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USA Today – July 26, 2007 Some public schools and universities are granting Muslim requests for prayer times, prayer rooms and ritual foot baths, prompting a debate on whether Islam is being given preferential treatment over other religions. The University of Michigan at Dearborn is planning to build foot baths for Muslim students who wash…

Associated Press – August 14, 2007 VIENNA, Austria – They were planted to honor one pope. Now they’re being purged for another. Four stately lime trees ceremoniously planted near a popular Roman Catholic shrine in 1983 for a visit to Austria by the late Pope John Paul II are being uprooted to make way for…

By Robert Schwaneberg (RNS) Luisa Paster and Harriet Bernstein of Ocean Grove, N.J., say they were not trying to start a federal case when they complained last month to the state’s civil rights agency. “All that we were trying to accomplish was to have our civil union in the boardwalk pavilion” in Ocean Grove, a…

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A man charged with dragging Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel from a hotel elevator apologized in court Monday to the Nobel laureate over the alleged anti-Semitic attack. Eric Hunt, 22, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, stalking, elder abuse and hate crimes following the February incident…

MEXICO CITY, Aug 13, 2007 (UPI via COMTEX) — The international rights group Amnesty International is poised to defy the Roman Catholic Church by endorsing abortion rights for rape victims. The group’s leaders are meeting Mexico City this week, and the British newspaper, The Independent, said they were expected to endorse a board recommendation last…

CHICAGO (RNS) — Efforts to eliminate a celibacy requirement for gay Lutheran clergy failed Saturday (Aug. 11) at a churchwide assembly, but delegates urged bishops to refrain from disciplining sexually active gay pastors. After five days of debate among delegates from the 5 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, voting members deferred any changes in…

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Democratic presidential contenders Thursday sought to underscore their differences with Republicans on gay and lesbian rights, but leading candidates also faced sharp questions on their reluctance to embrace marriage for same-sex couples. In a forum focusing on gay issues sponsored by a gay-rights organization and aired on a gay-oriented cable channel,…

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) – The Internet, satellite television and even the telephone are increasingly being used in the Muslim world to issue fatwas – religious decrees – on issues as varied as whether women can pluck their eyebrows or good Muslims should read Harry Potter. A fatwa is a ruling by a recognized Islamic scholar,…

By Jennifer Koons, Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Against the backdrop of celebrations to mark the one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government has angered religious freedom activists by attempting to assert greater influence over the successor to the Dalai Lama. “The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and…

Associated Press KOLOMUDO VILLAGE, Thailand – The black-uniformed raiders roared into this Thai Muslim village, firing assault rifles and hurling grenades from a pickup truck at a group of teenagers relaxing near the mosque. When the attack was over, five of the youths lay dead. As they have done in the past, authorities initially said…
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