Religious News From Around the Web September 27, 2021

Muhammad Ali Documentary Explores Relationship With Islam; Taliban Ruler says Executions Will Resume; Dutch Open Holocaust Museum; Pew Study Documents India’s Religious Composition; Court Orders Facebook to Release Anti-Rohingya Records

Documentary Explores Relationship Between Muhammad Ali and Islam

Boxer Muhammad Ali embraced the Nation of Islam, and its early leaders including Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and made the Hajj to Mecca. A four-part series explores Ali’s life — his family, boxing career, controversies and religion. The PBS documentary, from filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon was released Sept. 19 and is available online.

Taliban Ruler: Executions Will Resume

One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. In an interview with The Associated Press, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi dismissed outrage over the Taliban’s executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium, and he warned the world against interfering with Afghanistan’s new rulers.

Dutch Open Holocaust Museum

The Netherlands officially unveiled its first National Holocaust Memorial in Amsterdam on Sunday, after years of legal dispute over the monument’s location. The memorial is the first in the Netherlands to name all 102,000 Dutch Jews, Sinti and Roma who were deported or killed by the Nazis during World War II. The monument — funded mainly through donations — is located near the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam’s city center.

Pew Study Documents India’s Religious Composition
A new Pew Research Center report shows that India’s religious composition has been fairly stable since the 1947 partition that divided the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. This study – the second in the Center’s series about religion in India – covers the six decades between 1951, when the first post-Partition census was conducted, and 2011, the date of the nation’s most recent census. Here are some of the report’s key findings.

Court Orders Facebook to Release Anti-Rohingya Records
A U.S. federal judge has ordered Facebook to release records of accounts connected to anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar that the social media giant had shut down, rejecting its argument about protecting privacy as “rich with irony.”