faith - Page 11

Islam’s holiest site has been hit by a swarm of locusts forcing religious authorities to launch an unprecedented clean-up operation.

Christian persecution in key countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, will be analysed in a report commissioned by the UK government, along with a comprehensive policy response.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan praised Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro during a meeting in Caracas on Monday for his support towards the Islamic world and the ongoing battle against “Islamophobia.”

TEL AVIV – The old adage “Football is life. The rest is mere details” clearly doesn’t ring true for one rabbi who was caught on a stadium camera at an Israel-Scotland game in Glasgow deep in Talmudic study just after the away team scored a goal. 

TEL AVIV – The chief rabbi of Jerusalem approved the burial of a Palestinian Muslim in a Jewish cemetery after Imams refused to bury him over suspicions that he sold real estate to Jews, a capital offense in Palestinian society.   

ANKARA, Turkey — The fiancee of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has expressed “shock and sadness” over reports suggesting that his body may have been dissolved with chemicals.

Despite his undisputed brilliance in his field, British physicist Stephen Hawking was “naïve” and “ham-handed” in matters of religion, writes Bishop Robert Barron of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commemorated International Religious Freedom Day by reminding Americans religious freedom is “the first among the rights enumerated in our Constitution.”

NEW YORK — A handwritten letter from Albert Einstein about his thoughts on God, religion and his search for meaning is to go on sale in New York, valued at up to $1.5 million, Christie’s said Wednesday.

The lawyer representing American pastor Andrew Brunson reportedly filed an appeal on Wednesday to the highest legal body for constitutional review in Turkey for his client’s release from house arrest.

TEL AVIV – A man fell off of a fourth floor balcony on on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Succoth but the sukkah of a neighbour broke the fall and likely saved his life, Jerusalem paramedics said. 

JERUSALEM – A Palestinian cleric claimed Israel is excavating under the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem “like rats burrow underground” for “evil and destruction,” Palestinian Media Watch reported.

Israel shut down on Tuesday evening for Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

The latest generation of Americans is the “least religious” in the nation’s history, said Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput over the weekend in a dour assessment of the present state of affairs.

First Reformed is a frantic prayer sputtered into a Dark Night of the Soul, and it as poetic, haunting, unflinching, and beautiful as it is an expression of faith.

Mina (Saudi Arabia) – Thousands of cleaners are busy separating plastic from other rubbish as more than two million Muslims wrap up a pilgrimage to Mecca that presents a huge environmental challenge for Saudi Arabia.

Bishops of China’s state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) have told dioceses to draft local versions of a national “Sinicization” program to bring the Catholic Church into line with the ideals of the Communist party.

Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney accused previous White House administrations of withholding foreign aid from countries in sub-Saharan Africa to secure compliance with left-wing policy initiatives on “abortion [and] gay marriage.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Tuesday at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) summit in Washington, DC, that the ties between the United States and Israel are secured by our common religious heritage and our commitment to liberty for our citizens.

A large boulder from the Western Wall was dislodged from the ancient structure on Monday morning, tumbling down onto an egalitarian prayer platform.

Labour MP Naz Shah has been made a shadow equalities minister two years after admitting her “ignorance” about discrimination against Jews during a row over anti-Semitism in the party.

Ten people have been detained by German police in the wake of an alleged anti-Semitic attack in a Berlin park, with local media reporting all involved are Syrian migrants.

ROME — There is a danger that the Christian presence in the Middle East will disappear, “disfiguring the very face of the region,” Pope Francis said Saturday.

JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s Franciscan friars have opened a new museum filled with artifacts related to daily life in Jesus’ time.

Christians have been rooted in the Middle East as minority communities since the birth of the religion, but their numbers are dwindling amid conflict and jihadist attacks.

The death toll of last weekend’s massacre of Nigerian Christians by militant Muslim Fulani herdsmen has risen to at least 200, according to a report released Friday by Open Doors, an organization that monitors Christian persecution.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller said this week that many bishops today are involved in “a blatant process of Protestantizing” the Catholic Church, leaving many of the faithful confused and disoriented.

South African Jewish leaders condemned “alarming” amount of anti-Semitic attacks this week.

Jewish artifacts, including ancient parchment Torahs from one of the world’s oldest synagogues, have gone missing from the Syrian capital amid the tumult of ongoing civil war, with some precious items reportedly surfacing abroad.

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper argued in a column Tuesday that banning all religious garments in public is necessary to achieve “social unity” and contended the act does not portray “religious hatred.”

In most Muslim-majority nations, “religious liberty is either crushed altogether or it barely exists,” wrote Catholic League president Bill Donohue Monday.

A poll on attitudes to minorities in Western Europe found that nearly a quarter of British respondents would be unwilling to accept Jews as family members.

The last remaining Jewish citizen in Afghanistan finds himself among a small group of non-Muslim religious minorities who have become a target of a deadly persecution campaign at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and the Taliban, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) mentions in a report released on Tuesday.

The government of Cuba released Daniel Llorente, an independent dissident, from a notorious mental hospital where he was detained for more than a year after being diagnosed with “believing in God.” Llorente was arrested after interrupting the 2017 May Day parade in Havana, waving an American flag and demanding freedom for Cuba.

A journalist who posted a picture of a group of teenagers praying in a restaurant before prom is getting some heat from Facebook users who argued the kids were not necessarily “nice” just because they were praying in the picture.

Despite recent signs of ebbing religious faith among Americans, the vast majority still believe in God or some sort of divinity, the Pew Research Center revealed in a report Wednesday.