that left 76 dead in Oslo and a nearby island hosting a Labour Party youth camp, there would have been a tendency to dub him as a ‘lone wolf’. […]

There is no compulsion in religion

source/credit. dailytimes A thousand years before the age of enlightenment and before the idea of religious toleration took root in the west, the Holy Quran said, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). It is often forgotten, when we speak of Islam, that Islam’s approach was reformist. For example, the […]

Jordan: Ramadan thoughts

Editorial: Jordan Times The holy month of Ramadan starts today. It is a month of abstinence, spirituality and prayer, one in which fasting Muslims are called upon to refrain from eating, drinking and carnal pleasure between dawn and sunset. It is a time when Muslims should turn to meditation and […]