Word: religion
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...amount of self-censorship. A recent report by the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association said that over the past year, 25 journalists were arrested, 24 were beaten or intimidated by public officials, 22 received death threats and four outlets were forced to close. Rahimullah Samandar, head of the association, says religion, official graft and certain issues related to national security are now seen as "red lines," crossed at one's peril...
...girls, who identified herself as Zeinab, 26, nervously pulled her chador down to cover as much of her face as she could. She explained that she felt a religious duty to attend the protest. "How dare these men who call themselves protectors of religion enter a girls' dormitory in the first place?" Zeinab said. Her friend Sara, 27, added, "Our problem goes beyond the elections. They are ruining our religion. They chant 'Heydar, Heydar' [a name for the Prophet Muhammad's cousin Imam Ali, a central Shi'ite leader] when they kill these innocent people. That's terrifying! They feel...
Secularism is the religion of contemporary France. And the enforcers of that faith have a new target. "Today ... we are confronted by certain Muslim women wearing the burqa, which covers and fully envelops the body and the head like a moving prison," said Andre Gerin, a Communist Party legislator who joined 57 others on Wednesday in signing a motion for a parliamentary committee to study possible legislation to ban the wearing of the traditional costume in public. Despite the fervor of Gerin and his allies, however, the burqa remains sufficiently rare in France that even the legislators railing against...
Probably because Catholicism has deep roots in French history and culture and is not viewed as a foreign faith the way Islam is, which, with about 6 million practitioners, is the second largest religion in France. Its practitioners are also growing at a faster rate than Catholics. Indeed, the expanding size of Islam and fears about spreading extremism seem to have emboldened pundits and policy-makers to wade in and legislate aspects of Muslim observance and life in ways that they would be wary of doing with Catholics, Protestants or Jews...
...religion stories...