Farah, a 12-year-old Christian girl, says she was taken from her home in Pakistan last summer, shackled, forced to convert to Islam and made to marry her kidnapper. It’s a fate estimated to befall hundreds of young Christian, Hindu and Sikh women and children in the country each year. On 25 June, Farah was at home… Read More Mike Thomson: Abducted, shackled and forced to marry at 12
The theater historian Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, who was married to the production’s set designer, Leo Kerz, remembered the mood inside the theater on the opening night. “People were weeping,” she said in a phone interview. “At the end there was this deadly silence. Then, people got up and there was a 20-minute applause. For the… Read More Rolf Hochhuth, Who Challenged a Pope’s Wartime Silence, Dies at 89 ( May 2020). By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
A French schoolgirl has admitted to spreading false claims about a teacher before he was murdered last year. Samuel Paty was beheaded in October after showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The girl, whose complaints sparked an online campaign against Paty, has now admitted that she was not in the class. Mr Paty’s killing stunned France… Read More Samuel Paty: French schoolgirl admits lying about murdered teacher
On February 16, a temple in Srinagar became the subject of national news in India. Several media outlets reported that the Sheetal Nath temple in Kralkhud locality had reopened after a period of 31 years, with special prayers held on the occasion of Basant Panchami. The reports claimed the temple dedicated to Shiva had remained shut since 1989 when… Read More Safwat Zargar: In Kashmir, a temple reopens old schism within Pandit community – and shines light on BJP's politics
Radical Islamism benefits from the silence of moderate Muslims who see no reason why their faith implies a responsibility to condemn its violence. But Islamism also stands to gain from the blurring of boundaries between genuine Islamophobia and criticism of Islam where it departs from democratic norms. After last year’s Islamist terror acts in France and… Read More Cinzia Sciuto: Break the silence!
For two decades, the U.S. government has been engaging with faith leaders in Muslim communities at home and around the world in an attempt to stamp out extremism and prevent believers vulnerable to radicalization from going down a path that leads to violence. Now, after the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory helped to motivate the insurrection… Read More Zack Stanton: Violent Christian Extremism in the USA
NB: These are serious allegations and if the state government has been encouraging conversion it is a violation of secular norms. It becomes criminal in cases of desecration of temples. We may keep in mind instances in north India where people of oppressed castes have threatened to convert if attacks on them don’t stop, but in no… Read More Prasad Nichenametla – Andhra Pradesh: Chandrababu Naidu accuses CM Jagan of intending religious conversions
Before India’s “love jihad”, Pakistan found its way to getting rid of its Christians. Blasphemy was pinned on them with the confidence that no judge would let them off the hook, with pious crowds demanding death outside his court. Pakistan’s most humiliating moment is reached every time someone is accused of blasphemy and sentenced to… Read More Khaled Ahmed: Pakistan’s blasphemy law is used to target the Christian community with impunity
In a video message Saturday, Pope Francis encouraged young economists and entrepreneurs from around the world to bring Jesus to their cities, and to work not only for the poor, but with the poor. Addressing participants of the Economy of Francesco online event, the pope said Nov. 21 that changing the world is about much… Read More Pope Francis encourages young economists to learn from the poor
Early on in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” the first of three autobiographies Douglass wrote over his lifetime, he recounts what happened – or, perhaps more accurately, what didn’t happen – after his master, Thomas Auld, became a Christian believer at a Methodist camp meeting. Douglass had harbored the hope that Auld’s conversion,… Read More Michael Luo: American Christianity’s White-Supremacy Problem
After the truth-shower 