UK Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has instructed Government lawyers to oppose the right of Christian workers to wear a cross.
They will call on European human rights judges to dismiss the claims of Christian workers who have been banned from displaying the symbol of their faith at work.
Tensions remain high in an Egyptian village where as many as 5,000 mostly Salafi Muslims went on a rampage over a false rumor that a church was holding a girl against her will in order to convert her back to Christianity.
The 14-year-old girl’s father, an ethnic Copt who converted to Islam, had stirred them up on the mistaken notions that his daughter had converted to Islam and that Christians had kidnapped her.
Acts of violence and intolerance against Christians in Indonesia almost doubled in 2011, with an Islamist campaign to close down churches symbolizing the plight of the religious minority.
The worst is perhaps yet to come if authorities continue to overlook the threat of extremism, said a representative from the Jakarta-based Wahid Institute, a Muslim organization that promotes tolerance.
Authorities in eastern Uzbekistan have warned local churches not to allow youngsters and children to attend their worship services and not to carry out missionary activities or “proselytism”, the word for evangelism, local Christians and activists said.
The news emerged after Deputy Head of Administration Saidibrahim Saynazirov spoke with church leaders in the city of Angren, 110 kilometers (70 miles) east of Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent.
Charges that a pastor “lured” Muslims to Christianity by offering money are false and have put the lives of the clergyman and other Christians in danger, according to Bishop Pradeep Kumar Samantaroy of the Church of North India denomination.
The allegations of allurement appear to have turned Muslim clergy and separatist leaders against the Christians.
In a test case of religious intolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, an Indonesian mayor is defying court rulings by pushing for a decree to block Christians from opening churches on streets with Islamic names.
Members of the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church in the West Java town of Bogor are, after three years, still forced to worship on the sidewalk outside their building, protected by police.
Hundreds of other churches scattered through the former Hindu kingdom of Nepal have faced government discrimination.
Five years after it abolished Hinduism as the state religion, Nepal is working on a new criminal code forbidding a person from one faith to “convert a person or abet him to change his religion.”
Article 160 of the proposed code also says no one will be allowed to do anything or behave in any way that could cause a person from a caste, community or creed to lose faith in his/her traditional religion or convert to a different religion. The proposal would also prohibit conversion “by offering inducements or without inducement,” and preaching “a different religion or faith with any other intent.”
Florida Pastor Terry Jones, whose threat to burn Islam’s holy book on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks last year provoked widespread condemnation, has been banned from visiting Britain, Reuters reports.
Malaysia — In this Muslim-majority country, it’s OK to be Christian, Buddhist or Hindu. But not Shiite.