(The new seven-volume encyclopaedia of hadiths is pictured at the library of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate in Ankara May 21, 2013.  REUTERS/Umit Bektas)

Scholars around the Muslim world were alarmed five years ago by news reports that Turkey planned a new, possibly heretical compilation of the Prophet Mohammad’s sayings that might scrap those it thought were out of date.

Turkish religious leaders and theologians received anxious calls asking about Western media reports they would edit a “radical” new set of hadiths, scriptures that are second only to the Koran in Islam. “Will you write a new Koran next?” one irate Arab scholar asked a baffled Turkish academic.

The new work, finally ready after six years in the making, is nothing like the 95 Theses in which Martin Luther condemned practices in the Roman Catholic Church and launched the Protestant Reformation.

Instead, its 100 authors have selected a few hundred of the about 17,000 reported quotes from Mohammad to examine Islamic views on God, faith and life in terms that the average modern Turk can understand.

“We don’t live in the 20th century anymore,” said Mehmet Ozafsar, director of the project and vice-president of Ankara’s Religious Affairs Directorate, or Diyanet, a state agency. “We needed a new work with Islamic beliefs in the perspective of today’s culture.”

The hadiths record Mohammad’s words and acts during his life. Preachers and jurists use them to understand the Koran and support Muslim teachings and fatwas (religious edicts) on all aspects of life, from prayer to education for women.

Digests of selected hadiths are nothing new in Islam. Scholars have produced them for centuries to help Muslims learn about the Prophet’s sayings without having to navigate through the long and sometimes confusing classical compilations.

What makes this one different is that it selects and explains the hadiths from the perspective of today’s Turkey, whose mix of a secular state, dynamic economy and Muslim society has aroused considerable interest in the Middle East since the Arab Spring revolts two years ago.

Read the full story here.

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(People walk past the entrance to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris February 8, 2013. REUTERS/Charles Platiau )

An 78-year-old French far-right activist committed suicide at the altar of the Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday by shooting himself in the mouth, three days after a law legalizing same-sex marriage came into effect.

Police evacuated the cathedral, one of Paris’ biggest tourist draws, after Dominique Venner – a historian known for his hard-right political essays and a fierce opponent of gay marriage – shot himself, sending tourists fleeing in panic.

Venner made no declaration as he shot himself around mid-afternoon, a police source said. He carried a letter on his person, but its contents were not released to the media.

A May 21 entry on his blog page appealed to readers to join a march planned for Sunday against the Socialist government’s gay-marriage law, which came into force at the weekend.

President Francois Hollande made good on a campaign pledge by making France the 14th country to allow same-sex weddings. The country’s biggest social reform in three decades is backed by a small majority of French, surveys show.

Yet the move stirred up a storm of opposition among social conservatives and Catholics who have hosted a series of angry and often violent protests.

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By Ricardo Moraes

It was Palm Sunday in Rio’s cathedral when I found them in a small group wearing their simple, traditional robes, with short hair and beards, praying, concentrating, amidst hundreds of other Catholics.  I’m talking about the Franciscans, young followers of Saint Francis of Assisi who on some occasions I had seen roaming the city, almost invisible, helping Rio’s poor.

I knew nothing about them, but with the election of a Latin American Pope and his chosen name of Francis, I began to do some research. Apart from what I learned from the Internet and through phone calls to a monastery, there wasn’t a lot more information available. The Franciscan orders have existed for centuries around the world, but I wanted to know more about those youths who one monk had told me are the “Church’s rebels.”

I stood observing them during an important moment in the mass, with their eyes tightly shut and very serious faces. I really wanted to photograph them, but with so many people around me I didn’t want to disturb the mass. I waited, and when the mass finished I was finally able to talk to them and introduce myself. Their serious looks disappeared and with smiles they told me that I would be very welcome to visit them in their home.

It was a short conversation in which I barely explained that I wanted to do a photo essay about their lives motivated by the election of Pope Francis, and asked them how they felt about the papal choice. One of the brothers told me, “It’s a confirmation of all that we believe.”

The following week I was finally able to meet the fraternity named “O Caminho,” or “The Way,” divided into two houses, one for the sisters and one for the brothers, in Campo Grande about 50 kms (31 miles) from the center of Rio. I arrived in the early morning as they performing the first daily prayer. I was well received and allowed to photograph as they prayed. They weren’t at all bothered by me working, and never lost concentration.

After their prayer session I met all of them, and then I was introduced to two homeless men who lived with the brothers because they had no place else to live. One thing I quickly learned was that the Franciscans refer to the poor as “children,” or individually as “son” and “daughter,” and any poor people who live with them are called “favorite” son or daughter. Among the favorite sons on my first visit to The Way, were Paulo and Alexandre.

The Franciscans had breakfast together, praying before and after, and then they got ready for the first pastoral activity of the week, which was offering haircuts and shaves to the homeless in the city center. The first brother I spoke with at length with was Jose Damasio, 29, who had been in the fraternity for just a year. He asked me about my work and  was anxious to know if I could write about their dreams. Then he explained that their biggest dream was to have a farm where they could help the poor and drug addicts.

We met up with the sisters in Campo Grande’s marketplace and began the the day’s tasks. Well equipped with gloves and disposable razors, they began to groom the homeless. The “sons” who were most vain went for the beard cut and shave. Among the curious pedestrians stopping to watch was one elderly woman who commented, “It takes the love of God to do something like that.”

As the Franciscans worked, brother Jose talked to me about other missions of the fraternity in which they help prostitutes and prisoners. He explained the during their contact with the “children” it’s most important to show them the affection that they never had, and that sometimes they will even sleep on the streets to keep them company.

I thought that could be a great picture story, but then I learned that the Franciscans stopped staying overnight on the streets after several violent incidents with crack addicts and vigilantes who attack the homeless to try and expel them from their neighborhood.

As we returned to their home, brother Antonio, who is 29 and has been in the fraternity for more than four years, gave me a more thorough description of their work. He said, “This is our Nazareth, and what we do is live as Jesus lived for 30 years of his life.” When I mentioned my interest in photographing them, he said, “We live an ordinary life, a simple life, there is nothing extraordinary in our lives.” I commented that more and more a simple life becomes something extraordinary in the world we live in today, and that being so simple is what’s different.

And that was what I saw on my visits to the fraternity – a well-defined routine with many prayers worshiping the Lord and dedicated to the poor. Brother Antonio told me that they are followers of Saint Francis of Assisi, as well as of Saint Clare, besides other saints, without hiding the joy over Pope Francis’ election. This happens to be the Franciscan year in which the saint is being studied, remembered, and honored by his followers.

On one of my visits Antonio invited me to a special mass in which girls who were already in the group as apprentices would receive their mini habits as a major step by becoming what they call “aspirants.” During the sermon some of them came close to tears, but when they stepped up to receive their habits, general commotion broke out.

Families and friends embraced them with tears of joy and pride. That was when I understood the importance of that moment for youths who are on the road to becoming nuns, a great goal in their lives.

They always made me feel comfortable, especially with the phrase “feel at home.” They impressed me by never showing any sign of vanity. I can’t remember the last time I covered anything without someone asking me to see their photo on the back of the camera. The girls sometimes seemed shy in front of the camera, but never did anyone ask to see what I was doing.

The last day I spent with them was during one of their nighttime rounds when they would take food to the “children.” At least that was what I thought we were going to do, but it turned out to be much more. After walking a few miles with a pot of soup and bread, the Franciscans reached a garden across from a church where there were several homeless people.

Sister Clara, 21 years old and always smiling, helped one of the homeless “sons” light a bonfire to cook some fish that he had acquired. After serving soup the Franciscans sat with the rest to chat and take turns playing guitar. Sister Clara, very naturally and with affection, sat on the bed of a “daughter” who was trying to sleep, and sang religious songs along with brother Placido and other Franciscans.

Right after that I said goodbye, and was thinking about everything I had seen and experienced with them. What made me happy was seeing how they acted naturally with the poor on their missions. Nothing they do is premeditated, nothing shows they are feeding their egos nor using their religion for personal satisfaction.

Their attitudes and daily lives confirmed everything Antonio told me, about how they live ordinary lives and how they need the strength of their faith to continue. But more than that, they live for brotherly love. As it says in the prayer of St. Francis, I can say I met young people who bring joy where there is sadness and above all, want to love more than be loved.

(A combo photo shows a detail view of the damaged Michelangelo’s Pieta and it after restoration works at the Vatican. Musei Vaticani/Handout via Reuters)

Forty-one years ago, a crazed Hungarian named Laszlo Toth jumped an altar railing in St. Peter’s Basilica and dealt 12 hammer blows to Michelangelo’s Pieta, severely damaging the Renaissance masterpiece.

To mark the attack on May 21, 1972, the Vatican Museums held a day-long seminar on Tuesday on the statue, the incident, and what subsequently became one of the most delicate and controversial art restorations in history.

In his attack on the statue, which depicts the Madonna holding the body of the dead Jesus minutes after he was taken down from the cross, the unemployed geologist knocked off her left arm and hand.

Toth, who alternately said he was Jesus Christ or Michelangelo, also broke her nose in three parts and left about 100 other fragments, including chips from the back of her head, lying on the floor of the chapel where it was on display.

(The restored Michelangelo’s Pieta is seen in this undated photo released by Musei Vaticani at the Vatican May 21, 2013. Handout via Reuters)

At the time, art historians were divided on how to proceed with the restoration of the masterpiece.

The statue is so lifelike that a viewer can almost feel the curls of the dead Christ’s hair and the softness of the Madonna’s lips.

The veins in Christ’s muscular arms seem to be still holding blood. The folds in the Madonna’s veil seem made of muslin rather than marble.

Read the full story here.

View a full slideshow about the restoration here.
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(Pope Francis speaks as he leads a Pentecost vigil mass in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican May 18, 2013. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini)

Pope Francis shared personal moments with 200,000 people on Saturday, telling them he sometimes nods off while praying at the end of a long day and that it “breaks my heart” that the death of a homeless person is not news.

Francis, who has made straight talk and simplicity a hallmark of his papacy, made his unscripted comments in answers to questions by four people at a huge international gathering of Catholic associations in St. Peter’s Square.

But he outdid himself in passionately discussing everything from the memory of his grandmother to his decision to become a priest, from political corruption to his worries about a Church that too often closes in on itself instead of looking outward.

“If we step outside of ourselves, we will find poverty,” he said, repeating his call for Catholics to do more to seek out those on the fringes of society who need help the most,” he said from the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica

“Today, and it breaks my heart to say it, finding a homeless person who has died of cold, is not news. Today, the news is scandals, that is news, but the many children who don’t have food – that’s not news. This is grave. We can’t rest easy while things are this way.”

Read the full story here.
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(An Afghan woman in a burqa walks along a road on a windy day on the outskirts of Kabul April 16, 2013. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail )

Afghanistan’s parliament failed to pass a law on Saturday banning violence against women, a severe blow to progress made in women’s rights in the conservative Muslim country since the Islamist Taliban was toppled over a decade ago.

President Hamid Karzai approved the law by decree in 2009 and parliament’s endorsement was required. But a rift between conservative and more secular members of the assembly resulted in debate being deferred to a later date.

Religious members objected to at least eight articles in the legislation, including keeping the legal age for women to marry at 16, the existence of shelters for domestic abuse victims and the halving of the number of wives permitted to two.

“Today, the parliamentarians who oppose women’s development, women’s rights and the success of women…made their voices loud and clear,” Fawzia Koofi, head of parliament’s women’s commission, told Reuters.

Women have won back the hard-fought right to education and work since the Taliban was toppled 12 years ago, but there are fears these freedoms could shrink once NATO-led forces leave Afghanistan by the end of next year.

Read the full story by Miriam Arghandiwal and Ibrahimi Aziz here.
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In the nearly five years since the worst financial crash since the Great Depression, the remedy for the world’s economic doldrums has swung from full-on Keynesianism to unforgiving austerity and back.

The initial Keynesian response halted the collapse in economic activity. But it was soon met by borrowers’ remorse in the shape of paying down debt and raising taxes without delay. In the last year, full-throttle austerity has fallen out of favor with those charged with monitoring the world economy.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has been urging German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been imposing singeing public spending cuts on her neighbors, and George Osborne, Britain’s finance minister, who has been doing the same to the Brits, to ease up. The IMF is now urging fiscal measures beyond monetary easing “to nurture a sustainable recovery and restore the resilience of the global economy.”

Earlier this month, Lagarde criticized America’s automatic sequester cuts for being too deep, too soon. The United States, she said, “should consolidate less in the short term, but give … economic actors the certainty that there will be fiscal consolidation going forward.”

So much for the economics of austerity. That is only half the story, however. Austerity is a moral issue, too. It inflicts enormous misery upon hundreds of millions. To an American living under a relatively generous economic regime that is providing annual growth at 2.5 percent, the scale of unemployment in Europe is alarming.

We think 7.5 percent is too high. In Greece, it has reached 27 percent and youth unemployment (age 15 to 24) is at an appalling 64 percent. Much the same is happening in Spain, with 27.2 percent unemployed and youth unemployment hitting 57 percent. Italy’s 11 percent unemployed figure disguises the fact that more than that number have given up looking for jobs ‑ so the real jobless tally is more than 20 percent.

The social cost of austerity can be found in widespread political unrest, including mass public demonstrations that often spill into violence. Hard times are encouraging the adoption of simple-minded political solutions, and Europe has seen an upsurge in the electoral success of undemocratic and racist extreme parties that scapegoat minorities. Traditional parties take turns taking the blame, with voters turfing out incumbents of both right and left to punish them for complicity in inflicting such general misery.

The prospect of no work is diminishing and socially corrosive. Depression is rife. Cuts to health budgets have led to a sharp rise in HIV cases. New research from Stanford and Oxford Universities suggests austerity is deeply damaging to individuals and sharply increases the number of suicides.

While mainstream politicians revel in their impotence, religious leaders are speaking out with unprecedented vigor. It takes a lot before senior churchmen dare to intervene in politics, for fear they will offend half their followers. But the extent of the despair being endured has changed the equation.

The Roman Catholic primate of Spain, Braulio Rodriguez, archbishop of Toledo, predicts that austerity will lead to despotism. “We have to change direction,” he said this week, “otherwise this is going to bring down whole political systems. We have to give people some hope or this is going to foment conflict and mutual hatred.”

Archbishop Ieronymos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, has written to the Greek premier to warn against administering “larger doses of a medicine that is proving deadly.” “Greeks’ unprecedented patience is running out,” he said, “fear is giving way to rage, and the danger of a social explosion cannot be ignored.”

In London, where the ruling coalition’s austerity program has led the nation twice back into recession, the leader of the Anglican church, the archbishop of Canterbury, argues that “what we are in at the moment is not a recession but essentially some kind of depression. It therefore takes something very, very major to get us out of it, in the same way as it took something very major to get us into it.”

When spiritual leaders warn that austerity may lead to the end of democracy, it’s time for political leaders to take notice.

There is little sign that Europe’s political leaders, in particular Germany’s unwavering Merkel, grasp the seriousness of their dilemma. Yet austerity is undermining the very cause they claim to be rescuing by their tough love: closer European unity. Nor is it rescuing the euro, the troubled single European currency designed to bind European nations in an ever-closer embrace.

The latest economic data shows the 27-nation European Union to be in recession for the sixth consecutive quarter. The euro bloc of 17 nations has also been in recession for six quarters. Far from bolstering the value of the euro, austerity policies are causing it to slide against the dollar. Yet the EU insists there is no alternative: Austerity is the only cure, even if it kills the patient.

Germany, with Europe’s strongest economy, has almost alone among EU nations benefited from the acceptance of the euro, which, particularly in its weak state, keeps the prices of exports unnaturally cheap. But German prosperity comes at an enormous cost. Anti-German sentiment in Europe is rife ‑ particularly among the Mediterranean nations, which are reviving memories of atrocities committed during German occupation in World War Two.

Seventy years after German troops massacred 498 men in cold blood in the Greek village of Kalavryta, in reprisal at the killing of German soldiers by Greek partisans, the Greek government is citing such incidents to prove Germany owes $213 billion in unpaid World War Two reparations. A quarter of a million Greeks died during German occupation, most from starvation. Germany agreed to reparations when the war ended in 1945, but stopped payments within a year.

In 1970, the Germans settled for a once-and-for-all payment of $70 million. The sum the Greeks are now demanding would go a long way to solving the country’s debt problem. The angry response from Merkel’s government to the new Greek demands aggravates the newly opened wounds between the two countries and revives the sense, now commonly expressed by non-German Europeans, that the financial crisis has let Germany own by stealth what the Nazis failed to win by conquest.

Europe’s economic turmoil is dragging the world economy down. It is against this destructive display of unnecessary and counterproductive masochism that many here continue to demand that the U.S. sequester be allowed to continue slashing at public spending. On top of this, Tea Party insurgents in the Republican Party prevent the vacillating party leadership from leading.

Few doubt that the level of national debt is unsustainable and must eventually be paid down, but timing is everything. A glance across the Atlantic offers a chilling insight into what would happen here if the fiscal hawks get their way and start imposing European-style austerity.

It won’t be pretty.

Nicholas Wapshott is the author of “Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics.”Read extracts here.

PHOTO (Insert A): International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde speaks during the conference with top financial officials at the Economy ministry in Paris November 30, 2012. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

PHOTO (Insert B): Irena, 50, a Polish homeless worker, lies on a park bench in central Athens January 15, 2012. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

 PHOTO (Insert C): German Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) meets with IMF chief Christine Lagarde before a European Union debt crisis summit in Brussels October 26, 2011. REUTERS/Pool/Bundesregierung

(Israeli policemen detain an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man during a demonstration against plans to enlist men from their community into the military, near the recruitment offices in Jerusalem May 16, 2013. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)

Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested in Jerusalem on Thursday against plans to enlist men from their community into the military, a proposal supported by the secular majority pushing for a more equal share of the burden on Israeli society.

A sea of black coats – the traditional attire of ultra-Orthodox men – engulfed Jerusalem streets near the city’s military draft bureau where the crowd heard rabbis warn that army service would irreparably harm their way of life.

“The government wants to uproot (our traditions) and secularize us, they call it a melting pot, but people cannot be melted. You cannot change our (way of life),” Rabbi David Zycherman told the crowd in an anguished plea.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has committed to increase drafting ultra-Orthodox men, most of whom receive exemptions on religious grounds, in order to share the national burden and reduce pressure on the middle classes.

The party of Finance Minister Yair Lapid, Netanyahu’s main coalition partner, received wide support at the polls in January on a pledge to resist demands by religious parties and to spread the load of army service and taxation more evenly.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said at least 20,000 protesters took part and about a dozen arrests were made when violence erupted and men hurled bottles and stones at officers, some on horseback, who used stun grenades to quell the unrest.

Read the full story here.
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(Villepinte prison guard Blaise Gangbazo walks on grounds overlooking the prison facilities in Villepinte, April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen )

In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad.

With the country on heightened security alert since January when French troops began fighting al Qaeda-linked Islamists in Mali, authorities are increasingly worried about home-grown militants emerging from France’s own jails.

But despite government efforts to tackle the problem, conditions behind bars are still turning young Muslims into easy prey for jhadist recruiters, according to guards, prison directors, ex-inmates, chaplains and crime experts interviewed over the last few months by Reuters.

“I have parents who come to me and say: ‘My son went in a dealer and came out a fundamentalist’,” said Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the mosque in Drancy, a gritty suburb north of Paris.

Malian Islamists have warned France it is a target for attacks, most recently in a video that came to light on Tuesday. This has added to concern in a country which, according to the Europol police agency, arrested 91 people in 2012 on suspicion of what it categorized as religiously-inspired terrorism.

These numbers are by far the highest for any European Union country, although tiny when compared with France’s estimated 5 to 6 million Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are peaceful, law-abiding citizens.

France, which has Europe’s biggest Muslim population, is not alone. International studies show that prison radicalization is a problem in countries ranging from Britain and the United States to Afghanistan. However, France stands out because over half its inmates are estimated to be Muslim, many from communities blighted by poverty and unemployment.

Read the full story here.
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(Rohingya Muslims look through the gates of a house in a village where many displaced by violence found shelter, near Sittwe April 27, 2013.  REUTERS/Damir Sagolj )

A 16-year-old Muslim boy lay dying on a thin metal table. Bitten by a rabid dog a month ago, he convulsed and drooled as his parents wedged a stick between his teeth to stop him from biting off his tongue.

Swift treatment might have saved Waadulae. But there are no doctors, painkillers or vaccines in this primitive hospital near Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State in western Myanmar. It is a lonely medical outpost that serves about 85,300 displaced people, almost all of them Muslims who lost their homes in fighting with Buddhist mobs last year.

“All we can give him is sedatives,” said Maung Maung Hla, a former health ministry official who, despite lacking a medical degree, treats about 150 patients a day. The two doctors who once worked there haven’t been seen in a month. Medical supplies stopped when they left, said Maung Maung Hla, a Muslim.

These trash-strewn camps represent the dark side of Myanmar’s celebrated transition to democracy: apartheid-like policies segregating minority Muslims from the Buddhist majority. As communal violence spreads, nowhere are these practices more brutally enforced than around Sittwe.

In an echo of what happened in the Balkans after the fall of communist Yugoslavia, the loosening of authoritarian control in Myanmar is giving freer rein to ethnic hatred.

Read the full story here.
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