An organisation dedicated to file-sharing is officially recognised as a religion in Sweden.

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Sweden’s file-sharing ‘religion’

Baby Jesus is keeping strange company. For the better part of 50 years, a creche and a Christmas tree were the only holiday displays on the Loudoun County Courthouse grounds. Then came the mannequin Luke Skywalker and signs celebrating the winter solstice. This month, a skeleton Santa Claus was mounted on a cross, intended by its creator to portray society’s obsession with consumerism. A pine stands adorned with tinsel — and atheist testimonials. (“I can be moral without religion,” one declares.) Read full article > >

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In Leesburg, holiday displays bring controversy and change

Eboo Patel, Founder and President of the Interfaith Youth Core , believes that religion is a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division. He’s inspired to build this bridge by his faith as a Muslim, his Indian heritage, and his American citizenship. He has spoken about this vision at places like the TED conference, the Clinton Global Initiative , and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, as well as in college and university campuses across the country. He writes about his work regularly in The Washington Post , USA Today, and The Huffington Post . Recently Patel sat down with AslanMedia to talk about his work.

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Eboo Patel: Working to Make Interfaith the Norm

The Catholic Church, its religious authorities often remind its followers, is intentionally slow to change, if it ever changes at all. The ritual of Communion, where the priest consecrates the bread and wine for distribution to the faithful, for example, has been observed in similar fashion for thousands of years. Read full article > >

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Will Catholic Mass changes cause mass confusion?

Pope Benedict wraps up his three-day tour of Africa with an open-air Mass for tens of thousands of people in Cotonou – the heartland of the Voodoo religion.

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Pope’s Mass wraps up Africa visit

On October 23rd, The Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UC Santa Barbara held an event to launch it’s new Hamdani World Harmony Lecture Series . Leading the series with “The Role of Women in Promoting Peace and Democracy in the Middle East,” Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Iranian Human Rights lawyer, author, and recent exile Shirin Ebadi, drew a substantial audience at the Santa Barabara campus.

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For Every One Woman They Put in Jail, There are 10 More in Her Place

The fervor around Tim Tebow’s beliefs and his struggles for the Denver Broncos has escalated into a national debate over religion and its place in sports.

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In Tebow Debate, a Clash of Faith and Football

The celebration of the Islamic holiday of Eid-ul-Adha is a reminder of whole-animal food preparation, an essential process throughout the developing world that is enjoying a renaissance in modern American dining. Eid-ul-Adha – or Bakra Eid (Eid of the goat ) as we called it – is a day on which Muslims around the world sacrifice cows and goats in remembrance of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God. Growing up in Karachi, I remember trucks stopping door-to-door picking up animal skins, excited chatter about the treats we would soon enjoy, and visiting friends and family to share carefully packaged cuts of meat. My appreciation and understanding for this tradition took on a new perspective two years ago when my grandmother visited me in Atlanta. My sister and I were discussing this crazy new food movement in the American south that used buzzwords like farm-to-table, organic, and whole-animal cuisine. “Can you imagine, Alishba? A restaurant that actually utilizes each and every part of an animal! How ingenious! They use the good, the gross, AND the ugly!” Insert grandmother Nani: “Sweetie, is that what they are really doing? Oh well, it’s good that people are now catching on to methods we have used since donkey’s years!” Me: “Hold on, what do you mean Nani? How can you say that? We don’t eat a whole animal – like ALL of the parts!” “No, you do, maybe you just didn’t notice. Don’t you remember Eid!?” Suddenly, I began to see my 22 years of Bakra Eid experiences from a new perspective. Saima Ali was raised in Pakistan, and continues a Bakra Eid tradition with her family in Atlanta. Although she has lived in Atlanta for over thirty years, Ali and her family travel to a family farm Calhoun, Georgia every year to select, slaughter, prepare, and consume a cow. “I want my children to be able to know where their proteins come from, and to respect the animal they sacrifice and eat.” Alpharetta, Georgia mother of two Mobiha Murad puts particular emphasis on the quality of meat used during the holiday. “The taste of fresh meat prepared for an Eid feast tastes like no other dish through out the year; the meat is fresh, aromatic and has a soft and subtle texture.” Murad uses the opportunity of the whole animal to prepare classic, labor-intensive south Asian delicacies like kata kat, paya, and varieties of kababs. Similarly, celebrated Atlanta chef Anne Quatrano has gone “meatcentric” in a special way with her two year old venture, Abattoir. Quatrano’s menu at Abattoir includes dishes made with head cheese (a terrine made from head meat and jellied stock), feet, and innards. “We use locally-raised proteins to produce high quality, affordable food.” Explaining the origin of the local-animal concept, Quatrano notes, “We had great relationships with local farmers, butchers, and herders (by purchasing produce for her other restaurants Bacchanalia, Star Provisions, and Floataway Café); we knew the way their products are nurtured, cared for, and butchered.” And the Abattoir experience goes beyond the dining clientele. “Using a whole animal is a spiritual experience for me and the staff here because we respect the animal that has given up its life for us to consume.” That respect extends to the environment outside the restaurant for Kevin Ouzts, owner of The Spotted Trotter , a chic charcuterie in Kirkwood, an Atlanta neighborhood. Ouzts is a great advocate of thoughtful, environmentally conscious decisions about meat. “As far is travel and cutting time is concerned, buying the whole animal locally streamlines the process and you then avoid wastage of both energy and non-recyclable materials used in packaging proteins or then preserving it.” Further, Ouzts buys whole animals only from local farms where animals are raised on organic feed. Although some of Quatrano’s and Ouzts’s menu selections would be literally foreign to Nani, I think she would recognize and appreciate the care, precision, and respect that goes in to the dishes. Brain masala today, tripe ramen tomorrow. Previously – Five reasons to consider the goat and An Egyptian family's Eid al-Fitr feast For more on religion, visit the Belief Blog

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Bakra Eid and the whole animal tradition

TUNIS — The strong showing by a moderate Islamist party in Tunisia’s elections this week has made this tiny coastal nation a test case for whether Islamist ideology and democracy can coexist in a region long dominated by Western-backed autocrats who have used religion as a foil, not a governing philosophy. Read full article > >

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In Tunisia, Islamists flourish as democracy is ushered in

After Perry backer called religion a ‘cult.’

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Herman Cain Skirts Mormon Question

The uneasy relationship between Mitt Romney and the evangelical wing of the Republican Party over his Mormon religion has been part of the quiet subtext of the primary contest so far. On Friday, the quiet ended. At the Values Voters summit in Washington, prominent evangelical leader Robert Jeffress told reporters that Mormonism was a cult and that Romney was not a Christian. Read full article > >

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Mormonism takes center stage at conservative event

At any given moment in this country, there are museums, galleries, performing arts centers, film societies, theater groups and book clubs, all focusing on the artistic work of people who share something in common: race, gender, religion, sexual identity. And the assumption is almost always the same: that people who are demographically alike in some way must produce artworks with something in common. Read full article > >

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‘30 Americans’: A challenging study of identity

When people think of Southern California, they tend to picture sunshine, a free-spirited atmosphere, and a culture of expression and curiosity. It is an idyllic setting to wax philosophic on matters of religion in the 21st century.

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School of Thoughts

“Islam is a violent religion. It is not a religion of peace,” announces an unnamed political pundit in the opening of the documentary Fordson as shots of Fordson high school football players and early Arab American settlers flash across the screen. Ten years after the tragedy of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the hateful rhetoric is so familiar we do not need names to remember. But the rarely seen images remind us of both the rich history of Arabs in America and how this new generation of Arab Americans is moving us forward in quintessential American fashion – by playing high school football.

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Review of Fordson: Faith, Fasting and Football

Too many atheists miss the point of religion, it’s about how we live and not what we believe, writes John Gray.

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Can religion tell us more than science?