Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters – A man walks past graffiti depicting ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and others in downtown Cairo on Sept. 24.

CAIRO — An Egyptian minister said Tuesday that the government would “postpone” the court-ordered dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the country’s state-run media outlet, MENA.

The statement comes after an obscure court issued a sweeping but legally questionable decision Monday to ban the Muslim Brotherhood and all related organizations and activities, which appears to grant the military-backed government expansive legal authority to go after the group’s finances and other assets and essentially criminalizes the group’s political and social service work.

Stephanie McCrummen reports on the shifting status of the Muslim Brotherhood for the Washington Post.

The healthcare law requires corporations to cover contraceptives such as the birth control pill. Some employers object on religious grounds. (Getty Images / January 1, 2000)

“The Obama administration set the stage Thursday for another Supreme Court showdown on the president’s healthcare law, this time to decide whether for-profit companies can be forced to provide full contraceptive coverage for their employees despite religious objections from their owners.”

The Los Angeles Times‘ David G. Savage reports on the U.S. Solicitor General’s request that the Supreme Court take up the question of whether private companies like the Hobby Lobby can claim a 1st Amendment’s protection for the “free exercise of religion” to exempt themselves from the law.

NPD Party activists hold up German flags in the Hellersdorf-Marzahn district of Berlin last month, as they protest a new home for asylum seekers.(Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images)

As many as 5,000 Syrian refugees are moving to Germany this month after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government agreed to a U.N. request to host them. But they aren’t receiving the warmest welcome in a country where a growing number of Germans are unhappy about the steady stream of asylum seekers. Fanning the flames are right wing extremists, who want Germany to close its doors to refugees.

Soraya Sorhaddi Nelson reports on  opposition to Syrian refugees, most of whom are Muslim, for NPR.

Which side in Egypt is currently on the side of the angels?

We like to imagine that in any conflict (particularly political ones) the good guys can be easily separated from the bad guys; good guys play by the rules of the game, bad guys don’t. Life is rarely that simple, of course, but the current situation in Egypt is especially complex. The cast of key characters keeps switching sides—villains have become heroes only to be rebranded as villains, and on and on.

Asma Afsaruddin, professor of Islamic Studies and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington, considers where the moral and ethical lines are being drawn now in Egypt for Religion Dispatches.

Religious Affairs Minister Nourredine Khadmi works in his office in Tunis, September 2, 2013. Credit: REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi

The young man at the entrance to Zitouna, the oldest mosque in the Tunis medina, was adamant. Non-Muslims could no longer enter the building, not even just its outside gallery overlooking the busy souk.

“You can only come in if you declare, ‘There is no god but God and Mohammad is God’s messenger’,” he said – effectively making conversion to Islam the new admission ticket to a monument that used to welcome non-Muslim visitors.

Tom Heneghan, Reuter’s religion editor, reports on tensions between Ennahda, Tunisia’s governing party, and increasingly activist Salafi groups.