Word: church
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...mannequins in period costume, but you'll gasp at the exquisite carving, painted ceilings and marble floors. Move on to Umayyad Mosque, one of the world's oldest, having been completed in 715. Before that, it was successively an Aramaean temple, a Roman temple and then a Byzantine church. Over the centuries it has become a meeting place for the city. The mosque's courtyard - an inadequate term for this vast plaza of glittering marble - is alive with afternoon strollers and gossiping families. When you're done people-watching, track down one of the mosque's great curiosities: a shrine...
...tearful woman crouches over rubble outside the attackers' first target. "Look what they have done to our church," says Shahida William, the wife of the pastor, pointing at the deeply blackened one-room Faith Bible Church. Inside, bricks are strewn across the floor. The stinging smell of the chemicals used still hangs in the air. A few houses down, Ethel Gill points to nine bullet holes that have been punched into the top story of her home: "They threw rocks and bricks at us. Then they opened fire. We cowered for safety and ran away, jumping over roofs of other...
...This isn't the first time that this has happened," says Pastor William, who heads the burned one-room church. Similar episodes of broke out in the towns of Shantinagar in 1997 and Shangla Hill in 2005. Just last month, accusations of blasphemy triggered violence in four different towns in Punjab. On Tuesday, two people were killed in the town of Muridke after a similar accusation was raised. In each case, says William, blasphemy laws are used as a pretext for attacks on religious minorities. Anger is now spreading in Pakistan's Christian community. On Wednesday, riots broke...
...less politicized figure than his predecessor. Alexy II, an infrequent visitor to Kiev, openly supported the Moscow-backed candidate Viktor Yanukovych in his 2004 presidential race against Yushchenko. "Kirill is developing a new approach to Russian-Ukrainian spiritual unity," says Andrei Zolotov, an expert on the Russian Orthodox Church who followed the patriarch on his visit. "He's saying that he's the patriarch not just of Russia but of Rus. He's trying to position himself as a supranational leader beyond state boundaries...
...Zolotov concedes that Kirill will have trouble convincing many in Ukraine that his mission is only spiritual. "The idea that independent Ukraine must have an independent Orthodox Church is at the core of the Ukrainian national idea formed in the past decade," he says. "It's a complicating factor that the patriarch lives in Moscow and has ties with the Kremlin." For now, Kirill's Ukrainian critics have their wish: the patriarch is heading back to Moscow on Wednesday, Aug. 5. But Zolotov says there has been talk in Kirill's entourage of making the trip an annual event...