Religious Conversions

In a remarkable bid to attract disillusioned members of the Anglican Communion, the Vatican announced Tuesday that it would establish a special arrangement that would allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while preserving their liturgy and spiritual heritage, including married priests. The worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the 2.3 million-member U.S. Episcopal Church, has been racked by years of conflict over the interpretation of Scripture that has led to clashes over female clergy and, recently, the rights of gays to serve as clergy.

An assembly representing Conservative rabbis worldwide expressed dismay this week over a revised Roman Catholic prayer calling for the conversion of Jews, and it voted to ask the Vatican to clarify the text's meaning. The 1,600-member Rabbinical Assembly said it was "dismayed and deeply disturbed to learn of reports that Pope Benedict XVI has revised the 1962 text of the Latin Mass, retaining the rubric 'For the conversion of the Jews.'

Police in western India arrested two Christian missionaries, who allegedly forced conversions, and 11 Hindu hard-liners accused of attacking them this week, officials said. The two missionaries were charged with "unlawful religious conversions" after a complaint filed by two Hindu residents of Ichalkaranji, 140 miles south of Mumbai, police said. The missionaries told police they were attacked by Hindu extremists, and TV footage showed them being kicked and punched.

The Bush administration stepped up pressure Thursday on Afghanistan's government to free a man who could be sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity, a case that is further heightening tensions between the West and the Islamic world. A day after President Bush expressed his concern, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Afghan President Hamid Karzai and urged him "in the strongest terms" not to punish Abdur Rahman, a 41-year-old medical aid worker.

Pope Benedict XVI has written to Afghan President Hamid Karzai asking that charges be dropped against a man facing a possible death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity, the Vatican said. The appeal to spare Abdur Rahman was sent in the pope's name by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who said the pope's appeal was inspired by the "firm belief in the dignity of human life and by respect for every person's freedom of conscience and religion."

After days of international outcry, an Afghan court has dismissed the case against a man threatened with being put to death for having converted from Islam to Christianity, a court official said Sunday. The charges of apostasy against Abdur Rahman, a 41-year-old medical aid worker, were being dropped for lack of evidence, said Abdul Wakil Omari, a spokesman for the Afghan Supreme Court. "It has been sent back to prosecutors," Omari said of the case.

As Afghan officials considered last week whether a medical aid worker should be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity, an alliance of small Christian congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area was working to spread the Gospel to more Muslims in the Middle East. "We are very proud of that man because he has not denied his Christianity," said Navid Moborez, 29, an Afghan Christian and former Muslim who now lives in Fremont and belongs to the Iranian Christian Church here.

An Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity has been freed from prison, the deputy attorney general said early today. The man has asked for asylum in another country, according to U.S. and U.N. officials. Abdur Rahman was released from the high-security Policharki prison on the outskirts of Kabul late Monday, Deputy Atty. Gen. Mohammed Eshak Aloko said. "We issued a letter saying he was mentally unfit to stand trial, so he has been released," Aloko said.

For centuries, disciples of the spirit have come to this desert shrine town in search of guidance, power or solace. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani studied at the seminaries here as a young man before heading off to Iraq and eventually becoming Shiite Islam's most widely regarded scholar. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who lived here before his exile, returned to settle among the bearded and turbaned clerics after leading the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

He was just 12, the son of a former Conservative Party organizer in a neat suburban neighborhood of single-family homes and duplexes, when the father he adored died. He started drinking, neighbors say. Getting in fights. But six months ago, Don Stewart-Whyte stopped drinking and smoking, and became calmer and more polite, those who know him say. The 21-year-old had converted to Islam, the currency of some of the toughest and hippest young Asian students in his High Wycombe neighborhood.