In a step expected to cause controversy in Egypt, a ruling party official announced that the government was studying the possibility of removing the religion section from all identification cards following a similar move in Lebanon.
From Mark Harding: Sir.  I don’t believe that anyone in their right mind would support persecution of anyone anywhere for any reason and I know I don't. I commend you and your office for doing a lot of work on this issue and I do appreciate the hours you have spent trying to make heads or tails of it all.
The US State Department’s human rights report, released a few weeks ago, stressed that the Egyptian government’s respect for freedom of the press, and religious freedom declined last year. Security forces arbitrarily arrested and detained individuals and kept them in prolonged pre-trial detention.
Nearly six years since the beginning of the war in Iraq, Iraqi's are increasingly saying that their country is becoming a safe place to live, according to a recent survey. For Christians, however, the daily threat of violent attacks means these are still uncertain times.
A lawyer for a U.S. couple jailed in Egypt in an adoption case said Egypt should pass a law allowing Christian families to adopt, because a legal gap that disallows the practice is pushing them to do so in secret.
A consensus has emerged in the Middle East to support Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, seen as a victim of Western malice, regardless of his innocence or guilt for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In its editorial yesterday, The Washington Post advised President Obama to find allies for progressive change in the Middle East, but from outside the rulers' palaces.
For years, the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, the Institute for Gulf Affairs, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and various Washington Post journalists have been documenting the fact that the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in northern Virginia —
CAIRO: Democracy in Egypt has deteriorated slightly since 2006 and the spread of democracy globally has come to a halt, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) 2008 democracy index.
Until recently most autocrats believed they had no one to answer to, except the god they pretended to believe in. But as the Roman statesman Cicero is reported to have uttered in deploring the viciousness and corruption of his age, "O tempora o mores!" (Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!) Yes, things are beginning to change. Perhaps creeping in slowly; but nevertheless change is coming.