Cartoon censored by major US newspaper

A cartoon due to appear in Sunday's Washington Post and several other newspapers across America has been pulled after it was deemed offensive to Muslims. The cartoon, the latest installment of Berkeley Breathed's "Opus" series (follow link to see cartoon), features a regular character, known for converting to various spiritual fads, wearing a multi-coloured headscarf and explaining to her husband that she had become a radical Islamist. Editors were also concerned that the punchline's sexual innuendo could cause offence.

According to sources contacted by Fox News, the Washington Post pulled the cartoon after showing it to Muslim members of staff, who responded "emotionally" to the image of a woman in traditional Muslim dress expressing Islamist views.

Vatican, Scientologists, Mormons caught editing Wikipedia articles

A new application that traces the source of changes made to Wikipedia entries has revealed that the Catholic Church, the Church of Scientology and the Mormons have all been doing a spot of sneaky editing. The Wikipedia Scanner trawls through the online, user-edited encyclopedia unearthing the location of computers responsible for edits. It found that users within the Vatican had made changes to entries on Catholic saints and, bizarrely, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. The change to Adams' entry involved removing a link to a 2006 newspaper story which alleged his fingerprints had been found on a car used in a double murder in 1971.

The Church of Scientology has been found to have edited the entry pertaining to its worldwide "spiritual headquarters" in Clearwater, Florida. A passage which suggested that the organisation has at times had a "hostile" relationship with local residents was removed in an edit shown by the Scanner to have come from within the Church. The Mormons have also been found to have removed criticism from their entry.

The must publicised edits came from within the CIA, having made changes to pages as diverse as those of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. Other notable editors include the Rebublican Party, who replaced the term "occupying forces" with the world "liberating" in an Iraq War entry, and Al-Jazeera, who inserted a line into Israel's entry comparing the foundation of the Jewish state to the holocaust.

For a comprehensive list of interesting edits, see the Wired Science blog

George W Bush on religion

Here's a little gem that appeared recently on Libby Purves's Faith Central blog on the Times website - The Word according to Dubya: 50 religious insights from George Bush.

Highly amusing and at the same time incredibly worrying.

New Dawkins show starts tonight, 8pm, Channel 4

Having lucratively attacked the tenets of monotheism, Richard Dawkins now turns his attention to alternative therapies and psuedo-science in his new TV programme The Enemies of Reason.

Broadcast tonight (13 August) on Channel 4 at 8pm, with the second part airing next Monday (20 August), The Enemies of Reason will confront "apparently harmless but utterly irrational belief systems from astrology to New Age mysticism, clairvoyance to alternative health remedies." Of course Dawkins does not view these as harmless, as the press release for the show states:
"Richard Dawkins confronts what he sees as an epidemic of irrational, superstitious thinking. He explains the dangers the pick and mix of knowledge and nonsense poses in the internet age, and passionately re-states the case for reason and science."

The hilarious Charlie Brooker wrote about The Enemies of Reason in his column in Saturday's Guardian, declaring it "possibly the most important broadcast of the year so far". Anyone who regularly reads Brooker's columns will know he rarely has good things to say about TV shows (well, except when he's quite rightly enthusing about The Wire), so it seems Dawkins' new show is not to be missed.

"Jesus was gay" claims Ulster LGBT activist

If you really wanted to enrage the more conservative elements of Northern Ireland's Christian communities, it'd be hard to think of a more effective way than this. PA MacLochlainn, a Christian and gay rights activist, this week told BBC Radio Ulster he had reached the conclusion that Jesus was a homosexual: "I believe that a 33-year-old unmarried rabbi living in Israel, in the time that he was living and having a favourite friend among the apostles called John, was quite clearly a gay man," he said.

His comments were prompted by a row over a banner displayed at last weekend's Belfast Pride event, which read "Jesus was a fag". Inevitably the banner provoked outcry from certain elements in the religious community, in particular Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church. The Church holds a yearly protest march against Belfast Pride, which it delightfully terms a "celebration of sodomy".

In the July/August issue of New Humanist Newton Emerson reported how Ulster's gay rights debate had taken on a surprisingly secular character. This latest row perhaps shows that the old religious conservatism is never too far from the surface.

China bans TV fortune tellers

It's not often you'll find me saying this, but perhaps the UK authorities should follow the lead of the Chinese government, who have just placed a ban on televised fortune telling hotlines, which urge superstitious viewers to text or call premium rate numbers to discover their futures.

Now that we've put a stop to Richard and Judy fleecing daytime TV audiences of their hard-earned cash and the Blue Peter presenters conning kids out of their pocket money, maybe it's time to stop the astrologers, tarot readers and the like exploiting the credulity of anyone daft enough to dial a premium rate number. Just imagine a world without Mystic Meg and Russell Grant...

US generals under fire for evangelising in the line of duty

Seven US military officers, including four generals, have been found guilty of misconduct for appearing in an evangelical video while in uniform three years ago. Members of the US military are banned from seeking converts on active duty, and there is little doubt this was the aim when the seven appeared in a promotional video for Christian Embassy, an outreach group of evangelical body Campus Crusade for Christ.

As CNN's report points out (watch the video at the bottom of the linked-to page), this is particularly embarrassing for America given the fact that it has long been at pains to stress the War on Terror is not a crusade against Islam.

Ruling that the officers were "inappropriately offering support for the religious organisation while appearing to operate within the scope of their official government duties", the Defence Department's Inspector General has recommended that the Air Force and Army take unspecified "corrective action" against the men.

Princess Anne's son to lose place in line to the throne

Leaving aside for one moment the wider question of monarchy, the archaic Act of Settlement has this week reared its ugly head as a result of a fairly obscure royal, Peter Phillips (off with my head if I'm wrong, but I'd never heard of him), getting engaged to a Catholic.

Phillips, who is Princess Anne's son, was 10th in line to the throne but now, thanks to the establishment of the Church of England, he will have about as much chance as I have of becoming King of England.

The 1701 Act of Settlement prohibits monarchs from becoming or marrying Catholics, so poor Peter will have to relinquish his place in the line when he marries his Catholic fiancee Autumn Kelly, unless she gives up her religion.

Obviously monarchy itself poses plenty of difficult questions for a democratic society in the 21st century, but if that's the system we're going to have then the least we could do is ensure that our head of state doesn't by law have to come from the Church of England. Surely it's time the Act of Settlement was erased from statute books? You never know, with that toppled all the other dominoes of establishment might begin to fall. Well, we can dream anyway...

The great Christian almond pasteurisation crisis of 2007

When you peruse the internet looking for random/ridiculous religion-related stories to report on a blog, you occasionally find exactly what you're looking for. This is one such example.

You see, the Almond Board of California (yes, them) have recently decreed that all almonds produced in California, destined for distribution throughout North America and Mexico, must be pasteurised in order to protect consumers from salmonella. Apparently this is a problem for Christian raw foodists (who only eat raw food, of course), as they see pasteurisation as a form of cooking.

Now, you may ask what being a Christian has to do with raw food. The answer lies is in the teachings of Jesus who said, among many other things, that it is bad for body and soul to eat cooked food: "…prepare not your foods with the fire of death, which kills your foods, your bodies and your souls also."

The ruling of the shadowy, Orwellian Almond Board of California would not be such a problem for raw foodists if they were able to procure said nuts from elsewhere. Unfortunately, "California happens to be the only U.S. state commercially growing almonds. In addition, California grows about 80% of the world’s almonds, according to the Almond Board of California website."

With their raw almond options severely limited, Christian raw foodists are claiming that their right to freedom of religion is being violated. That's right, the pasteurisation of Californian almonds has become a First Amendment issue. Campaigners have even set up a website aimed at reversing the ruling, brilliantly entitled What Would Jesus Pasteurise?

In the meantime the advice is clear: "stock up on your raw almonds… while they are still raw."

Australian priest in trouble over racist rant on YouTube

Now this is in no way reflective of the Catholic Church as a whole, but it's difficult not to raise a smile when a man of the cloth is caught red-handed misbehaving. Reverend Monsignor Geoff Baron, the dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, has just been suspended after a video was posted on YouTube of him entering into a foul-mouthed racist rant at some teenage skateboarders trespassing on his church's property.

In the video the large group of teenagers deliberately taunt Reverend Baron, even accusing him of being a paedophile, but there's absolutely no defence for what follows as he launches into a screaming tirade which includes some extremely choice language and some despicable racist slurs.

The incident happened over a year ago but it just goes to show that, in this age of camera phones YouTube, misdemeanours can easily come back to bite people at a later date. And that includes Catholic Priests. The Pope must be very disappointed in him.

[WARNING: the video contains extremely strong language]