Taken from THE GUARDIAN The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has ordered an independent, global review into the persecution of Christians of all nationalities amid claims that not enough is being done to defend the rights of nearly 200 million Christians at risk of persecution today. The unprecedented Foreign Office review will be led by the…
An Interfaith event was held at Noor Mosque, Crawley, organised by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Elder’s Association. The local mayor, Bishop of Horsham, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim speakers talked about the value of interfaith and different projects that were being carried out. Awards were also given to the speakers and some of the attendees. Director of…
Reported by the BBC and others, Russia’s Supreme Court has ordered the disbanding of the Jehovah’s Witnesses on Russian territory. The ban came into effect after the court rejected an appeal by the religious group against a ruling in April which declared it to be extremist. The justice ministry had argued that the group distributed…
Writing in the Guardian last month, Miqdaad Versi highlighted both the dangerous linking of terrorism with relgion, chiefly Islam, in the press, and the frightening way in which such false claims are then propagated through social media. The most recent example was the Daily Express headline ‘Terror in Spain: Gunman screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ opens fire in…
It is often noted that, different though religions are in the specifics of faith and practice, there are more shared principles than differences. An article in World Religion News compares quotes from core teachings of different religions on the subject of religious freedom. What may be surprising is just how similar these teachings are, from Catholicism to…
A YouGov poll on attitudes to the causes of Islamic and Christian terrorism shows a significant differences of views between younger and older respondents. While “religious views” is thought to be the main cause of terrorist acts, in neither Christian or Islamic cases is terrorism thought to reveal anything about the faith. Asked “Generally speaking,…
On 5th December 2016, 16 fully armed policemen and 12 plain clothed officers in three police vehicles forcefully entered the Tahrik Jadid (an administrative body of the Ahmadiyya community overseeing overseas missions, building mosques, and publishing literature and the Holy Quran in various languages) compound in Rabwah, Pakistan. Cases have been filed against the 4…
Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia has reported that law enforcement agencies in Petrovpavlovsk-Kamchatsky broke out a window in a building where a Jehovah’s Witnesses worship service was being conducted, interrupted the service, and conducted a search. Two armed operatives in masks smashed a window in a residential building where about 100 persons were…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed the so-called “Yarovaya package” of laws which substantially toughen criminal accountability for a number of crimes and introduce new forms of violations of law, including “failure to report a crime”. The package also forbids unregistered organizations [chiefly religious groups] to engage in missionary activity, while any missionary activity by…
The majority of people promoting “jihad” online are using political rather than religious arguments, according to a study by two UAE-based think-tanks. The report, by the Abu Dhabi-based Future Centre and the al-Mesbar Centre in Dubai, was released as a video called “How a Terrorist Thinks”. The study analysed 45,000 Arabic-language Twitter posts by individuals…
