February

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Feb 1, 2004
251 pilgrims were killed and another 244 injured in a stampede during the stoning ritual in Mina, Saudi Arabia.

Feb 2, 1982
The Hama massacre occurred when the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 7,000 to 25,000 people were killed, including about 1000 soldiers.

Feb 3, 2006
Hemant Mehta, an atheist, puts his own soul on the eBay auction block. The DePaul University graduate student promised the winner that for each $10 of the final bid, he would attend an hour of church services.

Feb 4, 2005 (publication date)
The Greek Orthodox Church suspends a senior bishop and several clergymen. They allegedly tried to influence or bribe judges to fix the outcome of trials - some involving drug dealers.

Feb 5, 2008
Pope Benedict has ordered changes to a Latin prayer for Jews at Good Friday services by traditionalist Catholics, deleting a reference to their "blindness" over Christ.

Feb 6, 1481
The first Spanish auto de fe (public penance of condemned heretics and apostates) was celebrated in Seville, Spain: six people were burned alive.

Feb 7, 2007
St Mary's church in northern Greece is at the center of a scandal after it unveiled an image of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of Russia's 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The controversial fresco depicts Lenin trimming a canonized Russian archbishop's beard in a metaphor apparently symbolizing Bolshevik persecution of Christianity and other religious faiths.

Feb 8, 1915
Premier of the KKK-friendly film "The Birth of a Nation" helped revive the Klan. It grew into an anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish organization as well as anti-black. Membership peaked in 1924 at 4 million. The Klan claimed 40,000 members were Protestant ministers.

Feb 9, 2007
Anti-immigrant sentiments is fueling a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. As it did from its founding, the KKK views itself as having a religious dimension. Today, Christian Evangelicals are much more likely than mainstream Protestants or Catholics to believe that "newcomers threaten traditional American customs and values." Cartoon on our blog.

Feb 10, 2008
A human skull found in a woman's luggage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is likely an object used in a voodoo ritual, the Broward County medical examiner said Friday.

Feb 11, 2003
The stoning of the devil ritual claimed 14 lives in Saudi Arabia during the pilgrimage known as the hajj. Over the years, hundreds of people have been trampled to death during the stoning of the devil ritual.

Feb 12, 2008 (publication date)
Saudi police visited florist and gift shop owners throughout Riyadh with instructions that the color red is banned until the day after St. Valentine's Day. This included red roses, red candy boxes, red teddy bears, red clothing, and other such articles given as tokens of romantic love.

Feb 13, 2008
Deacons of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth are recommending that an anniversary pictorial directory have no family photos, an effort to defuse a controversy over whether gay couples should be included.

Feb, 14, 1989
A fatwa requiring the execution of the author of the Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie (left), was proclaimed by Ayatollah Khomeini (right), the spiritual leader of Iran.

Feb 14 to March 5
Aztec Indians sacrifice children to Tlaloc (it's good for the crops).

Feb 15, 1999
The Reverend Jerry Falwell, a former spokesman for America's Moral Majority, denounced the children's show, Teletubbies. He said it does not provide a good role model for children because Tinky Winky is gay.

Feb 16, 2008 (publication date)
A Saudi woman condemned to death for “witchcraft” is still clinging to hope that King Abdullah will spare her life after Human Rights Watch appealed her sentence.

Feb 16, 2008 (publication date)
A backlash is growing among televangelists against an investigation spearheaded by Sen. Charles Grassley that is probing churches' acquisitions of Rolls Royces, mansions and private jets.

Feb 17, 1600
Italian mathematician/philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition. The city of Rome erected a statue of Bruno facing the Vatican at the site where he was burned.

Feb 17, 2006
A Pakistani cleric today offered 1.5m rupees (£9,600) and a car as a reward to anyone who killed the cartoonist who drew images of the prophet Muhammad. Updated on our blog.

Feb 18, 2007
As the year of the pig begins in China, the government bans any mention of pigs in TV ads. The ban was imposed to avoid offending China's 20 million Muslims.

Feb 19, 2007 (publication date)
On July 6, Don Larsen applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces. By year's end, his superiors not only denied his request but also withdrew him from Iraq and removed him from the chaplain corps, despite an unblemished service record.

Feb 20, 2007
A Gallup poll revealed that Americans would prefer a gay presidential candidate rather than an atheist. Forty-three percent would not vote for the gay candidate. Fifty-three percent would not vote for the atheist.

Feb 21, 2008
A retired Roman Catholic priest was sentenced to more than five years in prison for bilking two churches out of hundreds of thousands of dollars while he led a double life as a husband and father.

Feb 22, 2006
Bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in Iraq triggered revenge attacks between Shiite and Sunni militants.

Feb 23, 2005 (publication date)
Gay marriages are part of "a new ideology of evil" that is insidiously threatening society, Pope John Paul says in his newly published book.

Feb 24, 2005
Dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jewish worshipers confronted Natalie Portman and her co-star, objecting to the couple kissing during the filming of a scene beside Jerusalem's Western Wall.

Feb 25, 2008
According to Pew poll, 28% of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another one. The numbers jump to 44% if you include those who switched from one Protestant denomination to another.

Feb 26, 1993
A car bomb was detonated below Tower One of the World Trade Center. Six people died and 1,042 were injured. The plot was carried out by Muslim extremist.

Feb 27, 2002
58 Hindus, including 25 women and 15 children were burnt alive in a railway coach in the town of Godhra following an altercation between local Muslims and Hindus. This lead to several months of rioting. According to an official estimate, 1044 people were killed in the violence - 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus including those killed in the Godhra train fire.

Feb 27, 272
The Roman emperor Constantine (right) is born. He was the first Christian emperor, and issued (with his co-emperor Licinius) the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious toleration throughout the empire.

Feb 28, 2008
Across the country, "revirginization" appears to be gaining steam. Spiritual efforts to reclaim virginity emerged back in the early 1990s and now, prompted by abstinence-only school courses, and by religious teachers, there are reports of more and more young women attempting a sexual do-over.

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