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Reuters blog archive
from FaithWorld:
Egyptian Christians to end two-week sit-in protest
(Coptic Christian women protest after clashes between Christians and Muslims in downtown Cairo May 8, 2011/Mohamed Abd El-Ghany)
Egyptian Christians holding a sit-in in downtown Cairo agreed to end nearly two weeks of protests on Friday, state television reported, after authorities promised to meet some of their demands. Witnesses said some of the protestors had begun preparing to go home after one main protest leader, Father Metyas Nasr, an Orthodox priest, agreed to a government offer to free five young men detained on Thursday following clashes outside a church in the eastern Cairo suburb of Ain Shams.
State news agency MENA said authorities will organise a meeting between Christian and Muslim clergymen on Saturday to discuss the subject of two closed churches in Ain Shams. Nasr was not immediately available to comment.
Witnesses said the decision split the protestors, with some getting ready to leave immediately while others insisting that authorities must first meet their demands in full, including equality for Christians, reopening of all closed churches and trying suspects in previous church attacks.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Letting the qat out of the bag…
Blog Guy, I read with interest your item about the goofy protesters in Yemen. You know, the snake-biters, the bread-heads and so on.
So have they made progress since they started getting goofier? I’ve seen plenty of photos of angry crowds over there.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Call it a tokin’ effort?
Lamar, get in my office! Are you the one who approved the permit for those people to hold a huge Global Marijuana March in the streets here over the weekend?
Aren't you aware that some folks blame marijuana for things like difficulty in concentrating, slowed reaction time and altered time perception? I can't believe you let them march!
from FaithWorld:
Rare rally tests Vietnam’s religious tolerance
(Catholic seminarians attend Easter Sunday Mass at St. Joseph Cathedral in Hanoi April 24, 2011/Kham)
Vietnam has deployed troops to contain a rare mass protest by ethnic Hmong people that is testing the government's tolerance of minority Christians, just weeks after human rights activists accused leaders of persecuting another hill tribe. As many as 7,000 Hmong people began to gather several days ago in the far-flung mountains of Dien Bien Province, near the northwestern border with Laos and China, apparently for religious reasons although some were advocating an independent kingdom, according to diplomatic, government and other sources.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Get out your daggers, kids!
Okay staff, we've been hired by the anti-government faction over in Yemen to get some publicity for their cause.
It seems that what with Bahrain and Egypt and Libya and all, nobody is even paying attention to the poor protesters in Yemen.
from FaithWorld:
Syria’s Assad retrenches into power base of his Alawite Shi’ite sect
(A supporter of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad holds aloft a photograph of the president at Hamidiya market in Damascus April 30, 2011/Khaled al-Hariri)
President Bashar al-Assad is increasingly relying on his Alawite power base to crush pro-democracy protests that have posed the boldest challenge to the Assad family's 41 years of rule over Syria. Assad, an Alawite, sent army and secret police units dominated by officers from the same minority sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, into mainly Sunni urban centers to crush demonstrations calling for his removal for the last six weeks.
from FaithWorld:
Days of protest after Christian governor named in southern Egypt
(A Coptic Orthodox church in Cairo, April 18, 2009/Tarek Mostafa)
Muslims in southern Egypt protested for a third day on Sunday over the appointment of a Christian governor, saying his predecessor, also a Christian, had failed to solve their problems. Thousands rallied outside the governor's office in Qena and prevented employees from entering, blocked highways leading to the town and sat on a railway line into the province demanding that the appointment of Emad Mikhail be reversed.
Egypt's interim military rulers, who took control when President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising, selected Mikhail last week as one of several new appointments to replace officials associated with his autocratic regime. The protesters say Mikhail's predecessor, Magdy Ayoub, failed to stem sectarian violence and address poverty and unemployment, which grew during his tenure. Witnesses say some Coptic Christians joined the protest as well.
from FaithWorld:
France starts ban on full-face veil, factbox on veils in Europe
(Kenza Drider, a French Muslim of North African descent, wearing a niqab at the Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris April 11, 2011/Jean-Paul Pelissier)
France's ban on full face veils, a first in Europe, went into force on Monday, making anyone wearing the Muslim niqab or burqa in public liable to a fine of 150 euros or lessons in French citizenship.
from FaithWorld:
France’s ban on full face veils goes into force
(Official poster for the information campaign about France's full face veil ban. The quote says "Nobody can wear clothes meant to hide the face in public."/SIG)
France's ban on full face veils, a first in Europe, went into force Monday, exposing anyone who wears the Muslim niqab or burqa in public to fines of 150 euros (£131.90). France's five-million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe's largest, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full face veil. Many Muslim leaders have said they support neither the veil nor the law banning it.
from FaithWorld:
French police arrest protesters before burqa ban goes into effect
(A Muslim woman protests against France's banning of full face veils from public spaces, outside the French Embassy in London September 25, 2010/Luke MacGregor)
French police have arrested 59 people who turned up for a banned protest over the banning of the Muslim full face veil, a police spokesman said. The measure goes into force on Monday and prohibits wearing the full veil, the burqa, in all public places, with a 150 euro ($216) fine for offenders.
