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(The publisher of Attounissia newspaper Nasreddine Ben Saida looks at a photograph of German-Tunisian footballer Sami Khedira of Real Madrid with his nude girlfriend, at his office March 19, 2012. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi)

Islamists attacked Nessma television station in October for airing an Iranian animated film that depicted God, accusing it of stirring up trouble on the eve of Tunisia’s first election since the uprising that ousted Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Police detained the protesters, but also put Nessma’s boss on trial. Among the charges: violating “sacred values”.

In February, Nassredine Ben Saida, the publisher of a tabloid newspaper set up after the revolution, was jailed for eight days and fined after he plastered a picture of a German-Tunisian footballer and his naked girlfriend on the front page.

Tunisian journalists and secularists fear these and other incidents are signs the interim government wants to roll back gains in freedom of expression after the uprising.

What concerns many is that legal action has tended to focus on issues of public morality and ignore important issues such as the poor sourcing and libel that plague the profession. With the ban on criticism of the government only recently lifted, Tunisian journalists worry that they are tripping over new red lines.

The standoff between the media, dominated by secularists, and the government, now led by Islamist moderates Ennahda, reflects a broader struggle over identity in what has for decades been among the Arab world’s most secular countries.

Sitting in the whitewashed villa that houses the journalists union, Nejiba Hamrouni said the new government still viewed the media with suspicion.

“What we see daily is not a return to censorship, but efforts to influence journalists and guide them towards a particular editorial line, particular figures, particular issues,” said Hamrouni, elected to lead the union last year.

Read the full story by Lin Noueihed here.
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(A poster of Pope Benedict XVI is seen on a street in Havana March 13, 2012, as the country continues with preparations for the Pope's visit on March 26. REUTERS/Enrique de la Osa )

Father Miguel Angelo Jimenez’ congregation is small and mostly elderly and his church, Our Lady of Carmen in central Havana, needs repairs to a leaking roof for which there is no money. As he sits behind a worn desk that looks like it dates back to the church’s opening in 1926, he is under no illusions about the state of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba.

“It was in decline (before Cuba’s 1959 revolution) and it continues to decline in many things. The Church really needs to renew itself,” he said.

That, in essence, is why Pope Benedict will visit the communist island on March 26-28 after a three-day stop in Mexico. The once-powerful Catholic Church in Cuba is hoping the German pontiff will awaken what Cardinal Jaime Ortega called last week a “a sleeping faith” and also help build on its budding relationship with the Cuban government.

Badly weakened in the years after the revolution, the Church wants to regain some of its lost glory, both in terms of bringing more people into the fold and expanding its role in shaping Cuban society.

Read the full story by Jeff Franks here.
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(Stained glass image of Saint Patrick in the Church of the Assumption, Our Lady's Island, County Wexford, Ireland, 26 September 2010/Andreas F. Borchert)

St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, may well have been a tax collector for the Romans who fled to Ireland where he could have traded slaves to pay his way, according to new research by a University of Cambridge academic published on Saturday.

The generally accepted account of the saint’s life, albeit based on scant evidence, says Patrick was abducted from western Britain as a teenager and forced into slavery in Ireland for six years during which time he developed a strong Christian faith.

Afterwards, the account continues, he escaped his captors and went back to Britain before eventually returning to Ireland as a missionary.

But Roy Flechner, from the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, believes there are reasonable grounds to question the popular version which is based partly on Patrick’s own words in his “Confessio”.

“The problem with this account is that he was telling this story in response to accusations leveled against him that he fled to Ireland for financial gain,” Flechner told Reuters in a telephone interview. “It’s an inference that has been made long before in conventional scholarship.”

According to the study, published on Saturday to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, the saint may have wanted to leave Britain in the early 400s to avoid the “onerous” duties of a “Decurion”, or Roman official responsible for collecting taxes.

Patrick’s father was a Decurion and, when he decided to rid himself of the post by becoming a cleric, his responsibilities would have fallen to his son.

Read the full story here.
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(Joachim Gauck stands in front of a TV screen with a picture of Germany's Federal Assembly after being elected by the assembly as president, in Berlin, March 18, 2012. REUTERS/Thomas Peter)

Germans resoundingly elected Joachim Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor and human rights activist from communist East Germany, as president of the European Union’s largest country on Sunday, posing a potential headache for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In the largely ceremonial office of president, Gauck presents no threat to Merkel’s domination of national politics. But his moral authority, independence of mind and lack of party affiliation could make him an awkward partner for her government as it struggles to overcome Europe’s economic crisis. Gauck, 72, won 991 votes in the federal assembly comprising members of parliament and regional delegates. His main rival, veteran anti-Nazi campaigner Beate Klarsfeld, got 126 votes.

Germans hope Gauck, a prominent player in the peaceful protests that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, can restore dignity to the presidency, tarnished by financial scandals that felled his predecessor Christian Wulff.

“I take up this post with the endless gratitude of a person who, after a long trek through the political desert of the 20th century, has finally and unexpectedly found his home again and was able to witness in the last 20 years the joy of shaping a democratic society,” he said after taking the oath of office.

Gauck has a rich life story shaped by the Cold War. When he was 11 his father was sent to the Siberian Gulag for alleged espionage and did not return for four years. That experience fostered an abiding aversion to totalitarianism, and he has said freedom will be the leitmotif of his presidency.

After the fall of Communism and Germany’s reunification, Gauck oversaw the archives of the dreaded Stasi, the East German secret police, earning recognition for exposing their crimes. He ensured that the sprawling files were used to root out former Stasi employees and collaborators in public service and to understand the country’s past.

See also Eastern activist tilts Germany’s political landscape and How East Germany’s communists misunderstood its Protestants.

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Read the full story here.
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(An "emo" punk fan, 12 February 2009/Visual Kei )

At least 14 youths have been stoned to death in Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shi’ite militants against youths wearing Western-style “emo” clothes and haircuts, security and hospital sources say.

Militants in Shi’ite neighborhoods where the stonings have taken place circulated lists on Saturday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.

The killings have taken place since Iraq’s interior ministry drew attention to the “emo” subculture last month, labeling it “Satanism” and ordering a community police force to stamp it out.

“Emo” is a form of punk music developed in the United States. Fans are known for their distinctive dress, often including tight jeans, T-shirts with logos and distinctive long or spiky haircuts.

At least 14 bodies of youths have been brought to three hospitals in eastern Baghdad bearing signs of having been beaten to death with rocks or bricks, security and hospital sources told Reuters under condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Nine bodies were brought to hospitals in Sadr City, a vast, poor Shi’ite neighborhood, three were brought to East Baghdad’s main al-Kindi hospital and two were brought to the central morgue, medical sources said.

Six other young people, including two girls, were wounded in beatings intended as warnings, the security sources said.

Read the full story by Ahmed Rasheed and Mohammed Ameer here.
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(U.S. dollar banknotes lie on a table in Warsaw August 8, 2011. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel )

It’s a different kind of value investing.

A growing number of Americans are deciding to base their investment decisions on principles ranging from their religion to their concerns about the environment. Financial advisers managed nearly .1 trillion in assets in 2010 using so-called socially responsible strategies, according to industry group US SIF, up from just 0 billion in 1995.

It’s a long way from the late 1970s, when most social investors were more concerned about what they wouldn’t buy than what they would. Typical taboo lists included companies involved in the production of tobacco, alcohol, weapons or nuclear energy.

Now, however, some socially-minded investors are starting to put as high a value on performance as well. For financial advisers, that means managing a client’s socially screened portfolio can require an additional layer of research to keep pace with or outperform the broader market.

Read the full story by David K. Randall here.
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(Tourists and locals walk past a mosque in Cape Town's Bo-Kaap suburb April 20, 2010. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings)

A low-budget movie about a young Muslim man’s quest to make it on the Johannesburg comedy circuit is wowing audiences across South Africa, and its powerful portrayal of the clash between youth, tradition and religion may lead to global recognition.

Set in the Muslim Indian enclave of Fordsburg in Africa’s “City of Gold”, “Material” charts the tempestuous relationship between Cassim Kaif, played by local stand-up comedian Riaad Moosa, and his ageing father, Ebrahim, whose one dream is for his son to take over the family’s struggling fabric shop.

Shot on a shoe-string million budget, the movie combines moments of heart-wrenching family and personal drama with hilarious snippets of stand-up comedy and everyday life in one of the continent’s most cosmopolitan cities.

“The film celebrates the goodness of South Africa’s spirit and the legacy of a unique and historical part of this land,” said producer Ronnie Apteker, a successful Internet entrepreneur whose energies are now dedicated to film-making.

“It is not a Bollywood film, but a contemporary Indian story. It is a movie for the whole family, contains no profanity, and should be able to be enjoyed by people of all ages both in South Africa and the rest of the world.”

In the past three weeks, box office takings show it holding its own against major Hollywood releases, and it is generating considerable buzz in local media and among a South African public not renowned for its movie-going.

It is also a rare example of a film that explores the plight of the sizeable Indian community, rather than focus on the more well-known struggle of the black majority against the white-minority rule that ended in 1994.

Read the full story by Ed Cropley here.
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(Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols speaking at Britain's Foreign Office in London July 5, 2010 in London. REUTERS/Peter Macdiarmid)

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England will be the latest church leader to try to ambush the prime minister’s attempt to legalise same-sex marriage when he launches his “no” campaign from the pulpit this weekend.

Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols has written a pastoral letter to be read out during Mass in the London diocese’s 214 parishes over the weekend of March 10 -11, warning about the dangers of changing the legal definition of marriage.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron is already facing a religious backlash from many in the Anglican mother church, the Church of England, which is sometimes called “the Conservative Party at prayer.”  Its head, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has said a new law for gay couples would amount to forcing unwanted change on the rest of the nation.

The argument echoes others elsewhere in Europe and beyond. On Friday, Pope Benedict denounced the “powerful political and cultural currents” seeking to legalise gay marriage in the United States, where Maryland has just become the eighth state to allow it.

The British government is planning this month to launch a formal consultation document on allowing homosexual couples to marry, spearheaded by a minister from the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the government coalition. Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone argues churches do not “own” marriage law.

Read the full story here.
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(Islamic scholar Sheikh Hussein Hamed Hassan checks a copy of Koran in Russian during an interview at his office in Cairo, February 27, 2012. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany )

Decades of parsing turgid legal documents have not dampened the enthusiasm of octogenarian Islamic scholar Sheikh Hussein Hamed Hassan. He gets agitated as he searches for a paper among piles of documents strewn across his posh Dubai office.

Wearing a dark grey suit with no tie, the Egyptian-born academic talks to a visitor for almost two hours about Islamic banking, which he has been instrumental in developing over half a century of writing and lecturing.

“Listen to me. You have to understand the basics of sharia, what’s allowed and not allowed in Islam. If you get it, then you’ll write it. And the whole world will understand,” he says.

Sheikh Hussein is one of the world’s most sought-after scholars in applying sharia or Islamic law to finance, chairing no fewer than 22 of the boards which rule on whether products and practices in the industry obey religious principles. Such scholars command great influence but their opinions, lacking definitive legal sanction, are often challenged, creating an uncertain regulatory environment. And some scholars sit on scores of boards, leaving them open to charges of conflict of interest and making it hard for them to keep up with all areas of their work.

“The big problem is that there just aren’t enough of them,” said one Dubai-based banker in the industry, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. “It’s a bit like being a rock star. They are disproportionately recognized, with people saying: ‘I want that name in Malaysia, I want that name in Bahrain.’”

Read the full story by Anjuli Davies and Mirna Sleiman here.
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(A man walks past a newly-opened Sharjah Islamic Bank branch on Sheikh Zayed road in Dubai January 11, 2012. REUTERS/Jumana El Heloueh)

A controversial plan by Goldman Sachs to issue an Islamic bond has ignited a wider debate on whether conventional banks in the West should be allowed to engage in Islamic finance.

At a major conference of Islamic scholars and bankers in London this week, much of the public and private discussion was devoted to whether growing Western interest in Islamic finance could damage the industry by compromising its religious principles.

Some participants argued investment banks such as Goldman should be banned from issuing Islamic bonds, or sukuk, because the funds they raised could help to finance other parts of their business that did not comply with sharia or Islamic law.

“A conventional bank, with the exception of multilateral development banks like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, should not be allowed to issue sukuk,” said Badlisyah Abdul Ghani, chief executive of CIMB Islamic, the Islamic unit of CIMB Group, Malaysia’s second biggest bank.

“The basic principle of Islamic finance is that you should only finance activities that are consistent with sharia, and conventional rib (interest) is not,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of the Euromoney Islamic Finance Summit.

Other participants said the industry could not bar conventional banks and should focus instead on ensuring that each of their Islamic transactions complied with sharia law.

Read the full story by Anjuli Davies here.
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