An atheist-themed festival drew hundreds of people to an Army post in North Carolina on Saturday for what was believed to be the first-ever event held on a U.S. military base for service members who do not have religious beliefs.

Organizers said they hoped the “Rock Beyond Belief” event at Fort Bragg would spur equal treatment toward nonbelievers in the armed forces and help lift the stigma for approximately 295,000 active duty personnel who consider themselves atheist, agnostic or without a religious preference.

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During the month leading up to Passover, which this year begins April 6 at sundown, Chevy Weiss, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother with five kids and a demanding career, scrubs and vacuums almost everything in her Baltimore home.

In keeping with their strict interpretation of Jewish law, which forbids Jews from possessing and consuming chametz (fermented grains) during the eight-day festival, Weiss and her husband, Yoel, clean every one of their five children’s toys by hand, with bleach.

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“New Haggadahs will be written until there are no more Jews to write them. Or until our destiny has been fulfilled, and there is no more need to say, ”˜Next year in Jerusalem,’” according to the preface to the New American Haggadah. Watch our interviews at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC with writers Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander about the new Haggadah edited by Foer, translated by Englander, designed by Oden Ezer, and published by Little, Brown. Interviews by Julie Mashack. Edited by Fred Yi.

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Members of the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunnati Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, also known as Boko Haram, may have concluded arrangements to engage the security operatives in Kaduna State in a free for all. They have warned residents to flee all security formations in the state.

In a letter distributed in Kaduna, the sect said it is ready to fight security operatives in the state and warns residents whose houses are located near military, police, SSS as well as prison formations to relocate with immediate effect to avoid being victims of the planned attack.

Confirming the report, the state police commissioner, Mohammed Abubakar, said: “Yes, we are aware of it… that unless their people are released from detention, if not they will come and stage attacks. We are aware of that one. We have strategized and are waiting for them….

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Sydney’S acute shortage of burial space is set to hit the Muslim community hardest, with Islamic plots at Australia’s largest cemetery expected to run out – again – within a year.

When space dedicated to Islamic burials was last exhausted in Rookwood Necropolis two years ago, some Muslims were forced to fly their loved ones to Lebanon because they couldn’t afford to bury them here.

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So how do Melbourne, London and Montreal maintain economically affordable, academically excellent Jewish schools? Simple: The government picks up part of the tab, often by covering the cost of the school’s secular subjects. If American Jews want our Jewish schools to flourish, we must push our government to do the same.
Doing so would constitute a radical shift. Outside the Orthodox community, American Jewish organizations have for decades opposed government funding for religious schools. The most common objection is that by intertwining church and state, such funding threatens religious liberty, a deep concern for a religious group that comprises roughly 2% of the U.S. population.

But that fear is overblown. Government aid to Jewish schools in Australia, Britain and Canada doesn’t mean that Jews in those countries enjoy less religious liberty than their American counterparts. Even in America, state and local governments already pay for the cost of special education in religious schools.

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Hindu and Christian representatives say forced conversions to Islam have become the latest weapon of Islamic extremists in what they call a growing campaign against Pakistan’s religious minorities, on top of assassinations and mob intimidation of houses of worship. The groups are increasingly wondering if they still have a place in Pakistan.

“It is a conspiracy that Hindus and Christians and other minorities should leave Pakistan,” says Amar Lal, the lawyer representing Kumari in the Supreme Court. “As a minority, we feel more and more insecure. It is getting worse day by day.”

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The insurgent violence stalking northern Nigeria has struck a long list of official targets, killing police and army officers, elected officials, high-ranking civil servants, United Nations workers and other perceived supporters of the Nigerian government.

Now it has an ominous new front: a war against schools.

Public and private schools here have been doused with gasoline at night and set on fire. Crude homemade bombs ”” soda bottles filled with gasoline ”” have been hurled at the bare-bones concrete classrooms Nigeria offers its children.

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the 92nd Street Y in New York, Vanderbilt Divinity School professor Amy-Jill Levine is making the case that Jews and Christians alike need to pay more attention to the Jewishness of Jesus, and the best way to do that, she believes, is by reading the New Testament from a Jewish perspective.

PROFESSOR LEVINE: If I want to understand Jewish history, the New Testament is one of the best sources that I’ve got.

LAWTON: Levine, who is an observant Jew, is co-editor of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, a version of the Christian scripture with footnotes and commentaries written entirely by Jewish scholars.

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Thousands of people are expect to descend on the Mall in Washington, D.C., on Saturday to celebrate not believing in God. It’s being called a sort of “Woodstock for Atheists,” a chance for atheists to show their power in numbers and change their image.

The “Reason Rally” could attract up to 30,000 people; organizer David Silverman says it marks a coming-of-age for nonbelievers.

“We’ll look back at the Reason Rally as one of the game-changing events when people started to look at atheism and look at atheists in a different light,” Silverman says.

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Earlier this month, the TLC network announced that it will cancel the reality show “All-American Muslim” due to low ratings. Critics had complained that the show whitewashed the problem of Islamic radicalism in the U.S. by not portraying Muslim extremists, which led major sponsors such as the retailer Lowe’s to drop their support.

But the show’s producers were closer to portraying reality than critics asserted. The story of Islam in America today is a story of rapid assimilation and even secularization, not growing radicalism.

Jihad Turk, director of religious studies at LA’s Islamic Center of Southern California, says that of the roughly 750,000 Muslims living in Southern California, just 30,000, or about 4%, regularly attend Friday prayer.

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The head of Perth’s Anglican Church has dismissed civil marriage ceremonies as “sentimental fuzz” as new figures reveal more than 70 per cent of WA couples opt for civil celebrants over religious ministers to conduct their nuptials.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show just 27 per cent of weddings in WA were conducted by a religious official in 2010 – down more than 2 per cent on the previous year – while 78.2 per cent were overseen by a civil celebrant.

Anglican Archbishop of Perth Roger Herft said the statistics were a sign of the times but true commitment could only be forged in the house of God.

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Two nuns in Upper Egypt faced “unimaginable fear”–with one later hospitalized over the emotional trauma–when 1,500 Muslim villagers brandishing swords and knives trapped them inside a guesthouse last week and threatened to burn them out.

The next day, the assailants frightened children at the school; attendance has since dropped by more than a third.

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French police are linking the shootings of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse to the killings of three soldiers of North African descent in two separate incidents last week.

The same gun and the same stolen scooter were used in all three attacks, sources close to the investigation say.

A teacher and three children were shot dead at the Ozar Hatorah school, and a teenage boy was seriously injured.

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The greater New York City area (including Brooklyn, and central and northern New Jersey) is home to millions of atheists, including many who still engage in religious activities, including Jewish and Muslim rituals. While we have little interest in arguing against cultural affirmations, we are eager to question the false foundations for religious ideas ”“ and to call out atheists who’re helping keep irrationality alive.

Atheism needs the involvement of atheists, deserves the support of atheists ”“ and that’s every bit as true of atheists who read Hebrew or Arabic, as it is of anyone else.

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Burned-out rubble is all that’s left of Christian shopkeeper Abskharon Suleiman’s appliance store in the northern Egyptian village of Sharbat. His home was destroyed as well as shops owned by his adult children ”“ all targeted because they are Christians.

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“What concerns us is the message that it sends,” said Atheist of Florida member Rob Curry. “A very chilling message that, if you’re not a Christian, if you don’t believe as we do, then you’re not welcome.”

Curry’s referring to a road-anointing performed on CR 98 last year as part of the “Polk Under Prayer” campaign, where Christians poured olive oil on the asphalt and prayed over it, calling for a revival in the area.

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There’s no Sunday school, and meetings are regularly held at Denny’s restaurants, but for members ”” and the federal government ”” Sacred Spiral is very much a church, albeit a Pagan church….

In the years since abandoning the title of coven, [Rosemary] Szymanski, founder and president, has worked with her fellow witches to organize openly and spread knowledge about Paganism.
“Covens are much more secretive,” Szymanski, a witch for 17 years, said. “So in 2007, I banned the coven and created the church.”

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A man aged 20 has been arrested in northern Italy on suspicion of plotting an attack on a synagogue in Milan.

The suspect, described as Moroccan-born, was said to have had details of the synagogue and plans for an attack on his computer.

Police in London said a 40-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion of collecting information useful to terrorism.

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For more than a dozen years, Khairat el-Shater guided his family of 10 children, his sprawling business empire and Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, all from a prison cell.

Each week, he held court behind prison walls as young Muslim Brothers delivered to him dossiers about the organization that sometimes were as long as 200 pages. His corporate employees paid regular visits for strategic advice about his investments in software, textile, bus manufacturing and furniture companies and other enterprises. And before consenting to the marriages of his eight daughters, he met in prison with each of their suitors. Some of the grooms were prisoners with him, others made the pilgrimage, and five said their vows in his presence, behind bars.

Now Mr. Shater, 62, commands far wider influence.

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Everyone willing to follow the Lord is supposed to have listened in some way to this seemingly imperious command: “Come!” a command which implies an act of faith, referred to sometimes as the “leap of faith.” As it is clear from the Scriptures, what we are able to see is not faith, as the biblical faith is defined as : “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We have to decide “in spite of”’, in order to experience the power of God. But we need to remember that everything must be done according the Word of God. Peter did not experience the possibility to walk on water because he decided to leave the boat but because of the Word, the Command of the Lord.

The Word of God tell us to “expect to suffer hardship” and dishonor for the sake of His Name. Our Christian confession is not acceptable if we ignore this statement, if we do not manifest the patience of the Lord in our sufferings. Anybody ignoring it will be ashamed in that day.

Let us remember that sometimes the leap of faith leads us towards some impasses. Just as the Word led the sons of Israel leaving Egypt toward the impasse of the Red sea. These impasses are midway between promises of God and their fulfillments and they challenge our faith. Believers are to accept these challenges as a part of their spiritual course. The Son was challenged at Calvary in the hardest way, as it is written in the Scriptures….

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Pope Benedict has condemned violence committed in God’s name and personally exonerated Jews of responsibility for Jesus’ death in his latest book, released on Thursday. The book, the second in a planned three-part series on the life of Jesus, is a detailed, highly theological and academic recounting of the last week in Jesus’ life.

Publishers have printed 1.2 million copies of the book in seven languages. A blaze of international publicity included teleconferences with the media in several countries.

In one section, Benedict writes that there can be no justification for violence carried out in God’s name, an assertion as applicable to Islamist militancy today as to violence that the Catholic Church itself committed in the past as it spread the faith.

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Alain de Botton, the British pop philosopher whose new book Religion for Atheists has made him the friendly face of modern godlessness….said if you walked into a modern university and asked to study the humanities in order to find meaning in life, “the people in charge would immediately dial the number of the insane asylum, and you would be taken away.”

He said the message of the secular world is that life is simple, and the only people who need help are stupid people who read self-help books.

He set his own views against the “virulent strain” of atheism that sees religion as “not just false but wrong, ridiculous, malign and corrupt,” epitomized by Christopher Hitchens’ claim that “religion poisons everything.”

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A Roman Catholic Bishop in Ireland is being investigated under ”˜hate crime’ laws for delivering a homily that upset a humanist.

The Bishop’s unremarkable comments warned of “the arrows of a secular and godless culture” and that only believers “know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness”.

Humanist John Colgan complained about the remarks to the police. Now prosecutors are investigating the Bishop of Raphoe, Dr Philip Boyce, under Ireland’s ”˜incitement to hatred’ laws.

Read it all (another from the long queue of should-have-already-been-posted material).

Muslims are being used as “scapegoats” in the French election campaign in which halal slaughter has become a hot-button issue, the French Council of the Muslim Faith said yesterday.

The statement came a day after the prime minister, Francois Fillon, urged Muslims and Jews to consider scrapping their “outdated” halal and kosher slaughter rules.

The council, asked about Mr Fillon’s comment on halal, said it “does not accept that Islam and Muslims be used as scapegoats in this [election] campaign”.

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A technological crackdown, telegraphed by Mormon leaders, has effectively blocked the pre-eminent whistle-blower of controversial proxy baptisms from accessing the LDS Church’s database that chronicles so-called baptisms for the dead.

LDS officials defend the move, saying it helps prevent overzealous Mormons and mischief-makers from violating church policy by submitting the names of prominent Jewish figures, such as Anne Frank and Daniel Pearl, both discovered on the baptism rolls in recent weeks.

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…[Middle Eastern Christians] share of the region’s population has plunged from 20% a century ago to less than 5% today and falling. In Egypt, 200,000 Coptic Christians fled their homes last year after beatings and massacres by Muslim extremist mobs. Since 2003, 70 Iraqi churches have been burned and nearly a thousand Christians killed in Baghdad alone, causing more than half of this million-member community to flee. Conversion to Christianity is a capital offense in Iran, where last month Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death. Saudi Arabia outlaws private Christian prayer.
As 800,000 Jews were once expelled from Arab countries, so are Christians being forced from lands they’ve inhabited for centuries.

The only place in the Middle East where Christians aren’t endangered but flourishing is Israel. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, its Christian communities (including Russian and Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Armenians and Protestants) have expanded more than 1,000%.

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Ever since their mad dash out of Egypt bound for the Promised Land, Jews have been on the move ”” and they continue to be, far more than any other religious group, according to a new study.

One in four of the world’s Jews has migrated from one country to another, compared to 5% of Christians and 4% of Muslims who have left their native lands.

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Over the last hundred years or so, however,…[the] hopeful vision [that secularism promises a neutral public and peaceful space] has not materialized. Rather than seeing greater harmony in secular societies, we have witnessed more community breakdown. We also notice that the greatest losses of life in the twentieth century (Mao Tse-tung: 70 million deaths; Stalin: 20-40 million deaths; Hitler: 11-12 million deaths; Pol Pot: 1-2 million deaths”¦) have been inspired by secular ideologies, not religious ones. The atrocities that human beings commit against each other continue apace, and secularism is at a loss to know what to say about them. “It is the work of a few rogues” sounds less plausible every time we hear it. The incoherence of secularism also means that it cannot withstand determined pressure groups or totalitarian ideologies.

I believe secularism in the West is really a combination of Christianity and paganism, with the proportions shifting over the years from the former to the latter. Secularism does not supply values of its own but borrows them from Christianity (human rights, care for minorities, freedom of speech, toleration of differences, etc.) or paganism (fascination with astrology and ever more extreme forms of entertainment, lower views of marriage, higher views of other relationships, openness to abortion/infanticide, euthanasia, etc.). Credit is rarely given to these sources, and it is only as the proportion of paganism has increased that the true nature of secularism is becoming more apparent.

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British police say they have investigated more than 80 witchcraft-based child abuse cases in the last decade, and warned that the practice is “far more prevalent” than previously believed.

Authorities say the belief in witchcraft is widespread and growing in some African immigrant communities in Britain.

The disclosure came as a couple from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Magalie Bamu and Eric Bikubi, were sentenced to life in prison for torturing and drowning the woman’s 15-year-old brother, Kristy Bamu.

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