After my earlier post/can of worms on secularism I have been a bit hesitant to stir up more religious trouble. Until I saw this little beauty:
The Vatican has asked Israel to ban a gay pride parade due to take place tomorrow in Jerusalem. Thousands of gay activists are expected to march in Jerusalem even though [...]

I cannot recommend highly enough Ken Macleod’s post (found via Crooked Timber) on how the “socialism of fools” - Engels’ description of anti-semitism - was accompanied by a sort of “liberalism of fools”, to wit, the anti-Catholicism of the pre-WWII era. Macleod, acknowledging that anti-Catholicism is rather passé these days, wonders if hatred of [...]

Iran newspaper Hamshahri came up with an original plan to counter the release of Danish cartoons making fun of the prophet Muhammad and decided to hold a little cartoon contest to test the limits of free speech:
The daily paper Hamshahri said the contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech — the reason [...]

The Guardian is running a story which seems to cast Jyllands-Posten Jens Kaiser editor in a very sorry light indeed. If this story is confirmed I think the expression would be ‘rank hypocrisy’ rather than ‘free speech outpost’.(Many thanks to commenter Hans for drawing this to our attention).
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the [...]