WASHINGTON (RNS) The imam who has faced resistance for plans to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero said Tuesday (March 1) that pro-democracy movements across the Arab world need to be open to all faiths. “Government’s coercive powers should not be used against one religion,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a panel…

IRVINE, Calif. (RNS) “Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech!” And so began the protest of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s lecture at the University of California, Irvine in February 2010, as the shouting student, Osama Ahmed Shabaik, was escorted out of the auditorium by police to cheers and jeers. It didn’t…

METAIRIE, La. (RNS) A fundamentalist Christian pastor known for his bullhorn protests of the annual Southern Decadence gay pride festival was arrested on a charge of masturbating at a park on Friday (Feb. 25). The Rev. Grant Storms, 53, was taken into custody after two women reported seeing him masturbating in the driver’s seat of…

LONDON (RNS) Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the judges said has no place in the laws of a “largely secular” Britain. Owen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled…

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