All kinds of online forums allow open discussion of religious questions.For the first time, lay people can easily separate religious commands from tradition by looking at holy texts and scholarship rather than relying on their local preachers.
Nonetheless, some Egyptian and Syrian Muslim scholars have issued legal opinions (called fatwas) proposing that if there is a compelling reason to perform an autopsy, including benefit to society or prevention of disease, then these religious commands may be suspended [ 35].
Religious leaders command strict authority inside their communities and have the external political power to demand a degree of self-rule.
Koch said he found the story hard to believe; it is quite offensive to call a black minister a liar, since religious leaders command more respect among blacks than other groups.
Pollsters and political analysts in Pakistan have maintained that the religious parties command only a small percentage of popular support and that the 2002 elections were an aberration, a reaction to the American intervention in Afghanistan and the result of rigging by Pakistan's intelligence agencies, which have always had links with the religious parties.
Sistani and Moqtada are natural foes, for personal and ideological reasons, and Sistani, because of his immensely greater religious authority, commands a much larger following among Iraqi Shiites.
But there are costs to being a nation in which we're all heretics to one another, and no religious orthodoxy commands wide support.
The grand ayatollah, the senior cleric among the Shiite religious hierarchy, commands vast respect among ordinary Iraqis, many of whom could be counted on to give serious consideration to a pronouncement by him about the elections.
Lao Dan is but one manifestation of the divine Laozi, albeit a pivotal one because of the writing of the Daodejing, which in religious Daoism commands devotion as a foundational scripture that promises not only wisdom but also immortality and salvation to those who submit to its power.
The Malay word she uses is wajib, meaning any religious duty commanded by Allah.
