Saudi Arabia should overturn a death sentence imposed on a Lebanese national convicted of practicing witchcraft during a visit to the conservative kingdom, an international human rights group said in a report late Tuesday.
Human Rights Watch also called on the Saudi government to halt “its increasing use of charges of ‘witchcraft,’ crimes that are vaguely defined and arbitrarily used.”
Ali S
A parade of glow-sticks lit a trail around a Derby park in a celebration of the citys different faiths.
As visitors walked around the path at the Arboretum, in Normanton, on Saturday evening, nov 21 they found decorated stalls which plotted a history of different religions in the area.
Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism, Muslim, Bahai and Pagan religions all had their own stall, comp
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., heard arguments last week about whether police should have to get a warrant before putting a GPS device on a suspects car. It is a cutting-edge civil liberties question that has divided the courts that have considered it. GPS devices give the government extraordinary power to monitor peoples movements. The Washington court should rule that a warrant i
Same-sex marriage advances in one region, then retreats in another, making the United States a two-nation nation on this issue now and for years to come. Advocates on both sides are in the majority somewhere, but in the minority somewhere else.
Thats why two church-state encounters this month, in two very different parts of the country, are instructive reminders that in a deeply divided soci
No words are more typical of our moral culture than inappropriate and unacceptable. They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that you are being tied up with little pieces of soft string.
Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of political correctness. They have more or le
We all have this idea in our heads that the first English settlers of New England, commonly known as the Pilgrims, or more correctly, Puritans, were stodgy, God-fearing, hard working farmers, laborers and clergy, who had nothing better to do with their spare time than burn witches, attend prayer meetings, and defend themselves against the pesky natives who wanted the invaders to just go back home.
The number of hate crimes against blacks and religious groups increased in 2008 over the previous year, the FBI reported Monday.
Hate crimes overall increased by 2%, to 7,783 incidents, according to the report.
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said it is difficult to make a yearly trend analysis from the
This wasn’t a typical church service.
The 25th annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service and Celebration on Sunday began with a Muslim chant and the blowing of a ram’s horn from the second floor of the First Baptist Church of Austin. Dancers leading a procession wore bright purple dresses, green-and-white robes, Wiccan symbols, crosses, hijabs and yarmulkes.
“God planted different colors of flo
Like many other religious groups, Wiccans have a tradition of giving thanks in connection with the harvest season, said the Rev. Selena Fox, of Circle Sanctuary, a Wiccan church near Barneveld.
Some contemporary Wiccans celebrate the first harvest at the beginning of August, the abundant harvest in September, and the end of the harvest in late October, Fox told a group of about 100 people Sunda
Sgt. Fahad Kamal awoke before dawn the morning after the attack. In his Army uniform, he stood before his prayer mat, the one his mother bought him in Houston. He smoothed the top right corner folded over against the evil eye, touched his forehead to the velvet rug the color of sand, and held his palms toward heaven.
Kamal, 26, a combat medic who served in Afghanistan before moving to Fort Hoo
