Author archives: Faith Matters

Trump’s new travel ban will worsen refugees’ woes: UN
March 8, 2017 By Faith Matters

Trump’s new travel ban will worsen refugees’ woes: UN

President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban on refugee resettlement will worsen the agonies of refugees, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday. Speaking at a press briefing at the UN headquarters, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for Guterres, said refugees are ordinary people forced to flee war, violence and persecution in their […]

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Last letters – From Mosul schoolboys to Islamic State ‘martyrs’
February 27, 2017 By Faith Matters

Last letters – From Mosul schoolboys to Islamic State ‘martyrs’

“My dear family, please forgive me,” reads the handwritten letter discarded in the dusty halls of an Islamic State training compound in eastern Mosul. “Don’t be sad and don’t wear the black clothes (of mourning). I asked to get married and you did not marry me off. So, by God, I will marry the 72 […]

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Philadelphia Jewish cemetery desecrated by vandals
February 27, 2017 By Faith Matters

Philadelphia Jewish cemetery desecrated by vandals

About 100 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia have been knocked over, police said on Sunday, in the latest apparent vandalism incident at a Jewish burial ground in the United States. A Mount Carmel Cemetery visitor called police on Sunday morning to say the gravestones of three of his relatives had been toppled, police […]

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February 27, 2017 By Faith Matters

Specter of xenophobic chaos looming over South Africa again

Tensions between South Africans and foreigners rose again in Pretoria and parts of Johannesburg recently. Authorities say despite government pleas for peace, damage to property, acts of violence and looting continue to be reported in Pretoria. The Home Affairs minister spoke out Thursday to respond to reports from the Nigerian government claiming that 116 of […]

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Comics and music shows in Saudi Arabia draw rebuke from clerics
February 26, 2017 By Faith Matters

Comics and music shows in Saudi Arabia draw rebuke from clerics

A comic show and a recent pop concert have drawn rebuke from powerful religious figures and social media users in Saudi Arabia this week, highlighting the sensitivity of cultural reforms underway in the conservative kingdom. Thousands of Saudis – including women – decked out in costumes and face paint attended the country’s first-ever Comic Con […]

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The power struggle behind Thailand’s temple row
February 24, 2017 By Faith Matters

The power struggle behind Thailand’s temple row

A stand-off between security forces and monks at Thailand’s biggest temple has exposed a struggle as much about power as religion in the predominantly Buddhist country, where the junta has shut down dissent since a 2014 coup. For the past week, some 4,000 police and soldiers have surrounded the Dhammakaya temple, which practices a form […]

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Stolen Nazi gate returns to concentration camp
February 23, 2017 By Faith Matters

Stolen Nazi gate returns to concentration camp

A stolen WWII gate bearing the infamous Nazi slogan. Returning after two years to its home in Dachau, a former concentration camp in Germany. It disappeared overnight in 2014 and only resurfaced in Norway in December after police followed an anonymous tip off. The words “work sets you free” cast into this Iron Gate would […]

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‘Blind sheikh’ convicted in 1993 World Trade bombing dies in U.S. prison
February 20, 2017 By Faith Matters

‘Blind sheikh’ convicted in 1993 World Trade bombing dies in U.S. prison

Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Muslim cleric known as “the blind sheikh” who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of planning a broader “war of urban terrorism” in the United States, died on Saturday in a North Carolina prison, authorities said. Abdel-Rahman, 78, died of natural causes at 9:40 a.m. (1440 […]

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Islamic State posts video of man it says was Egypt church bomber
February 19, 2017 By Faith Matters

Islamic State posts video of man it says was Egypt church bomber

Islamic State published a video on Sunday threatening Egyptian Christians and showing the last statement of a man it said was responsible for the deadly bombing in December of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo. The masked man in battle-dress, whom the group identified as Abu Abdallah al-Masri, is seen encouraging militants all over the world […]

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Pakistan says kills 100 ‘terrorists’ after suicide shrine attack
February 18, 2017 By Faith Matters

Pakistan says kills 100 ‘terrorists’ after suicide shrine attack

Pakistani security forces killed dozens of suspected militants on Friday, a day after Islamic State claimed a suicide bombing that killed more than 80 worshippers at a Sufi shrine, the biggest in a spate of attacks this week across the country. The bombing at the famed Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province was […]

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