MIDEAST: A Zionist Way to Back Palestinians

To many people Rabbi Arik Ascherman would appear to be a contradiction in terms. He is an ardent Zionist and religious Jew who believes that God made a covenant with the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. But the core of Ascherman’s Zionist ideology revolves around fighting for human rights, especially those of the Palestinians.

MIDEAST: Confrontation Begins Before the Sailing

Activists are engaged in a harsh confrontation with Israeli authorities days before the international ‘Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human’ sets sail towards the Gaza strip in an attempt to break the naval blockade Israel has imposed since 2007.

OP-ED: Religion, Revolution and Two Languages

The elderly Venerable Tep Vong, the Supreme Patriarch of the Buddhist community in Cambodia, traveled to Jaffna in Sri Lanka in the midst of the recent civil war. In a broken city under siege, he joined others - Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians - to try to bring a peaceful end to the violent separatist conflict.

ECUADOR: Bishop Fasts for Reconciliation in Jungle Province

Catholic bishop emeritus Gonzalo López Marañón has been fasting since May 24 in a park in the Ecuadorian capital to call for peace and reconciliation in Sucumbíos, an Amazon province immersed in a conflict over the Vatican's decision to put the diocese in the hands of an ultra-conservative Catholic order.

OP-ED: Europe’s Rising Islamophobia

Religious intolerance is a daily reality in Europe. Mainly targeted at Muslims, attacks on religious pluralism focus on refusing to share public space with non-majority religions or only tolerating practices seen as "secular".

OP-ED: Cutting the Fog: Multiculturalism, Religion and the Common Good

The death of "multiculturalism" has been proclaimed repeatedly recently, the idea pronounced with a big "M" as if we were talking of something tangible around which there is consensus.

EGYPT: Revolution Brings Religious Freedom to Sinai

Abu Sumaia’a Al Suoarki is 29 years old and a Muslim, according to the personal identification card issued by the Egyptian government. These days, however, his religious belief is no longer just a detail on his ID card, but is something he openly practices every day.

OP-ED: Religion, Out of Place?

Brazil is seen as a country of diverse and profound faith. But though religion is an important reference point in the lives of the population, the extent of religious diversity in this sprawling country is not nearly so pervasive as belief itself.

OP-ED: The Sacred and the Secular – Promoting Muslim Democracy

The presence of religion in public space challenges our ideas about the roles of faith in our lives and politics. Over the last centuries, proponents of secularisation have claimed that as societies modernise, the role of religion in public and private life diminishes. For them, modern rationality, science, and the ideal of representative governments as sovereign replace religion as a source of authority, regulation, and security.

EGYPT: Political Punch with a Religious Thrust

More than three months since the fall of the Mubarak regime, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement is well on its way to forming its first official political party since its inception in 1928. But while the nascent party is to be based on "the principles of Islamic Law and respect for freedom of belief," some critics see this as a contradiction.

Tajikistan’s New Generation of Guerrillas

While most of the world is closely watching the Middle East, monitoring the human rights situations in Bahrain, Syria, Libya and Israel, the International Crisis Group (ICG) is keeping its eye on neighbouring Central Asia.

OP-ED: Iran’s Greatest Spiritual Leader

Iran's officially recognised "spiritual leader" today may be Ayatollah Khamenei, but for hundreds of years before the current establishment of mullahs and ayatollahs, Iranians of all creeds have looked to another spiritual leader: Jalal ad- Din Rumi.

Q&A: “We Live in a Complicated World in Transition”

Fresh from a midnight arrival from Intuit's headquarters in California's Silicon Valley, Jean-Christophe Bas has just participated in the launch of a campaign to promote global inclusion, under the auspices of the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations (AOC) and the U.N. Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and in advance of the World Day for Cultural Diversity on May 21.

EGYPT: Secularists Unite to Take On Islamists

Liberal and secular Egyptians at the core of mass protests that toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak are scrambling to form a unified political front ahead of critical parliamentary elections in which they will face the better-organised Islamists.

OP-ED: Do One Thing for Diversity and Inclusion

All cultures contribute to the enrichment of humankind. Human beings must respect one another in all their diversity of belief, culture and language. Differences within and between societies should be neither feared nor repressed but cherished as a precious asset of humanity. This is a core challenge of the 21st century.

OP-ED: The Fate of Minorities in the Arab Spring

From the shores of the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, women and men in many Arab-Muslim countries are demanding that their rulers democratise, and that dictators monopolising power and national wealth for their own profit step down.

EGYPT: Hidden Hands Stoke Sectarian Strife

Recent Muslim-Christian clashes have renewed fears of sectarian conflict in Egypt. But many local analysts - along with wide swathes of the public - believe sectarian tensions are being stoked by elements loyal to the ousted Hosni Mubarak regime in possible coordination with Israel.

Egypt Hunts Down the Right to Love

Abeer Fakhry, a young Christian woman, had only wanted to live with a man who would love and respect her, and not with her abusive husband. But within months of trying to escape her marriage, and her faith, Abeer finds herself chased by her family, by the Orthodox Christian Church, by the fundamentalist Islamic Salafi Group and, lately, by Egypt’s top army generals.

OP-ED: Religion and the Public Sphere in India

In contrast to most South Asian countries, modern India has always been officially "secular", a word the country inscribed in its Constitution in 1976.

Q&A: “Clergy Sexual Abuse of Women Is a Violent Abuse of Power”

Ninety to 95 percent of victims of clergy sexual exploitation are women, according to recent estimates by the Columbia Theological Seminary's Rev. Pamela Cooper White, and yet very few studies have been conducted on this issue.

Pakistanis Indifferent to Anti-U.S Rallies

Two of the country’s main religious-political groups have been calling on Pakistanis to come out and protest the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, but the public response has been lukewarm.