FaithWorld

(U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (R) delivers his speech as (from L) KAICIID Secretary General Faisal Abdulrahmen bin Muaammar, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, World Muslim League President Abdullah Al Turki, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger, Spanish Foreign Minister Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil and Cardinal Jean-Luis Tauran listen during the opening ceremony of the “King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue” (KAICIID) in Vienna November 26, 2012. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger)

The violent crises in Syria, Gaza and Mali show how important it is for different religions to work together to promote understanding rather than sow hatred, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said on Monday.

Addressing the opening of a new Saudi-backed interfaith centre in Vienna, he said the Syrian conflict was “taking on troubling sectarian dimensions” and “unrest (continues) between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Valuable religious monuments had been destroyed in Mali, he said, referring to the destruction of centuries-old Muslim heritage by the radical Islamist Ansar Dine movement.

Religious leaders “can unite people based on tenets and precepts common to all creeds” but at times have also “stoked intolerance, supported extremism and propagated hate.”

(Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal  talks to journalists upon his arrival in front of the ‘King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue’ (KAICIID) in Vienna November 26, 2012. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger )

A Saudi-backed center to promote interfaith dialogue worldwide began work in Vienna on Monday by bringing hundreds of religious activists together to discuss how to promote understanding among different beliefs.

Named after Saudi King Abdullah, the center is a welcome boost for bridge-building between faiths in an era of financial austerity but has drawn criticism because Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islam and bans non-Muslim religious practice.

Delhi, India

By Mansi Thapliyal

"I am Gandhi!" he says firmly. "His soul resides inside me," he announces, smiling unwaveringly.

I stare blankly at the man who is wearing a dhoti wrapped around his waist, thick black oval glasses and carrying a cane just like Mahatma Gandhi.

GALLERY: MODERN-DAY GANDHI

Two weeks ago, I called this man asking to meet him and he politely told me not to say "hello."

Both Pakistan and Egypt had much to learn from each other this week.

On the foreign policy front, if Pakistan ever had aspirations to play the central role as the leader of Muslim unity, it had a salutary lesson in the way Egypt played its cards. Barely a week ago, Pakistan was looking forward to hosting Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, who was to be given the rare honour of addressing a joint session of parliament.

Mursi – the first president to emerge from the Muslim Brotherhood - was due in Islamabad for a summit meeting of the Developing-8 Islamic countries, which also includes Iran, Turkey and Nigeria among others.  The Jamaat-e-Islami (which sees itself as the ideological sibling of the Brotherhood - both were founded in the first half of the 20th century as anti-imperial Islamist  movements in British India and Egypt) proclaimed on its Twitter feed about how much it looked forward to greeting Mursi in Pakistan.

And then Mursi cancelled, his office saying he wanted to stay at home to monitor the ceasefire he had just brokered in Gaza.

(The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, speaks during a meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England, at Church House in central London November 21, 2012. REUTERS/Yui Mok/Pool )

The Archbishop of Canterbury accused his Church of England of being willfully blind to the attitudes of modern British society on Wednesday after it voted ‘no’ to women bishops, a triumph for its traditionalist minority.

After more than 10 years of divisive debate, the General Synod, the Church legislature, failed to pass the measure on Tuesday evening by just six votes despite the fact that 42 of the Church’s 44 dioceses had earlier approved it.

(Sturany Palace on Vienna’s Ringstrasse boulevard, 27 March 2008/Erich Schmid)

The road to reform in Saudi Arabia is long and winding. In the rigidly restricted field of religion, the path is so circuitous that part of it even runs through traditionally Catholic countries like Austria and Spain.

Next Monday, a pioneering Saudi-backed centre for worldwide interfaith dialogue will open in a baroque palace on Vienna’s elegant Ringstrasse boulevard. Riyadh paid for the building and will foot the centre’s budget for the first three years.

(A sign reading ‘Arbeitsgerichte’ (Labour courts) is pictured in the late evening in Hamburg September 1, 2012. REUTERS/Morris Mac Matzen)

Germany’s main churches and a union that represents their employees have both claimed victory after the Federal Labour Court issued a Solomonic decision on whether church employees are allowed to strike.

The Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches greeted the ruling as an endorsement of their system of resolving wage disputes through mediation, while the union said it confirmed church workers had the right to industrial action.

Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali gestures as he speaks during an interview at the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit in Tunis November 20, 2012. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi

Tunisia’s Islamist-led government will not allow puritanical Salafis to enforce their vision on a country grappling with the role of Islam in a once rigidly secular society, the prime minister said on Tuesday.

“Militants who have used violence are few, but they can not impose their vision on our country and our people. We will not allow them … Tunisia will remain moderate,” Hamadi Jebali, who belongs to the Islamist Ennahda party, said in an interview.

(Italian-language copies of Pope Benedict XVI’s book “The Childhood of Jesus” are seen during a presentation in the Vatican November 20, 2012.  REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi)

Pope Benedict published the last part of his trilogy on the life of Jesus on Tuesday, delivering an early childhood narrative which strongly reaffirms the doctrine of the virgin birth as an “unequivocal” truth of faith.

The book, 137 pages in its English version, is titled “The Infancy Narratives – Jesus of Nazareth” and will be published around the world in some 20 languages. It goes on sale on Wednesday.

Police escort blindfolded Muslim cleric Khalid Jadoon as he is brought before a judge at a court in Islamabad September 2, 2012. Pakistani authorities have arrested Jadoon on suspicion of framing Christian girl Rimsha Masih who was arrested under the country’s controversial anti-blasphemy law, a police official said on Sunday. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood

A Pakistani court dismissed on Tuesday a blasphemy case against a Christian girl which had drawn international condemnation and concern about the rights of religious minorities in the predominantly Muslim country.

Rimsha Masih, believed to be no older than 14, was charged with burning pages of the Koran in August but was granted bail in September after a cleric was detained on suspicion of planting evidence to stir up resentment against Christians.