FaithWorld

(Turkish classical pianist Fazil Say performs during a concert in Ankara October 14, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer )

A world-renowned concert pianist was given a suspended jail sentence in Turkey on Monday for insulting religious values on Twitter, a case which has become a cause celebre for Turks alarmed about creeping Islamic conservatism.

Fazil Say, also a leading composer, went on trial in October for blasphemy – a crime that can carry an 18-month sentence – for a series of tweets including one citing a thousand-year-old poem.

That message, in April last year, retweeted a verse in which 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam mocks pious hypocrisy. It is in the form of questions to believers: “You say rivers of wine flow in heaven, is heaven a tavern to you? You say two houris await each believer there, is heaven a brothel to you?”

In another tweet, Say poked fun at a muezzin, someone who makes the Muslim call to prayer. “The muezzin finished the evening prayers in 22 seconds … Why are you in such hurry? A lover? A raki table?” he asked, referring to the aniseed-flavored spirit popular in Turkey.

(Antique tribal masks revered as sacred ritual artifacts by a Native American tribe in Arizona are displayed at an auction house in Paris April 11, 2013. REUTERS/John Schults)

An auction of ancient masks revered as sacred by a Native American tribe has fetched more than 750,000 euros, disappointing prominent opponents of the sale after a French court ruled it should go ahead.

The Hopi tribe of northeastern Arizona and supporters including the U.S. ambassador to France and actor Robert Redford had urged the Paris auction house to suspend the sale due to the masks’ cultural and religious significance.

(Veiled women take part in a protest demanding the inclusion of Islamic Law in the constitution, in Tunis March 25, 2012. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi )

Radical Muslims have burst into a Tunisian school and assaulted its chief after he barred entry to a teenage girl wearing a face veil, or niqab, teachers said, an incident that underlined rising Islamist-secularist tensions.

Since secular dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was toppled in the first “Arab Spring” uprising two years ago, Tunisia has seen mounting strife between secularists who long held power and Islamists whose influence is increasing.

(Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill arrive for the meeting with Russian Orthodox church bishops in Moscow February 1, 2013. REUTERS/Sergei Gunyeev/Ria Novosti/Pool)

The head of the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has said  feminism was a “very dangerous” phenomenon offering an illusion of freedom to women who should focus on their families and children.

Some three quarters of Russians consider themselves Russian Orthodox and Kirill has fostered increasingly close ties with President Vladimir Putin who has portrayed the church as the guardian of Russia’s national values.

(Muslim men gather in front of a mosque heavily damaged during recent violence in town of Gyo Bin Gauk, some 150 km (93 miles) north of Yangon April 4, 2013.  REUTERS/Damir Sagolj )

An ultra-nationalist Buddhist creed is becoming more visible in Myanmar’s commercial capital, Yangon, after monks from the apartheid-like movement helped stoke a wave of anti-Muslim violence in the central heartlands.

Many Muslims in the city say they are living in fear after dozens of members of their faith were killed in March by Buddhist mobs whipped up by monks from the “969″ movement, a name that refers to attributes of the Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood.

(Same-sex marriage supporters hold a rainbow umbrella and a placard that reads “Yes” on their balcony during a demonstration against gay marriage, adoption and procreation assistance in Paris, April 4, 2013. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann )

France’s Senate upper house voted in favor of same-sex marriage on Friday, paving the way for it to enter law after street marches rallied hundreds of thousands of demonstrators both for and against it.

The move is France’s most important social reform since the 1981 abolition of the death penalty and was a keynote campaign pledge by President Francois Hollande’s ruling Socialists.

(Members of an Amish community fill sandbags to be placed along the levy in Canton, Missouri, in this June 17, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Frank Polich)

Five members of a breakaway Ohio Amish sect head to federal prison on Friday to begin serving sentences for hate crimes, leaving behind a tight-knit religious group coping with the absence of parents for nearly 50 children.

The leader of the Bergholz sect, Samuel Mullet Sr., and 15 of his followers were convicted of federal hate crimes last year for a series of beard- and hair-cutting attacks on members of other Amish groups in Ohio in 2011.

(Chief Rabbi of France Gilles Bernheim leaves after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris December 16, 2011. REUTERS/Charles Platiau )

France’s Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, until recently the moral voice of the country’s Jewish community, stepped down on Thursday after admitting plagiarism in two books and deception about his academic credentials.

Bernheim, 60, submitted his resignation and apologies at an emergency leadership meeting of the Central Consistory, the top Jewish religious authority, after initially trying to hold on to his post despite acknowledging his faults.

(Coptic Christians run from tear gas fired by police inside the main cathedral during clashes with Muslims standing outside the Cathedral in Cairo, April 7, 2013. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih)

When Egyptian Christian Kerollos Maher watched on television as petrol bombs and rocks rained on Cairo’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral he had only one thought – emigration.

“Egypt is no longer my country,” said the 24-year-old construction worker, standing in the courtyard of the country’s largest cathedral where one Copt and one Muslim died in sectarian clashes this week.

(Women pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City February 11, 2013. REUTERS/Baz Ratner )

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to consider liberalising access to Judaism’s Western Wall, officials said on Wednesday, citing concern that police-enforced Orthodox controls on women worshippers alienate Jews abroad.

A compromise proposed by a Netanyahu envoy would expand the Jerusalem prayer site’s plaza, where worshippers are segregated by sex in accordance with Orthodox ritual practice, to add a mixed-gender section for other denominations of Judaism.