The World’ s Muslims: Unity and Diversity – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are united in their belief in God and the Prophet Muhammad and are bound together by such religious practices as fasting during the holy month of Ramadan and almsgiving to assist people in need. But they have widely differing views about many other aspects of their faith, including how important religion is to their lives, who counts as a Muslim and what practices are acceptable in Islam, according to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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In Pedophile Case, Church Failed to Stop Priest – NYTimes.com

On the surface, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan was just the kind of dynamic new priest that any Roman Catholic bishop would have been happy to put in a parish. He rode a motorcycle, organized summer mission trips to Guatemala and joined Bishop Robert W. Finn and dozens of students on a bus trek to Washington for the “March for Life,” a big annual anti-abortion …

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Muslims Enroll at Catholic Colleges in Growing Numbers – NYTimes.com

Arriving from Kuwait to attend college here, Mai Alhamad wondered how Americans would receive a Muslim, especially one whose head scarf broadcasts her religious identity.

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Economist Debates: Jewish fundamentalism

Economist Debates: Jewish fundamentalism?

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Pew Forum: Overview of the Conflict Between Religion and Evolution

Almost 150 years after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Americans are still fighting over evolution. If anything, the controversy has recently grown in both size and intensity. In the last five years alone, for example, debates over how evolution should be taught in public schools have been heard in school boards, town councils and legislatures in more than half the states.

Throughout much of the 20th century, opponents of evolution (many of them theologically conservative Christians) either tried to eliminate the teaching of Darwin’s theory from public school science curricula or urged science instructors also to teach a version of the creation story found in the biblical book of Genesis. The famous 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial, for instance, involved a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the state’s schools. (See The Social and Legal Dimensions of the Evolution Debate in the U.S.)

In this research package

The Conflict Between Religion and Evolution

An overview of the American debate over evolution.

Social and Legal Dimensions

The battle over evolution has been largely fought in courtrooms.

Darwin and His Theory of Evolution

At first glance, Charles Darwin seems an unlikely revolutionary.

Religious Groups’ Official Positions on Evolution

A breakdown of 13 major religious groups’ views on evolution.

Evolution: A Timeline

This timeline highlights key events in the debate surrounding evolution.

Religious Differences on the Question of Evolution

The Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that views on evolution differ widely across religious groups.

Fighting Over Darwin, State by State

A review of battles over whether – or how – public school students should learn about evolution and the origins of life.

But beginning in the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a number of decisions that imposed severe restrictions on those state governments that opposed the teaching of evolution. As a result of these rulings, school boards, legislatures and government bodies are now barred from prohibiting the teaching of evolution. Teaching creation science, either along with evolutionary theory or in place of it, is also banned.

Partly in response to these court decisions, opposition to teaching evolution has itself evolved, with opponents

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Egypt’s Military Cements Its Powers as Voting Ends – NYTimes.com

The Muslim Brotherhood on Monday projected its candidate as the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential election, hours after the ruling military council issued …

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Egyptians Vote in Presidential Poll – NYTimes.com

After weeks of fevered debate, speculation and argument, Egyptians went to the polls on Wednesday in the Arab world’s first competitive presidential election, choosing among a dozen candidates spanning the nation’s …

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More See “Too Much” Religious Talk by Politicians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

A new survey finds signs of public uneasiness with the mixing of religion and politics. The number of people who say there has been too much religious talk by political leaders stands at an all-time high since the Pew Research Center began asking the question more than a decade ago. And most Americans continue to say that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of politics.

Nearly four-in-ten Americans (38%) now say there has been too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders, while 30% say there has been too little. In 2010, more said there was too little than too much religious expression from politicians (37% vs. 29%). The percentage saying there is too much expression of religious faith by politicians has increased across party lines, but this view remains far more widespread among Democrats than Republicans.

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Religion in Prisons – Pew Research Center

Professional prison chaplains see America’s state penitentiaries as places bustling with religious activity, ranging from efforts by inmates to proselytize or convert other inmates to religious switching by prisoners.

In the view of the chaplains, religious counseling and other religion-based programming play an important role in rehabilitating prisoners.

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Faith on the Move – Pew Research Center

An estimated 214 million people — about 3% of the world’s population — have migrated across international borders as of 2010. While the percentage may seem small, if the migrants were counted as one nation, they would constitute the fifth most populous country in the world, just behind Indonesia and ahead of Brazil.

Nearly half of these migrants (49%) are Christians, and the top country of origin has been Mexico, followed by Russia and the Ukraine where borders changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second-largest group of migrants are Muslims (27%), among whom the largest share has come from the Palestinian territories, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

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Chain of Avoidable Errors Cited in Koran Burning – NYTimes.com

American and Afghan officials investigating the Koran-burning episode that has brought relations between the countries to a new low say that the destruction could have been headed off at several …

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Rick Santorum, Meet Hamza Kashgari : The New Yorker

President Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religious freedom makes Rick Santorum “throw up.” “What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their …

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