Religion is alive and kicking in officially atheist China
Source: PRI The communists who took the reins in China in 1949 viewed religion as backward and superstitious. Authorities did their best to wipe out religious life. And by the […]
Firebrand monk Wirathu travels to Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine State
Source: Reuters By Wa Lone | YANGON A Myanmar Buddhist monk renowned for his anti-Muslim sermons travelled to Rakhine State on Wednesday, an official said, sparking concern over religious tension […]
A polygamy trial in Canada tests the limits of conjugal freedom
Source: The Economist The case illustrates the tension between religious freedom and human rights in democracies by P.F. and ERASMUS | VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA Many of today’s hottest arguments about […]
Neuroscientists Are Searching for God in Our Gray Matter
Source: Tonic By Shayla Love Neuroscientists have long been curious about the neural basis of faith. Between 1967 and 1970, neurologist and Korean War veteran William Caveness started an unusual collection. […]
Iran is seeking ‘to control Islamic world’, says Saudi Arabian prince
Source: The Guardian Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince has said there is no space for dialogue with the Iran due to its ambitions “to control the Islamic world”. The rare […]
Hypnosis and holy water: Russian ‘cures’ for gay people
Source: BBC By Anastasia Golubeva BBC Russian Service Image copyrightINSTAGRAM.COM/XCV_CHURCHImage captionChristian Pastor Peresvetov claims religion can cure gay “perversion” Controversial “treatments” by psychotherapists and preachers are being offered to gay people in Russia. BBC Russian heard accounts of so-called cures, after it emerged that gay men were being persecuted in […]
Black People Still Aren’t Living As Long as Whites: Study
Source: Time BY Alice Park People in the U.S. and beyond are living longer thanks to better health care, but gaps between whites and other groups, including African-Americans, persist, according to […]
How Scientists Think CRISPR Will Change Medicine
Source: Time BY Alexandra Sifferlin TIME Health For more, visit TIME Health. With the advent of CRISPR, a new way to edit DNA, the field of genomic technology has never been […]
Francis and Benedict: Two popes, two divergent approaches to Islam
Epigraph: And thou shalt assuredly find those who say, ‘We are Christians,’ to be the nearest of them in love to the believers. That is because amongst them are savants […]
Blasphemy isn’t just a problem in the Muslim world
Source: Religion News Service By Steve Pinkerton, who is a lecturer in English at Case Western Reserve University. This article was originally published on The Conversation (The Conversation) Recent weeks have brought renewed attention to […]
Muslims on Capitol Hill learn how to lobby
By Aysha Khan and Lauren Markoe Al-Sharif Nassef, far right, a participant in the third annual Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, takes an elevator to an appointment on May […]
German minister in pre-election dispute over “dominant culture”
Reuters International MAY 2, 2017 Immigrants are escorted by German police to a registration centre, after crossing the Austrian-German border in Wegscheid near Passau, Germany, October 20, 2015. REUTERS/Michael Dalder/File Photo (reuters_tickers) BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s interior minister has caused a furore five months before an election for saying migrants […]
Switzerland: Asylum
By swissinfo.ch FEB 15, 2016 (Keystone) Anyone can apply for asylum – protection from persecution – in Switzerland, but applicants must prove or at least credibly demonstrate their refugee […]
Switzerland: NEW INTELLIGENCE CATEGORY: Ninety people identified as being ‘at risk’ of jihadism
MAY 2, 2017 – The intelligence service, headquartered in Bern, released the new category and figures as part of its annual report. (Keystone) Switzerland’s intelligence service has created a new category for identifying and describing the estimated 90 individuals who could have connections to terrorist activity. The new “at risk” […]
US military ending role in hunt for elusive African warlord Joseph Kony
By Ryan Browne, CNN Updated 1810 GMT (0210 HKT) May 2, 2017 Story highlights The number of fighters in Kony’s forces have dropped from nearly 2,000 to under 100 Outside […]
TIME TRAVEL IS MATHEMATICALLY POSSIBLE WITH NEW MIND-BOGGLING MODEL
BY HANNAH OSBORNE ON 5/2/17 What Are Gravitational Waves? Updated | Many have dreamed of figuring out how to travel in time—and dismissed it as impossible. Now, researchers have proposed a mathematical model that makes time travel possible, using concepts of Einstein’s theory of general relativity coupled with the hypothesis that […]
Democracy – Justice: How are they related? (update)
Democracy – Justice: How are they related? by Hakan Erten INTRODUCTION Welcome to democracy-justice.com, dedicated to explaining the relationship between democracy and justice, based on two specific […]
Islam needs Islamophobia right now
BY Omar Mahmood, April 21, 2017 In Pakistan, a mob killed a journalism student because he didn’t believe. That could have been me. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/04/21/apostate-pakistan-lynched-islamophobia-blasphemy-column/100708734/#sthash.tSsNfeVU.dpuf (Photo: Abdul Majeed, AFP/Getty Images) 18477CONNECTTWEET 7LINKEDIN 101COMMENTEMAILMORE Last week, a 23-year-old journalism student was beaten to death by a mob outside the cafeteria of Abdul Wali Khan University […]
Pakistan: why they lynched university student Mashal Khan
DAWN.COM 29/04/2017 By Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islamabad THE mental state of men ready and poised to kill has long fascinated scientists. The Nobel Prize winning ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, says such persons experience the ‘Holy Shiver’ (called heiliger Schauer in German) just moments before performing the deed. In his famous book On […]
Learning about Mormonism from a Ted Talk with a sense of humor
Ted Talk: Letting Go of God When two young Mormon missionaries knock on Julia Sweeney’s door one day, it touches off a quest to completely rethink her own beliefs, in […]