General Articles
Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, considered the guardian of Islamic orthodoxy, has retained its independence in the face of the authoritarian government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, but the venerable institution is facing new competition from neighboring countries and newly established
The Pacific Northwest continues to be the bastion of religious non-affiliation it has been since the early 2000s, only more so, having a significant impact on religious communities, writes Mark Silk in his blog for Religion News Service, Spiritual Politics (May 31).
Although affected itself by the economic crisis that Greece has been experiencing since 2009, the Greek Orthodox Church has become an active source of social support for impoverished people, thus seizing an opportunity to position itself as a relevant institution in contemporary societ
Even as Hungary has drawn admiration from conservative Christians for its strong support of the traditional family and maintaining its “Christian heritage,” the central European
The fire in Paris’ historic Notre Dame Cathedral in early May was mourned as a loss to French Catholicism, but there has been a trend of church fires and desecrations in France that are more mysterious and even suspicious, writes Nina Shea in the National Catholic Register (May 12–25).
The announcement on March 14 by Cardinal Reinhard Marx that the Catholic Church in Germany would start a “synodal process” to deal with issues of priestly celibacy, teachings on sexual morality, and clerical power marks an attempt to assert its peculiar identity and to promote a reform
“Africa is emerging as an important remnant of the Islamic State, even if the continent is too divided along cultural and tribal lines to restore its caliphate,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek (May 22).
While leaders of the pro-democracy movement in Sudan seem reluctant to make Islamic law a source of legislation, the country’s ruling military council insists that “Islamic Sha
Police programs in the United States using undercover officers in mosques to monitor members suspected of extremism are facing pushback from the Muslim community, which tends to view such tactics as anti-Islamic and sinful, and are fostering distrust in Islamic institutions, according to Ibrahim
Nashville, Tennessee, has emerged as a center of Coptic Orthodox Christianity in the U.S. and also serves as a case study of Muslim-Coptic coexistence outside of a context of conflict and persecution, writes Lydia Yousief in the blog Public Orthodoxy (April 17).