Chechen surgeon Khassan Baiev, who treated many Chechens and Russians in the conflict between Russia and Chechnya, is visiting Japan for the first time to give lectures across the country on the suffering of children in the hostilities.
Popularity: 2% [?]
November 21, 2006A top Russian Orthodox cleric said on Sunday that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church were allies in the face of hostile secularism, the Reuters news agency reported Monday.
Popularity: 3% [?]
November 20, 2006Russian Federal Security Service has detained two Uzbeks belonging to the international religious extremist organization Hezb-e Tahrir, RIA-Novosti reports.
Popularity: 3% [?]
November 15, 2006The Azeri Prosecutor General’s Office has initiated a criminal case following last week’s publication of an article in the Senet newspaper insulting the Prophet Muhammad, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported quoting Azeri First Deputy Prosecutor General Rustam Usubov.
Popularity: 1% [?]
A jury in southern Russia acquitted a man being retried for an apartment building blast in 1999 that killed 64 people and led to Moscow’s renewed military campaign in Chechnya, The Associated Press news agency reports quoting a statement by a court spokesman.
Popularity: 2% [?]
The radio-controlled land mine exploded late Friday while the military vehicle was moving near the village of Berkart-Yurt on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Grozny, the regional branch of Russia’s Interior Ministry said in a statement. The blast wounded two soldiers and damaged the vehicle, it said.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Russia’s Central Muslim Board Chairman Talgat Tajuddin has urged Palestinian and Israeli secular leaders and clergy to sign a 40-year peace deal, with Russian religious leaders posing as guarantors, Interfax news agency reports.
Popularity: 2% [?]
November 7, 2006An official spokesman of the Russian Orthodox Church has said that schools should teach other theories of human creation apart from Darwin theory, but did not name any options.
Darwinism should not be presented at schools as the only scientific hypothesis of human origin, said the Secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate’s External Relations Department Michail Dudko.
“Obviously, this theory may be taught in school but not as the only scientific view on the origin of the world. Besides, Darwin’s theory contradicts Christian ideology according to which our world was created and did not evolve graduallyâ€.
The official also noted that the Church’s point of view had the right to be presented in schoolbooks on equal terms with Darwin’s theory.
Dudko made the comments as a court in St. Petersburg started hearings into the lawsuit of a schoolgirl who said teaching Darwin’s in schools infringed her rights as a Christian believer. The girl, represented in court by her father, also claims that presenting Darwin’s theory as the only correct theory encroaches her human right to choose the point of view.
Popularity: 2% [?]
October 27, 2006Russia’s top Muslim cleric has agreed to help the wife and Durban-based parents of abducted Israeli soldier, Ehud Goldwasser, find out if he is still alive, Daily Online reported.
The family recently met the head of the Council of Muftis in Russia, Sheikh Ravil Gaynutdin at his office in Moscow and appealed to him for help.
Hezbollah militants kidnapped Goldwasser and fellow soldier Eldad Regev on July 12 in a cross border raid into Israel. Their capture sparked a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in which thousands of tons of artillery were lobbed both ways across the border. The war eventually ended in a United Nations-brokered ceasefire.
Ehud Goldwasser spent his formative years in Durban, where his parents, Miki and Shlomo, still live. They have returned temporarily to Israel as the base for their endeavours to find him and secure his release.
The Goldwassers handed the mufti a Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) card for Ehud.
“I don’t dare ask you to work toward their release, which of course is our deepest wish,†Miki Goldwasser told Gaynutdin.
“In the initial stage, we will settle for a sign from someone reliable who can confirm to us that the boys are alive.†The appeal echoes a similar call the family made a few weeks ago to the South African government.
She said the family was not pinning its hopes on the mufti.
He promised to use all his connections to bring a swift end to the abductions, but did not go as far as to say he would initiate a meeting with Hezbollah. But he did say he would gladly speak to any member who approached him.
“Islam is a religion that demands the preservation of the honour, health and welfare of prisoners,†he told them.
“We are greatly saddened that there are those among us who claim that suicide is a religious act that is rewarded,†he added.
The meeting took place at the initiative of Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar who praised the good relationship between Muslims and Jews in Russia. However, there have been some anti-Semitic incidents, most notably a bloody knife attack at a Moscow synagogue earlier this year.
Russia and Israel are celebrating 15 years of renewed diplomatic relations. Israel views Russia as a potentially valuable mediator in relations with the Arab world and Iran. One in six Israelis comes from the former Soviet Union.
Relations between the two countries were cut when the Soviet Union threw its support behind Arab states, after the 1967 Six Day War. They were only restored under Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
Popularity: 1% [?]
The Russian registration Service has shut down a women’s monastery in the Tyumen region of Siberia. The state agency said that the monastery, headed by a U.S. citizen, failed to meet the registration rules for NGOs in Russia.
The check on Ishim monastery of St. John, carried out under the recent controversial law on NGOs, has revealed that the activities of the organization did not correspond to those declared in its order, RIA Novosti reports.
The monastery has been forced to seize its actions and move to its original location — Odessa, Ukraine. Besides, local registration officials have informed the Federal Security Service and to the Prosecutor’s Office about the case.
Local branch of the Registration Service registered 9,740 NGOs in the Tyumen, Yugra and Yamal regions in 2006, plus 2,785 public associations, including 410 religious associations.
The service has had to act on violations in 609 cases.
Popularity: 1% [?]
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