The Home Office has rejected a claim for asylum on the grounds that the claimant, a Pakistani humanist, when asked to name ancient Greek philosophers who were humanists, did not name Plato and Aristotle.
Karen Armstrong, whose new book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence invites far more subtle understanding of the relationship between faith and fratricide globally, has written a characteristically thoughtful piece on IS/ISIS for The New Statesman magazine: 'Wahhabism to ISIS: how Saudi Arabia exported the main source of global terrorism'.
Just Festival and its predecessor, the Festival of Spirituality and Peace, has been concerned over the years to strike up a genuine personal, artistic, spiritual and cultural conversation among the different religions and beliefs that make up our country.
Twenty years ago, many public commentators believed that religion was dead, or at least 'on the way out'. How wrong that proved. Simon Barrow looks at how the conversation about faith is deepening and broadening in the face of growing religious and non-religious diversity.