Muslim leaders are upset over plans to host a “International Burn a Koran Day” at a church in Gainesville, Fla.; this is the same church, you might recall, that got in trouble for posting a “No Homo Mayor” sign against an openly gay mayoral candidate.
The lesbian high school student in Mississippi who was told she couldn’t attend prom with her girlfriend has settled her suit against the school district for $35,000.
The American Jewish Congress, which lost $21 million of its $24 million endowment to Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, has apparently suspended operations after 92 years. Some folks in Hyrum, Utah, are threatening payback at the polls after a pastor was allowed to close a July 4 celebration with a prayer — in Spanish.
President Obama and new British PM David Cameron say the release of the Pan Am 103 bomber had nothing to do with BP oil contracts. Indian audiences are flocking to a Bollywood parody about Osama bin Laden. Three Americans were expelled from Indonesia on charges of (illegal) proselytizing, while Indonesian Muslims got the OK to drink coffee brewed from the dung droppings of civet cats.
NPR looks at efforts to reconcile China’s “official” and “underground” Catholic churches, and the Chronicle of Higher Ed looks at Germany‘s efforts to train imams. Spain rejected a total ban on burqas, but it could live to see another day in a narrower form.
Fire eaters in Saudi Arabia are growing tired of harassment from the country’s religious police. Austrian church leaders say a confessional that’s for sale on eBay can’t be turned into a one-man sauna.
A Welsh politician is facing a possible inquiry after posting on his Twitter feed: “I didn’t know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.” Hard-line Islamic groups are rushing to the aid of a Nigerian politician who’s under fire for marrying a 13-year-old girl; he says a 2003 law the prohibits marriage to anyone under age 18 “must have been enacted in error.”
CNN’s Eatocracy blog delves into the dietary restrictions of 12 major world religious traditions, and Politics Daily compares the parenting models of Sarah and Todd Palin, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as their daughters get ready to step down the aisle this summer.