Al Qaeda’s north African wing threatened revenge against France for launching a “war” against Muslim women who wear full burqas that cover them from head to toe, according to a Web statement posted in the group’s name.

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Christianity turns adherents into evangelists—a sales force that seeks to spread the “good news.”  To accomplish this requires some of the same qualities that make for good marketing campaigns, viral emails, and fads.

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There are Democratic sex scandals to be sure, but Democrats didn’t build a franchise on holier-than-thou moral rectitude. The Republicans did. They used sexual morality as a weapon and now it’s shooting them in the foot.

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Sharia courts should not be recognised under Britain’s 1996 Arbitration Act, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas.

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Much as the hammers that leveled the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War, so might the protests rocking Iran signal the death of radical Islam and the challenges it poses to the West. Just as with the evangelicals and the Republican Party, the integration of politics and religious dogma cannot hold.

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Richard Dawkins backs atheist camp to give children ‘godless alternative’

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GIVE Richard Dawkins a child for a week’s summer camp and he will try to give you an atheist for life. The author of The God Delusion is helping to launch Britain’s first summer retreat for non-believers, where children will have lessons in evolution and sing along to John Lennon’s Imagine.

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Doctors are demanding that NHS staff be given a right to discuss spiritual issues with patients as well as being allowed to offer to pray for them.

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Unloaded weapons allowed at event celebrating Second Amendment

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If recent trends are any guide, many Church of England parishes will have been cheered by higher attendances at Easter services. The last published statistics for 2006/7 show rises of 7 and 5 per cent in church going at Christmas and Easter.

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Britain is no longer a Christian nation and the Church of England could die out within a generation, an Anglican bishop has warned.

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Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in several exciting panel discussions at the World Science Festival in New York City. But the most dramatic encounter took place at the panel strangely titled “Science, Faith and Religion.”

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We often point to France as a beacon of secularism, a country with a constitution that guarantees religious rights but ensures that they are completely separate from the functions of the state.

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Church of England bishops are becoming restive at the prospect that the Government might recommend a wholly elected House of Lords

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Hardline Somali Islamists amputated a leg and a hand from each of four alleged thieves in a public punishment held in the middle of Mogadishu.

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The government takes on a “walking prison”
When the French government decided in 2004 to ban the Muslim headscarf in state schools and other public buildings, it set off a heated debate over religious expression and women’s rights in a secular state. Now Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked another by calling the burqa, a head-to-toe Islamic garment, “a sign of subjugation;of debasement that is not welcome on French territory.”
Mr Sarkozy’s comments came after a group of deputies, led by Andre Gerin, a Communist, had called for a parliamentary inquiry into the wearing of the burqa, with a view to a possible ban. This would mean in all public places, since it is already banned in state institutions under the 2004 law. The deputies called burqas “veritable walking prisons.”

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A debate rages about the nature of clerical rule

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Gay and youth advocates are demanding an investigation

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A church in Belfast, Ireland, which gave sanctuary to more than a hundred Romanians when they fled from racist violence, has been attacked by vandals. The Romanians had sheltered in the church after being driven from their homes in south Belfast by “disturbances” earlier in the month. Now, all but 14 of them have asked to return to Romania, and the government of Northern Ireland is paying to send the back.

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Leaders of the UK’s main religions appeal to their followers to support a campaign to register as organ donors. The Church of England, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, the head of the U.K. Hindu Council and the Chief Rabbi have all said that organ donation after death is both permitted and encouraged by their respective religions. The Church of England went farther, calling it a “Christian duty.”

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