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Silence is hardly the word to characterize the matter of France and professions of religious piety. Last year the country's highest administrative court denied the naturalization request of an otherwise irreproachable Moroccan woman on the grounds that her wearing a burqa was incompatible with French secularist statutes. On Tuesday, French Scientologists raised complaints of religious intolerance when state prosecutors wrapped up their arguments against the church on charges of organized swindling by requesting that the organization be disbanded and barred in France. (Read an argument against the veil by Azadeh Moaveni...
...President-elect's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, gave a rare one-word answer. Asked if Barack Obama would "get rid" of the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, which prohibits gays from serving openly, Gibbs replied firmly...
...motor scooters, skittered through the lines of automobiles, most of which were decked out with signs supporting the moderate challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi. There was good-natured banter between the two groups. "Chist, chist, chist," the Ahmadinejad supporters chanted, referring to Mousavi's awkward, constant use of that word - Farsi for "y'know" - during his debate with Ahmadinejad. The Mousavi supporters chanted, "Ahmadi - bye, bye." After about an hour, our cabdriver gave up, and Nahid and I set out on foot...
...chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable. It's impossible to authenticate sources. It's also not clear who exactly is using Twitter within Iran, especially in English. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the bulk of tweets are coming from "hyphenated" Iranians not actually in the country who are getting the word out to Western observers, rather than from the protesters themselves, who favor other, less public media. This is, after all, a country where the government once debated the death penalty for dissident bloggers. (See pictures of daily life in Iran...
Foezul Ali is explaining the concept of shura - the Arabic word for collective decision-making by consultation - to a small class of adolescent girls at a madrassa run by the Aziziye Mosque in Stoke Newington, north London. Consultation, he explains, requires taking into consideration the views of all members of society, including Christians, Jews and secularists. Ali reads a quote from the Koran that requires Muslims to seek the advice of the nonfaithful on important matters. So, he asks the girls, can we learn from non-Muslims? When they respond affirmatively, he smiles. "That's right...