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September 16th, 2010
10:40 PM ET
New Republic controversy on Islam blog post roils HarvardFrom CNN Jerusalem bureau chief Kevin Flower: A blog post on Islam on the website of the liberal political magazine The New Republic has prompted a torrent of criticism that is roiling the hallowed halls of Harvard University. Writing about Muslims in America, New Republic editor and former Harvard professor Martin Peretz posted the following on the magazine's site:
September 16th, 2010
04:33 PM ET
North Carolina city officials vote to take down Christian flagFrom CNN affiliate WGHP: A Christian flag flying at the Veterans Memorial at Central Park in King, North Carolina has been removed following a city council vote on Wednesday. According to city officials, the City Council voted 3-to-1 to remove the flag, with councilman Wesley Carter being the only vote against removing the flag.
September 16th, 2010
03:00 PM ET
Our Take: How to reclaim Islam from the radicals
By Khalil Nouri and Michael Hughes, Special to CNN Contrary to popular belief, most of the Islamic faithful were severely disturbed by the 9/11 attacks. According to Gallup, 93 percent of Muslims across the globe condemn the heinous acts, and many found it appalling that deranged jihadists hijacked two planes and killed over 3,000 innocents in the name of Islam. These extremists also hijacked Islam itself. Muslims can rescue their religion only through a solution that is spiritual in nature. Although a relatively diminutive percentage of the total, Muslims who adhere to Islamic radicalism have done significant damage. Take Afghanistan, where U.S.-led forces are struggling against the Taliban and al Qaeda, movements described as “fascism with an Islamic face”. 
September 16th, 2010
12:13 PM ET
Pope hasn't done enough to stop abuse, British sayPope Benedict XVI has not done enough to punish priests who abuse children, and the Catholic Church has not shown enough remorse for the crimes, British people said overwhelmingly in a poll released as the pope arrived in the United Kingdom Thursday. And British Catholics are nearly as critical of the pope and the church as the population as a whole, the ComRes poll for CNN found. Three out of four British adults say the pope hasn't done enough to punish the guilty. Among British Catholics, two out of three agree. Fewer than one in 20 British people say he has done enough. But only one in four think Benedict should resign over the child-abuse allegations sweeping across the Catholic Church in Europe and North America. Half said he should not, and the other quarter did not know.
September 16th, 2010
11:04 AM ET
Opinion: Our moral code is out of date Consider how just two fundamental ideas have ushered in the modern world. Rewind a scant 600 years, and modern science doesn't yet exist. Men and women live and die in squalor and filth, largely ignorant of the germs that ravage their bodies and of the natural laws that govern the universe, instead imploring an alleged supernatural force to help them navigate this vale of tears. But thanks to minds such as Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur and Charles Darwin, this is not how we face the world today. They taught us our method of knowing: careful, mathematically precise observation, step-by-step inference and generalization, and systematic, evidence-based theory building. 
September 16th, 2010
10:41 AM ET
Pancake house takes on prayer groupIHOP has filed a lawsuit against a church group called the International House of Prayer claiming that the group is illegally using the pancake house's famous acronym. The legal flap started earlier this month when the International House of Pancakes filed the lawsuit in a federal court in California. The Kansas City, Missouri-based church group "selected and adopted the International House of Prayer name, knowing it would be abbreviated IHOP. IHOP-KC intended to misappropriate the fame and notoriety of the household name IHOP to help promote and make recognizable their religious organization," the lawsuit says. 
September 16th, 2010
10:36 AM ET
Church abuse survivors demand justiceSue Cox was 10-years-old when she says she was raped by a priest in her family home on the eve of her Confirmation, a sacrament which signifies the cementing of bonds between baptised believers and the Church. The attack occurred in her bedroom while her family was downstairs. "I was mortified. I started to self-harm. I was ashamed and guilty," she said. Her mother told her: "Perhaps it was one of God's plans." "It wasn't one of His better ones," Cox said. Now in her 60s, Cox was one of five abuse survivors who Wednesday urged Pope Benedict XVI to turn over information on abuse claims against the clergy ahead of his arrival in the UK Thursday.
September 16th, 2010
09:56 AM ET
Pope addresses sex abuse scandal as he starts visit to BritainLondon, England - Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday the Roman Catholic Church has not been vigilant enough or fast enough in responding to the problem of sexual abuse by priests. "These revelations were for me a shock and a great sadness. It is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly ministry was possible," he told reporters aboard his plane to Scotland. "How a man who has done this and said this can fall into this perversion is difficult to understand."
September 16th, 2010
09:46 AM ET
Dispatch from pope's UK trip: How it works on the papal planeCNN Senior Vatican Analyst John L. Allen Jr. filed this report from London. Media coverage of day one on any papal trip is often dominated, for good or ill, by whatever the pope says to journalists aboard the papal plane. Benedict XVI’s forthright comments on the sexual abuse crisis set the right tone heading to the United States in April 2008, while his suggestion last year en route to Africa that condoms make AIDS worse set off a global contretemps. The opening day of Benedict’s September 16 -19 trip to the United Kingdom has been another case in point, as most coverage has featured Benedict’s statement that the Catholic Church was “not sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick and decisive” in combating the sexual abuse crisis.
September 16th, 2010
09:42 AM ET
Yemen's many shades of IslamEditor's Note: CNN's Mohammed Jamjoom filed this report from Yemen. Residents of Tareem, one of Yemen’s most historic and holy cities, claim there are more descendants of the Prophet Mohammed here than anywhere else in the world. Tucked away in the country’s Hadramawt Province – a land of dusty valleys and towering cliffs – the city is home to Dar Al Mustafa, a local religious school that attracts students from all over the world. While other religious schools in this remote part of Yemen have recently come under scrutiny for alleged links with extremist groups, residents of Tareem say the teachings here have nothing in common with Osama Bin Laden’s militant interpretation of Islam. |
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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Editor's Note: Khalil Nouri was born in an Afghan political family. He is the co-founder of 
Editor's note: Yaron Brook is president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and a columnist at Forbes.com; Onkar Ghate is a senior fellow at the center. Brook is one of the speakers at The Economist's "Ideas Economy: Human Potential" 