The Times – The Roman Catholic Church in Germany ordered two separate investigations yesterday into allegations of widespread sexual abuse in its institutions, specifically at the Bavarian boarding school where the Pope’s brother served as choirmaster.With nearly two thirds of dioceses caught up in the widening scandal, the German Bishops’ Conference said that it would examine all 170 allegations made so far. A spokesman said that the investigation would take a close look at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys’ choir, led by Georg Ratzinger for 30 years until 1994. Read Article
BBC – The governor of Nigeria’s Plateau state has accused military commanders of ignoring warnings of an attack on Sunday near the city of Jos. Hundreds died during attacks on three villages in the area between the mainly Christian south and Muslim north. The massacre is seen as revenge for a previous bout of killings in January. Read article
The Times – Germany has blamed a “wall of silence” created by the Vatican for hampering investigations into decades of abuse of schoolchildren by Catholic clergy. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the Justice Minister, said that Vatican secrecy rules, including a 2001 directive requiring even the most serious cases to be investigated first by Church officials, were complicating efforts to shed light on claims of abuse at some of Germany’s most highly regarded schools. Read Article
BBC – Former priest Bill Carney was named as one of the worst cases in Dublin’s Catholic diocese in the Murphy report into clerical abuse there. However, for the last 10 years he has been free to live quietly in Britain. Newsnight’s Olenka Frenkiel has investigated his case and tracked him down in the Canary Islands. Read Article
BBC – Thousands of demonstrators have marched through Spanish cities to protest against a bill that will make it easier for women to seek an abortion. In Madrid, families with young children carried banners, flags and balloons and chanted “No to abortion! Yes to life!”.
The bill, already passed by parliament, introduces abortion on demand up to 14 weeks into a pregnancy. Read Article
Press TV – The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) urges an all-out international effort aimed at ending the Israeli aggression after an Israeli raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. On Saturday, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu called for “an international intervention effective at every level to end Israeli aggressions and make Israel respect international law,” AFP reported. The Israeli forces on Friday raided the compound of the holy site in the occupied East Jerusalem (Al-Quds) to push out Palestinian worshippers who had gathered for the weekly Friday prayers. Read article
Herald Sun – TWO Muslim women were stopoed from boarding a flight from Britain to Pakistan for refusing to go through new body scanners, citing religious and medical reasons, airport officials say. The pair – travelling together at Manchester airport last month – are the first confirmed cases in Britain of anyone being refused travel since body scanners became mandatory at the airports using them on February 1.The two women, who are British residents, were travelling on a Pakistan International Airlines flight to Islamabad from Manchester Airport in northwest England on February 19.They were randomly selected to go through the scanners but refused to do so, Britain’s busiest non-London airport said. Read Article
New Scientist – HERE’s a fact to flatter the unbelievers among you: the bright young things at the University of Oxford are among the most godless groups ever studied in the UK. Of 728 students surveyed in 2007, 48.9 per cent claimed not to believe in any god, with 49.6 per cent claiming no religious affiliation. And while a very small number of Britons typically label themselves as “atheist” or “agnostic” (most surveys put it at about 5 per cent), an astonishing 57.3 per cent of the Oxford sample did.This may come as no surprise. After all, atheism is the natural stance of the educated and the informed, is it not? It is only to be expected that Oxford students should be wise to what their own professor Richard Dawkins calls “self-indulgent, thought-denying skyhookery” – and others call “faith”. The old Enlightenment caricature, it seems, is true after all: where Reason reigns, God retires. Read Article
Washington Report – This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion. Read article
BBC – Hundreds of Iraqi Christians have taken part in protests calling for government action after a spate of killings. At least eight Christians have been killed in the past two weeks in the volatile northern city of Mosul. The killings prompted an appeal by Pope Benedict on Sunday for Iraqi authorities to protect vulnerable religious minorities. Read article
BBC – An influential Muslim scholar is to issue in London a global ruling against terrorism and suicide bombing. Dr Tahir ul-Qadri, from Pakistan, says his 600-page judgement, known as a fatwa, completely dismantles al-Qaeda’s violent ideology. Read article
BBC – Hundreds of Dutch activists have walked out of a Mass in protest at a Roman Catholic policy of denying communion to practising homosexuals. On this occasion, the church, in ’s-Hertogenbosch, had already decided not to serve communion, so the protesters left, shouting and singing. The dispute began earlier this month when a priest in a nearby town refused communion to an openly gay man. Read Article
Chicago Tribune – Is full-body scanning a religious question? Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars have called the security measure, coming soon to O’Hare International Airport, a violation of religious and privacy rights. Earlier this month, the Fiqh Council of North America, a group of scholars focused on Islamic jurisprudence, asked that scanner software be modified to produce only an outline of the body. The council also urged Muslim travelers to express a preference for alternative pat-down searches. Read Article
Presstv – In an unprecedented move British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized on Wednesday for the UK’s role in sending an estimated 150,000 children to former colonies, where they were abused. Brown apologized for the treatment of children by the child migrants program — under which thousands of British children were sent to Commonwealth countries including Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Read article
Guardian – Head of National Dialogue Front withdraws from election, raising concerns of repeat of 2005. One of Iraq’s two most prominent Sunni politicians has withdrawn his party from next month’s general election and called on Sunni voters to boycott the polls – a move that has raised fears of a repeat of the country’s disastrous 2005 ballot. Read article
Spiegel – The community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel is half a million strong and growing. They live in a parallel universe cut off from the modern world in tight-knit communities where everything revolves around religion. Only a few dare to abandon this life — and the price for doing so is high. When she left, she left everything behind — even her name. She no longer wanted to be known as Sarah, the name her parents had given her. She’d felt imprisoned by that name for too long; it made her feel different and subject to laws that others imposed upon her. So, she started her new life with a new name, Mayan, the Hebrew word for “source.” Read article
ABC – China has warned United States President Barack Obama not to meet the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan spiritual leader has arrived in Washington and is preparing to meet Mr Obama as relations between China and the United States continue to strain. Read article
Radio Netherlands Worldwide – “If it’d said ‘Allah Akbar’, the council wouldn’t have dared to try and remove it,” says Marianne Bons, a member of the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. She’s talking about a farm roof on which ‘Jesus saves’ is painted in enormous letters. The council says the text has to go. The farm’s owner, evangelical Christian Joop van Ooijen, is refusing to obey. The affair has united Christians of all persuasions behind the message. Read article
Times Online – Yemen has agreed ceasefire terms with Shia Muslim rebels, raising hopes that the six-year conflict in the north of the country may be coming to a close. Officials in Sanaa, the capital, said that the Houthi tribe behind the uprising had agreed a six-point “road map” for peace and that bilateral negotiations could begin soon if the rebels were to withdraw from their positions in the disputed Saada region to the northeast. Read article
Minnesota Independent – At a Republican Jewish Coalition event in Los Angeles last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann offered a candid view of her positions on Israel: Support for Israel is handed down by God and if the United States pulls back its support, America will cease to exist. Read article
Medical News Today – The details surrounding the emergence and evolution of religion have not been clearly established and remain a source of much debate among scholars. Now, an article published by Cell Press in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences on February 8 brings a new understanding to this long-standing discussion by exploring the fascinating link between morality and religion. Read Article
Reuters – Twin car bombs killed at least 40 people and wounded 145 others Friday in Iraq’s holy city of Kerbala as hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite pilgrims observed a major religious rite, health officials said. Read article
Daily Telegraph – The former prime minister’s wife, who sits as a judge as Cherie Booth QC, told Miah Shamso that she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a “religious man”. Miah, a devout Muslim who had been convicted of breaking a man’s jaw with two punches after a dispute in a bank queue in East Ham, London. The 25-year-old had gone to the bank from a local mosque. Read article
Spiegel – A priest in a statement last week admitted he had abused a number of pupils at an elite Berlin high school run by Jesuit priests. In recent days, around 20 former students have come forward alleging they were sexually abused by priests at the school. The director of Canisius College, has described the years-long abuse as “systematic.” Read article
The Times – India has never been short of religions: although 80 per cent Hindu, it also incorporates Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Judaism and Zoroastrianism as well as hundreds of lesser known faiths. Now it has another. The establishment of Ravidassia in the northern city of Varanasi last weekend — the latest addition — is sending shockwaves across the world’s 23 million-strong Sikh community. Ravidassia was founded by a radical Sikh sect called Dera Sachkhand Ballan, which consists mainly of “Untouchables”, or Dalits, who come at the bottom of India’s complex and still pervasive caste hierarchy. Read Article
