Mecca talks stress religious tolerance
Riazat Butt, The Guardian
More than 500 delegates from around the world gathered in the Islamic holy city of Mecca yesterday with the aim of fostering better relations between Muslims and followers of other faiths. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia opened the three-day conference in Al-Safah Palace, a stone’s throw from the Grand Mosque, by stressing the need for better understanding and cooperation between monotheistic religions. The king urged his audience to promote the true message of Islam…
Misrepresenting Islam
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im, ReligionDispatches
Suggestions that Presidential candidate Barack Obama was a Muslim seemed to have subsided when his controversial pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, walked onto the stage. But even as Obama defended his Christian faith, and his choice of churches, speculation about his connection to Islam continues on-line as well as within the mainstream press, including an Op-Ed entitled “President Apostate” in The New York Times (May 12, 2008) by the military strategist and historian Edward Luttwak (and, exactly a week later, in a May 19 Christian Science Monitor Op-Ed entitled “Barack Obama–Muslim Apostate?“).
Critics of embryo research are ‘absurd’, says church academic
Mail
The Rt Rev Richard Harries, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, told an audience that it was an ‘extra-ordinary’ position to think of every fertilised embryo as a living soul. The former Bishop of Oxford said his position differed from the ‘more conservative’ Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams who recently used the word ‘rape’ in connection with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Lord Harries told Cheltenham Literature Festival: ‘We now know…
[Cardinal on the attack: Scotsman]
Nicky Reilly remanded in custody on Exeter restaurant bomb charges (Home Staff , Times)
Deoband first: A fatwa against terror (Tabsir)
‘BBC news is fuelling racist attacks on Poles because liberal elite is scared to highlight non-white immigration’ (Mail)
15 child brides used to settle Pakistan feud (Declan Walsh, Guardian)
Interfaith talks on agenda in Mecca, Rome and London (Tom Heneghan, FaithWorld)
Blame terrorism on multiculturalism says Torygraph (Islamophobia Watch)
Qaradawi slams Pakistan bombing (Islamophobia Watch)
‘Symbolism of hijab’ (Islamophobia Watch)
Denmark: Three Muslims attacked after embassy bombing (Islam in Europe)
Pig’s head nailed to Asian centre (BBC News Online)
U.S. religious groups in anti-torture campaign (Ed Stoddard, FaithWorld)
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