The IARF has recently welcomed the Bektashi Order of Macedonia as a new member group. It is a branch  of the Bektashi Order of Dervishes which has members in 31 countries, with headquarters originally in Turkey, now established in Albania. It is Alevite in character. The order has its origin in the teachings and life […]

 26-27 May 2012  Geneva, Switzerland In response to specific requests during the last 19th Session of the Human Rights Council in March 2012, from grassroots NGO representatives and human rights defenders, IARF in collaboration with the David M. Kennedy Centre for International Studies is organizing an international training workshop on the UN Human Rights Mechanisms – focus on the […]

26th April 2012House of Lords, London IARF was contacted on 20 March 2012 by Dr Layla Alroomi, the spokesperson of the Mandaean Human Rights Group (MHRG), with a request to attend a conference regarding: The plight of the Sabian Mandaeans of Iraq as a Religious, Ethnic and Linguistic minority …getting more serious. Since 2003 this small […]

    Case studies of seven countries—Algeria, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Poland—where such laws exist both on paper and in practice. 

  …what is religious freedom, and why are we talking about it now?    From The Immanent Frame blog (“interdisciplinary perspectives on secularism, religion, and the public sphere”), recent academic articles on the subject.    

  EME region conference 2012 – Trifold flyer   (PDF, 2 pages) EME region conference 2012 – Updated Programme Information (4 July) (PDF, 2 pages) EME region conference 2012 – Registration Form (PDF, 1 page)    

 Egypt court upholds conviction of top Arab actor   The 71-year-old celebrity, described as the Arab world’s Charlie Chaplin, has a long history of legal tangles with Islamists who regard the actor’s work as blasphemous.    

People have often asked me whether the Web design was influenced by Unitarian Universalist philosophy. I have to say that it wasn’t explicitly, as I developed the Web well before I came across Unitarian Universalism at all. But looking back on it, I suppose that there are some parallels between the philosophies.

  The Common Ground project This is an important and pioneering book, which seeks to find common ground between the teachings of Islam and of Buddhism. It is my hope that on the basis of this common ground, followers of each tradition may come to appreciate the spiritual truths their different paths entail, and from […]