Ramadan is not only a time for fasting, it’s also a time for the best television around the Muslim world. A television serial in Egypt has stirred controversy: The Group explores the world of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition movement. Similarly, a Syrian serial, What Your Right Hand Possess (it sounds better in Arabic) has drawn furious criticism for allegedly distorting Islam. A Malaysian TV station has axed a commercial wishing Muslims a happy Eid al-Fitr because viewers complained the commercial was too Christmas-y.
In France, halal food is going upscale.
Christian morality meets communist population control: evangelical group Focus on the Family has partnered with Chinese officials to bring its abstinence program to Chinese teens. Muslim couples can find “shariah-approved” products for “sexual health” at El Asira—an online shop attracting 30,000 visits a week.
Teetotaling Mormons in Idaho grow barley for beer brewers.
A Muslim mason who worked to rebuild the Saint Jean Cathedral in Lyon, France, has been immortalized as a winged gargoyle on the facade of the church. The inscription beneath his stone image reads “God is great.” In Germany, a team of researchers have built digital models of synagogues destroyed by Nazis on Kristallnacht in 1938.
Anglican vicar Alex Brown was convicted of performing 360 sham weddings for immigrants trying to stay in the UK.
Vandalism against mosques and Islamic centers continues: There’s the vandalism in Madera, California and Hudson Valley, New York. Meanwhile, federal investigators have ruled that a fire at a the construction site of an Islamic center in Murfreesborough, Tennessee was an arson. Elsewhere in the state, a Memphis pastor put a “Welcome to the Neighborhood” sign outside his church to welcome the new Islamic center being built nearby. And a new mosque has gone up in Lousiville, Kentucky quite peacefully.
Is the BBC anti-Christian?
The Florida pastor who had planned to burn Qur’ans on 9/11 has instigated protests in Indonesia and the threat of a flag-burning protest in Great Britain. Indian officials have called for a media blackout of the event. Meanwhile, his own daughter has joined the list of folks condemning the event. She called his church a “cult” that uses “mental violence.” Not to be left out in denouncing things, Angelina Jolie also condemned the plan. President Obama called it a “recruitment bonanza” for radical Islamic groups. “Recruitment bonanza” sounds more like a white-collar job fair than an act of Islamophobia.
Some shoppers buy kosher not for religious practice, but because they think it’s safer.
In Poughkeepsie, New York, a local Jewish group has been given the okay to place a menorah on public property downtown—they just can’t use city resources to build it or light it. Clothing retailer and gatekeeper of what’s hip (or at least what was hip in the early 2000s), Abercrombie & Fitch, is being sued because hijabs don’t fit into the “Abercrombie look.” A federal judge has overturned a Nebraska ban on flag mutilation, allowing the members of the Westboro Baptist Church to continue trampling the American flag at protests so long as they do so peacefully.
Ten men in Algeria were arrested for eating during daylight in a restaurant during the fasting month of Ramadan.
Is religion a taboo topic in sports? I’m not sure. These guys seem to want to talk about it: NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger says he turned to the Bible for support and guidance during a tumultuous off-season that included sexual assault allegations and a six-game suspension for this season. Former Dallas Cowboy lineman Duke Preston left football altogether to work in Christian ministry. In baseball, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Matt Garza exchanged theological reflections about God’s interest in the majors with Orioles hitter Luke Scott. Does anyone else pick up on a Catholic-Protestant undertone in this story?
