The cry that "my freedoms are in jeopardy" just sounds like whining to the rest of the world when it comes from people who've historically occupied the cultural driver's seat.

In the wake of the Boston bombings, Muslim parents fear for their children at school. Muslim women are discussing whether it is necessary to "pass" (remove their headscarfs), to be safe. How many innocent people will be teased, harassed or assaulted?

I can't deny that hearts are in the right places and heads are on the right side of this issue, but I ask of FEMEN: Please, slow down and make sure that your protests are respectful of whoever you're tying to help. There's no need to be patronizing or to exploit harmful stereotypes.

Historians have long known that early Christians wrote -- and wrote and wrote -- about martyrs, but evidence from outside the movement simply does not confirm this picture.

One of the great themes of the Christian Easter story is that the love of God can overcome the worst of human folly, wickedness and weakness. This idea, if taken seriously, would be a tonic in many parts of the world today, but perhaps nowhere is it more desperately needed than in the Muslim world.

By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Secretary of State John Kerry is calling for the release of an Iranian-American minister...

Passover day in 1960, the world broke down into sandwich eaters and weirdos, and in my classmates' eyes, there was no doubt to which category I belonged.

Three-year-old Artin Rahimian stands in line to visit his mother in Iran's Evin prison. It's been two years since Faran Hessami and her husband, Kamran Rahimian, were arrested for their role as educators for the Baha'i faith community, Iran's largest religious minority.

If persecution language is not reserved for situations of actual persecution, then unspeakable violence becomes indescribable. Disagreement becomes martyrdom and martyrdom becomes disagreement.

By Sherif Elhelwa/The Media Line When a group of Islamic terrorists with links to al Qaeda assaulted the American consulate in Benghazi killing Amb...

If all of us who have experienced others' insensitivity to our beliefs could sympathize with those marginalized for beliefs different from our own, we could make the world a more tolerant place.

I thought about the American Protestant sense of persecution as I sat shivering in the Anabaptist cave under a waterfall at the top of a gulley in the hills southeast of Zurich. It struck me that until we are forced to worship in secret, we should knock off talking about being persecuted.

"Sacred Ground" is a slim volume that serious interfaith students or practitioners will read for the fascinating territory it surveys: the history of religious bigotry in American politics, the sociology of nonprofits in the United States, and the "science of interfaith cooperation."

How did evangelical Christians, who have been dedicated to the care of all people and at the forefront of social reform in America, come to be broadly identified with intolerance and a lack of compassion?

By Trevor Grundy Religion News Service CANTERBURY, England (RNS) The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday (Jan. 15) ruled that equality laws ...

Christian Reverend Saeed Abedini, a 32-year-old American pastor currently being held in an Iranian prison, has been transferred to a judge known for h...

By Lauren Markoe Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) The persecution of Christians "vastly rose" in 2012 as radical Islamists consolidated powe...

By Doug Stanglin USA Today/Religion News Service (RNS) An ad campaign on San Francisco buses is aimed at trying to change public perception of the...

Iranian human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh sits starving in a prison cell in Tehran. Twenty-five years ago that was me. The prison was Leningrad, but the story was the same: a mother of young children punished by a dictatorial regime, yearning for the basic freedoms Americans sometimes take for granted.

Something in the human spirit survives even the worst of tragedies, allowing us to rebuild shattered lives, broken institutions and injured nations. That to me is the Jewish story.

What is the major influence related to religious tensions crossing borders? Hint: It's about much more than a small church in Florida burning a Quran or a Danish magazine publishing cartoons of a revered prophet.