Featuring stars including Riz Ahmed and Nabhaan Rizwan, the event aims to celebrate the ‘rich tapestry of Muslim experiences via the medium of film’

The UK’s first major film festival dedicated to Muslim cinema announced its inaugural lineup on Tuesday, with a slew of award-winning films featuring the likes of Riz Ahmed and Informer’s Nabhaan Rizwan .

Ahmed, winner of an Oscar for best live action short film, will appear in Dammi, a short film directed by Yann Demange, the French film-maker best known for Top Boy and Northern Ireland-set drama ’71. Ahmed co-stars with Isabelle Adjani in a story about a man confronting his French and Algerian heritage on a trip to Paris. Rizwan plays the lead in In Camera, a British feature directed by Naqqash Khalid that screened at the London film festival, as an actor struggling to make a career in the film industry in the face of repeated rejections.

Michaela community school, run by former government social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh, introduced ban last March

A ban on prayer rituals at one of the highest-performing state schools in England, famous for its strict discipline code and high-profile headteacher, was not unlawful, a high court judge has ruled.

The case against Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, was brought by a Muslim pupil, known only as TTT in court proceedings, who claimed the ban was discriminatory and breached her right to religious freedom.

Mary Dispenza spent years as a nun and working in the church before her buried memories rose to the surface. It was the start of her long journey towards justice and peace

Mary Dispenza was almost 50 when she experienced her first flashback. At the time, she was in a workshop entitled Sexual Misconduct on the Part of the Clergy, which she had been asked to attend as part of her job in pastoral support for the Roman Catholic archdiocese in Seattle. To this day, she isn’t sure what words unleashed that memory.

She recalls only how clammy her hands became and how the room suddenly started spinning as she saw her seven-year-old self being lifted on to the lap of a priest in a dark, empty auditorium. She knew in an instant who he was.

NSW premier Chris Minns said a ‘major and serious criminal investigation’ was underway after the incident at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, which Anthony Albanese describes as ‘extremely concerning’

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New South Wales police are treating the alleged stabbing of a bishop during the live stream of a mass in western Sydney as a terrorist attack.

The premier, Chris Minns, said the decision was taken early on Tuesday morning and validated by the police minister.

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As a recent BBC series confirms, the idea of a spiritual journey has survived the decline of organised religion

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s England, the arrival of spring was taken by many as a cue to take to the road. As the prologue to The Canterbury Tales begins: “When in April the sweet showers fall/And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all/…Then people long to go on pilgrimages”.

Given Britain’s increasingly damp climate, contemporary pilgrims are as likely to encounter persistent rain as the occasional sweet shower. But the participants in the BBC’s sixth Pilgrimage series, which ended on Friday, were largely blessed with fine days as they travelled by foot and bus across North Wales. Travelling the Pilgrim’s Way, the group of minor celebrities followed a Christianity-based route-map of shrines and churches, but also stayed at an eco retreat and a Buddhist meditation centre.

A region known as ‘God’s land’ offers a glimpse of the future if Indian prime minister’s BJP party retains its power

For centuries it has been known as the “land of the gods”. Stretching high up into the Himalayas, the Indian state of Uttarakhand is home to tens of thousands of Hindu temples and some of the holiest Hindu pilgrimage sites.

Yet as Hindu nationalism has become the dominant political force in India under prime minister Narendra Modi over the past decade, the government is accused of weaponising Uttarakhand’s sacred status for politics, making the state a “laboratory” for some of the most extreme rightwing policies and rhetoric targeting the Muslim minority.

Troops took Layan Nasir away at gunpoint from her home in the West Bank and her parents haven’t been told where she is

The Israeli troops arrived at about 4am last Saturday to take 23-year-old Layan Nasir away at gunpoint from her parents home in the West Bank town of Birzeit. There was no arrest warrant or charges, and her parents haven’t been notified where she is held.

The only Palestinian Christian woman currently in Israeli detention, her case has been raised by the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. “I’m shocked and deeply concerned,” he said in a post on X. “Please pray for Layan’s safety and swift release.”

The attack, blamed on a suicide bomber, killed 85 people, wounded 300 and devastated Latin America’s biggest Jewish community

A new ruling by Argentina ’s highest criminal court has blamed Iran for the fatal 1994 attack against a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, declaring it a “crime against humanity” in a decision that paves the way for victims to seek justice.

That massive blast at the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), was blamed on a suicide bomber driving a stolen van loaded with explosives. It killed 85 people, wounded 300 and devastated Latin America’s biggest Jewish community.

While some were freed or escaped, the authorities’ waning interest and ongoing mass abductions by militants has left campaigners and families of missing pupils in despair

When her Boko Haram captors told Margret Yama she would be going home, she thought it was a trick. She and the other girls kidnapped from their school in Chibok , in north-east Nigeria’s Borno state, had been held for three years and had been taunted before about the possibility of release.

Conditions where they were being held in Sambisa Forest were harsh. Food and water were limited, the work was hard and the surveillance from the Islamist militants was suffocating. But then came the day in May 2017 when the girls were escorted to a Red Cross convoy on the edges of the forest.