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• Executive will not pay for Muslim schools | First Minister Jack McConnell yesterday ruled out direct Executive funding for Muslim schools in Scotland in the wake of the highly critical report on the Imam Muhammad Zakariya school in Dundee. (Muslim News, UK)
  
  
• Islam 'should talk to the West' | Delegates from 65 Islamic countries are meeting in Cairo for the start of a conference on tolerance in Islam. (BBC)
  
  

Muslims, police clash in Thailand, church burned in Ambon:

• Thai police kill 107 Muslims in battles | More than 100 Muslim militants armed with machetes and guns died as they attacked security posts in southern Thailand yesterday. (The Telegraph, UK)
  
  
• Thai forces kill 107 after attacks by Muslim youths | Thailand's troubled southern provinces exploded into violence yesterday when hundreds of Muslim youths attacked 15 police and military posts in an apparent attempt to seize weapons. (The Guardian, UK)
  
  
• Jakarta denies troops razed Ambon church | Witnesses in Karang Panjang, in Ambon city, said soldiers arrived at the Nazaret church on Tuesday night and promised to guard it. The soldiers, from Kostrad 413, according to one witness, asked everyone sheltering in the church to leave. Shortly afterwards, the church was aflame. (The Australian)
  
  

Church & state:

• Indonesia set to re-arrest cleric | Indonesian police have said they will re-arrest militant cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir when he is released from jail on Friday. (BBC)
  
  
• Second German state bans headscarf | Lower Saxony became the second German state to ban Muslim public school teachers from wearing headscarves after regional deputies voted in a new law to that effect yesterday. (Agence France Presse)
  
  
• CalMac sails into troubled Sabbath waters | This weekend, another part of Sabbath tradition in the Hebrides will end when the first Sunday Caledonian MacBrayne ferry travels between Skye and Raasay (The Herald, Scotland)
  
  
• BJP in do-or-die battle to swing late votes | India's ruling Hindu nationalists have moved the might of their final campaign to the key heartland state of Uttar Pradesh to swing voters and win a majority. (Arab News, Middle East)
  
  

Catholicism:

• Catholic priest who aids church sexual abuse victims loses job | Twenty years ago, the Rev. Thomas Doyle warned the nation's Roman Catholic bishops about the church's looming sexual abuse nightmare. Since then, he has become a hero to the victims, speaking out on their behalf and helping them in legal cases in recent years. In doing so, Father Doyle also became a thorn in the side of the church hierarchy. (New York Times)
  
  
• Diocese reviews Satanic slay allegations | The Toledo Diocese is taking another look at a woman's previously dismissed claims of satanic sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests now that one of the clergymen has been charged with the "ritualistic" slaying of a nun 24 years ago. (Associated Press)
  
  
• Protesters seize San Salvador cathedral | Masked demonstrators who stormed the main cathedral in El Salvador's capital demanded the country's new president withdraw troops from Iraq and rehire dozens of fired government employees. (Associated Press)
  
  
• Pope tells U.S. bishops of need for holiness, humble lifestyles | Pope John Paul II told American churchmen Thursday that bishops must strive for personal holiness and a lifestyle imitating "the poverty of Christ." (Associated Press)
  
  

More articles:

• Asia puts faith in mobiles | Mobiles phones are not usually seen in the West as a way of keeping in touch with God. (BBC)
  
  

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48