EXCERPT: “Jew or not Jew?”: That is just part of the question. An iPhone app bearing this name has been yanked from Apple’s App Store in France amid threats of a lawsuit and demands for its removal. The app, still available elsewhere, pulls together a database of thousands of famous Jews – including movie stars,…
Category: Human Rights
Article18: Poland — Citizens March in Bialystok to Protest Antisemitism; Death Metal Singer Not-Guilty After Trashing Bible on Stage
By Martin Surridge – For much of the twentieth century, Poland served as a sort of punching bag for many of Europe’s strongest armies. Half a million Polish soldiers died in the First World War, the country was brutalized by the Nazis in the Second World War, and for the last half of the century, Poland was repressed by Soviet-inspired…
Fear, Incorporated: Who’s Paying for all that Islamophobic Paranoia (FP)
EXCERPT: One of the distinctive features of American democracy is the permeability of our political institutions. It’s an incredibly wide-open system, given First Amendment freedoms, the flood of money that corrupts the electoral process, and a wide array of media organizations and political journals that can be used to disseminate and amplify various views, even…
Article18: Kosovo — Muslim Headscarf Ban Upheld for Schools, Christians Required to be Buried in Islamic Graveyards
By Martin Surridge – Only a few years ago, the country of Kosovo, in Southern Europe, didn’t even exist. Like South Sudan in recent weeks, Kosovo became independent after the war-torn region declared independence because of a strong separatist movement that sought to break away from Serbia. While the country may be small, one of…
Article18: Pakistan — Christian Flood Victims in Punjab Face Land Discrimination in Disaster Aftermath
By Martin Surridge – The bad news that comes out of Islamabad typically features either nuclear proliferation, harboring of terrorists, a military coup, or tension with India. Sadly for many of the citizens living within its borders, Pakistan is also one of the world’s most egregious violators of religious liberty. This is Article18-RLTV’s weekly blog…
Refuge Camp in Africa “The Most Desperate Place on Earth” (CNN)
EXCERPT: “It makes me want to scream, but instead I nearly cry.” CNN’s Anderson Cooper reports – Dadaab, Kenya (CNN) — Right now, this may be the most desperate place on Earth. “A drought, not seen in 60 years, compounded with near complete lawlessness and utter disregard for human life has made it so. “It is…
Religious Groups Object to Covering Birth Control (Fox News)
EXCERPT: They defied the bishops to support President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Now Catholic hospitals are dismayed the law may force them to cover birth control free of charge to their employees. A provision in the law expanded preventive health-care benefits for women, and the administration said last week that must include birth control…
Alabama Immigration Law Questioned by Catholic Archbishop
EXCERPT: The bishops of Alabama have joined with local Episcopal Church and Methodist officials in taking legal action against immigration legislation scheduled to come into effect on September 1. The law makes it illegal to “encourage or induce an alien to come to or reside in this state if the person knows or recklessly disregards…
The Church as a Bride of Caesar (National Review)
While we have tracked the emergence of the religious right in America, Fr. Robert Sirico writes in the National Review about the political power of part of the religious left which he describes as “a hyper-political movement that offers up the moral authority of churches and aid organizations to advance the ends of the Obama administration and its allies in Congress.”
Article18: Norway — Personal Reflections on the Origin of a Tragedy
The fact of the matter is that the demon of terrorism is one that will practice whatever religion it must to satisfy its craving for violence. Terrorism knows no religion that it can’t corrupt. Violence can find a home in any religion, any belief system, be it Muslim, Christian, or Sikh and it is not partial to any one in particular, despite the ramblings in the media.