Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said American Muslims, like followers of other faiths, should be allowed to build places of worship wherever local zoning laws permit. The 90-year-old justice also called tarring all Muslims with the terrorist brush through guilt by association “unfair.”
The Catholic bishop of Cordoba, in Spain, wants people to stop calling the city’s famous mosque/cathedral a mosque. Pope Benedict XVI visits Spain this weekend, setting up a clash of values, according the AP, between the pontiff and the liberal nation. B16 can probably handle it though, since he was just named the world’s fifth most powerful person, which would put a spring in anyone’s step, I suspect.
President Obama leaves for his Asian tour today, but not before he wished Hindus a happy Diwali. The president plans to celebrate Diwali in India this weekend, after hosting the first White House celebration of the holiday last year.
A suicide bomber killed 50 people during Friday prayers at a mosque in Pakistan.
Muslims feel a little less at home in Oklahoma after 70 percent of their fellow residents decided to ban shariah law. The Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit on Thursday saying that the anti-sharia referendum is unconstitutional since it serves no secular purpose. The ACLU is suing New Jersey Transit after the agency fired an employee who burned a Quran on 9/11 this year.
Germany ordained its first female rabbi since the Holocaust on Thursday. For the first time in its 62-year history, Israel will soon allow civil marriage ceremonies. Only couple with no legal religious affiliation may apply.
A network of faith-based groups met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and urged him to do something about the wave of fraudulent foreclosures. Marathoners in New York City this weekend will seriously disrupt church routines in Harlem. The rest of the city will presumably be safe in their secular pods.
A Michigan woman was within her rights to post a flier at her church seeking a “Christian roommate,” federal housing officials say. A South African pastor has created a stir by saying Jesus was HIV positive.
