EXCERPT: An Italian parliamentary commission has approved a draft law that would ban women from wearing veils that cover their faces in public, if passed by parliament in September. The draft approved by the constitutional affairs commission on Tuesday would prohibit women from wearing a burqa, niqab or any other garb that covers the face in…
Category: Human Rights
A Madman and His Manifesto (NYT)
EXCERPT: It passed with only scant notice, as with so many of the rude extremes of American life in a kinetic media age. The bodies of those Norwegian children slaughtered by a terrorist had yet to be fully recovered, let alone buried, when Glenn Beck compared the victims to Nazis. The summer camp where children…
Rep. Schakowsky talks about the Importance of Protecting Religious Minorities Abroad (C-SPAN)
On July 27, 2011, Jan Schakowsky (D – Illinois) spoke in support of HR 440, to provide for the establishment of a special envoy to promote religious freedom of religious minorities in the near east and south central Asia.
Circumcision Ban: Violating Religious Freedom? (Odyssey Networks)
A coalition including Jewish and Muslim groups have launched a lawsuit challenging a proposed ban on circumcision that is due to go before San Francisco voters in the Fall. The coalition asserts that a ban on circumcision, a ritual practice in both religious traditions, represents a violation of the right to religious expression, and that,…
Slavery and the Civil War – How the North and South were to Blame (Adventist Review)
On this 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, the Adventist Review is examining the history of the fiercest conflict ever on American soil. In light of the modern human trafficking that most people are only now becoming aware of, Ellen White’s article originally published during the Civil War is worth re-reading. EXCERPT:…
Buying Power: Human Trafficking and the Local Marketplace
I’m not willing to pick cocoa beans or cotton for a dollar a day, so who is? Trafficked boys on the Ivory Coast and factory children in Asia whose fingers are small enough to work intricate and dangerous machines fill this gap. – One of the biggest reminders and strongest points I repeat daily is that I have done nothing to secure the position I have in life of being in a free country, just like these modern day slaves have done nothing to have their entire lives indebted to us because of the harsh demands we put on them with our high consumerist behavior. These socially conscious products contain more than just a new age aura or a better selling point; they represent a desire for the priority of humanity instead of selfish search for profit.
Southern Mexico’s religious liberty forum spotlights local challenges to freedom of belief
Although they garner little attention from the international community, recent cases of violence directed toward Protestants in the region, among them Adventists, intensify the need to protect the region’s tenuous religious liberty.
Suit Seeks To Invalidate New York Same-Sex Marriage Law For Procedural Irregularities (Religion Clause)
EXCERPT: Liberty Counsel announced today that it has filed a lawsuit in New York asking a state court to declare the state’s Marriage Equality Act void and to declare void any same-sex marriages that have taken place under the Act. The complain in New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms v. New York State Senate, (Livingston Co….
Hermain Cain Opposes Murfreesboro Mosque Project (DNJ)
EXCERPT: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Thursday an effort by local Muslims to build a large mosque here is an attempt to “sneak” Shariah law into the fabric of the U.S. legal system. “I think it is an infringement and abuse of our freedom of religion, and I don’t agree with what’s happening here…
Article18: Cuba — Three Protestant Pastors Interrogated; Roman Catholic Church in Havana Helps Free 126 Prisoners of Conscience
Like the classic American cars that drive up and down Havana’s hot streets, communist Cuba is a country from another era–Cold War isolationism, a American trade embargo that began fifty years ago, and a pair of aging dictator-brothers who have ruled the nation and restricted its freedom for decades. But while Cuba may be living in the past in many respects, its religious freedoms are a curious blend of old-fashioned totalitarian crackdown and modern globalist acquiescence.