Guardian Unlimited | Online | sdrawkcab elgooG rieht teg esenihC: "ElgooG [provides] full access to Google for users in China who can type the Roman alphabet backwards. The machinery apparently wasn't recognising that 'sweN CBB' is a banned broadcaster.'"

Asia Times Online - India's porn police bring their quarry to eBay

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Thai hill tribes mix technology with tradition

Guardian Unlimited | Newsblog | Happy holy days

'Horoscopes' is AOL's most searched word | The Register

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Talk timethoughts of Sherry Turkle: "If we stigmatise the medium as 'addictive' and try to strictly control it, we'll never learn how to nurture this self-reflection."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock

MSNBC - Online research worries many educators

Associated Press, Jehovah's Witnesses learn Arabic in outreach to Muslims"Some Jehovah's Witnesses, known for their door-to-door efforts to bring people to their spiritual beliefs, have been learning Arabic as part of an effort to convert Muslims."

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Orthodox Church seeks virtual saint: "'What is the internet?' Father Andrey asked. 'It is a typically monastic pursuit. I am totally hidden from the public, it is quite impersonal - but at the same time I can take part in various discussion forums.'

"He believes the thousands of Russian Orthodox internet users could only benefit from a patron saint dedicated to them."

Times Online - Comment, Christians bear witness to the fallout from war discussion of the work of the Christian Peacemaker Teams

USNews.com: People pray for everything, from the divine to the selfish and profane (12/20/04): "The importance of prayer in all religions through many millenniums has been well established. U.S. News teamed up with Beliefnet , the leading multifaith Internet site on religion, to create an online survey about how these prayers are focused. "

MSNBC - Religion: The Birth of Jesus multimedia discussion

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : New Forms of Online Communication Spell End of Email Era in Korea

Holocaust group puts 3 million lost lives online | Tech News on ZDNet more details on this story, including links to the Yad Vashem database, which is extremely quick and easy to use.

WorldWide Religious News/Washington Times, 'Hanukkah Song' strikes sour note on Jewish ears November 28, 2004 "Although the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights does not begin until sundown December 7, Binyamin Jolkovsky, 35, of www.jewishworldreview.com is spearheading an effort to depose a pop song composed in 1996 by "Saturday Night Live" comedy idol Adam Sandler."

profindpages.com, $28,000 "Holy Toast" turning bread into wine!: "A ten year old cheese sandwich has just fetched $28,000 on the internet auction site eBay, for apparently bearing a likeness of the Virgin Mary."

A Hindi-English jumble, spoken by 350 million | csmonitor.com

Prayer Breakfast Draws Strong Tech Turnout (washingtonpost.com) [subscription site]: "The personal testimonials -- and a turnout that has doubled since the first such breakfast three years ago -- reflect the growing number of technology executives who believe that their Christianity should be part of their work as well as their private lives. "

iht, Programming Africans' linguistic needs

How Homer Simpson can enrich philosophy class | csmonitor.com doh!

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Bangalore's cyber-cafe crackdown

Fascinating news from New Orleans, accompanied by photos and a history of 'St Expedite':

Wired News: Patron Saint of the Nerds: "'People who are computer experts or who work with computers do say Expedite is their patron saint,' said the Rev. Michael Amesse, pastor of Our Lady of Guadeloupe Chapel in New Orleans, the only American church with a statue of the saint.

"'I don't know why they say Expedite is the computer saint. St. Isidore is the saint of technology and the internet. Yet these people insist on praying to Expedite. Like all things that concern this saint, it is a mystery.'"

BBC NEWS | Wales | Mid Wales | First Welsh bible goes online, 10 Sept 04: "A version of the first Welsh language bible has appeared online 400 years after the death of the bishop who first translated it.

"William Morgan's book is claimed to be the most important ever published in Welsh as it reinforced the language's status.

"The National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth, has added its 1,110 pages to its website."

Wired 12.11: The Geek Guide to Kosher Machines

CNS STORY: Syria's Christian churches face political, religious challenges " ... the evolving Syrian culture -- complete with Internet, cell phones and satellite TV -- is changing the way young people relate to the church and traditional values, several sources said."

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > Suffering the Pornographers

The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > Strangers in Life Join Hands in Death as the Web Becomes a Tool for Suicide in Japan

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Communists gamble on hi-tech future

419 spammers use Holocaust to boost credibility - ZDNet UK News

India mulls tough ID rules for cybercafes | The Register

Forum 18 Archive, CHINA: Government blocks religious websites: "Chinese web-users are denied access to a range of religious sites based abroad, Forum 18 News Service has found after a two-month survey of how far the Chinese government's Golden Shield firewall, used to censor the internet, affects access to religious websites. Sites blocked include those related to the persecution of Christians and other religious faiths, the Dalai Lama, the Falun Gong religious movement, the Muslim Uygurs of Xinjiang and a number of Catholic sites, including the website of the Hong Kong diocese and the Divine Word Missionaries in Taiwan."

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Turning the tables on Nigeria's e-mail conmen

Salon.com Technology | Thou shalt not steal: "Christian teens are just as eager to file-swap copyrighted music as any other youngsters. But if the word of God gets spread, would Jesus give a damn?"

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Kenya's prisoners go hi-tech

>>> AsiaNews.it <<< Reporters Without Borders’ Cyberfreedom Prize goes to Chinese dissident

Jerusalem Post Internet Edition, Maverick visionary or eccentric academic?

Gay Spirituality & Culture blog -- with a comprehensive series of links to related spirituality pages.

Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Indian Government Orders Blocking of "Inflammatory" Website

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | China creates web vigilante site: "The Chinese authorities have begun a new website for people to report on what officials describe as illegal or unhealthy information on the internet"

The Daily Star - Arts & Culture - Tunisian 'miracle' blends Jews, Muslims

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Japan schoolgirl killer 'sorry'

The Daily Star - Arts & Culture - Keeper of The Word shares a few: on the role of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church, and its application of the internet

Tolerance.org: MOVE OVER BARBIE: The Changing Face of Dolls non-tech digression

Wired News: XXXchurch Wants No More XXX Christian anti-pornography website controversy

CNN.com - Cyber church reacts to 'Satan' visit - May 19, 2004 "Britain's first three-dimensional cyber church has been forced to tighten security after a slew of abusive visitors ranted from the pulpit and swore in the aisles."

Middle East Online, 'Hand of Fatima', is it protective?

The Daily Star - Lebanon News - 'The Passion' gets a new twist on Al-Manar: "Al-Manar Television has triggered yet another storm of controversy by broadcasting trailers mimicking Mel Gibson's contentious film, 'The Passion of the Christ,' with coalition soldiers compared to the Romans and Jews in the movie, and the Iraqis' suffering to that of Jesus."

more on the First Church of Cyberspace (expect a struggle for this title -- see my book 'The Good Web Guide to World Religions'! The New York Times > National > Religion Journal: Services at the First Church of Cyberspace [subscription site]

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Nanny knows best "Considerate to a fault, the Chinese authorities have closed down more than 8,600 unlicensed internet cafes in the past three months to ensure the "healthy development" of the nation's impressionable young minds."

ABCNEWS.com : People Seek Haven From Too Much Data: "For the past 20 years Levy, a self-confessed e-mail addict, has sought balance between these disparate worlds. It has led him to meditation, aikido and, with his rabbi wife, a disciplined practice of Judaism. 'Because we observe Shabbat — the Sabbath — it means we don't work during that time, and I'm not on the computer,' he says. 'And as soon as the Sabbath is over, I run upstairs and go see what's happened in the last 24 or 25 hours.'"

Wired News: Dropping the Bomb on Google: "In March, during a casual Web search, the 26-year-old real-estate investor accidentally found that Jew Watch, an anti-Semitic site, was the top Google result."

Yahoo! News - Internet Church Marries Christianity And Technology

"For those Internet junkies who embrace faith but just can't pull themselves away from their computers to attend church, fret no more. The United Kingdom's Ship of Fools--a Web site that dubs itself "The Magazine Of Christian Unrest"--has launched its Church of Fools, a Web-based place of worship that could go a long way toward assuaging modern Christian guilt."

The Daily Star - Arts & Culture - An Egyptian bishop's tech-savvy plan to build a unified country

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Prophets of Cyberabad face rural backlash

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Religious hatred flourishes on web

BBC NEWS | Technology | Asia puts faith in mobiles

MEMRI: Liberal Muslim Scholar: The Term 'Jihad' is Misunderstood by Islamist Clerics "In an article in the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Qatar, stated that modern Islamic Fatwas (religious legal opinions) distort the meaning of Jihad to justify an aggressive ideology."

sfgate.com, SAN FRANCISCO / Singing the gospel of Transcendence / Nation's first all-transgender gospel choir raises its voices to praise God and lift their own feelings of self-love and dignity

Newsday.com - God talk is everywhere
"An online poll on Beliefnet.com, answered by about 12,000 people, found that 62 percent were reading the Bible more often after seeing "The Passion.""

Inter-Press, Activists Crusade Against E-Jihad interesting use of the term 'crusade' here

Reuters/Khaleej Times Online, “Passion” flouts Islamic taboos to rapt Arab viewers

Haaretz - Israel News - Musings / Een, Yuudaayaa naa interesting article about Aramaic

Haaretz - Israel News - Digging for the roots of an age-old scourge discussion on what has been dubbed the "new anti-Semitism"

Aljazeera.Net - Palestinians love Mel Gibson's film
I'm sure that Mr Gibson is delighted in this news, although he won't be so pleased to learn that the film has been widely pirated in Gaza and the West Bank.

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Sikh holy book flown to Canada

IIAS Newsletter 32- IIAS contains several sgnificant articles associated with the Internet in China

MSNBC - Religion as mainstream pop culture:

Middle East Online, Gibson film stirs religious controversy in Kuwait

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Film | Python film to challenge Passion

BBC NEWS | Technology | Bookies suffer online onslaught not a religious issue (necessarily - depending on whether divine intervention is part of a betting strategy), but an interesting technical one

Daily Star, Teens take to the Net in Madrid mourning

staugustine.com: World News: Web of Islamic militants who share bin Laden's ideology grew out of al-Qaida recruiting drive 03/16/04

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Desire to integrate on the wane as Muslims resent 'war on Islam'

The Register, EC seeks to stamp out Net child porn, racism and spam lofty ideals here, but how are they going to achieve these aims?

World Religions found this interesting one in my travels. It's a class blog from the World Religions course a St Andrews. I'm going to be integrating blog into my teaching next session too. Seems to work well.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Prayers and fears of Madrid's Muslims

MSNBC/AP - Polish nun faces drunken driving charges for the headline.

Reuters, China's search engines to take on Google

CNN.com - Encyclopedias gather dust as research moves online - Mar 11, 2004

Two stories about i-church and the new web pastor vacancy:
BBC NEWS | UK | Church plans parish in cyberspace

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Church of England to set up 'internet parish' "The purpose of the internet church or 'i-church', according to its website, "is to provide a Christian community for those who wish to explore Christian discipleship but who are not able, or do not wish, to join a local congregation"."

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Special reports | Amish reality show provokes outrage

Aljazeera.Net - Muslim broker to screen The Passion

BBC NEWS | Technology | Tribes take to wireless web

Times Online - Sunday Times, "The suicide web cult that killed our son"

Wired News: The Passion Inflames the Web more on The Passion and its impact online

BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | Politicians monitor the 'bloggers' an interesting article on how blogging can bridge the 'divide' in Northern Ireland. It also contains a micro-list of relevant links.

Reporters sans frontières - China: "Reporters Without Borders today condemned the latest Chinese effort to gag the Internet by means of directives to portals that have discussion groups. As a result of the directives, many news groups have closed since 23 February and filtering of online messages has been stepped up. Verisign's decision to assign China a DNS root server is also worrying for the Web's future."

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Film | Hollywood moment for ancient language about the Aramaic used in Gibson's film - the story has a tech edge: "'The word we use for 'television' is 'surqolo',' Dr Kiraz explained. 'It's made up from the words for 'vision' and 'voice'.'"

the Wired Press - The Passion of The Christ: The Second Coming? satiral swipe at Mr Gibson's familiarity with sequels, with net reference.

Vmyths.com, It takes guts to say 'Jesus' virus

Peacefire Blocking software information. Worth checking regularly.

Wired News: Net Dissidents Jailed in China

Yahoo! News - Gibson's new film goes on release bloated with controversy and hyped by the Church

Wired News: At the Front in the Virus Wars

Infoshop News - Anonymous Blog Cracks Window Into Hasidic Community: "Yeedel, as we'll call him, writes an anonymous weblog (or 'blog'), a kind of online diary, under the pen name Hasidic Rebel. His comments, first posted in February, range from musings about the Hasidic lifestyle to stinging indictments of the community. "

Reuters, China arrests Internet essayist "Chinese police have formally arrested a civil servant, whose Internet essays are critical of the government, for subversion in a case that has provoked widespread criticism of China's human rights record."

Aljazeera.Net - New US channel raises Palestinian ire: "Farid Abu Dhuhair is Professor of Journalism and Mass communication at the Najah University in Nablus. He believes the very idea of launching al-Hurra station stems from a misunderstanding.

"Al-Hurra, it is claimed will 'tell us' Israel is not killing Palestinians

“The Americans think that we hate them because we don’t receive accurate information about the reality of American politics. This is not true.

"'America’s image is ugly because American policies and actions are ugly. America can’t act the way it is acting and expect Arabs and Muslims to love her.”

something of a pre-emtive critique of al-Hurra, found on al-Jazeera ...

Reuters AlertNet - Spanish judge hailed for Guantanamo extradition

Wired News: Foiling Laptop Data Thieves

‘Asian Cyberactivism’ to be launched tomorrow

ArabicNews.com, Al-Oroush links negotiations to approval of Amazigh as an official language, 2 Feb 2004 This is not an area I have previously addressed in this blog; an initial google of the subject revealed a number of online networks associated with Amazigh, including an online forum Amazigh.net and the AmazighOnline website, which claims to be a portal to the Amazigh world.

Yahoo, Open Source Gaining Traction in Asia this fits in with what I feel will be a significant development during the coming years, regarding accessability to technology (also discussed elsewhere in this blog).

Reuters, How Spammers Are Targeting Mobile Phones in Asia

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Chinese activists evade web controls

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Muslims gather for climax of annual pilgrimage

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 54 jailed in China over internet use "Detainees also include followers of the banned Falun Gong movement"

This refers to a report from Amnesty International:People's Republic of China - Controls tighten as Internet activism grows

BBC NEWS | Business | Nigeria to tackle e-mail scams let me introduce myself .... 419 scams discussed at World Economic Forum

BBC NEWS | Technology | Bombay plans cyber cafe controls

Times Online - Sunday Times: "ATTENDANCE at Britain’s mosques has outstripped the number of regular worshippers in the Church of England for the first time."

AlterNet: The American Taliban: "The Internet has certainly enabled folks on the far right to circulate plenty of hate propaganda and scurrilous conspiracy theories at minimal expense. This has helped with the spread of everything from Holocaust denial to bogus tracts about black genetic inferiority and fear mongering about non-white immigration. "

Reuters, Pray for the web porn browsers, 20 Jan 2004: "The rabbi recommends that Jews recite the prayer when they log on to the Internet or even programme it to flash up on their computer screens so they are spiritually covered whether they enter a porn site intentionally or by mistake."

Telegraph | News | Bible Belt missionaries set out on a 'war for souls' in Iraq: "US Christian evangelists want to 'save Muslim souls' in Iraq". Missed this one when it came out, but it remains relevant.

Reuters | WWII aerial photographs on the Internet: "From the smoke billowing from the incinerator of the Auschwitz concentration camp in which millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis, to the U.S. landings on Omaha beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the pictures tell dramatic stories."

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "'My sons are more important to me than all of Palestine. I would be lying if I said I would willingly send my son (to carry out a suicide attack). What for? I don't believe these attacks are useful,' Ghanem, 49, told Reuters."

BBC NEWS | Wales | Police win paedophile internet ban: "A Welsh police force has won what is thought to be a ground-breaking ruling which bans a paedophile from using the internet and mobile phones. "

NY Times, A Real-Life Debate on Free Expression in a Cyberspace City Sims morality play

TIME Asia Magazine: A Glimmer of Hope -- Jan. 19, 2004 Kashmir

Aljazeera.Net - Rabbi on trial for opposing demolitions: "An Israeli rabbi who heads a human rights group will be put on trial on Wednesday for attempting to block the demolition of Palestinian homes by standing in front of Israeli bulldozers. "

Women Not Prohibited From Driving in Islam, Says Al-Qarni : "Sheikh Ayed Al-Qarni, a prominent Saudi Islamic scholar, has said that Islam does not prohibit women from driving but that the matter must be seriously discussed. He said he preferred a woman driving her car herself rather than being driven by a stranger without a legal escort.

“There is no definite text (either in the Qur’an or Sunnah) that bans women driving,” said the scholar, who is known for his moderate Islamic views, in an interview with Al-Hayat newspaper. He called for a debate on the issue by prominent scholars."

The Register, Lastminute.com cleared of 'mocking the Christian faith', 7 January 2004: "Lastminute.com has been cleared of 'mocking the Christian faith' after running a series of ads calling on people to 'keep weekends sacred'.

"The captions accompanying posters (which showed streams of bright sunlight through the clouds) were written in mock bible-speak.

"Take this one for example: 'Thou shalt not spend thine Sabbath arguing in a Swedish furniture store, but shalt see a west-end show for less silver pieces than a fancy lamp.'"

The Register, Stroppy emails make you sick: official

Muslim school in synagogue: Simply a business deal, landlord and tenant say

Wired News: Beyond Google: Narrow the Search useful for those of use (re-)searching 'religion' on the web.

sacbee.com -- Religion -- Time to move on: "Last May, Ahmad wrote a column on what he saw as some of the concerns of the Muslim community and posted it on the mosque Web site (www.masjidibrahim.com). The response, he says, was overwhelming. He heard from people all over the country who agreed with his views. The column was the impetus for the conference.
In his column, Ahmad wrote about the need for Muslim social services and for a unified religious body in this country that sets rules and guidelines. He understands why some people may be reluctant, given the experience of Islamic governing bodies in other countries, but says one is needed here. He chided Muslims for not attending services regularly and not providing financial support to their local mosques, among other issues. He also discussed race."