Religious Relations

Jihad Turk -- clean-shaven and youthful -- is telling an interfaith audience that the prophet Muhammad traces his lineage to Abraham, the biblical patriarch. Turk explains to the crowd of mostly Christians and Jews that Muslims also revere Jesus and Moses as prophets, and that Islam cherishes life. But some in the Pepperdine University audience are skeptical. One man wants to know why so many Muslims are "willing with perfect ease to kill," as he puts it, drawing brief applause.

He's a "living Buddha" with movie-star good looks and an iPod, a 25-year-old who rubs shoulders with Richard Gere and Tom Cruise and is mentioned as a successor to the Dalai Lama. Now allegations that he's a Chinese spy, and a money launderer to boot, have laid bare divisions in the outwardly serene world of Tibetan Buddhism and longtime tensions between China and India. There's a lot at stake. The Karmapa is among Tibetan Buddhism's most revered figures and heads the religion's wealthiest sect, with property estimated at $1.2 billion worldwide.

The Mormon Church has to be among the most outgoing on Earth; in recent years its leaders have reached out to, among others, Latinos, Koreans, Catholics and Jews. One of the most enthusiastic responses, however, has come from what some might consider a surprising source: U.S. Muslims. "We are very aware of the history of Mormons as a group that was chastised in America," says Maher Hathout, a senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.

At a fundraiser in February for Zaytuna College, organizers seemed intent on preempting critical questions. "Why a Muslim College in America?" the Anaheim event was headlined, as if anticipating the query from audience members. And throughout the four-hour gathering, the speakers repeatedly stated why they believed such an institution was needed, calling it an idea whose time has come. Hatem Bazian, a UC Berkeley lecturer in Near East studies and a co-founder of Zaytuna, said that touch of defensiveness came after more than a year of crisscrossing the country and gauging sentiment from the American Muslim community.

It's a hot, sticky Friday night in one of Tel Aviv's swankiest neighborhoods and a battle over the community's soul is about to erupt. On one side is a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, in black coats and hats, celebrating the Sabbath by singing, praying and drinking wine in a public courtyard. Attracted by the revelry, and the wine, about two dozen teenagers and young men join in.

He is arguably the nation's most influential African American televangelist, but for many years, says Pastor Frederick K.C. Price of Crenshaw Christian Center, a lot of blacks "thought I was white." Price, whose Vermont Avenue church is the nation's biggest religious sanctuary, with more than 10,000 seats, eschews the traditional black church's "emotionalism." He prefers opera to gospel music.

For years, on the anniversary of his wife's death in 2000, Peter Underwood sought the solace of the tiny hillside cemetery not far from this city's bustling downtown. He laid flowers at her grave site and paid his respects to four generations of his family who are buried here -- mostly Western missionaries who first arrived in Korea more than a century ago. There's even a plot for Underwood himself. But the 54-year-old consultant no longer visits this sanctuary. He says he feels harassed here -- shadowed by the new stewards of a cemetery that offers a hallowed history lesson in Korea's expatriate past.

The nation's most widely read cartoonist is once again challenging a popular belief in the separation between church and the funny pages. Johnny Hart's Stone Age comic "B.C." usually spoofs the human condition, but this Sunday's solemn panels are devoted to the last words of Jesus Christ during crucifixion. The comic strip depicts the candles of a menorah being extinguished one by one until the Judaic symbol is finally transformed into a cross.

The night was filled with voices, murmuring then gathering together then rising into hymns and chants that carried far in the balmy air. This was the time for God and for spirits. On a road next to the central cemetery, residents of a small slum were lying on mattresses and pieces of cardboard set out on the broken pavement. A woman started to hum a Christian song, and soon rallied a chorus, singing and dancing and clapping for rhythm. " K em kontan Jesus renmem, aleluya ," they sang -- joyously, not mournfully.

Residents of Pacific Palisades began buzzing in early April when the local newspaper ran a blurb about a fundraiser for the Palisades Jewish Early Childhood Center. What got them talking wasn't the news that 10 tons of fresh snow would be trucked in for the April 6 event at the public Temescal Gateway Park, where the preschool operates out of three trailers and a fenced playground.

The attacks came in the night, as the villagers slept. Hundreds of Muslim herdsmen armed with guns and machetes swooped down on three Christian villages outside Jos in central Nigeria, killing more than 120 people early Sunday, according to witnesses. There were contradictory reports on the casualties. Some said more than 120 were killed, while others put the number at about 200. The massacre in volatile Plateau state -- long beset with ethnic-religious violence -- was apparently a revenge attack.

The night was filled with voices, murmuring then gathering together then rising into hymns and chants that carried far in the balmy air. This was the time for God and for spirits. On a road next to the central cemetery, residents of a small slum were lying on mattresses and pieces of cardboard set out on the broken pavement. A woman started to hum a Christian song, and soon rallied a chorus, singing and dancing and clapping for rhythm. " K em kontan Jesus renmem, aleluya ," they sang -- joyously, not mournfully.

The threat of renewed sectarian violence is at its highest in years. But it's a seamy affair between Northern Ireland's most famous female politician and a man nearly 40 years her junior that has put the province's fragile peace pact between Roman Catholics and Protestants in danger of unraveling. The woman in question is Iris Robinson, 60, the glamorous wife of the leader of Northern Ireland and a canny lawmaker in her own right. For months, she maintained a sexual relationship with a 19-year-old, then allegedly helped set him up in business with money secretly lent her by a pair of property developers.

The Judo family stayed away from Christmas Eve Mass in Baghdad. Because of recent sectarian violence in the capital and other areas of the country, they were worried that churches might be targeted by armed groups. By nightfall, their worst fears had been realized. Not only had a Christian been killed in the northern city of Mosul, but the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura, which this year begins one day after Christmas, had made the situation even more volatile: 27 people killed in attacks on Shiite neighborhoods.

The government of Israel seems to be embracing the Christmas spirit. This week it is organizing carols and tree giveaways in Jerusalem, bus service to Bethlehem and even a fireworks show in Nazareth with an apparent eye on burnishing the nation's reputation for religious diversity. But Israel won't be giving the Christmas gift near the top of the Vatican's wish list this year: possession of a Mt. Zion holy site where Jesus is believed to have gathered his disciples for the Last Supper.

An Anglican congregation evicted from its La Crescenta church in October after it lost a legal battle with the Episcopal Church asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear its case. Congregants at St. Luke's of the Mountains Anglican Church voted in 2006 to leave the Episcopal denomination over theological differences, including the consecration of a gay bishop in New Hampshire. The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the national church sued to retain the church's property.

Leaders representing 300 American Baptist churches in Southern California and parts of other Western states announced Wednesday that they have taken the first steps to break with their national denomination because they said it had failed to declare homosexual practice incompatible with Christian Scripture.

Muslim leaders on Tuesday called Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger disrespectful and insulting for ignoring their request to meet about the war in Lebanon so he could explain his appearance at a rally supporting Israel that was attended by thousands. Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke at the July 23 event in front of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles building on Wilshire Boulevard. On Aug.

As the calendar goes, December tends to be a winning month for God. Christians celebrate the birth of Christ. Jews mark the story of Hanukkah. Muslims this year will observe the start of Al-Hijra, the Islamic New Year. And the American Humanist Assn. has decided to join the festivities with an alternative celebration in mind. The group, consisting of atheists and others who say they embrace reason over religion, has launched a national godless holiday campaign, with ads appearing inside or on 250 buses in five U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco starting today.

In a sign of latent fears of Islamic influence in Switzerland, voters on Sunday approved a constitutional ban on the construction of minarets on Muslim places of worship. There are only four minarets atop mosques in the small Alpine country, but the two right-wing parties that sponsored the referendum cast it as a political question about the assimilation of Muslims into Swiss life. The minaret "is a political symbol against integration; a symbol more of segregation, and first of all, a symbol to try to introduce Sharia law parallel to Swiss rights," Ulrich Schluer said in a telephone interview.