What Muslims want in a new pope

(RNS) Together, Islam and Catholicism represent about 40 percent of the world’s population, so the estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world have more than a passing interest in the new pope who will shepherd the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Too often, relations between the two groups have been shaped by conflict — the Christian…

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Netherlands Raises Terror Threat Level From Limited to Substantial

March 13 2013   The Dutch National Counterterrorist and Safety Coordinator (NCTV) has raised the threat of a terror attack in the Netherlands from “limited” to “substantial”. The government’s anti-terror organization made the announcement on the grounds that increased risk stems from radicalized individuals returning to the country from fighting in the Middle East, specifically…

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Seeing Islam in Global Cities: A Spatial Semiotic Analysis

Jerome Krase & Timothy Shortell, Department of Sociology, Brooklyn College CUNY  As noted by Krase and colleagues (Krase & Hum 2007; Krase & Shortell 2009, 2011; Shortell & Krase 2011, 2012), visual sociology of changing urban neighborhoods is not merely an aesthetic exercise of finding images to illustrate sociological concepts. Rather, it is an increasingly…

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Celebrating Darwin: Religion And Science Are Closer Than You Think

The MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, which we’re officially publishing today in honor of Charles Darwin’s 204th birthday. We found that only 11 percent of Americans belong to religions openly rejecting evolution or our Big Bang. So if someone you know has the same stressful predicament as my student, chances are that they…

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On TV, an Everyday Muslim as Everyday American

The screen showed a balding man with tawny skin and a salt-and-pepper goatee, and seconds later it spelled out his name: Mujahid Abdul-Rashid. The advertisement went on to show him fishing, playing in a yard with two toddlers, and sitting down to a family meal. One week later, again during an N.F.L. game, the same…

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