As y’all probably know by now, there was no Quran burn in Gainesville on Saturday — “not today, not ever,” says Pastor Terry Jones. The non-event resulted in at least 13 deathsin the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan, and two in Afghanistan. The Orlando Sentinel profiles the Florida imam who helped broker a cease-fire with Jones, and Gainesville is still trying to make sense of it all as some local churches read portions of the Quranfrom Sunday pulpits and locals try to remember what normal was before all this.
In a sign that Islamophobia continues to simmereven after Jones’ non-event, city officials in Hartford, Conn., are under fire for opting to invite Muslim leaders to offer prayers before municipal meetings. U.S. Muslims are asking why, nine years after 9/11, they’re still struggling to be seen as authentic Americans.
9/11 observances were overshadowed by the lingering dispute over whether to build an Islamic community center a stone’s throw from Ground Zero; crowds for and against faced off in lower Manhattan. A new Marist poll finds support for the center inched up from 34 to 41 percent among New Yorkers in the past month, and the imam behind the project is blaming pols like Sarah Palin for fanning the flames of Islamophobia to further their own careers.
Author Porochista Khakpour wonders whether life as a U.S. Muslim was better under George W. Bush than Barack Obama, and Tariq Ramadan says it’s time for American Muslims to step it up.
Perhaps envious of all the media attention Jones got, Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps announced plans to burn Qurans on Sunday; Religion Dispatches describes the scene. Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq, the two guys who set off to mark Ramadan in 30 different states, chew over their findingswith NPR.
Sarah Posner attends the launch of Ralph Reed’s new Faith and Freedom Coalition; Americans United for Separation of Church and State mostly yawns. Gay rights groups are increasing the pressureon Congress to repeal Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell as another case (this time in Washington state) heads to federal court. Number-crunchers are expecting a record increase in federal poverty numbers (based on recession-ravaged 2009 data) scheduled for release later this week.
The Vatican‘s chief ecumenical officers says Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will focus on what they have in common during B16’s visit to the UK this week, not the recent strains between Catholics and Anglicans. The AP thinks the pope’s choice to beatify the late Cardinal John Henry Newman could cause more tentions, and also compares and contrasts Benedict’s trip with John Paul II‘s 1982 visit, and the Vatican‘s library is reopening to scholarsfollowing a three-year renovation.
Israel is poised to start deporting illegal immigrant families, a move that officials say is necessary to help preserve the country’s Jewish identity. Not everyone is happy with the government’s decision to end Daylight Savings Time a month and a half early to accommodate Yom Kippur.
Catholic officials in Belgium want abusive priests to turn themselves in to superiors; a confessed abusive bishop has gone into hiding. A public referendum that easily passed in Turkey will allow the appointment of more judges who are sympathetic to the (officially secular) government’s Islamic leanings.
Defrocked Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo (anyone remember him and his accupuncturist wife?) is locked in a land disputewith his former church. Muslim holy men in Senegal are no longer allowed to let children beg on the streets on their behalf, a judge ruled.
