The United States will resume limited contacts with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed on Thursday, saying it was in Washington’s interests to deal with parties committed to non-violent politics. While Clinton portrayed the administration’s decision as a continuation of an earlier policy, it reflects a subtle shift in that U.S. officials will be able to deal directly with officials of the Islamist movement who are not members of parliament.

The move, first reported by Reuters on Wednesday, is likely to upset Israel and its U.S. supporters who have deep misgivings about the Brotherhood, a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.

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The five-page code of conduct, which has been under negotiation since 2005, was unveiled at a Geneva news conference by the World Council of Churches (WCC), a senior Roman Catholic prelate and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA).

It urges Christians wanting “to share the good news of God’s kingdom” — missionary work or simply publicly testifying to their faith — “to build relations of respect and trust with all religions” and adapt their approaches to local conditions.

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations has earned a fierce reputation for defending Muslim civil rights.

Middle Tennessee Muslims turned to the group this year over a proposed state law they feared would threaten their faith. When vandals torched a Columbia mosque and construction equipment at the new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro site, CAIR demanded authorities investigate both incidents as hate crimes.

But the Washington, D.C.-based group’s work is being threatened as it faces scrutiny for failing to file tax returns.

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Confronting stereotypes is nothing new to Muslims at the Islamic Center of Eastside. It’s the very reason they have an open house every few months ”” to invite in neighbors and “demystify” themselves.

Saturday’s scheduled open house came just two days after two Muslim men were arrested in Seattle and accused of planning a terrorist attack on a Seattle military building. Disheartened but expecting questions, presenters at the Islamic Center in Bellevue worked up an extra PowerPoint slide to address terrorism.

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REV. MICHEL BRIERE: The eldest daughter of the Church, that’s what we were called. Today, saying you believe in a religion takes a real identification of faith. Today, the number has really diminished.

[DEBORAH] POTTER: Twenty years ago, about 80 percent of French people described themselves as Catholic. Today, it’s just over half and less than 5 percent””most of them older””regularly go to Mass. Father Briere blames a growing culture of consumerism and a Catholic hierarchy that he says has been too rigid, failing to draw young people into the Church. That’s true across Europe, but France is a special case, a country where religion is widely seen as a source of trouble. If France had an official religion it would be laicite or secularism, a principle that’s enshrined in this country’s constitution and reflects its history of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, as well as the French Revolution, that basically booted the Catholic Church from power.

That history lives on in French movies and classrooms, where students are taught in gory detail about a 16th-century massacre, when thousands of Protestants [Huguenots] were slaughtered by the Catholic forces of the King. And that history still lies on public display in Paris. These are the bones of Catholic priests killed and mutilated by a revolutionary mob in 1792””small wonder that the French concept of separation of church and state is strikingly different from that in the US, says Jocelyne Cesari, a French political scientist and research fellow at Harvard.

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Recent developments in the Middle East and North Africa have produced an unprecedented opening for change that will not last. The international community has both the opportunity and the responsibility to facilitate transformation in the countries that seek democratization. This historic moment ”” the Arab Spring ”” is no time for inaction.

If history is any guide, the use of Islam in the political arena might not be a sign that countries such as Egypt or Tunisia are adopting more extremist agendas, but that their governments are incapable of fulfilling the promises they made to their people.

The Obama administration, the U.S. Congress, and indeed, the international community should remain focused on each country in transition, recalibrate old policies toward the region, and take concrete, meaningful actions to support democratization now.

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The international basketball federation has decided to permit an Orthodox Jewish basketball player to cover her arms during competitions in accordance with her religious beliefs.

FIBA made the decision several weeks after point guard Naama Shafir, a member of the Israeli national women’s basketball team, said she would be unable to play in the sleeveless regulation jerseys worn by all players

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Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were introduced in the 1980s. Though they were supposed to be used to protect the religious sensitivities of the country’s Muslim majority, in practice they are often used to persecute religious minorities.

In 2009 almost 100 people were charged with blasphemy, including 67 Ahmadi Muslims and 17 Christians.

Many of those accused or suspected of blasphemy have been assaulted or tortured. Some people detained in prisons on blasphemy charges have been killed by fellow inmates or prison wardens. Others suspected of blasphemy, but not under arrest, have been unlawfully killed without the police taking any action to protect them.

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Church leaders in Nigeria have urged the government to act swiftly in combating terror attacks on Christians.

The murder campaign in the North waged by Islamist Boko Haram sect known as the Nigerian Taliban could ignite a sectarian war in the South with Christians seeking revenge against Muslims, the Anglican Bishop of Awka warned.

Last week, the fundamentalist sect bombed a Roman Catholic Church and a police station in Maiduguri, killing eleven people, while on June 7 a Church of Christ in Nigeria pastor the Rev. David Usman and the church secretary were gunned down by members of the cult. Last week’s murder follows a 2009 attack on Mr. Usman’s church by Boko Haram militants, who burned it to the ground and killed several members of the congregation.

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Concern is growing for prominent moderate Muslims in Russia’s Dagestan region after an imam was shot dead days after the killing of an academic.

Unidentified gunmen shot Ashurlav Kurbanov near his mosque in the northern village of Mikheyevka, investigators said.

Maksud Sadikov, rector of an Islamic college in the regional capital Makhachkala, was killed last week.

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Gary Cornia, dean of Mormon-run Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management, is often asked what makes Mormons so successful. “I’m not going to say we beat everybody out, but we do have a reputation,” says Cornia. “And one of the defining opportunities for young men and young women is the mission experience.” Reflecting on his own mission to the mid-Atlantic states, Cornia adds, “When I left, the son of a relatively poor mother and a father who died when I was young, I frankly didn’t know if I could do anything. I came back with the confidence that I can accomplish most hard things. I may not have had that otherwise.”

The Mormon Church is 181 years old, and its adherents compose less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, according to a 2009 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). Yet Latter-Day Saints hold, or have held, a seemingly disproportionate number of top jobs at such major corporations as Marriott International (MAR), American Express, American Motors, Dell Computers (DELL), Lufthansa, Fisher-Price (MAT), Life Re, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Madison Square Garden, La Quinta Properties, PricewaterhouseCooper, and Stanley Black & Decker (SWK). The head of human resources at Citigroup is Mormon, and in 2010 Goldman Sachs (GS) hired 31 grads from BYU, the same number it hired from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

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It was last Saturday, and we were sitting with about 300 other Mormons, including dozens of children, at the annual picnic of the Genesis Group, a social organization for black Mormons and their friends. Some were Latino or American Indian, and nearly half were white, the parents and siblings of adopted black children. It was the most racially integrated church event I had ever attended.

Having been introduced to Mormonism by kindly white neighbors in his hometown of Colorado Springs, the teenage Darius [Gray] read his way through much of the scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He had no idea about the racist church policy. His newfound faith was badly shaken.

“I went home and prayed,” Mr. Gray said. “And I received a personal revelation, an inspiration from God: ”˜This is the restored Gospel, and you are to join.’ So the next day, I entered into the waters of baptism. Then the next day I went to church as a member for the first time.” And a little girl addressed him using a certain racial epithet. That was a first, too.

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An Anglican chaplain at a British university has rebutted claims that universities throughout the U.K. are a breeding ground for extremist recruitment, and that universities are not doing enough to tackle the problem.

Jeremy Clines who is the Anglican chaplain at the University of Sheffield has said that Islamic extremists were not the problem for universities, but rather government spending cuts were of greater concern.

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Sarah Sentilles was about to be ordained as an Episcopal priest when she lost her faith in God.

To put it in perspective-she was engaged and the wedding invitations were sent. Calling things off was more than a little awkward.

In Breaking Up with God: A Love Story (HarperOne; Hardcover; June 2011), Sentilles tells the deeply personal story of her difficult decision to leave not only the priesthood, but to let go of Christianity altogether. She had spent years immersed in the religion-from CCD to youth ministry to Harvard Divinity-and had, as an adult, wholeheartedly embraced the religion that had defined her youth. And yet one day she woke up and realized…it was over.

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The Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, has urged Moslem leaders in the country to call their members involved in the killing of Christians in the North to order, warning that Christians could no longer continue to be on the receiving end during riots in any part of Nigeria.

In a speech delivered at the second session of the 28th synod of the Diocese on the Niger, taking place at the Immanuel Church, Onitsha, the Bishop of the Diocese, Rt. Rev. Owen Nwokolo, wondered why Christians should be massacred in the guise of protesting in favour of a political candidate who lost during the recent general elections.

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Theresa May told The Daily Telegraph that universities were not taking the issue of radicalisation seriously enough and that it was too easy for Muslim extremists to form groups on campuses “without anyone knowing”.

She also said the Government would cut funding to any Islamic group that espoused extremist views, and set out the “key British values” to which those seeking support must subscribe. It is understood that about 20 groups are already losing their funding.

Mrs May made her comments ahead of the publication this week of the updated version of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.

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RABBI SHIRA STUTMAN (Director of Community Engagement, Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, Washington, DC): The Shavuot holiday is actually one of the more important holidays in the Jewish tradition, and it basically has two reasons for being. The original reason comes out of the Israelite people being an agricultural people a few thousand years ago in the land that we now call Israel. The Israelites would bring the bikkurim, the first fruits, the first offerings, of their harvest up to the temple as an offering to God, as a way of saying thank you and in hopes of a good harvest.

After the temple was destroyed in about 70 CE, the rabbis needed to enlarge the understanding of Shavuot because we no longer had a temple to which people could bring their offerings. So they brought forward this understanding of Shavuot as being the anniversary of revelation: the anniversary of the moment that God gave the Torah, our Bible or a part of the Hebrew Bible, to the Israelite people on Mount Sinai, basically turning them from this rag-tag group of slaves who had just weeks ago come out of Egypt into a people complete with its own set of texts and ways of being in the world.

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At the pulpit of an inner-city Chicago mosque, the tall blond imam begins preaching in his customary fashion, touching on the Los Angeles Lakers victory the night before, his own gang involvement as a teenager, a TV soap opera and then the Day of Judgment.

“Yesterday we watched the best of seven. … Unfortunately we forget the big final; it’s like that show ‘One Life to Live,’ ” Imam Suhaib Webb says as sleepy boys and young men come to attention in the back rows. “There’s no overtime, bro.”

The sermon is typical of Webb, a charismatic Oklahoma-born convert to Islam with a growing following among American Muslims, especially the young. He sprinkles his public addresses with as many pop culture references as Quranic verses and sayings from the prophet. He says it helps him connect with his mainly U.S.-born flock.

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Church leaders in Nigeria have denounced the introduction of Sharia banking in the West African nation, saying the introduction of religion into the financial services sector violates the law and will further divide the country along sectarian lines.

On May 8 the Diocese of Ughelli released a statement calling for the government to force the Central Bank of Nigeria to back down from its proposal to issue licences to Sharia banks.

The Ughelli synod noted “with suspicion the haste with which approval was granted for the issuance of a licence for Islamic banking in Nigeria, without any known or overt legislative support from the National Assembly.”

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The editor-in-chief of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Arabic-language online portal, Ikhwan Online, announced today that he submitted his resignation to the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abdel Galil Alsharnouby, who has been the editor of the group’s homepage for years, objected in his resignation on his Facebook page to what he considers the MB’s use of him as a scapegoat.

The MB site came under fire for their coverage of the “Second Day of Rage” demonstrations that took place last Friday. Criticism came because the group, which strongly opposed the demonstrations, provided what critics described as extremely biased, similar to the coverage of the state-owned media of the Egyptian revolution before the overthrow of Mubarak.

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The synod said the 84 churches were burnt in riots that took place in Kaduna, Niger Adamawa Bauchi and Kano states, but did not give a breakdown of the churches burnt in each state.

A communiqué issued after the third session of the Seventh Synod of the Diocese of Minna Anglican Communion held at St James Anglican Church, Suleja Niger State also bemoaned the death of a number of members of the National Youth Service Corps taking part in their national service during the crises.

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(ACNS) The Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON) has this week launched an exciting and valuable new resource to assist Anglicans and other Christians in their engagement with people of other faiths.

Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue ”“ an Anglican theology of inter faith relations was produced in 2008 by NIFCON members. The report, which formed the basis for work at the 2008 Lambeth Conference in this field, has become increasingly well-known over the last three years, and is becoming a bench-mark for involvement by Anglicans in inter faith relations throughout the Communion.

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Secularism is moving slowly in America, but the story of religious belief and practice here looks even more complex if one takes a long view. More than 60% of Americans belong to some formal religious body today. In the late 18th century, that number was less than 10%.

Any intellectually serious program in secular studies will avoid triumphalism and deal with the complexity of secularism’s history. It will know that the recent history of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is not the history of all humanity. It will also acknowledge that there is not merely one variety of secularism””some secularists have strong beliefs in paranormal phenomena, which disgusts other secularists. A serious program will also acknowledge that some of the best work on secularism has been done by Christians, foremost among them the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor.

A few years down the line, how can we know that secular studies at Pitzer is living up to its promise? One sign: If some of its students come in as devout atheists or agnostics and leave as religious believers.

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Bishop Danbinta spoke on Thursday in a sermon at the opening of the first session of the 10th Synod of Remo Anglican Diocese….[He] disclosed that it was becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to openly carry the Bible in some areas in the North.

Although he did not mention such places, the Kaduna-born bishop said he had had nasty experiences of hostility against adherents of the Christian faith in Kano and Zamfara states, where he is currently a bishop.

“Those of you who are Christians in the South here do not know what it really means to be Christians. In the North, we live daily preparing to be killed for the sake of Jesus Christ. And we suffer a lot for Christ sake….”

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In the end, there does not seem to be any single explanation for the church attack and the other recent incidents of violence. What is clear is that a confluence of forces””an army seeking the opportunity to consolidate power, remnants of a regime stirring havoc, a cabinet with little authority of its own, radical Islamists aspiring to an Islamic State, and deep-rooted currents of social intolerance that Egypt has long failed to confront””have created a situation in which the Copts, among other groups, have become particularly vulnerable. As the economy plummets, financial woes may lead to more instability””prices have already risen, and on the streets people are complaining they have no work. Reports indicate that many are already resorting to theft to feed their families.

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The Principal of Pusey House, Oxford, the Revd Jonathan Baker, is to resign as a Freemason after being encouraged by the Archbishop of Canterbury to reconsider his membership before his consecration as the next Bishop of Ebbsfleet.

It was announced earlier this month…that Mr Baker would be one of the two new Provincial Episcopal Visitors, to replace Mgr Andrew Burnham, a leader of the RC Ordinariate, who seceded in January.

Mr Baker, who recently served as an Assistant Grand Chaplain to the Freemasons, posted a statement on the Ebbsfleet website last Friday, the day when he was contacted by a Sunday newspaper. He said that he had joined as a lay undergraduate in Oxford, and had found it to be “an organisation admirably committed to community life and involvement with a record of charitable giving second to none, especially among, for example, unfashionable areas of medical research”.

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The word “cafeteria” just doesn’t cut it. The Bear’s Den in the South 40 dorm complex at Washington University is really more like a collection of high-end mini-restaurants, serving everything from fresh seafood to vegetarian.

And like the student body it serves, the Bear’s Den has become increasingly diverse, a place that needs to please more palates and ideologies.

So, early this year, when the campus’ Muslim Student Association approached the school’s food service provider, Bon Appetit, and asked it to provide halal options ”” food prepared in accordance with Islamic law ”” the company agreed. In April, with the Student Union’s support, the Bear’s Den launched a halal food service, making Washington University the first school in the state to offer halal food, according to organizers.

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Scores of mostly Coptic Christian protesters were injured when their weekend demonstration blocking a street near the heart of downtown Cairo was attacked by motorists and residents as riot police stood by, prompting new questions about the ability and willingness of Egypt’s military-led government to maintain security.

The attacks came hours after an explosion at the tomb of a Muslim saint in the northern Sinai town of Sheik Zweid and a week after sectarian clashes left 15 dead and 200 injured.

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