Some interesting law and religion news stories from around the web this week:
- At the beginning of the United States Supreme Court’s next term, the Court will hear argument about whether prison officials may prohibit Muslim inmates from growing the beards required by their faith. As in the Hobby Lobby case decided last term (though this case implicates a different statute), the Court will consider whether the challenged government regulation places a substantial burden on religious practices. If so, the government must show that it had a compelling reason for the regulation and no less restrictive means of achieving it.
- A new version of an Ohio bill, which would replace the Common Core in that state, removed language that could have opened the door for religious views to be taught in science classes and replaced it with language calling for “critiques of strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories,” among other changes.
- The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 2013 hate-crime conviction against 15 members of an Amish separatist group who forcibly cut the beards of others in their faith.
- Emboldened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise to power in May, leaders of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have joined right-wing activists to openly declare India a nation of Hindus, posing a challenge to its multi-faith constitutional commitment and sparking controversy as they work to convert all non-Hindus.
- Turkish Environment and Urbanism Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar said that Christianity is no longer a religion but only a “culture,” and warned against a similar fate for Islam.
- Opinion: Nabil Echchaibi, Associate Director of the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture at the University of Colorado, challenges all Arabs take up the fight against Islamic extremism.
- Religion and gay rights take center stage in Brazil’s presidential race.
- Indonesian and Malaysian authorities say they are keeping a close eye on local supporters of the Islamic State, who threaten religious minorities and host destructive demonstrations in Southeast Asia.
- South Africa has denied the Dalai Lama a visa to enter the country for a third time.The reasons for denial are reported to have involved fear of angering the Chinese government.
- After abducting more than 200 girls in Nigeria’s Borno State, Boko Haram has begun occupying churches in the country’s northeastern region, beheading men, forcing Christian women to convert to Islam and taking them as wives.
- Russia’s Federal Migration Service in Crimea has rejected attempts by the Muftiate to allow for 23 Turkish imams and religious teachers to continue the service in Crimean mosques and madrassahs that they have been providing for many years.
- A missionary group working in Nigeria recently reported that a six-year-old boy was beheaded by Boko Haram in the Christian village of Attagara, Nigeria, in June as a missionary was trying to get the beaten boy medical attention.
- Illinois Bishop Daniel Jenky and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York are engaged in a public dispute over which diocese has claim to Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s body, which is currently buried in New York.