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- Muslim woman presses French for burqa ban
- Senator Probes Forgery Charges Against Book of Mormon
- Military chaplains serve in a remarkably diverse environment
- A preacher who wants to resume leading ...
- Children's author says Jesus is not God
- Some Indonesian adulterers 'to be stoned'
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The leader of an advocacy group for Muslim women and girls urged a French parliamentary panel on Wednesday to press for laws that would ban the wearing of Islamic body- and face-covering veils.
Sihem Habchi appeared as the first witness before a newly created parliamentary group studying Islamic clothing such as burqas and niqabs — part of France's effort to integrate its growing Muslim population while preserving its heritage and secular roots.
The panel will hold months of hearings before issuing a report, likely by January. It has no power to draft laws but could recommend legislation restricting or banning women from wearing head-to-toe Islamic robes that mask facial features in public.
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has spent time on and off for the last seven years building a defense of the Book of Mormon, one of the key tomes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Religion News Service reports.
The three-term senator -- A former missionary and bishop and the grandson of a past president of the church -- has now delved into a different debate: whether the book Mormons believe was revealed by an angel to their founder Joseph Smith in the 1820s is authentic.
The latest report from the Defense Department tracks 101 faiths for active-duty personnel, from 285,763 Roman Catholics to the one member of the Tioga River Christian conference. In between are Baptists, Jews, Buddhists, Bahai's, Mormons and Wiccans. About a half a million active personnel are evangelicals. Almost 281,710 claim no religion.
No military has ever tried to meet such diverse spiritual needs, says Doris Bergen, a history professor at the University of Toronto. In World War II, the British army had thousands of Hindus and Muslims in its ranks, but only Christian and Jewish chaplains.
"To build a military chaplaincy that reflects the incredible religious diversity of Americans, and that supports that diversity in a meaningful way -- it's uncharted terrain," Bergen said. "It's completely brand new. You don't really have any models to look to."
Incidentally, airport chapels are also adapting to accommodate more religions.
A preacher who wants to resume leading the National Baptist Convention USA after serving a prison term for stealing millions of dollars from the denomination has asked a court to stop an upcoming presidential election, AP says.
The lawsuit is just the latest twist in a saga surrounding former St. Petersburg preacher Henry Lyons, who served nearly five years in state prison for swindling more than $5.2 million from the organization's corporate partners.
According to the St. Petersburg Times a former board member said that when Lyons was president of the organization, he had its board of directors approve an amendment to stop members from suing the convention.
Philip Pullman, the children's author, is set to cause controversy with a new book - called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - denying that Jesus was the son of God.
Publisher Jamie Byng said that Pullman's book, which will be published next Easter, "strips Christianity bare and exposes the gospels to a new light".
Indonesia's staunchly Muslim Aceh province is set to enforce a strict form of Islamic criminal law, including stoning to death married adulterers, a lawmaker says.
Aceh, where separatists had been fighting the Indonesian government since 1976 until a peace deal in 2005, has so far only partially adopted sharia law, which requires modest Muslim dress codes, mandatory prayers five times a day, fasting and the giving of alms to the poor.
In our view, Islamic law is incompatible with modern civilization and should be rejected until Muslims rid Sharia of all laws that violate basic human rights.
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