The Dalai Lama’s aides clarified his statements on Osama bin Laden’s death and said the Buddhist leader believes bin Laden deserves “compassion.”

On May 3, 2011, the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism, said that while Buddhism, like most Western religions, calls for forgiveness, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take countermeasures, you have to take countermeasures.”

Read a May 4, 2011, essay in Scientific American, “Does Revenge Serve an Evolutionary Purpose?” A psychologist who studies human behavior explains the complex desire for vengeance in the context of bin Laden’s death.

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served in the Justice Department from 2001-03, writes in The Wall Street Journal that the successful raid vindicates the Bush administration’s interrogation policies.

A May 3, 2011, blog post rounds up news stories and religious reaction surrounding the torture issue.

Read an editorial in the May 23, 2011, edition of America magazine, the national weekly produced by the Jesuits, that questions whether the bin Laden operation means the U.S. is resorting too frequently to “extrajudicial” killings.

The Prayer Bear Ministry of Sherman, Texas, solicits small donations from people to make simple fabric teddy bears for shipment to servicemen and women at home and abroad. In just one year, the ministry sent more than 20,000 bears to Iraq and Afghanistan. Each bear is prayed over as it is made and has a silver tear, […]

Diana Hayes is a retired professor of systematic theology at Georgetown University, gave an opening speech at Sisters, a conference on the role of women’s leadership in Catholicism and Islam, in 2003. The conference took place at the Catholic Theological Union. It began on the first day of the war in Iraq.

Do editors care about religion coverage? By David Gibson The Star-Ledger* Okay, your editor has just created a religion beat and tabbed you to fill it. Going on the assumption that you lobbied for this job, you are jazzed, and you ought to be. So the question: Does your editor care about religion coverage? The […]