Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected Hawaii’s request for an emergency injunction against the Trump Administration’s travel ban while the state seeks clarification on its scope.
- Members of Egypt’s population of Coptic Christians fear that their community is under siege after a series of unexplained killings.
- Muslim groups in Indonesia and Malaysia are calling for a boycott of Starbucks in response to the chain’s public support of gay rights.
- An Australian state has passed a law shifting the burden of proof from plaintiffs to defendants for certain portions of civil cases brought by victims of sexual abuse, though it is not retroactive.
- Two of Belgium’s regional parliaments have voted to ban all animal slaughter conducted without pre-stunning in a move some see as targeted at the Muslim and Jewish communities; Christian leaders have condemned the ban.
- Representatives of Muslim and Jewish organizations in Europe have come together to oppose restrictions on nonmedical circumcision and ritual slaughter.
- Native Americans are suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to prevent the agency from removing grizzly bears from the endangered species list because they say to do so without consulting them would violate their religious freedom.
This book analyses contemporary Christian-Muslim relations in the traditional lands of Orthodoxy and Islam. In particular, it examines the development of Eastern Orthodox ecclesiological thinking on Muslim-Christian relations and religious minorities in the context of modern Greece and Turkey. Greece, where the prevailing religion is Eastern Orthodoxy, accommodates an official recognised Muslim minority based in Western Thrace as well as other Muslim populations located at major Greek urban centres and the islands of the Aegean Sea. On the other hand, Turkey, where the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is based, is a Muslim country which accommodates within its borders an official recognised Greek Orthodox Minority. The book then suggests ways in which to overcome the difficulties that Muslim and Christian communities are still facing with the Turkish and Greek States. Finally, it proposes that the positive aspects of the coexistence between Muslims and Christians in Western Thrace and Istanbul might constitute an original model that should be adopted in other EU and Middle East countries, where challenges and obstacles between Muslim and Christian communities still persist.