Strengthening the ties between the United States, United Kingdom, and the English speaking world.
The Anglosphere Society
Europe Continues to Shrink Religious Liberty
By Wesley J. Smith
As western society secularizes, religious liberty is in danger of becoming passé. Increasingly, jurisdictions are enacting laws in furtherance of legitimate social considerations that, concomitantly, shrivel the freedom of religious believers to live according to their personal faith precepts. Western Europe is leading the way. Belgium now requires all food animals be stunned before slaughter, which prevents their meat from being declared kosher or halal — hence edible — in accordance with the religious requirements of Judaism and Islam. Click here to read
Trump’s Best Overseas Bet Is Elizabeth
By Conrad Black
On the heels of my misguided intuition, expressed on another site last week, that Judge Amy Coney Barrett was the president’s most likely selection for the Supreme Court vacancy, the president should be (but won’t be), commended for choosing the least controversial candidate, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The nomination of Judge Kavanaugh, a Bush appointee and friend, may be taken as (but again probably won’t be) a conciliatory gesture to traditional Republicans.
Whatever appearances, conservatives are placated, moderates have nothing to complain about, and an obviously highly qualified candidate is unlikely to be seriously damaged by the Democratic kamikaze attacks, which did not await the banal formality of having the name of the justice-designate before hurling themselves at the unnamed choice.
A Visit to Islamic England
By Andy Ngo
Muslims headed to Friday prayer while non-Muslims went the other way. No one made eye contact.
Other tourists may remember London for its spectacular sights and history, but I remember it for Islam. When I was visiting the U.K. as a teenager in 2006, I got lost in an East London market. There I saw a group of women wearing head-to-toe black cloaks. I froze, confused and intimidated by the faceless figures. It was my first encounter with the niqab, which covers everything but a woman’s eyes.
Stop Hounding the Knights of Columbus
By The Editors of NRO
Article VI of the Constitution consists of three paragraphs. The final one includes an emphatic prohibition against applying a “religious test” to any office.The provision is lost on some federal lawmakers who, despite taking an oath to uphold the Constitution, are now blatantly engaged in applying de facto religious tests to prospective federal judges. Click here to read
Religious Freedom In The World Report Launched Ahead of Red Wednesday 2018.
By Lord Alton of Liverpool
How the West is failing those persecuted for their Faith. The Prince of Wales and an Appeal To End Religious Persecution. Links to Remarks by the Patriarchs of the Eastern churches. The 70th Anniversary of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the plight of Asia Bibi and the millions who suffer for their religion or beliefs. Click here to view Report
US SecState Pompeo: Religious freedom a fundamental human right
By Devin Watkins
In an interview with Vatican News, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says religious freedom is a fundamental human right and invites all faiths and countries to promote it.
The United States Department of State is hosting the first-ever international summit on the topic of religious freedom.
The event is slated for July 24-26 in Washington D.C., and will gather over 80 delegations, including more than 40 foreign ministers.
Persecution has brought America’s Catholics and Jews together
By Michael Davis
On October 27, a white nationalist named Robert Bowers stormed the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, touting an AR-15 and hurling anti-Semitic slurs. He left with bullet wounds from a shootout with police, having claimed 11 lives in what is thought to be the deadliest incident of anti-Semitic violence in US history. Bowers wasn’t Catholic, and his motivation wasn’t theological. Click here to read
Jeremy Corbyn’s Anti-Semitism Crisis
By Sam Knight
During the improbable summer of 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn went from being an unknown, sixty-six-year-old leftist Member of Parliament to the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, there was a natural urge to know more about him. Journalists and bloggers, supporters and skeptics, all picked over Corbyn’s thirty-two-year parliamentary career, reading old speeches and looking into the causes he had adopted and the company that he kept. There was plenty to go through. Click here to read
As the Church reels, is an even larger scandal building?
By William Kilpatrick
The Church has been deeply damaged in recent weeks by revelations of widespread clerical sex abuse in Chile and Honduras, the further revelation that Cardinal McCarrick’s predatory behavior had been hushed-up, and now claims by an archbishop that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but repealed them. Click here to read
Playing Hardball with Hungary
By Bruce Bawer
The EU’s disgraceful attempt to bring PM Orban to heel. - Criticize the government of Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary since 2010, all you like. But the European Union's despotic and disgraceful attempt to bring him to heel, which came to a head with a vote in the European Parliament on September 12, has nothing whatsoever to do with the purported “erosion of democracy” in his country.
Extremism Advances in the Largest Muslim Country
By Benedict Rogers
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, has long stood as a role model for religious pluralism. That’s changing. Political Islam and violent extremism have been taking root in society and may soon do so in the government. President Joko Widodo’s choice of Ma’ruf Amin, a 75-year-old cleric, as his running mate in next year’s election marks an ugly turn for Indonesian politics. Click here to read - Subscription may be needed
The New, New Anti-Semitism
By Victor Davis Hanson
The old anti-Semitism was mostly, but not exclusively, a tribal prejudice expressed in America up until the mid 20th century most intensely on the right. It manifested itself from the silk-stocking country club and corporation (“gentlemen’s agreement”) to the rawer regions of the Ku Klux Klan’s lunatic fringe. While liberals from Joe Kennedy to Gore Vidal were often openly anti-Semitic, the core of traditional anti-Semitism, as William F. Buckley once worried, was more rightist. And such fumes still arise among the alt-right extremists. Click here to read
European Court of Human Rights Blasphemy Laws: Where a Word out of Place Can Cost Your Life
By Denis MacEoin
There are, of course, social settings where it pays to watch your words. Saying you fancy the looks of a mafioso's new girlfriend could well prove fatal. Spending time with a bunch of Hamas terrorists while expressing your love for Israel might not lead to your premature demise. In London today, young men who make remarks or play music to other youths on the street can wind up stabbed to death. Click here to read
Theresa May’s Impossible Choice
By Sam Knight
The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, often strikes people as cautious, but her political career has been defined by acts of boldness, often on behalf of unfashionable causes, or in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances. The misconception arises in part because she is an awkward person. May, who is sixty-one, is tall and stooped, serious and shy. Since she was elected to Parliament, in the late nineteen-nineties, she has dressed in sharp, eye-catching clothes, as if to offset the fact that she is not personally vivacious, but the effect is often to accentuate what is not there. May doesn’t say much, by anyone’s standard, let alone that of a politician. Click here to read
U.S. gathering on religious freedom sets up competing narratives
By Nahal Toosi and Lorraine Woellert
The U.S. will host a first-of-its-kind gathering on international religious freedom next week, an assembly being hailed by evangelical voters who helped propel President Donald Trump into office. The three-day Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom has become the hottest ticket in Washington, with more than 80 countries sending delegations, hundreds of rights activists attending, and a number of others being shut out for political reasons as well as lack of space. Click here to read
Christians must fight growing anti-Semitism in America
By Frank Wolf, Lela Gilbert | Fox News
One of President Trump’s guests at his State of the Union speech Tuesday was Judah Samet, who received an ebullient welcome and a spontaneous rendition of the “Happy Birthday” song from the audience on his 81st birthday. A Holocaust survivor, Samet emerged alive – once again a survivor – and somehow remained uninjured during the Tree of Life synagogue massacre Oct. 27 in Pittsburgh. The mass murder at the synagogue marked the end of an era in the United States. A gunman took the lives of 11 Jews in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, ending an era of peace and security for America’s Jewish community. Click here to read
The Nation of Islam and the House
By Jeryl Bier
Donald Trump has repeatedly faced calls to disavow anti-Semites, but Democrats have their own anti-Semitism problem. The new House majority leadership includes several lawmakers with ties to the nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan: Click here to read - Subscription may be required
British Jews Find Their Voice
By Ben Judah
What has changed is not so much the community, but the environment of British politics. Sometimes, I don’t think I recognize British Jews anymore. For decades my community has been quiet and watchful, slow to place itself in the public eye. But last week, watching British Jews call out antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party I had to pinch myself. Were these really the Jews of Britain: publicly furious, outraged, venting their fear and disgust as they faced down what might well be Britain’s next government? I was stunned, because growing up, I never sensed that pride, or fearlessness. Click here to read
Stop the Fake News That Hungary Is Anti-Semitic
By Lee Cohen (Lee is the New York Director of TAS)
Next week Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban makes his first visit to the state of Israel. This symbolic and diplomatic event, considered against a consistent record of pro-Israel support and concrete measures to confront anti-Semitism in Hungary, should bring closure to the myth, popular among the Left, global Jewish organizations, and in the world press, of Hungary’s contemporary anti-Semitism. Instead of derision and conjecture, Orban deserves praise for his zero-tolerance policy on anti-Semitism and commitment to protecting all Hungarian citizens, including Hungary’s Jews.
We must confront Anti-Semitism
By Lord Alton of Liverpool
This speech was originally given by the author in the House of Lords.
“The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews”. Anti-Semitism is a virus that singles out Jews but which then spreads its hateful contagion to other minorities and to vulnerable groups, who are all too easily scapegoated. Click here to read