Some interesting law and religion news stories from around the web this week:
- Aljazeera: Pakistani authorities have begun to investigate reports that a charity run by an armed group had established an Islamic court separate from the regular judiciary in the eastern city of Lahore.
- On April 16th, Pope Francis will travel to Lesbos, Greece, to draw attention to the plight of refugees.
- A British court recently ruled that a supervisor did not suffer religious discrimination when she was issued a warning to stop her efforts to proselytize employees at the public mental health clinic where she works.
- The Wall Street Journal: Social conservatives, pivoting from a series of setbacks on the national stage, are taking a more targeted, local approach to religious and individual privacy rights.
- BBC: Members of the Saudi Arabian religious police, known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, will no longer be permitted to chase suspects or arrest them.
- NY Times: On Tuesday, the Governor of North Carolina issued an executive order which signals a modest retreat from the state’s new law eliminating anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender rights.
- India’s Supreme Court ruled this week that temples cannot, legally, deny women’s access to temples.
- This week, Islamists in Indonesia sealed off a newly-opened church and demanded that the local mayor cancel its permit.
- A study conducted for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was released this week, which shows that textbooks written for Pakistani public schools are now more antagonistic toward Christians and other religious minorities than they were five years ago.
- On Monday, Pope Francis spoke about Doctors of Law, whom he said are inflexible in upholding the law, when they should also be considering what is in people’s hearts.
- Haaretz: India’s approximately 5,000-member Jewish community is renewing its request for official government recognition as a minority group, submitting an application to the country’s minority affairs ministry.