FaithWorld

(A man prays outside a mosque in Banda Aceh December 5, 2012. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj )

Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries, but they disagree on what it includes and who should be subject to it, an extensive new survey says.

Over three-quarters of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia want sharia courts to decide family law issues such as divorce and property disputes, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said on Tuesday.

Views on punishments such as chopping off thieves’ hands or decreeing death for apostates is more evenly divided in much of the Islamic world, although more than three-quarters of Muslims in South Asia say they are justified.

Those punishments have helped make sharia controversial in some non-Islamic countries, where some critics say radical Muslims want to impose it on western societies, but the survey shows views in Muslim countries are far from monolithic.

(Tokyo Governor Naoki Inose (C) is surrounded by media as he speaks to reporters at Tokyo Metropolitan Government headquarters in Tokyo April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Yuya Shino)

Tokyo’s outspoken governor, Naoki Inose, who heads the city’s bid for the 2020 Olympics, apologized on Tuesday for “inappropriate” comments he made about rival candidate Istanbul and Islamic countries.

The remarks, made in a recent New York Times interview, prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to investigate, while Turkey’s sports minister said they were “unfair and disheartening” and “did not comply with the spirit of the values of the Olympic Movement”.

(A woman collects bricks and other useful items from burnt Muslim homes in Meikhtila April 25, 2013.  REUTERS/Damir Sagolj)

Many are detained in prison-like camps, unable to return to neighborhoods and businesses razed in four days of violence in Meikhtila that killed at least 43 people, most of them Muslims, displaced nearly 13,000, and touched off a wave of anti-Muslim unrest fuelled by radical Buddhist monks.

“It’s for their own security,” said a police officer at a camp inside a sports stadium on Meikhtila’s outskirts. The camp holds more than 1,600 people guarded by police with orders not to let them leave, said the officer, who declined to give his name.

(Participants of “March of the Living” walk in Budapest April 21, 2013. Participants of the walk remember more than half a million Hungarian Jews who were killed in the Holocaust during World War Two. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh)

Hungary has banned a far-right rally planned for the day before an international conference of Jewish leaders opens in the capital, it said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has instructed police to prevent any disturbance around the World Jewish Congress, which begins on Sunday and is expected to express concern over rising anti-Semitism across Europe.

Mriganka Dadwal knows everything about the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic that tells the story of warrior-god Rama and the abduction of his wife Sita by the powerful demon king Ravana.

The journalist-turned-entrepreneur says she would love to read the epic from the point of view of the vanquished Ravana. And now she can.

With several mythological tales getting a modern makeover and imaginative retellings crowding bookshelves, Dadwal and millions of urban, educated Indians who prefer to read in English have more choices than ever before.

(Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during the Global Alcohol Policy Symposium in Istanbul April 26, 2013. REUTERS/Murad Sezer )

If you are looking for one sure way to split public opinion in Turkey, just bring up the word alcohol.

That is what Turkey’s often divisive prime minister did late on Friday when he pronounced that the national drink was not beer, nor the aniseed spirit raki – choice tipple of Turkey’s founding father – but the non-alcoholic yoghurt drink ayran.

(Ordaining Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan (C) presents Rosemarie Smead (R), a 70-year-old Kentucky woman, to the audience after she was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest during a Celebration of Ordination at St. Andrew’s United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky April 27, 2013. Smead was ordained as part of a dissident group operating outside official Roman Catholic Church authority. REUTERS/John Sommers)

In an emotional ceremony filled with tears and applause, a 70-year-old Kentucky woman was ordained a priest on Saturday as part of a dissident group operating outside of official Roman Catholic Church authority.

Rosemarie Smead is one of about 150 women around the world who have decided not to wait for the Roman Catholic Church to lift its ban on women priests, but to be ordained and start their own congregations.

(Members of “Women of the Wall” group pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City April 11, 2013.  REUTERS/Baz Ratner )

Women seeking equal prayer rights at the Western Wall are planning a further challenge to Jewish Orthodox tradition at the site after a court ruling bolstered their cause, an activist said on Sunday.

The Women of the Wall movement hopes to have its members read from a Torah (holy scriptures) scroll at the Jerusalem site, a ritual reserved under Orthodox practice for men only, when it holds its monthly prayer session there on May 10, according to Anat Hoffman, a leader of the group.

(Jewish worshippers read the Torah inside the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba, April 28, 2013. REUTERS/Anis Mili )

Guarded by armed Tunisian police, Jewish revelers chant and dance in a three-day pilgrimage to the El Ghriba synagogue at an island resort 500 km south of Tunis.

In 2011, after the uprising that toppled former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the annual celebration was canceled and in 2012 only a few dozen Jews attended out of fear of possible attacks by hardline Islamists.

(A local health worker carries vaccination kits into a vehicle at a distribution centre ahead of the start of a nationwide polio immunization campaign  in Lagos February 21, 2011. REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Mercy Ahun is Special Representative to Eligible Countries for GAVI, a public-private partnership that works with governments, vaccine producers, civil society organizations and others to expand access to vaccines and immunization in the developing world.

By Mercy Ahun

Attacks on polio immunization workers in Pakistan have drowned out the celebrations of so much recent success in immunization work. Pakistan remains one of only three countries in the world where polio still exists, but efforts to bring vaccines to all corners of the country have been politicized to a tragic extent.