Israel will exhibit
Commandments
JERUSALEM — The world’s oldest complete copy of the Ten Commandments is going on rare display at Israel’s leading museum in an exhibit tracing civilization’s most pivotal moments.
The 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scroll, from a collection of the world’s most ancient biblical manuscripts discovered near the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem, has never before been publicly displayed in Israel and has only been shown in brief exhibits abroad, said Pnina Shor of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The manuscript is so brittle that it will only be on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem for two weeks before it is returned to a secure, pitch-black, climate-controlled storage facility there.
— The Associated Press
Muslim student
tally claim probed
PARIS — French authorities are investigating claims that a southern town tracks how many Muslim children attend its schools, which would be illegal and run counter to France’s secular view of itself.
The claims by the extreme right mayor of Beziers drew attention at the highest levels, reflecting heightened tensions around religion following the terrorist attacks in January.
The prime minister called Tuesday for swift action. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said counting children by religion “sends us back to the darkest hours of our history,” referring to French collaboration with the Nazis. France’s laws against counting people by religion or ethnicity stem in part from the Holocaust.
— The Associated Press
Judge: County
must halt prayers
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A federal judge has ruled that North Carolina’s Rowan County commissioners must stop opening their meetings with prayers that almost always referred to Christianity.
U.S. District Judge James Beaty Jr. ruled Monday that the way the commissioners opened meetings with prayers violated separation of church and state. Rowan County commissioners themselves delivered prayers before their meetings.
Beaty said the commissioners stood, almost always bowed their heads and asked audience members to also stand and join them in prayers that normally included references to Jesus, the Savior, and other tenets of the Christian faith.
— The Associated Press
Contest organizer
linked to lawsuits
NEW YORK — The Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that exploded in violence over the weekend in suburban Dallas was organized by Pamela Geller, a 56-year-old New Yorker who has warned for years that Islam threatens to destroy the United States.
The contest was offering $10,000 for the best depiction of Muhammad.
Geller has been involved in numerous lawsuits in recent years, many of them related to her efforts to place ads in public transit systems. New York’s transit authority recently banned all political advertising after a judge upheld Geller’s right to run bus ads about Islam that said, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.”
In 2012, the transit authority was forced to run Geller ads that read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” She paid for similar ads in San Francisco, Detroit and Washington.
— The Associated Press