Gandhi's wisdom lets religion and politics mix
Academic puts forward quest for peace
Wayne A. Holst
For The Calgary Herald
Saturday, September 20, 2008
CREDIT: Reuters Archive
Mohandas Gandhi, right, with Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, bridged the religious and political divisions in India -- a lesson that might be applied in today's world, a Calgary academic says.
The news from India has not been good. In the state of Orissa, Hindu groups accuse Christian missionaries of unfair recruitment tactics in their attempts to convert lower castes of society.
Last December, five Catholic churches, 48 village chapels, two seminaries, half a dozen hostels and four convents were destroyed in communal violence.
In August of this year, a Hindu religious leader, Swami Lakshmanananda, and some of his disciples were killed in their ashram.
This month, the Press Trust of India reported that several Hindu temples were attacked by Christian radicals.
In the land where Mohandas K. Gandhi, the grand mentor of peaceful religious coexistence, is venerated, sectarian violence spreads as each new provocation heightens bloody reciprocation. These tragedies mock what Gandhi envisioned.
Sectarian violence on the Indian subcontinent reminds us that the dangerous blend of radical religion and politics are not limited to places like the Gaza Strip or the Sudan.
Little more than a half-century ago, Gandhi ingeniously led his nation to independence from Imperial Britain as harsh political turmoil roiled the Hindu and Muslim communities.
In some ways, India is a very different nation today, but in others, it remains much the same. A big question of that time continues to haunt and intrigue people of good will in our time. Could the application of Gandhian principles that would knit political and religious factions into a common quest for peace reframe our vision for the world today?
A Calgary academic with a lifelong admiration for Gandhi believes they can, with a certain adaptation.
In his book Gandhi's Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony, (Cambridge University Press, 2006) Antony Parel, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Calgary, writes that contrary to commonly held views in western democracies, Gandhi believed religion and politics should creatively co-mingle and not be separate entities.
Gandhi demonstrated this truth could be practised in one's personal and communal life. By extension, it could also serve the best interests of people on a societal scale.
He learned from studies in ancient Vedic cosmology that right action could be aligned with the best democratic values he saw emanating from the West. Discoveries from his own culture's primal traditions contained universal values inherent to all humanity.
Balance and harmony -- where neither secular nor religious philosophies dominated but served each other -- formed his core principles.
He taught that ethical, esthetic and spiritual values must underlie our politics and economics. People of faith must learn to live in the real world; integrating the spiritual with the practical in their daily behaviour.
India has had a long history of inter-faith struggle. Now, however, Gandhi could serve as a fatherly inspiration; challenging his children to reclaim their ancient values.
Concurrently, Gandhi has a message for would-be "true" believers of all faiths. Go deeper than a shallow reading of your religious heritage. Use the primal values of your traditions to build bridges, not walls.
- The Gandhi Society of Calgary will hold its ninth annual dinner and lecture on Sept. 28 at 6 p.m. at the Inn on Crowchild. Tickets and information from 403-283-2004, 403-547-9879 or 403-220-7361.
Wayne Holst teaches religion and culture at the University of Calgary and co-ordinates adult spiritual development at St. David's United Church.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
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INTERFAITH ISSUES
Related articles linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/world ... ref=slogin
September 29, 2008
Jerusalem Journal
Jews and Muslims Share Holy Season in Jerusalem
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Jews are not quiet in prayer. Even when focused on the most personal of quests, as they are this season — asking God for forgiveness for dark thoughts and unkind deeds in the past year — they take comfort in community, chanting and swaying and dancing in circles, blowing the trumpet-like shofar, a ram’s horn.
These are the days of the Jewish month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, when tradition says that God determines who will live and die in the coming year, and the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem’s Old City is a festival of piety that runs from midnight till dawn. Tens of thousands roll in and out during the night reciting the special penitential prayers called Slihot.
Coincidentally — the Muslim calendar shifts every year — it is also Ramadan, the month when the faithful believe that God gave the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad, a time of fasting, self-reflection and extra prayer, when being at Al Aksa Mosque here is even more important than usual. At night, when the fasting is over, the celebrating begins. The ancient stone alleyways of the Old City are lit up with strings of colored lights, special foods are prepared, and Palestinian Muslims come and go by the thousands.
The result has been a kind of monotheistic traffic jam in September along the paths of the tiny walled Old City, especially as dawn approaches each day. The Muslims and Jews walk past one another, often intersecting just at the Via Dolorosa of Christian sanctity, as they hurry to their separate prayer sessions: the Muslims above at the Dome of the Rock, the Jews just below at the Western Wall.
It would be wrong to call these tense encounters, because there are essentially no encounters at all. Words are not exchanged. Religious women in both groups — head, arms and legs covered in subtly distinct fashion — look past one another as if they took no notice. Like parallel universes with different names for every place and moment they both claim as their own, the groups pass in the night.
But there is palpable tension. Israeli soldiers walk in small packs to ward off trouble. Security cameras bristle from most walls and intersections. Commemorative stone plaques mark past acts of terrorism (“On this spot Elhanan Aharon was killed. From his blood we will live and build Jerusalem.”) while Palestinians complain that they are losing the competition for control of these ancient byways and that those in the occupied West Bank are barred from coming without special permission.
“I don’t believe the Jews and Muslims can ever have peace here,” Said Abed said on his way to dawn prayers at Al Aksa when asked his view of the unusual intersection of Slihot and Ramadan. “The Jews are trying to control Jerusalem by deciding who can stay here.”
Some Muslims defy archaeology and history by saying that Jews have no link to the site and that it is purely Muslim sacred territory. The same problem exists on the other side as well — some Jews believe that the holiness here is theirs alone.
Inside a closed-off area of the Western Wall plaza a few hours earlier, four young men were studying Talmud, reading to one another rabbinic commentary about a prayer for rain that is said as the new year starts. What did they think of the coincidence of Jewish and Muslim prayers only yards from each other during these days?
“The Muslims shouldn’t even be there,” offered Haim Ben Dalak, 18, of Petah Tikvah, who just started a year at a Jerusalem religious seminary before his army service. “There should be a Jewish temple there. That’s what we believe.”
Thirty years ago, the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, who knew this city as few others have, wrote:
The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams like the air over industrial cities.
It’s hard to breathe.
The Hebrew name for the city, Yerushalayim, ends with “-ayim,” a grammatical construction used for pairs of things. The device, known as a dual, exists in Hebrew and Arabic but few other languages. Which duality is being invoked has been lost to history, but it would not be hard to imagine that it is the one of heaven and earth, of holy and profane, and the difficulty of their coexisting. But of course everyone tends to focus on the holy.
Called Al Quds (the Holy One) in Arabic, Jerusalem is the city that Mohammad visited on his night journey to heaven. Just as Jews pray facing Jerusalem from anywhere in the world, Muslims did so originally as well, until the site was moved to Mecca. Jerusalem remains for Muslims the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall for the past 12 years, goes every midnight during this period to Slihot at the wall.
“Night is a special time for spiritual reflection and this wall makes even those with hearts of stone shed a tear,” Rabbi Rabinowitz said after his half-hour Slihot prayer next to the wall, its crevices revealing the imploring notes to God stuffed there by visitors.
Above his voice can be heard scores of groups — some large, some small, all of slightly different tradition — praying in a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic, acknowledging sin, seeking redemption.
Most are devout, but some are secular Jews who come here for Slihot season, a growing trend.
“We love coming to Jerusalem at this time of year,” said Ada Lugati, a hairdresser from the northern city of Afula, who was dressed in distinctly nonobservant manner, in slacks with a uncovered head and bare midriff.
“It feels here as if the heavens are open to our prayer,” she said as she looked up at the clear night sky. Avi Kenig, 17, starting a year of religious study at an institute just across from the wall, put it this way: “We have been taught that here we are at the center of the world. These are the gates to heaven.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/world ... ref=slogin
September 29, 2008
Jerusalem Journal
Jews and Muslims Share Holy Season in Jerusalem
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Jews are not quiet in prayer. Even when focused on the most personal of quests, as they are this season — asking God for forgiveness for dark thoughts and unkind deeds in the past year — they take comfort in community, chanting and swaying and dancing in circles, blowing the trumpet-like shofar, a ram’s horn.
These are the days of the Jewish month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, when tradition says that God determines who will live and die in the coming year, and the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem’s Old City is a festival of piety that runs from midnight till dawn. Tens of thousands roll in and out during the night reciting the special penitential prayers called Slihot.
Coincidentally — the Muslim calendar shifts every year — it is also Ramadan, the month when the faithful believe that God gave the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad, a time of fasting, self-reflection and extra prayer, when being at Al Aksa Mosque here is even more important than usual. At night, when the fasting is over, the celebrating begins. The ancient stone alleyways of the Old City are lit up with strings of colored lights, special foods are prepared, and Palestinian Muslims come and go by the thousands.
The result has been a kind of monotheistic traffic jam in September along the paths of the tiny walled Old City, especially as dawn approaches each day. The Muslims and Jews walk past one another, often intersecting just at the Via Dolorosa of Christian sanctity, as they hurry to their separate prayer sessions: the Muslims above at the Dome of the Rock, the Jews just below at the Western Wall.
It would be wrong to call these tense encounters, because there are essentially no encounters at all. Words are not exchanged. Religious women in both groups — head, arms and legs covered in subtly distinct fashion — look past one another as if they took no notice. Like parallel universes with different names for every place and moment they both claim as their own, the groups pass in the night.
But there is palpable tension. Israeli soldiers walk in small packs to ward off trouble. Security cameras bristle from most walls and intersections. Commemorative stone plaques mark past acts of terrorism (“On this spot Elhanan Aharon was killed. From his blood we will live and build Jerusalem.”) while Palestinians complain that they are losing the competition for control of these ancient byways and that those in the occupied West Bank are barred from coming without special permission.
“I don’t believe the Jews and Muslims can ever have peace here,” Said Abed said on his way to dawn prayers at Al Aksa when asked his view of the unusual intersection of Slihot and Ramadan. “The Jews are trying to control Jerusalem by deciding who can stay here.”
Some Muslims defy archaeology and history by saying that Jews have no link to the site and that it is purely Muslim sacred territory. The same problem exists on the other side as well — some Jews believe that the holiness here is theirs alone.
Inside a closed-off area of the Western Wall plaza a few hours earlier, four young men were studying Talmud, reading to one another rabbinic commentary about a prayer for rain that is said as the new year starts. What did they think of the coincidence of Jewish and Muslim prayers only yards from each other during these days?
“The Muslims shouldn’t even be there,” offered Haim Ben Dalak, 18, of Petah Tikvah, who just started a year at a Jerusalem religious seminary before his army service. “There should be a Jewish temple there. That’s what we believe.”
Thirty years ago, the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, who knew this city as few others have, wrote:
The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams like the air over industrial cities.
It’s hard to breathe.
The Hebrew name for the city, Yerushalayim, ends with “-ayim,” a grammatical construction used for pairs of things. The device, known as a dual, exists in Hebrew and Arabic but few other languages. Which duality is being invoked has been lost to history, but it would not be hard to imagine that it is the one of heaven and earth, of holy and profane, and the difficulty of their coexisting. But of course everyone tends to focus on the holy.
Called Al Quds (the Holy One) in Arabic, Jerusalem is the city that Mohammad visited on his night journey to heaven. Just as Jews pray facing Jerusalem from anywhere in the world, Muslims did so originally as well, until the site was moved to Mecca. Jerusalem remains for Muslims the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall for the past 12 years, goes every midnight during this period to Slihot at the wall.
“Night is a special time for spiritual reflection and this wall makes even those with hearts of stone shed a tear,” Rabbi Rabinowitz said after his half-hour Slihot prayer next to the wall, its crevices revealing the imploring notes to God stuffed there by visitors.
Above his voice can be heard scores of groups — some large, some small, all of slightly different tradition — praying in a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic, acknowledging sin, seeking redemption.
Most are devout, but some are secular Jews who come here for Slihot season, a growing trend.
“We love coming to Jerusalem at this time of year,” said Ada Lugati, a hairdresser from the northern city of Afula, who was dressed in distinctly nonobservant manner, in slacks with a uncovered head and bare midriff.
“It feels here as if the heavens are open to our prayer,” she said as she looked up at the clear night sky. Avi Kenig, 17, starting a year of religious study at an institute just across from the wall, put it this way: “We have been taught that here we are at the center of the world. These are the gates to heaven.”
Minister enhances faith through meditation
'It breaks down all the barriers,' says reverend
Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald
Saturday, October 11, 2008
A leading voice in the Canadian Christian meditation community, an ancient spiritual practice finding renewed popularity in a chaotic, noisy world, is coming to Calgary.
Rev. Glenda Meakin of Stratford, Ont., will lead Let Nothing Disturb You, a weekend series of instructive meditations, Oct. 24 to 26 at Christ Church Anglican Church, 3602 8th St. S.W.
Many Calgarians are embracing the routine of setting aside daily quiet times where they withdraw from myriad demands of the secular world to get in touch with the divine.
Meakin, an Anglican priest, was introduced to Christian meditation by her spiritual director while in seminary.
"As so many people say, I felt like I had come home," says Meakin, who has worked in both parish ministry and, for eight years, as a chaplain at a girls school. "I felt this instant connection to this way of prayer."
Meakin calls Christian meditation an amazing gift in a multi-faith, multicultural society.
"It breaks down all the barriers. There is this incredible sense that we are one. There are many factors in how we interpret the spiritual life, but once you set aside the words, we can recognize our unity," says Meakin.
Meakin says through the years she came to realize her own spiritual journey was best suited to one of contemplation. She retired from parish ministry and took a year off, "just to be quiet."
"I began to teach Christian meditation in the tradition of John Main, to offer retreats and act as a resource person," recalls Meakin.
She defines Christian meditation as a path to the divine through silence and simplicity. By focusing on a simple word or phrase (many people use "maranatha," Aramaic for "come, Lord"), Meakin says participants are able to "clear away the outside world's monkey chatter and the clutter in our minds."
That daily quiet communion with the divine is a deep human longing that transcends all religious labels, she adds.
"It's a way of prayer shared by all other major faith groups. It's the path to unity, not only with God, but with one another."
Meakin says the ancient, contemplative practice fell victim to centuries of emphasis on hierarchical governance within the collective church.
"We certainly learn from one another and we need teachers, guides and people with gifts. But my sense is we got very involved in maintaining structure rather than following the way Jesus teaches," says Meakin.
"There's a great hunger out there. People embrace Christian meditation for its simplicity and its direct experience of the spirit within. And at some point, it really connects with us. We can't live a certain way just because somebody says you ought to," she says.
Christ Church member Forbes Newman hopes Meakin's visit will jump-start a Christian meditation group at the historic Elbow Park parish.
Newman has been practising a number of forms of meditation for almost 40 years. He now meditates 20 minutes each morning and again for 20 minutes every evening.
"It's really an integral piece of my life; it keeps me grounded," he says.
Meakin will lead guided meditations on Oct. 24 (7:30 p.m.) and Oct. 25 (9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.) and will deliver the Sunday homily at Christ Church on Oct. 26 at 10:30 a.m.
Each session costs $15 . Pre-register by calling the church office at 403-243-4680 is encouraged.
gmorton@theherald.canwest.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
'It breaks down all the barriers,' says reverend
Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald
Saturday, October 11, 2008
A leading voice in the Canadian Christian meditation community, an ancient spiritual practice finding renewed popularity in a chaotic, noisy world, is coming to Calgary.
Rev. Glenda Meakin of Stratford, Ont., will lead Let Nothing Disturb You, a weekend series of instructive meditations, Oct. 24 to 26 at Christ Church Anglican Church, 3602 8th St. S.W.
Many Calgarians are embracing the routine of setting aside daily quiet times where they withdraw from myriad demands of the secular world to get in touch with the divine.
Meakin, an Anglican priest, was introduced to Christian meditation by her spiritual director while in seminary.
"As so many people say, I felt like I had come home," says Meakin, who has worked in both parish ministry and, for eight years, as a chaplain at a girls school. "I felt this instant connection to this way of prayer."
Meakin calls Christian meditation an amazing gift in a multi-faith, multicultural society.
"It breaks down all the barriers. There is this incredible sense that we are one. There are many factors in how we interpret the spiritual life, but once you set aside the words, we can recognize our unity," says Meakin.
Meakin says through the years she came to realize her own spiritual journey was best suited to one of contemplation. She retired from parish ministry and took a year off, "just to be quiet."
"I began to teach Christian meditation in the tradition of John Main, to offer retreats and act as a resource person," recalls Meakin.
She defines Christian meditation as a path to the divine through silence and simplicity. By focusing on a simple word or phrase (many people use "maranatha," Aramaic for "come, Lord"), Meakin says participants are able to "clear away the outside world's monkey chatter and the clutter in our minds."
That daily quiet communion with the divine is a deep human longing that transcends all religious labels, she adds.
"It's a way of prayer shared by all other major faith groups. It's the path to unity, not only with God, but with one another."
Meakin says the ancient, contemplative practice fell victim to centuries of emphasis on hierarchical governance within the collective church.
"We certainly learn from one another and we need teachers, guides and people with gifts. But my sense is we got very involved in maintaining structure rather than following the way Jesus teaches," says Meakin.
"There's a great hunger out there. People embrace Christian meditation for its simplicity and its direct experience of the spirit within. And at some point, it really connects with us. We can't live a certain way just because somebody says you ought to," she says.
Christ Church member Forbes Newman hopes Meakin's visit will jump-start a Christian meditation group at the historic Elbow Park parish.
Newman has been practising a number of forms of meditation for almost 40 years. He now meditates 20 minutes each morning and again for 20 minutes every evening.
"It's really an integral piece of my life; it keeps me grounded," he says.
Meakin will lead guided meditations on Oct. 24 (7:30 p.m.) and Oct. 25 (9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.) and will deliver the Sunday homily at Christ Church on Oct. 26 at 10:30 a.m.
Each session costs $15 . Pre-register by calling the church office at 403-243-4680 is encouraged.
gmorton@theherald.canwest.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Equating Islam with Terrorism is Dangerous
By Sarwar Kashani
October 17, 2008
Astana
The widening gulf between different religions was leading to dangerous global instability, said leaders of Western and Islamic countries here Friday, and warned against equating Islam with terrorism.
At an international summit in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan, foreign ministers and other participants from 65 countries and international organizations said reconciliatory measures and dialogue between Muslims and Christians were a must for global peace and stability.
"It is a great pity that we see incessant attempts to authenticate and unify Islam and terrorism. The doctrinal substance of Islam is distorted. This repulses a big chunk of Muslims who cannot help but be offended by such treatment of the Quran," said Kazakhstan Foreign Minister M. Tazhin, addressing the conference, Common World - Progress Through Diversity.
Muslim belief, he said, "is declared as extremism, which erodes the principles of tolerance".
"Anti-Islamism is a danger with negative consequences not only for the Muslim community but also for Western countries themselves," Tahzin warned.
The Kazakhstan foreign minister suggested that the world leaders should not argue on what he referred to as "grammatical subtleties of our life and time and instead address mundane problems affronting the world today".
The summit is being held in the backdrop of the perceived widening gap between Islam and the Western world. The venue was a pyramid shaped architectural masterpiece, called the Palace of Peace and Concord in Astana - the hi-tech city in the north-central Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev stressed the need to jointly stave off threats to world security due to terrorism and the apparent discord between Muslims and Christians.
He said it was "imperative to stave off the division of the world along civilisational, cultural and religious lines and unite in the face of common threats to humanity".
Kazakhstan - a former USSR state that became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union - is home to nearly 16 million people of 130 ethnic groups practicing 46 faiths with a pre-dominant Muslim population.
The world's largest landlocked country is bordered by Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Caspian Sea towards the west.
The central Asian country, rich in mineral and fossil fuel resources, is a presidential republic. Nazarbayev, a popular leader with strong secular leanings, was re-elected as the head of the state in the 2005 elections with a thumping majority, with over 90 percent votes.
Kazakhs generally are highly appreciative of President Nazarbayev's social and economic reforms even though some international organizations doubted that the 2005 elections weren't held in accordance with global standards.
Condemning what he described as "mass media outrages" against feelings of followers of other religions, Nazarbayev warned that "journalists involved in these practices will face outrages against their own faith".
"That is why, it is imperative to stave off the division of the world along civilisational, cultural and religious lines and unite in the face of common threats to humanity."
OIC General Secretary Ekrneleddin Ihsanogiu said diversity was one of the fundamental principles of Islamic teachings that vouch for peaceful coexistence of different civilizations.
"Islam is the religion of peace, moderation and compassion and celebrates diversity and even recognizes Christianity and Judaism," Ihsanogiu said.
Echoing the same sentiments, foreign ministers and participants from, Pakistan, Russia, Belgium European Union, Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Poland and other nations unanimously rejected any form of "tensions based on religious beliefs, cultural and civilisational differences and their use for fuelling hatred, xenophobia and confrontation".
They also stressed the need to encourage permanent contacts and dialogue within and between Muslim and Western societies at political and social level.
They stressed that international relations should be guided by fundamental principles that underpin at corpus of human rights, democracy and equity.
By Sarwar Kashani
October 17, 2008
Astana
The widening gulf between different religions was leading to dangerous global instability, said leaders of Western and Islamic countries here Friday, and warned against equating Islam with terrorism.
At an international summit in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan, foreign ministers and other participants from 65 countries and international organizations said reconciliatory measures and dialogue between Muslims and Christians were a must for global peace and stability.
"It is a great pity that we see incessant attempts to authenticate and unify Islam and terrorism. The doctrinal substance of Islam is distorted. This repulses a big chunk of Muslims who cannot help but be offended by such treatment of the Quran," said Kazakhstan Foreign Minister M. Tazhin, addressing the conference, Common World - Progress Through Diversity.
Muslim belief, he said, "is declared as extremism, which erodes the principles of tolerance".
"Anti-Islamism is a danger with negative consequences not only for the Muslim community but also for Western countries themselves," Tahzin warned.
The Kazakhstan foreign minister suggested that the world leaders should not argue on what he referred to as "grammatical subtleties of our life and time and instead address mundane problems affronting the world today".
The summit is being held in the backdrop of the perceived widening gap between Islam and the Western world. The venue was a pyramid shaped architectural masterpiece, called the Palace of Peace and Concord in Astana - the hi-tech city in the north-central Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev stressed the need to jointly stave off threats to world security due to terrorism and the apparent discord between Muslims and Christians.
He said it was "imperative to stave off the division of the world along civilisational, cultural and religious lines and unite in the face of common threats to humanity".
Kazakhstan - a former USSR state that became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union - is home to nearly 16 million people of 130 ethnic groups practicing 46 faiths with a pre-dominant Muslim population.
The world's largest landlocked country is bordered by Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Caspian Sea towards the west.
The central Asian country, rich in mineral and fossil fuel resources, is a presidential republic. Nazarbayev, a popular leader with strong secular leanings, was re-elected as the head of the state in the 2005 elections with a thumping majority, with over 90 percent votes.
Kazakhs generally are highly appreciative of President Nazarbayev's social and economic reforms even though some international organizations doubted that the 2005 elections weren't held in accordance with global standards.
Condemning what he described as "mass media outrages" against feelings of followers of other religions, Nazarbayev warned that "journalists involved in these practices will face outrages against their own faith".
"That is why, it is imperative to stave off the division of the world along civilisational, cultural and religious lines and unite in the face of common threats to humanity."
OIC General Secretary Ekrneleddin Ihsanogiu said diversity was one of the fundamental principles of Islamic teachings that vouch for peaceful coexistence of different civilizations.
"Islam is the religion of peace, moderation and compassion and celebrates diversity and even recognizes Christianity and Judaism," Ihsanogiu said.
Echoing the same sentiments, foreign ministers and participants from, Pakistan, Russia, Belgium European Union, Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Poland and other nations unanimously rejected any form of "tensions based on religious beliefs, cultural and civilisational differences and their use for fuelling hatred, xenophobia and confrontation".
They also stressed the need to encourage permanent contacts and dialogue within and between Muslim and Western societies at political and social level.
They stressed that international relations should be guided by fundamental principles that underpin at corpus of human rights, democracy and equity.
During his recent GJ visit to Portugal MHI addressed the issue of atheists or non-believers in our society and that we should embrace them within the framework of cosmopolitan ethic. Below is the excerpt from the interview.
In Lisbon , a couple of weeks ago, Rabi René Sirat suggested a sort of G8 of religious leaders. Could this be a good idea, for the progress of inter-religious dialogue?
Inter-religious dialogue, yes, but I would prefer that it be based upon a cosmopolitan ethic. It would have to include non-believers. Because I am talking about human society and I cannot judge an individual's belief at any given time, in his life or mine. My experience is that belief is not necessarily constant; it varies according to age, to one's circumstances and the family in which one was educated.
The following are two pertinent recent stories which relate to the activities of non-believers and their need to be recognised and respected equally by our society.
Students call for God-free graduation
University of Alberta groups want changes
Keith Gerein
Edmonton Journal
Friday, October 24, 2008
A student group at the University of Alberta is fighting to make the
school's convocation ceremony a God-free event.
Specifically, the university's Atheists and Agnostics society objects to one
line in the service, when the chancellor charges graduates to use their
degrees for "the glory of God and the honour of your country."
The group is petitioning the university to either remove the line or change
the wording to respect their "God-optional" views.
"What they are doing is basically implying that everyone who graduates from
the university should be doing certain things with their degree, and this
kind of charge requires a belief in something up to one-third of campus
might not have," said Ian Bushfield, the organization's president, referring
to a Decima survey in May that found about 35 per cent of Canadians under 25
do not believe in a god.
The university is convening a special meeting Monday to hear arguments on
the issue from interested campus groups, as well as professors, support
staff and the chaplain's association. A committee is expected to make a
recommendation on Nov. 3, with a vote to come three weeks later
-- too late for the fall convocation, but it could get things rolling in
time for spring, Bushfield said.
Andrew Chan, of the group Christians in Action Bible Study, said it's OK if
the line is softened, but he believes the religious theme should remain part
of convocation.
"From my standpoint, the line has historical value because the U of A was
founded on Christian beliefs," Chan said. "Taking that out would take out a
part of the university's history."
But Brett Sawchuk of Cross Impact, another Christian group, argued that
Christianity is no longer part of the university's academic culture.
"As believers, it means something to us Christians and other people who are
religious, but taking it out is probably a more accurate portrayal of the
university," said Sawchuk, who was surprised to hear the "God"
reference at his convocation last June. "Christians who attend the U of A
know they are attending a non-Christian university."
(c) The Calgary Herald 2008
*****
Atheists Plan Anti-God Ad Campaign on Buses
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Promotional photo for the Atheist Bus Campaign
LONDON, UK — London buses have God on their side — but not for
long, if atheists have their way.
The sides of some of London's red buses will soon carry ads
asserting there is "probably no God," as nonbelievers fight what
they say is the preferential treatment given to religion in British
society.
Organizers of a campaign to raise funds for the ads said Wednesday
they received more than $113,000 in donations, almost seven times
their target, in the hours since they launched the project on a
charity Web site. Supporters include Oxford University biologist
Richard Dawkins, who donated $9,000.
The money will be used to place posters on 30 buses carrying the
slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your
life." The plan was to run the ads for four weeks starting in
January, but so much money has been raised that the project may be
expanded.
"A lot of people say trying to organize atheists is like herding
cats. The last couple of days shows that is not true," said comedy
writer Ariane Sherine, who started the campaign.
While most London buses carry posters for shops or Hollywood movies,
Christian churches and Muslim groups have bought bus-side ad space
in the past.
Sherine came up with the idea after seeing a series of Christian
posters on London buses. She said she visited the Web site promoted
on one ad and found it told nonbelievers they would spend eternity
in torment in hell.
"I thought it would be a really positive thing to counter that by
putting forward a much happier and more upbeat advert, saying 'Don't
worry, you're not going to hell,'" said Sherine, 28. "Atheists
believe this is the only life we have, and we should enjoy it."
The British Humanist Association, which is administering the
fundraising drive, said it had been so successful the campaign might
spread to other cities including Manchester and Edinburgh.
Most Britons identify themselves as Christians, but few attend
church regularly, and public figures rarely talk about their
beliefs. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was rare among politicians
in speaking openly about his Christian faith.
Dawkins, author of the best-selling atheist manifesto "The God
Delusion," said that religion nonetheless held a privileged position
in society.
"Religious organizations have an automatic tax-free charitable
status," he said. "Bishops sit in the House of Lords automatically.
Religious leaders get preferential treatment on all sorts of
commissions.
"This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make
people think — and thinking is anathema to religion."
Dawkins said that as an atheist he "wasn't wild" about the ad's
assertion that there was "probably" no God.
Sherine said the word was included to ensure the posters didn't
breach transit advertising regulations, which stipulate ads should
not offend religious people.
Few believers appeared offended by the campaign, although most
doubted it would work.
"I think people will ask themselves, 'On what basis can they make
that statement?" said Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of
Britain. "So it will get people thinking, so in that sense it can
only be good."
Ad agency CBS Outdoor, which manages advertising on many London
buses, said it had approved the atheist campaign.
Sales and marketing director Tim Bleakley said "our decision to take
an ad that promotes God, or one that promotes no God, is based on
commercial terms, as long as the advertising copy itself does not
breach U.K. advertising standards."
The Rev. Jenny Ellis, spirituality and discipleship officer for the
Methodist Church, welcomed the ads.
"This campaign will be a good thing if it gets people to engage with
the deepest questions of life," she said.
The religious think tank Theos said it had donated $82 to the
campaign, on the grounds that the ads were so bad they would
probably attract people to religion.
"It tells people to 'stop worrying,' which is hardly going to be a
great comfort for those who are concerned about losing jobs or homes
in the recession," said Theos director Paul Woolley.
"Stunts like this demonstrate how militant atheists are often great
adverts for Christianity."
In Lisbon , a couple of weeks ago, Rabi René Sirat suggested a sort of G8 of religious leaders. Could this be a good idea, for the progress of inter-religious dialogue?
Inter-religious dialogue, yes, but I would prefer that it be based upon a cosmopolitan ethic. It would have to include non-believers. Because I am talking about human society and I cannot judge an individual's belief at any given time, in his life or mine. My experience is that belief is not necessarily constant; it varies according to age, to one's circumstances and the family in which one was educated.
The following are two pertinent recent stories which relate to the activities of non-believers and their need to be recognised and respected equally by our society.
Students call for God-free graduation
University of Alberta groups want changes
Keith Gerein
Edmonton Journal
Friday, October 24, 2008
A student group at the University of Alberta is fighting to make the
school's convocation ceremony a God-free event.
Specifically, the university's Atheists and Agnostics society objects to one
line in the service, when the chancellor charges graduates to use their
degrees for "the glory of God and the honour of your country."
The group is petitioning the university to either remove the line or change
the wording to respect their "God-optional" views.
"What they are doing is basically implying that everyone who graduates from
the university should be doing certain things with their degree, and this
kind of charge requires a belief in something up to one-third of campus
might not have," said Ian Bushfield, the organization's president, referring
to a Decima survey in May that found about 35 per cent of Canadians under 25
do not believe in a god.
The university is convening a special meeting Monday to hear arguments on
the issue from interested campus groups, as well as professors, support
staff and the chaplain's association. A committee is expected to make a
recommendation on Nov. 3, with a vote to come three weeks later
-- too late for the fall convocation, but it could get things rolling in
time for spring, Bushfield said.
Andrew Chan, of the group Christians in Action Bible Study, said it's OK if
the line is softened, but he believes the religious theme should remain part
of convocation.
"From my standpoint, the line has historical value because the U of A was
founded on Christian beliefs," Chan said. "Taking that out would take out a
part of the university's history."
But Brett Sawchuk of Cross Impact, another Christian group, argued that
Christianity is no longer part of the university's academic culture.
"As believers, it means something to us Christians and other people who are
religious, but taking it out is probably a more accurate portrayal of the
university," said Sawchuk, who was surprised to hear the "God"
reference at his convocation last June. "Christians who attend the U of A
know they are attending a non-Christian university."
(c) The Calgary Herald 2008
*****
Atheists Plan Anti-God Ad Campaign on Buses
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Promotional photo for the Atheist Bus Campaign
LONDON, UK — London buses have God on their side — but not for
long, if atheists have their way.
The sides of some of London's red buses will soon carry ads
asserting there is "probably no God," as nonbelievers fight what
they say is the preferential treatment given to religion in British
society.
Organizers of a campaign to raise funds for the ads said Wednesday
they received more than $113,000 in donations, almost seven times
their target, in the hours since they launched the project on a
charity Web site. Supporters include Oxford University biologist
Richard Dawkins, who donated $9,000.
The money will be used to place posters on 30 buses carrying the
slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your
life." The plan was to run the ads for four weeks starting in
January, but so much money has been raised that the project may be
expanded.
"A lot of people say trying to organize atheists is like herding
cats. The last couple of days shows that is not true," said comedy
writer Ariane Sherine, who started the campaign.
While most London buses carry posters for shops or Hollywood movies,
Christian churches and Muslim groups have bought bus-side ad space
in the past.
Sherine came up with the idea after seeing a series of Christian
posters on London buses. She said she visited the Web site promoted
on one ad and found it told nonbelievers they would spend eternity
in torment in hell.
"I thought it would be a really positive thing to counter that by
putting forward a much happier and more upbeat advert, saying 'Don't
worry, you're not going to hell,'" said Sherine, 28. "Atheists
believe this is the only life we have, and we should enjoy it."
The British Humanist Association, which is administering the
fundraising drive, said it had been so successful the campaign might
spread to other cities including Manchester and Edinburgh.
Most Britons identify themselves as Christians, but few attend
church regularly, and public figures rarely talk about their
beliefs. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was rare among politicians
in speaking openly about his Christian faith.
Dawkins, author of the best-selling atheist manifesto "The God
Delusion," said that religion nonetheless held a privileged position
in society.
"Religious organizations have an automatic tax-free charitable
status," he said. "Bishops sit in the House of Lords automatically.
Religious leaders get preferential treatment on all sorts of
commissions.
"This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make
people think — and thinking is anathema to religion."
Dawkins said that as an atheist he "wasn't wild" about the ad's
assertion that there was "probably" no God.
Sherine said the word was included to ensure the posters didn't
breach transit advertising regulations, which stipulate ads should
not offend religious people.
Few believers appeared offended by the campaign, although most
doubted it would work.
"I think people will ask themselves, 'On what basis can they make
that statement?" said Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of
Britain. "So it will get people thinking, so in that sense it can
only be good."
Ad agency CBS Outdoor, which manages advertising on many London
buses, said it had approved the atheist campaign.
Sales and marketing director Tim Bleakley said "our decision to take
an ad that promotes God, or one that promotes no God, is based on
commercial terms, as long as the advertising copy itself does not
breach U.K. advertising standards."
The Rev. Jenny Ellis, spirituality and discipleship officer for the
Methodist Church, welcomed the ads.
"This campaign will be a good thing if it gets people to engage with
the deepest questions of life," she said.
The religious think tank Theos said it had donated $82 to the
campaign, on the grounds that the ads were so bad they would
probably attract people to religion.
"It tells people to 'stop worrying,' which is hardly going to be a
great comfort for those who are concerned about losing jobs or homes
in the recession," said Theos director Paul Woolley.
"Stunts like this demonstrate how militant atheists are often great
adverts for Christianity."
¡A Small Miracle¢
Muslim leaders from 40 nations say they're making progress to diminish the influence of extremists.
Stryker McGuire
A year ago, 138 Muslim leaders from 40 nations addressed a plea for interfaith dialogue to the leaders of the world's Christian churches in a bid to diminish the influence of extremism around the world. That initiative, "A Common Word Between Us and You," led to a conference between Muslim and U.S. Protestant leaders at Yale University last summer and another last week with Church of England leaders at Cambridge University, to be followed next month by a meeting with Roman Catholic leaders at the Vatican. Ali Gomaa, who as the grand mufti (chief Islamic jurist) in Cairo is the senior Sunni Muslim figure in Egypt, was one of the Common Word signatories. He presided over the Cambridge conference with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. newsweek's Stryker McGuire interviewed Gomaa at a local hotel. At one point, their chat was interrupted by a carpenter's power saw. "That noise," joked Gomaa, "is from the sphere of terrorism." Excerpts:
Newsweek: What signs of progress have you seen since the Common Word initiative was launched?
Gomaa: Meetings such as this one at Cambridge, working with Muslims and Christians because they represent much of the world's population, are a sign of progress. Our willingness to listen to each other is the first sign of the melting away of the iceberg between the two sides. It's really something of a small miracle. We need to go step by step. The massiveness of the current economic crisis is something else that we must come together to solve. A crisis in the United States affects the street trader in Cairo. We no longer have the option to live in isolation. We Muslims and Christians must be successful so that we can be an example to the rest of the world. We hope that Common Word becomes a massive international peace movement.
One of your goals has been to reduce extremism, including terrorism, in the Islamic world. Are the radicals listening?
We have two objectives here. The first is to reach young people. That is where the problems begin and where we must begin. I equate terrorism with cancer. If we leave it alone, it will affect the entire body. The second involves the actual terrorists themselves, and our effort is to dampen their negative effect. In that regard we have been successful, but it's a partial success. We want to create boundaries for terrorism and restrict its activity. We've had a specific experiment in Egypt with the people who killed [President] Anwar Sadat [in 1981]. In Egypt there were about 16,000 members of the group [Islamic Jihad] that was responsible for Sadat's assassination. We were able to discuss issues with them and convince them of their errors, and 14,000 of them ended up denouncing the principles of the terrorism they had espoused.
You are an eminent legal scholar, and as a religious judge, you issue fatwas , or religious rulings, in all kinds of disputes. You ' ve said in the past that ill-trained or manipulative Islamic pseudoscholars have misused fatwas for their own ends. How so?
It is from these people that you get fatwas that endorse terrorism. That leaves the cancer to spread throughout the body. If Islam is not approached from a proper, scholarly point of view, we will see many problems. These ignorant "scholars" have been able to use mass communications, and now they have satellite TV channels and they're speaking night and day, constantly. This is very, very dangerous. We deem these ignorant people to be criminals. So why are they continuing to do this? They are doing it because the satellite channels give them the money and the resources to do it. It's a moneymaking proposition. All of us need to come together and to try to stand against this phenomenon. We believe in freedom of expression, but what I'm talking about here is a form of deception. It's not a right to hurt others and create havoc on earth.
The war in Iraq is a source of grievance among Muslims. If the war begins to wind down, will that help you deal with the extremists who use the war as an excuse to commit terrorist acts?
Without a doubt. Military occupation is not something that's appropriate in our day and age. It can cause things to spin out of control. Sometimes there's a very fine line between terrorist activities and a legal armed struggle as outlined in the Geneva Conventions. When there's an occupation, there's a lack of balance, and then the concept of what's right and what's wrong is sometimes not understood by those committing violence or acquiescing in it.
Do you ever feel you ' re in personal danger because of what you do?
[Laughs] I don't feel that. The amount of love that I have in my heart for people allows me to feel there is no danger.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/165008
Muslim leaders from 40 nations say they're making progress to diminish the influence of extremists.
Stryker McGuire
A year ago, 138 Muslim leaders from 40 nations addressed a plea for interfaith dialogue to the leaders of the world's Christian churches in a bid to diminish the influence of extremism around the world. That initiative, "A Common Word Between Us and You," led to a conference between Muslim and U.S. Protestant leaders at Yale University last summer and another last week with Church of England leaders at Cambridge University, to be followed next month by a meeting with Roman Catholic leaders at the Vatican. Ali Gomaa, who as the grand mufti (chief Islamic jurist) in Cairo is the senior Sunni Muslim figure in Egypt, was one of the Common Word signatories. He presided over the Cambridge conference with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. newsweek's Stryker McGuire interviewed Gomaa at a local hotel. At one point, their chat was interrupted by a carpenter's power saw. "That noise," joked Gomaa, "is from the sphere of terrorism." Excerpts:
Newsweek: What signs of progress have you seen since the Common Word initiative was launched?
Gomaa: Meetings such as this one at Cambridge, working with Muslims and Christians because they represent much of the world's population, are a sign of progress. Our willingness to listen to each other is the first sign of the melting away of the iceberg between the two sides. It's really something of a small miracle. We need to go step by step. The massiveness of the current economic crisis is something else that we must come together to solve. A crisis in the United States affects the street trader in Cairo. We no longer have the option to live in isolation. We Muslims and Christians must be successful so that we can be an example to the rest of the world. We hope that Common Word becomes a massive international peace movement.
One of your goals has been to reduce extremism, including terrorism, in the Islamic world. Are the radicals listening?
We have two objectives here. The first is to reach young people. That is where the problems begin and where we must begin. I equate terrorism with cancer. If we leave it alone, it will affect the entire body. The second involves the actual terrorists themselves, and our effort is to dampen their negative effect. In that regard we have been successful, but it's a partial success. We want to create boundaries for terrorism and restrict its activity. We've had a specific experiment in Egypt with the people who killed [President] Anwar Sadat [in 1981]. In Egypt there were about 16,000 members of the group [Islamic Jihad] that was responsible for Sadat's assassination. We were able to discuss issues with them and convince them of their errors, and 14,000 of them ended up denouncing the principles of the terrorism they had espoused.
You are an eminent legal scholar, and as a religious judge, you issue fatwas , or religious rulings, in all kinds of disputes. You ' ve said in the past that ill-trained or manipulative Islamic pseudoscholars have misused fatwas for their own ends. How so?
It is from these people that you get fatwas that endorse terrorism. That leaves the cancer to spread throughout the body. If Islam is not approached from a proper, scholarly point of view, we will see many problems. These ignorant "scholars" have been able to use mass communications, and now they have satellite TV channels and they're speaking night and day, constantly. This is very, very dangerous. We deem these ignorant people to be criminals. So why are they continuing to do this? They are doing it because the satellite channels give them the money and the resources to do it. It's a moneymaking proposition. All of us need to come together and to try to stand against this phenomenon. We believe in freedom of expression, but what I'm talking about here is a form of deception. It's not a right to hurt others and create havoc on earth.
The war in Iraq is a source of grievance among Muslims. If the war begins to wind down, will that help you deal with the extremists who use the war as an excuse to commit terrorist acts?
Without a doubt. Military occupation is not something that's appropriate in our day and age. It can cause things to spin out of control. Sometimes there's a very fine line between terrorist activities and a legal armed struggle as outlined in the Geneva Conventions. When there's an occupation, there's a lack of balance, and then the concept of what's right and what's wrong is sometimes not understood by those committing violence or acquiescing in it.
Do you ever feel you ' re in personal danger because of what you do?
[Laughs] I don't feel that. The amount of love that I have in my heart for people allows me to feel there is no danger.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/165008
Prince to tour Indonesian rainforests
Calgary Herald
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Britain's Prince Charles arrived in Indonesia Saturday in a visit to promote the preservation of forests and encourage interfaith dialogue in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.
The visit is the first time in nearly two decades the heir to the British throne has visited the Southeast Asian nation and comes on the back of trips to Japan and Brunei.
Charles is scheduled to visit rain forest conservation work on Sumatra island before travelling to Jakarta to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
He will later travel to Yogyakarta, on Java island, to meet the city's hereditary Sultan Hamengkubuwono X.
Britain's ambassador to Indonesia, Martin Hatfull, said Friday conservation of rainforests and interfaith dialogue were "very close to the Prince of Wales' heart."
"He is well known and well respected as an authority . . . on both these issues," Hatfull said.
Local media reported heightened security around Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma air base in the lead-up to his visit, which comes as Indonesia prepares to execute three Islamist militants behind the 2002 bombings on Bali island that killed more than 200.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Calgary Herald
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Britain's Prince Charles arrived in Indonesia Saturday in a visit to promote the preservation of forests and encourage interfaith dialogue in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.
The visit is the first time in nearly two decades the heir to the British throne has visited the Southeast Asian nation and comes on the back of trips to Japan and Brunei.
Charles is scheduled to visit rain forest conservation work on Sumatra island before travelling to Jakarta to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
He will later travel to Yogyakarta, on Java island, to meet the city's hereditary Sultan Hamengkubuwono X.
Britain's ambassador to Indonesia, Martin Hatfull, said Friday conservation of rainforests and interfaith dialogue were "very close to the Prince of Wales' heart."
"He is well known and well respected as an authority . . . on both these issues," Hatfull said.
Local media reported heightened security around Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma air base in the lead-up to his visit, which comes as Indonesia prepares to execute three Islamist militants behind the 2002 bombings on Bali island that killed more than 200.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Atheism is a belief system too -- should it be protected?
Rob Breakenridge
For The Calgary Herald
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
There's a very simple way to look at the controversy raging over the convocation speech at the University of Alberta: the university is free to decide whether to maintain the "glory of God" reference in the speech -- no one's rights are being violated.
However, here's an equally true statement: the U of A chancellor would be free to use the speech to tell grads that God does not exist -- no one's rights would be violated in that instance, either.
It's therefore self-evident that the U of A chancellor could make no religious reference whatsoever, and simply use the occasion to offer his or her congratulations and best wishes to graduates.
The question then becomes whether it is appropriate for the chancellor of a public university to use such a speech to advance a position one way or the other on the "glory" of God -- or even the existence of God.
What's turned this speech into a public controversy is the push by a group of atheists at the U of A to remove a line from the traditional convocation speech, which urges grads to use their degrees for "the glory of God and the honour of your country."
A decision is expected this month, perhaps this week.
Whether the atheists are making a mountain out of a molehill is beside the point. Those who feel that way, however, should consider their own reaction if the speech read: "use your degrees to undermine religion and help prove that God does not exist."
I highly doubt that people of faith would sit on the sidelines.
Consider another hypothetical: if the starting point of this debate were a convocation speech devoid of any mention of God, it would seem most unreasonable for a group of believers to demand the university make mention of the glory of God and the obligation on grads to do God's work.
If inserting such a reference is unreasonable, why is it so unreasonable to simply remove such a reference?
The atheists at the U of A have also been accused of trying to "force their views", as though expressing an opinion and filing a request are somehow akin to a sudden state mandate that those views come into full force. These students obviously lack the power to "force" anything.
Moreover, if the atheists really were trying to "force their views" then they wouldn't be asking for words to be dropped from the speech, they'd be asking for words to be changed: "emptiness" instead of "glory", or something to that end.
Atheism is a belief -- specifically unbelief -- that is as deserving of protection under freedom of religion as any other belief.
What atheism is not, however, is secularism. Secularism means that no belief system is promoted by the state or elevated to the point of bestowing special privilege. It would be just as injurious to the cause of secularism to promote an anti-God or anti-religious point of view.
There seems to be a deeper sentiment in this debate that maybe the specific words in the speech don't matter all that much but that it's representative of a broader anti-Christian push in society. Of course, simply removing the words from the speech falls far short of anything approaching anti-Christianity.
Furthermore, we need to distinguish between anti-Christian and anti-Christianity. Just as people of faith are free to rail against the perceived evils of atheism, non-believers are free to rail against the perceived evils of religion.
That's not to say claims of anti-Christian bias are not unfounded. While several Christians have been targeted and convicted (i.e. censored) by human rights commissions, Alberta's own human rights commission does not seem inclined to protect Christians.
A 2003 case surrounding a record store, a CD, and a song called "Kill the Christians" was rejected, in part, because "there is very little vulnerability of the target group."
In short, both believers and non-believers would seem to have bigger fish to fry. That's not to say that the perceived pettiness of an issue makes it off-limit for debate.
Pro-religious views and anti-religious views both deserve protection, yet both have their time and place. That time and place is not the convocation speech by the chancellor of a public university. Therefore, the wording should be dropped.
I say keep the courts out, keep the human rights commissions out, and let the U of A make the decision. Hopefully it's the right one.
- - -
Rob Breakenridge hosts The World Tonight, weeknights from 6:30 - 9 p.m. on AM770 CHQR. rob.breakenridge@corusent.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Rob Breakenridge
For The Calgary Herald
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
There's a very simple way to look at the controversy raging over the convocation speech at the University of Alberta: the university is free to decide whether to maintain the "glory of God" reference in the speech -- no one's rights are being violated.
However, here's an equally true statement: the U of A chancellor would be free to use the speech to tell grads that God does not exist -- no one's rights would be violated in that instance, either.
It's therefore self-evident that the U of A chancellor could make no religious reference whatsoever, and simply use the occasion to offer his or her congratulations and best wishes to graduates.
The question then becomes whether it is appropriate for the chancellor of a public university to use such a speech to advance a position one way or the other on the "glory" of God -- or even the existence of God.
What's turned this speech into a public controversy is the push by a group of atheists at the U of A to remove a line from the traditional convocation speech, which urges grads to use their degrees for "the glory of God and the honour of your country."
A decision is expected this month, perhaps this week.
Whether the atheists are making a mountain out of a molehill is beside the point. Those who feel that way, however, should consider their own reaction if the speech read: "use your degrees to undermine religion and help prove that God does not exist."
I highly doubt that people of faith would sit on the sidelines.
Consider another hypothetical: if the starting point of this debate were a convocation speech devoid of any mention of God, it would seem most unreasonable for a group of believers to demand the university make mention of the glory of God and the obligation on grads to do God's work.
If inserting such a reference is unreasonable, why is it so unreasonable to simply remove such a reference?
The atheists at the U of A have also been accused of trying to "force their views", as though expressing an opinion and filing a request are somehow akin to a sudden state mandate that those views come into full force. These students obviously lack the power to "force" anything.
Moreover, if the atheists really were trying to "force their views" then they wouldn't be asking for words to be dropped from the speech, they'd be asking for words to be changed: "emptiness" instead of "glory", or something to that end.
Atheism is a belief -- specifically unbelief -- that is as deserving of protection under freedom of religion as any other belief.
What atheism is not, however, is secularism. Secularism means that no belief system is promoted by the state or elevated to the point of bestowing special privilege. It would be just as injurious to the cause of secularism to promote an anti-God or anti-religious point of view.
There seems to be a deeper sentiment in this debate that maybe the specific words in the speech don't matter all that much but that it's representative of a broader anti-Christian push in society. Of course, simply removing the words from the speech falls far short of anything approaching anti-Christianity.
Furthermore, we need to distinguish between anti-Christian and anti-Christianity. Just as people of faith are free to rail against the perceived evils of atheism, non-believers are free to rail against the perceived evils of religion.
That's not to say claims of anti-Christian bias are not unfounded. While several Christians have been targeted and convicted (i.e. censored) by human rights commissions, Alberta's own human rights commission does not seem inclined to protect Christians.
A 2003 case surrounding a record store, a CD, and a song called "Kill the Christians" was rejected, in part, because "there is very little vulnerability of the target group."
In short, both believers and non-believers would seem to have bigger fish to fry. That's not to say that the perceived pettiness of an issue makes it off-limit for debate.
Pro-religious views and anti-religious views both deserve protection, yet both have their time and place. That time and place is not the convocation speech by the chancellor of a public university. Therefore, the wording should be dropped.
I say keep the courts out, keep the human rights commissions out, and let the U of A make the decision. Hopefully it's the right one.
- - -
Rob Breakenridge hosts The World Tonight, weeknights from 6:30 - 9 p.m. on AM770 CHQR. rob.breakenridge@corusent.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Catholics, Muslims foster harmony
Tom Heneghan
Reuters
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Senior Vatican and Islamic scholars launched their first Catholic-Muslim Forum on Tuesday to improve relations between the world's two largest faiths.
The three-day meeting comes two years after Pope Benedict angered the Muslim world with a speech implying Islam was violent and irrational.
In response, 138 Muslim scholars invited Christian churches to a new dialogue to foster mutual respect through a better understanding of each other's beliefs.
In their manifesto, titled A Common Word, the Muslims argued that both faiths share the core principles of love of God and neighbour.
The talks focus on what this means for the religions and how it can foster harmony between them.
The meeting, including an audience with the Pope, is the group's third conference with Christians after talks with U.S. Protestants in July and Anglicans last month.
The session began with a moment of silence so the Roman Catholic and Muslim groups, each comprising 28 delegates and advisers, could say their prayers for its success.
"It was a very cordial atmosphere," one delegate said, asking not to be named because the meeting was closed.
After introductory remarks by delegation leaders Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric, a Catholic and a Muslim scholar delivered lectures on how their faiths understand the concept of love of God.
Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told the French Catholic daily La Croix on Monday that the forum "represents a new chapter in a long history" of often strained relations.
A Muslim delegate, Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan, wrote in the British daily The Guardian that dialogue was "far more vital and imperative than our rivalries over the number of believers, our contradictory claims about proselytism, and sterile competition over exclusive possession of the truth."
Christianity is the world's largest religion with two billion followers, just over half of them Catholic. Islam is next with 1.3 billion believers.
The Common Word meeting takes place a week before Saudi King Abdullah visits the United Nations to promote a parallel interfaith dialogue that he launched last summer.
Tuesday's talks centred on theological issues proposed by the Muslims, while today's meeting will focus on religious freedom issues the Vatican wants to raise.
The Vatican delegation includes bishops from minority Christian communities in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan.
Among the Muslims are converts from the U.S., Canada and Britain.
The Catholic-Muslim Forum is due to meet every two years, alternately in Rome and in a Muslim country.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Tom Heneghan
Reuters
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Senior Vatican and Islamic scholars launched their first Catholic-Muslim Forum on Tuesday to improve relations between the world's two largest faiths.
The three-day meeting comes two years after Pope Benedict angered the Muslim world with a speech implying Islam was violent and irrational.
In response, 138 Muslim scholars invited Christian churches to a new dialogue to foster mutual respect through a better understanding of each other's beliefs.
In their manifesto, titled A Common Word, the Muslims argued that both faiths share the core principles of love of God and neighbour.
The talks focus on what this means for the religions and how it can foster harmony between them.
The meeting, including an audience with the Pope, is the group's third conference with Christians after talks with U.S. Protestants in July and Anglicans last month.
The session began with a moment of silence so the Roman Catholic and Muslim groups, each comprising 28 delegates and advisers, could say their prayers for its success.
"It was a very cordial atmosphere," one delegate said, asking not to be named because the meeting was closed.
After introductory remarks by delegation leaders Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric, a Catholic and a Muslim scholar delivered lectures on how their faiths understand the concept of love of God.
Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told the French Catholic daily La Croix on Monday that the forum "represents a new chapter in a long history" of often strained relations.
A Muslim delegate, Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan, wrote in the British daily The Guardian that dialogue was "far more vital and imperative than our rivalries over the number of believers, our contradictory claims about proselytism, and sterile competition over exclusive possession of the truth."
Christianity is the world's largest religion with two billion followers, just over half of them Catholic. Islam is next with 1.3 billion believers.
The Common Word meeting takes place a week before Saudi King Abdullah visits the United Nations to promote a parallel interfaith dialogue that he launched last summer.
Tuesday's talks centred on theological issues proposed by the Muslims, while today's meeting will focus on religious freedom issues the Vatican wants to raise.
The Vatican delegation includes bishops from minority Christian communities in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan.
Among the Muslims are converts from the U.S., Canada and Britain.
The Catholic-Muslim Forum is due to meet every two years, alternately in Rome and in a Muslim country.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
November 7, 2008
Catholics and Muslims Pledge to Improve Links
By RACHEL DONADIO
VATICAN CITY — Catholic and Muslim leaders worked on Thursday to deflate suspicion between their two faiths, pledging at a high-level seminar here to work together to condemn terrorism, protect religious freedom and fight poverty.
The meeting came a year after 138 Muslim leaders wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI after he offended many Muslims by quoting a Byzantine emperor who called some teachings of the Prophet Muhammad “evil and inhuman.” In turn, top Vatican officials have worried about freedom of worship in majority-Muslim countries, as well as immigration that is turning Europe, which they define as a Christian continent, increasingly Muslim.
But on Thursday both sides said they hoped that the seminar would open a new and much-improved chapter in Catholic-Muslim relations, as the two groups said they might establish a committee that could ease tensions in any future crisis between the two religions.
“Let us resolve to overcome past prejudices and to correct the often distorted images of the other, which even today can create difficulties in our relations,” Benedict told the Muslim delegation. He called the gathering “a clear sign of our mutual esteem and our desire to listen respectfully to one another.”
Addressing the pope on behalf of the Muslim delegation, Seyyed Hossein Nasr of Iran, a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington, said that throughout history, “various political forces” of both Christians and Muslims had carried out violence.
“Certainly we cannot claim that violence is the monopoly of only one religion,” he said.
The three-day forum brought together nearly 30 Catholic clerics and scholars, led by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; and as many Muslim clerics and scholars, led by Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina based in Sarajevo.
The meeting “exceeded our expectations,” said Ingrid Mary Mattson, the director of the Islamic Society of North America and a professor of Islamic studies at the Hartford Seminary.
“The atmosphere was very good, very frank,” said Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University. A celebrated intellectual in Europe, Mr. Ramadan in 2004 was denied a visa to the United States on the grounds that he had donated to two European charities that the State Department later said gave money to Hamas.
Mr. Ramadan said the thorniest questions the group tackled were “apostasy” and “freedom of worship in a minority situation.” Some Muslims believe it is apostasy to convert out of Islam.
The 15-point declaration the group issued on Thursday did not address issues of conversion.
It called on Catholics and Muslims to renounce “oppression, aggressive violence and terrorism, especially that committed in the name of religion.”
And it said religious minorities should be “entitled to their own places of worship, and their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subjected to any form of mockery or ridicule.”
In 2006, Muslims around the world protested, some violently, after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of Muhammad.
One participant, Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, called the meeting “a first step” but said he hoped that the declaration would “bear fruit.”
In recent years, Islamic militants in Kirkuk have killed, kidnapped or forced Iraqi Christians to convert. Archbishop Sako noted that in their homilies, “many imams are preaching against infidels and crusaders,” and that “some simple people” believed that this referred to all Christians.
He called on Muslim leaders to publicize the declaration, with its assertion of shared Christian-Muslim values. “This should be clarified, stated, given to the media to teach people about it,” he said. “For us Christians living in Muslim countries, that would be very, very helpful.”
The Muslim delegation included representatives of Sunni and Shiite Islam, as well as several converts and participants from North Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and Uganda.
It notably did not include any participants from Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslim worship is not tolerated and with which the Vatican has had strained ties. Two Saudis were expected to attend, but had to cancel at the last minute for health reasons, said Ibrahim Kalin of Turkey, a spokesman for the Muslim delegation and a professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
Yet in July, Cardinal Tauran and other Vatican officials attended an interfaith dialogue organized by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Spain.
Participants in this week’s conference pledged to hold another dialogue in a Muslim country in 2010.
Catholics and Muslims Pledge to Improve Links
By RACHEL DONADIO
VATICAN CITY — Catholic and Muslim leaders worked on Thursday to deflate suspicion between their two faiths, pledging at a high-level seminar here to work together to condemn terrorism, protect religious freedom and fight poverty.
The meeting came a year after 138 Muslim leaders wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI after he offended many Muslims by quoting a Byzantine emperor who called some teachings of the Prophet Muhammad “evil and inhuman.” In turn, top Vatican officials have worried about freedom of worship in majority-Muslim countries, as well as immigration that is turning Europe, which they define as a Christian continent, increasingly Muslim.
But on Thursday both sides said they hoped that the seminar would open a new and much-improved chapter in Catholic-Muslim relations, as the two groups said they might establish a committee that could ease tensions in any future crisis between the two religions.
“Let us resolve to overcome past prejudices and to correct the often distorted images of the other, which even today can create difficulties in our relations,” Benedict told the Muslim delegation. He called the gathering “a clear sign of our mutual esteem and our desire to listen respectfully to one another.”
Addressing the pope on behalf of the Muslim delegation, Seyyed Hossein Nasr of Iran, a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington, said that throughout history, “various political forces” of both Christians and Muslims had carried out violence.
“Certainly we cannot claim that violence is the monopoly of only one religion,” he said.
The three-day forum brought together nearly 30 Catholic clerics and scholars, led by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; and as many Muslim clerics and scholars, led by Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina based in Sarajevo.
The meeting “exceeded our expectations,” said Ingrid Mary Mattson, the director of the Islamic Society of North America and a professor of Islamic studies at the Hartford Seminary.
“The atmosphere was very good, very frank,” said Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University. A celebrated intellectual in Europe, Mr. Ramadan in 2004 was denied a visa to the United States on the grounds that he had donated to two European charities that the State Department later said gave money to Hamas.
Mr. Ramadan said the thorniest questions the group tackled were “apostasy” and “freedom of worship in a minority situation.” Some Muslims believe it is apostasy to convert out of Islam.
The 15-point declaration the group issued on Thursday did not address issues of conversion.
It called on Catholics and Muslims to renounce “oppression, aggressive violence and terrorism, especially that committed in the name of religion.”
And it said religious minorities should be “entitled to their own places of worship, and their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subjected to any form of mockery or ridicule.”
In 2006, Muslims around the world protested, some violently, after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of Muhammad.
One participant, Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, called the meeting “a first step” but said he hoped that the declaration would “bear fruit.”
In recent years, Islamic militants in Kirkuk have killed, kidnapped or forced Iraqi Christians to convert. Archbishop Sako noted that in their homilies, “many imams are preaching against infidels and crusaders,” and that “some simple people” believed that this referred to all Christians.
He called on Muslim leaders to publicize the declaration, with its assertion of shared Christian-Muslim values. “This should be clarified, stated, given to the media to teach people about it,” he said. “For us Christians living in Muslim countries, that would be very, very helpful.”
The Muslim delegation included representatives of Sunni and Shiite Islam, as well as several converts and participants from North Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and Uganda.
It notably did not include any participants from Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslim worship is not tolerated and with which the Vatican has had strained ties. Two Saudis were expected to attend, but had to cancel at the last minute for health reasons, said Ibrahim Kalin of Turkey, a spokesman for the Muslim delegation and a professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
Yet in July, Cardinal Tauran and other Vatican officials attended an interfaith dialogue organized by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Spain.
Participants in this week’s conference pledged to hold another dialogue in a Muslim country in 2010.
Holocaust survivors to oppose sainthood for Pius
Philip Pullella
Reuters
Saturday, November 08, 2008
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 6&sponsor=
CREDIT: John MacDougall, AFP-Getty Images
A man walks past a placard that reads "Berlin Remembers," commemorating the ransacking of Jewish property by Nazi sympathizers in 1938 during "Kristallnacht" -- night of broken glass.
Holocaust survivors and their descendants will lobby Pope Benedict to stop the process of making his wartime predecessor Pius XII a saint, saying beatifying him would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations.
The plan, involving appealing to the pope by lobbying his ambassadors around the world, was approved on Thursday night in New York and will be announced formally on Monday, a leader of an organization spearheading it told Reuters on Friday.
"Beatifying Pius XII would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations, which have become so warm in recent years," said Elan Steinberg, vice-president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked silently behind the scenes and helped save many Jews from certain death during the Second World War.
Steinberg, who is also executive director emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, said survivors' groups around the world would seek meetings with Vatican nuncios (ambassadors) to express their concern.
This is believed to be the first time Holocaust survivors have organized a global campaign to lobby the Vatican. The American group has about 60,000 members.
On Thursday, Pope Benedict's deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Jewish accusations were "outrageous" and that no one could tell the Vatican whether Pius should be made a saint.
"Insofar as the historical record shows, Pius was not Hitler's pope, but he was the silent pope," said Steinberg, 55, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.
"This is a cry from the heart. Other Jewish leaders have spoken about this but, because we are speaking on behalf of survivors, we have to be more direct. We feel the pain in a greater way," Steinberg said by telephone from New York.
Differences over Pius's wartime role have haunted Catholic-Jewish ties for decades. The Vatican has shown signs of irritability recently as some Catholics have pushed for the Pope to expedite his sainthood process and some Jews want it frozen pending the opening of Holy See archives in about seven years.
At issue is whether Pope Benedict should let Pius proceed on the road to sainthood by signing a decree recognizing his "heroic virtues." This would clear the way for beatification, the last step before sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Benedict has so far not signed the decree, approved last year by the Vatican's saint-making department, opting instead for what the Holy See has called a period of reflection.
The Vatican says Pius saved several hundred thousand Jewish lives by ordering churches and convents throughout Italy to hide Jews and instructing Vatican diplomats in Europe to give Jews false passports.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Philip Pullella
Reuters
Saturday, November 08, 2008
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 6&sponsor=
CREDIT: John MacDougall, AFP-Getty Images
A man walks past a placard that reads "Berlin Remembers," commemorating the ransacking of Jewish property by Nazi sympathizers in 1938 during "Kristallnacht" -- night of broken glass.
Holocaust survivors and their descendants will lobby Pope Benedict to stop the process of making his wartime predecessor Pius XII a saint, saying beatifying him would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations.
The plan, involving appealing to the pope by lobbying his ambassadors around the world, was approved on Thursday night in New York and will be announced formally on Monday, a leader of an organization spearheading it told Reuters on Friday.
"Beatifying Pius XII would be a tragedy for Catholic-Jewish relations, which have become so warm in recent years," said Elan Steinberg, vice-president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked silently behind the scenes and helped save many Jews from certain death during the Second World War.
Steinberg, who is also executive director emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, said survivors' groups around the world would seek meetings with Vatican nuncios (ambassadors) to express their concern.
This is believed to be the first time Holocaust survivors have organized a global campaign to lobby the Vatican. The American group has about 60,000 members.
On Thursday, Pope Benedict's deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Jewish accusations were "outrageous" and that no one could tell the Vatican whether Pius should be made a saint.
"Insofar as the historical record shows, Pius was not Hitler's pope, but he was the silent pope," said Steinberg, 55, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.
"This is a cry from the heart. Other Jewish leaders have spoken about this but, because we are speaking on behalf of survivors, we have to be more direct. We feel the pain in a greater way," Steinberg said by telephone from New York.
Differences over Pius's wartime role have haunted Catholic-Jewish ties for decades. The Vatican has shown signs of irritability recently as some Catholics have pushed for the Pope to expedite his sainthood process and some Jews want it frozen pending the opening of Holy See archives in about seven years.
At issue is whether Pope Benedict should let Pius proceed on the road to sainthood by signing a decree recognizing his "heroic virtues." This would clear the way for beatification, the last step before sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Benedict has so far not signed the decree, approved last year by the Vatican's saint-making department, opting instead for what the Holy See has called a period of reflection.
The Vatican says Pius saved several hundred thousand Jewish lives by ordering churches and convents throughout Italy to hide Jews and instructing Vatican diplomats in Europe to give Jews false passports.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
November 12, 2008
Editorial
A Case of Religious Discrimination
Displays of the Ten Commandments have long been a lightning rod in constitutional law, and so they are again today. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a challenge to a city’s decision to allow the Ten Commandments to be placed in a public park, while refusing to allow a different religion’s display. The court should rule that that city’s decision violates the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion.
Pleasant Grove City, Utah, has a city park, known as Pioneer Park, that includes various unattended displays. These include historical artifacts from the town, a Sept. 11 memorial, and a Ten Commandments monument that was given to the city by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a national civic group.
A religious organization called Summum, which was founded in 1975 and is based in Salt Lake City, applied to install its own monument in the park. The monument it proposed would include the group’s Seven Principles of Creation (also called the Seven Aphorisms), which it believes were inscribed on tablets handed down from God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Pleasant Grove City rejected Summum’s application. It told the group that it had a decades-old practice of only accepting displays that directly related to the city’s history, or that were donated by groups with longstanding ties to the community. But this was not a firm policy at the time. It was only later that the city adopted a written policy enshrining these criteria.
Summum sued, arguing that the rejection of its monument violated its right to free speech under the First Amendment. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver agreed. In allowing monuments in its park, the court ruled, Pleasant Grove City had no right to discriminate on the basis of the content of those monuments. The city was free to ban all unattended displays if it wanted to. But once it decided to allow such displays, the court ruled, it had no right to permit the Ten Commandments but bar the Seven Principles of Creation.
The federal appeals court reached the right result, but regrettably, it ducked the issue at the heart of the case, which turns on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The real problem is that Pleasant Grove City elevated one religion, traditional Christianity, over another, Summum. The founders regarded this sort of religious preference as so odious that they included a specific provision in the First Amendment prohibiting it. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has a bad record on Establishment Clause cases, which made it easier for all of the parties to treat the case as a simple speech case.
But as the American Jewish Committee, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other groups argue in a friend-of-the-court brief, the Supreme Court should not make this mistake. It should squarely confront the religious discrimination underlying Pleasant Grove City’s rejection of Summum’s monument and make clear that the city violated the Establishment Clause.
There is no shortage of churches, synagogues and private parcels of land where the Ten Commandments could be displayed without the need to include the credos of alternative faiths. Public property like Pioneer Park must be open to all religions on an equal basis — or open to none at all.
Editorial
A Case of Religious Discrimination
Displays of the Ten Commandments have long been a lightning rod in constitutional law, and so they are again today. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a challenge to a city’s decision to allow the Ten Commandments to be placed in a public park, while refusing to allow a different religion’s display. The court should rule that that city’s decision violates the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion.
Pleasant Grove City, Utah, has a city park, known as Pioneer Park, that includes various unattended displays. These include historical artifacts from the town, a Sept. 11 memorial, and a Ten Commandments monument that was given to the city by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a national civic group.
A religious organization called Summum, which was founded in 1975 and is based in Salt Lake City, applied to install its own monument in the park. The monument it proposed would include the group’s Seven Principles of Creation (also called the Seven Aphorisms), which it believes were inscribed on tablets handed down from God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Pleasant Grove City rejected Summum’s application. It told the group that it had a decades-old practice of only accepting displays that directly related to the city’s history, or that were donated by groups with longstanding ties to the community. But this was not a firm policy at the time. It was only later that the city adopted a written policy enshrining these criteria.
Summum sued, arguing that the rejection of its monument violated its right to free speech under the First Amendment. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver agreed. In allowing monuments in its park, the court ruled, Pleasant Grove City had no right to discriminate on the basis of the content of those monuments. The city was free to ban all unattended displays if it wanted to. But once it decided to allow such displays, the court ruled, it had no right to permit the Ten Commandments but bar the Seven Principles of Creation.
The federal appeals court reached the right result, but regrettably, it ducked the issue at the heart of the case, which turns on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The real problem is that Pleasant Grove City elevated one religion, traditional Christianity, over another, Summum. The founders regarded this sort of religious preference as so odious that they included a specific provision in the First Amendment prohibiting it. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has a bad record on Establishment Clause cases, which made it easier for all of the parties to treat the case as a simple speech case.
But as the American Jewish Committee, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other groups argue in a friend-of-the-court brief, the Supreme Court should not make this mistake. It should squarely confront the religious discrimination underlying Pleasant Grove City’s rejection of Summum’s monument and make clear that the city violated the Establishment Clause.
There is no shortage of churches, synagogues and private parcels of land where the Ten Commandments could be displayed without the need to include the credos of alternative faiths. Public property like Pioneer Park must be open to all religions on an equal basis — or open to none at all.
Kings reach across religious divide
November 13, 2008
HAROON SIDDIQUI
There are two important Abdullahs in the Arab world – one is the king of Saudi Arabia and the other of Jordan. Both are orchestrating two unprecedented interfaith dialogues.
One of those historic initiatives is taking place at the United Nations in New York and ends tonight.
The two kings are conducting the outreach separately, for their own reasons. The more significant point is that they are. The dialogue across the religious divides is the first since 9/11 – indeed, the first ever on such a global scale.
When Pope Benedict's 2006 statement linking Islam to violence triggered violent protests, Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a cousin of King Abdullah of Jordan, co-ordinated a peaceful Muslim response.
A group of 138 scholars issued a statement, emphasizing the common elements between Islam, Christianity and Judaism: oneness of God, love of neighbour, shared prophets, etc. The signatories came from 40 countries, and were Sunnis, Shiites and others representing all the major schools of thought.
Addressed to all Christians, the statement rejected violence in the name of religion. It noted that Muslims and Christians make up well over half of the world's population, and that "without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world."
The Vatican responded coolly. But others warmed up to it, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The prestigious Yale Divinity School issued a letter signed by 300 prominent Christians, liberals and evangelicals alike.
"Peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians stand as one of the central challenges of this century, and perhaps of the whole present epoch ... The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace."
In July, Yale hosted a meeting in New Haven, Conn., of 150 people – Protestant theologians and evangelicals on the Christian side, and Shiites, Sunnis and others on the Muslim side. Six Jewish guests were present as observers.
Last month, Cambridge University in Britain held a similar meeting.
Last week, the Vatican, having come on board along the way, hosted 58 Christian and Muslims scholars and leaders, 29 from each side.
Mustafa Ceric, mufti of Bosnia, a survivor of Serb-initiated ethnic cleansing, said the world had a choice: "The clash or alliance of civilizations? Violence or reconciliation?"
The Pope, while speaking of the need "to overcome past prejudices," stressed religious freedom. He has long complained about restrictions on Christians in Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia.
The final communiqué said that religious minorities should be "entitled to their own places of worship." It was not just the Vatican but also the Muslims present who sent a clear message to Saudi Arabia.
On a separate track, Saudi King Abdullah had met the Pope last year, the first meeting between a Saudi monarch and a pontiff.
In June, the king held a meeting of Sunnis, Shiites and others in Mecca. In July, he held an interfaith dialogue of his own, in Madrid, with King Juan Carlos hosting.
And he was the initiator of this week's UN meeting of the representatives of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and Confucianism. All 192 UN member states were invited and 65 asked to speak. President Shimon Peres of Israel spoke of the possibility of "a movement of profound significance."
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that while anti-Semitism "remains a scourge, Islamophobia has emerged as a new term for an old and terrible form of prejudice."
There are two ways of reading Abdullah's initiative. He is in damage control: 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and his Wahhabi Islam has been under attack, including for its severe restrictions on non-Muslims. Another reading is that he has been dragging his conservative clerical establishment toward tolerance – first, for other Muslims and then, non-Muslims. The intra-faith and interfaith dialogue is part of that exercise.
Either way, it is welcome, as is the Jordanian initiative.
John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., was one of the signatories of the Yale letter. Of the Jordanian initiative, he told me yesterday, "this is really the first time in history that a representative group of Muslims from across the world has come together to address the Christian world and has entered into a dialogue."
His colleague Ibrahim Kalin, professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown, who was at the Rome meeting, told me his group welcomes the Saudi initiative: "It is a good sign that the king of the most conservative Muslim society in the world is extending an open invitation to all faiths to come together."
Haroon Siddiqui's column appears Thursday and Sunday.
November 13, 2008
HAROON SIDDIQUI
There are two important Abdullahs in the Arab world – one is the king of Saudi Arabia and the other of Jordan. Both are orchestrating two unprecedented interfaith dialogues.
One of those historic initiatives is taking place at the United Nations in New York and ends tonight.
The two kings are conducting the outreach separately, for their own reasons. The more significant point is that they are. The dialogue across the religious divides is the first since 9/11 – indeed, the first ever on such a global scale.
When Pope Benedict's 2006 statement linking Islam to violence triggered violent protests, Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a cousin of King Abdullah of Jordan, co-ordinated a peaceful Muslim response.
A group of 138 scholars issued a statement, emphasizing the common elements between Islam, Christianity and Judaism: oneness of God, love of neighbour, shared prophets, etc. The signatories came from 40 countries, and were Sunnis, Shiites and others representing all the major schools of thought.
Addressed to all Christians, the statement rejected violence in the name of religion. It noted that Muslims and Christians make up well over half of the world's population, and that "without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world."
The Vatican responded coolly. But others warmed up to it, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The prestigious Yale Divinity School issued a letter signed by 300 prominent Christians, liberals and evangelicals alike.
"Peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians stand as one of the central challenges of this century, and perhaps of the whole present epoch ... The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace."
In July, Yale hosted a meeting in New Haven, Conn., of 150 people – Protestant theologians and evangelicals on the Christian side, and Shiites, Sunnis and others on the Muslim side. Six Jewish guests were present as observers.
Last month, Cambridge University in Britain held a similar meeting.
Last week, the Vatican, having come on board along the way, hosted 58 Christian and Muslims scholars and leaders, 29 from each side.
Mustafa Ceric, mufti of Bosnia, a survivor of Serb-initiated ethnic cleansing, said the world had a choice: "The clash or alliance of civilizations? Violence or reconciliation?"
The Pope, while speaking of the need "to overcome past prejudices," stressed religious freedom. He has long complained about restrictions on Christians in Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia.
The final communiqué said that religious minorities should be "entitled to their own places of worship." It was not just the Vatican but also the Muslims present who sent a clear message to Saudi Arabia.
On a separate track, Saudi King Abdullah had met the Pope last year, the first meeting between a Saudi monarch and a pontiff.
In June, the king held a meeting of Sunnis, Shiites and others in Mecca. In July, he held an interfaith dialogue of his own, in Madrid, with King Juan Carlos hosting.
And he was the initiator of this week's UN meeting of the representatives of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and Confucianism. All 192 UN member states were invited and 65 asked to speak. President Shimon Peres of Israel spoke of the possibility of "a movement of profound significance."
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that while anti-Semitism "remains a scourge, Islamophobia has emerged as a new term for an old and terrible form of prejudice."
There are two ways of reading Abdullah's initiative. He is in damage control: 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and his Wahhabi Islam has been under attack, including for its severe restrictions on non-Muslims. Another reading is that he has been dragging his conservative clerical establishment toward tolerance – first, for other Muslims and then, non-Muslims. The intra-faith and interfaith dialogue is part of that exercise.
Either way, it is welcome, as is the Jordanian initiative.
John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., was one of the signatories of the Yale letter. Of the Jordanian initiative, he told me yesterday, "this is really the first time in history that a representative group of Muslims from across the world has come together to address the Christian world and has entered into a dialogue."
His colleague Ibrahim Kalin, professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown, who was at the Rome meeting, told me his group welcomes the Saudi initiative: "It is a good sign that the king of the most conservative Muslim society in the world is extending an open invitation to all faiths to come together."
Haroon Siddiqui's column appears Thursday and Sunday.
Promising Jewish-Muslim dialogue
TheStar.com - Atkinson - Promising Jewish-Muslim dialogue
Movement to twin North American mosques, synagogues tears down barriers
November 20, 2008
Haroon Siddiqui
Away from the media din of extremist Jews and Muslims, some extraordinary developments are taking place that herald the beginning of a potent-ially historic thaw between the mainstream moderates of the two communities in North America.
"I never thought I'd live to see this day in my life," Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress said of the twinning of 50 synagogues and 50 mosques in Canada and the U.S., including eight in the Toronto area this coming weekend.
Jews and Muslims will visit each other's places of worship and break bread together. Setting aside the Arab-Israeli conflict that divides them, they'll explore their common religious roots and, more urgently, their obligations to each other as Canadian and American citizens.
The seeds were sown a year ago in New York. The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding invited 13 rabbis and imams, including two from Toronto: Sheykh Zahir Bacchus of Lote Tree Foundation, Brampton, and Rabbi Yossi Sapirman of Beth Torah Congregation in Toronto. (They had befriended each other at a Toronto seminar on the spiritual needs of the sick and the dying).
Those at the New York meeting hit upon the idea of twinning.
"The goal was to get 25 mosques and 25 synagogues," Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the foundation and also chairman, World Jewish Congress United States, told me over the phone. "The response was overwhelming."
Meanwhile, the stars were lining up internationally.
King Abdullah of Jordan had initiated a dialogue with Christians, following Pope Benedict's 2006 incendiary statement about Islam. In July, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hosted in Madrid a broader interfaith summit, attended by Schneier, world Jewry's foremost proponent of interfaith dialogue.
Last week, the Saudi king helped arrange a special interfaith session of the UN General Assembly, where Israeli President Shimon Peres praised him for:
His 2002 peace plan for Arab recognition of Israel if Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders.
His message of interreligious reconciliation: "Your Majesty: I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people ... It's needed."
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni concurred.
Almost concurrently, a full-page ad appeared in the New York Times, heralding the "milestone event" of twinning. The ad was sponsored by Schneier's foundation (ffeu.org), the Islamic Society of North America (isna.net), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (mpac.org), and the World Jewish Congress (worldjewishcongress.org).
Public service announcements were being aired on CNN, with imams denouncing anti-Semitism and rabbis denouncing Islamophobia (view on ffeu.org).
In the Toronto area, the Solel Congregation is twinned with the Islamic Centre of Canada, both in Mississauga; Temple Emanu-El, North York with the Noor Cultural Centre, Don Mills; Temple Har Zion with the Jafari Cultural Centre, both in Thornhill; and Beth Torah with Lote Tree.
They are using different formats.
For example, the Noor Centre (noorculturalcentre.ca) and Emanu-El (templeemanuel.ca) – both led by women, Samira Kanji and Rabbi Debra Landsberg – will open their doors to the public as they host each other:
At Noor, for the 1 p.m. prayer tomorrow (led by Prof. Timothy Gianotti, Noor Fellow at York University); at the synagogue, for the Friday evening Kabbalat Shabbat, which opens the sabbath, and also the Saturday sabbath service; and back at Noor Sunday, for a breakfast discussion, 9.30 a.m.
Who would have thought such a day would ever come?
Rabbi Schneier acknowledged that there were voices within the Jewish community who opposed the initiative, even wanted to "sabotage" it. There are no doubt similar voices on the Muslim side as well. But goodwill prevailed.
Schneier hopes to export the model to Europe. "We're creating a new paradigm here." Muslim-Jewish understanding is "the greatest challenge of the 21st century."
As Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam, a blog dedicated to resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, wrote Monday, addressing those participating in the twinning: "Mazel tov to you for the vision and courage you've shown." In Arabic, that's mabrook. Congratulations.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday.
hsiddiq@thestar.ca
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/540068
TheStar.com - Atkinson - Promising Jewish-Muslim dialogue
Movement to twin North American mosques, synagogues tears down barriers
November 20, 2008
Haroon Siddiqui
Away from the media din of extremist Jews and Muslims, some extraordinary developments are taking place that herald the beginning of a potent-ially historic thaw between the mainstream moderates of the two communities in North America.
"I never thought I'd live to see this day in my life," Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress said of the twinning of 50 synagogues and 50 mosques in Canada and the U.S., including eight in the Toronto area this coming weekend.
Jews and Muslims will visit each other's places of worship and break bread together. Setting aside the Arab-Israeli conflict that divides them, they'll explore their common religious roots and, more urgently, their obligations to each other as Canadian and American citizens.
The seeds were sown a year ago in New York. The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding invited 13 rabbis and imams, including two from Toronto: Sheykh Zahir Bacchus of Lote Tree Foundation, Brampton, and Rabbi Yossi Sapirman of Beth Torah Congregation in Toronto. (They had befriended each other at a Toronto seminar on the spiritual needs of the sick and the dying).
Those at the New York meeting hit upon the idea of twinning.
"The goal was to get 25 mosques and 25 synagogues," Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the foundation and also chairman, World Jewish Congress United States, told me over the phone. "The response was overwhelming."
Meanwhile, the stars were lining up internationally.
King Abdullah of Jordan had initiated a dialogue with Christians, following Pope Benedict's 2006 incendiary statement about Islam. In July, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hosted in Madrid a broader interfaith summit, attended by Schneier, world Jewry's foremost proponent of interfaith dialogue.
Last week, the Saudi king helped arrange a special interfaith session of the UN General Assembly, where Israeli President Shimon Peres praised him for:
His 2002 peace plan for Arab recognition of Israel if Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders.
His message of interreligious reconciliation: "Your Majesty: I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people ... It's needed."
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni concurred.
Almost concurrently, a full-page ad appeared in the New York Times, heralding the "milestone event" of twinning. The ad was sponsored by Schneier's foundation (ffeu.org), the Islamic Society of North America (isna.net), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (mpac.org), and the World Jewish Congress (worldjewishcongress.org).
Public service announcements were being aired on CNN, with imams denouncing anti-Semitism and rabbis denouncing Islamophobia (view on ffeu.org).
In the Toronto area, the Solel Congregation is twinned with the Islamic Centre of Canada, both in Mississauga; Temple Emanu-El, North York with the Noor Cultural Centre, Don Mills; Temple Har Zion with the Jafari Cultural Centre, both in Thornhill; and Beth Torah with Lote Tree.
They are using different formats.
For example, the Noor Centre (noorculturalcentre.ca) and Emanu-El (templeemanuel.ca) – both led by women, Samira Kanji and Rabbi Debra Landsberg – will open their doors to the public as they host each other:
At Noor, for the 1 p.m. prayer tomorrow (led by Prof. Timothy Gianotti, Noor Fellow at York University); at the synagogue, for the Friday evening Kabbalat Shabbat, which opens the sabbath, and also the Saturday sabbath service; and back at Noor Sunday, for a breakfast discussion, 9.30 a.m.
Who would have thought such a day would ever come?
Rabbi Schneier acknowledged that there were voices within the Jewish community who opposed the initiative, even wanted to "sabotage" it. There are no doubt similar voices on the Muslim side as well. But goodwill prevailed.
Schneier hopes to export the model to Europe. "We're creating a new paradigm here." Muslim-Jewish understanding is "the greatest challenge of the 21st century."
As Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam, a blog dedicated to resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, wrote Monday, addressing those participating in the twinning: "Mazel tov to you for the vision and courage you've shown." In Arabic, that's mabrook. Congratulations.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday.
hsiddiq@thestar.ca
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/540068
The Muslims and Christians of Jos
Dec 4th 2008 | JOS
From The Economist print edition
The government of Africa’s most populous country is slow to stem violence
AP
THE Katako market was still smouldering five days after it was razed to the ground by a mob of Christian youths. The bodies of ten people trapped in the fires that destroyed it had already been taken away and buried. Muslim men kicked up plumes of dust as they shuffled through the ashes of their stalls, which a week earlier had numbered more than 5,000. A dirty young man searched through a pile of blackened onions, picking out those that were not inedibly charred.
A few hundred yards away, students and teachers at an Augustinian monastery were also sorting through wreckage. Their monastery had been attacked on the same day, just 30 minutes later, by a group of Muslim youths. The monk in charge narrowly escaped death when a Molotov cocktail thrown into his tiny room happened to land in the toilet.
The central Nigerian city of Jos is still assessing how much damage was done in the course of three days of destruction that began on November 28th, when what began as protests over local-government elections quickly took on a lethal sectarian character. At least 300 people died, 7,000 were displaced and many businesses, churches and mosques destroyed. A curfew remains in place, with dozens of army and police checkpoints.
Exactly who started the violence is unclear. On the other hand, everyone in Nigeria is familiar with the fierce animosities that exist between the various religious groups in Jos. The town is situated in the so-called “middle belt”, between Nigeria’s largely Muslim northern half and its predominantly Christian south—and thus has a pretty mixed population. And like other such cities, Jos has a history of ethnic and religious tension that has often boiled over. Similar incidents in 2001 and 2004 left thousands dead.
Many say the federal and state governments could have done more to prevent the killings. Local polls were a probable flashpoint. Elections in Nigeria are often violent and crooked affairs and in Jos there had been no local elections since the country’s military rulers gave way to democracy in 1999. Local officials wield enormous power all over Nigeria, often determining who can get college graduation diplomas, business forms and, most contentiously, papers indicating who is an “indigenous citizen” in a particular area. So the stakes are high. It was the declaration of victory in Jos for the ruling People’s Democratic Party, widely perceived as a mainly Christian party, that set off the chain of events that led to the violence. Backers of the defeated All Nigeria People’s Party, a mainly Muslim Hausa outfit, protested that the vote had been rigged.
Even after the mayhem began, the authorities’ response was slow. In most of the areas with widespread violence, the police did not show up for several hours and in some places did not arrive until the next day. Many residents say that when police and soldiers did eventually arrive, they used excessive force, sometimes shooting indiscriminately into crowds. Army officials have blamed such incidents on impostors dressed in makeshift fatigues.
The president, Umaru Yar’Adua, added to his reputation for underreacting to events by not even going to Jos after the violence, though it is only a three-hour drive from the federal capital, Abuja. Instead, as his envoy, he sent the minister of labour, who arrived after dark and left long before the sun rose the next day.
Forgiveness and reconciliation in Jos will be hard. The balkanisation of this city of 500,000-plus people that began in 2001 with a first round of religious violence will become starker after this latest bloodshed. Muslim businessmen will find it harder to rebuild shops in mainly Christian districts and Christian home owners will struggle to persuade their families to resettle in mainly Muslim areas. Since democracy was restored in 1999, most of northern Nigeria’s Muslim states have introduced sharia law. That prompted many thousands of Christians to migrate to other states. Increasingly, it seems, Christians and Muslims find it difficult to live alongside each other in a country of 140m-odd people.
At an internet café in one of the few shops still open in Jos, a businessman sitting at a computer doing research had an idea for how to avoid future outbreaks of violence. Every man, woman and child in Nigeria, he said, should own and know how to use a gun. Then events like the recent fighting wouldn’t happen, he said. And what was he researching? How to purchase, operate and dismantle an AK-47. He said he already had seven guns at home, including five pump-action shotguns. An AK was next on his wish list.
Dec 4th 2008 | JOS
From The Economist print edition
The government of Africa’s most populous country is slow to stem violence
AP
THE Katako market was still smouldering five days after it was razed to the ground by a mob of Christian youths. The bodies of ten people trapped in the fires that destroyed it had already been taken away and buried. Muslim men kicked up plumes of dust as they shuffled through the ashes of their stalls, which a week earlier had numbered more than 5,000. A dirty young man searched through a pile of blackened onions, picking out those that were not inedibly charred.
A few hundred yards away, students and teachers at an Augustinian monastery were also sorting through wreckage. Their monastery had been attacked on the same day, just 30 minutes later, by a group of Muslim youths. The monk in charge narrowly escaped death when a Molotov cocktail thrown into his tiny room happened to land in the toilet.
The central Nigerian city of Jos is still assessing how much damage was done in the course of three days of destruction that began on November 28th, when what began as protests over local-government elections quickly took on a lethal sectarian character. At least 300 people died, 7,000 were displaced and many businesses, churches and mosques destroyed. A curfew remains in place, with dozens of army and police checkpoints.
Exactly who started the violence is unclear. On the other hand, everyone in Nigeria is familiar with the fierce animosities that exist between the various religious groups in Jos. The town is situated in the so-called “middle belt”, between Nigeria’s largely Muslim northern half and its predominantly Christian south—and thus has a pretty mixed population. And like other such cities, Jos has a history of ethnic and religious tension that has often boiled over. Similar incidents in 2001 and 2004 left thousands dead.
Many say the federal and state governments could have done more to prevent the killings. Local polls were a probable flashpoint. Elections in Nigeria are often violent and crooked affairs and in Jos there had been no local elections since the country’s military rulers gave way to democracy in 1999. Local officials wield enormous power all over Nigeria, often determining who can get college graduation diplomas, business forms and, most contentiously, papers indicating who is an “indigenous citizen” in a particular area. So the stakes are high. It was the declaration of victory in Jos for the ruling People’s Democratic Party, widely perceived as a mainly Christian party, that set off the chain of events that led to the violence. Backers of the defeated All Nigeria People’s Party, a mainly Muslim Hausa outfit, protested that the vote had been rigged.
Even after the mayhem began, the authorities’ response was slow. In most of the areas with widespread violence, the police did not show up for several hours and in some places did not arrive until the next day. Many residents say that when police and soldiers did eventually arrive, they used excessive force, sometimes shooting indiscriminately into crowds. Army officials have blamed such incidents on impostors dressed in makeshift fatigues.
The president, Umaru Yar’Adua, added to his reputation for underreacting to events by not even going to Jos after the violence, though it is only a three-hour drive from the federal capital, Abuja. Instead, as his envoy, he sent the minister of labour, who arrived after dark and left long before the sun rose the next day.
Forgiveness and reconciliation in Jos will be hard. The balkanisation of this city of 500,000-plus people that began in 2001 with a first round of religious violence will become starker after this latest bloodshed. Muslim businessmen will find it harder to rebuild shops in mainly Christian districts and Christian home owners will struggle to persuade their families to resettle in mainly Muslim areas. Since democracy was restored in 1999, most of northern Nigeria’s Muslim states have introduced sharia law. That prompted many thousands of Christians to migrate to other states. Increasingly, it seems, Christians and Muslims find it difficult to live alongside each other in a country of 140m-odd people.
At an internet café in one of the few shops still open in Jos, a businessman sitting at a computer doing research had an idea for how to avoid future outbreaks of violence. Every man, woman and child in Nigeria, he said, should own and know how to use a gun. Then events like the recent fighting wouldn’t happen, he said. And what was he researching? How to purchase, operate and dismantle an AK-47. He said he already had seven guns at home, including five pump-action shotguns. An AK was next on his wish list.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
The Grand Mufti on Freedom of Conscience in Islam
Swirling hardly begins to describe the internet chatter about the whole topic of Muslims converting to Christianity. One topic that is discussed alot is whether or not the Grand Mufti of Egypt did state that a Muslim can choose a religion other than Islam?
So here's some information about the man himself and the text of the original essay in its original context.
The man:
Since 2003, Dr. Ali Gomaa has served as the Grand Mufti of the Arab Republic of Egypt, a position of religious authority second only to the Sheikh al-Azhar. As an Egyptian native and one of Islam’s most respected scholars of Islamic law, Dr. Ali Gomaa oversees Dar al-Ifta, Egypt’s highest body for delivering opinions on religious law. Prior to his appointment as Grand Mufti, Dr. Gomaa served as a Professor of Jurisprudence at al-Azhar University, where he specialized in usul al-fiqh, the science of religious law. There, he published over 25 books on various topics in Islam. He has also issued a number fatwas during his tenure on topics ranging from gender equality to democracy. The Grand Mufti sets himself apart from peers by having earned his first academic agree, a B.A. in commerce, from a secular institution. In addition to regular media appearances on Egyptian television, the Grand Mufti has been especially vocal in reaching out to non-Muslim media outlets as a means of promoting Islamic institutions in the non-Muslim world. Western media outlets have heralded Gomaa’s approach to Islam as anti-extremist and aware of modern realities.
The context:
This Washington Post forum - July 21, 2007
The relevant text of the Grand Mufti's essay:
Freedom of Religion in Islam
The essential question before us is can a person who is Muslim choose a religion other than Islam? The answer is yes, they can, because the Quran says, “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion,” [Quran, 109:6], and, “Whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve,” [Quran, 18:29], and, “There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is distinct from error,” [Quran, 2:256].
These verses from the Quran discuss a freedom that God affords all people. But from a religious perspective, the act of abandoning one’s religion is a sin punishable by God on the Day of Judgment. If the case in question is one of merely rejecting faith, then there is no worldly punishment. If, however, the crime of undermining the foundations of the society is added to the sin of apostasy, then the case must be referred to a judicial system whose role is to protect the integrity of the society. Otherwise, the matter is left until the Day of Judgment, and it is not to be dealt with in the life of this world. It is an issue of conscience, and it is between the individual and God. In the life of this world, “There is no compulsion in religion,” in the life of this world, “Unto you your religion and unto me my religion,” and in the life of this world, “He who wills believes and he who wills disbelieves,” while bearing in mind that God will punish this sin on the Day of Judgment, unless it is combined with an attempt to undermine the stability of the society, in which case it is the society that holds them to account, not Islam.
The summary:
So freedom of conscience in this lifetime (It's not illegal) and punishment in the future life (its still a sin).
The caveat: Is this conversion undermining the foundations of the society? If so, it then becomes a matter for the state.
This is very important since it reflects creeping recognition of the rights of individual conscience at some of the highest levels of Islam. Christians in the aftermath of the Reformation also wrestled with the issue of freedom of religion vs."the foundations of society" - because just like many Muslims today, earlier generations of Christians found it difficult to imagine a stable society that was not united religiously.
Of course, there is always the cultural kicker.
Three weeks after the Mufti wrote those words, the International Herald Tribune carried this story of a real life former Muslim in Egypt who was trying to change his religion on his identity card so that his unborn child could be officially raised as a Christian, marry as a Christian, etc. since in Egypt the official religion of the father automatically becomes the religion of the son. (Consider how American assumptions that healthy adults reconsider and re-choose their religious identity, if any, after they are grown - per the Pew Survey - is dramatically at odds with Egyptian practice.)
The problem is that 25 year old Mohammed Hegazy was the first MBB to attempt to change his legal identity in Egypt and a huge storm developed.
An Islamist cleric has vowed to seek Mohammed Hegazy's execution as an apostate, his family has shunned him, and Hegazy raised a storm of controversy when pictures of him posing for journalists with a poster of the Virgin Mary were published in the newspapers.
Hegazy said he received death threats by phone before he went into hiding, in an apartment bare of furniture where he lives with his wife, who is also a convert from Islam and is four months pregnant. He would not say where the apartment was located.
"I know there are fatwas (religious edicts) to shed my blood, but I will not give up and I will not leave the country," Hegazy said.
There is no law on the books in Egypt against converting from Islam to Christianity, but in this case tradition trumps the law. Under a widespread interpretation of Islamic law, converting from Islam is apostasy and is punishable by death — though killings are rare and the state has never ordered or carried out an execution.
Most Muslims who convert usually practice their new religion quietly, seeking to avoid attention, or flee the country to the West. In Egypt, at the very least they face ostracism by their families, but if their conversion becomes known they can receive death threats from militants, or harassment by police, who use laws against "insulting religion" or "disturbing public order" as a pretext to target them.
The overwhelming taboo against conversion has made even trying to get official recognition unthinkable, leaving it unknown if a court would accept it. Christians who become Muslims are able to get their new religion entered on their ID and face little trouble from officials — though they too are usually thrown out by their families.
So much more powerful than the law is entrenched culture and taboo. And interestingly, it doesn't just cut one way, While Christians who become Muslim get little flak from officials, Egyptian Christian families also tend to regard conversion as an unforgivable betrayal and throw the defiant child out.
Cultural norms that transcend law and religion?
Source blog entitled: Intentional Disciples by the Siena Institute.
The Grand Mufti on Freedom of Conscience in Islam
Swirling hardly begins to describe the internet chatter about the whole topic of Muslims converting to Christianity. One topic that is discussed alot is whether or not the Grand Mufti of Egypt did state that a Muslim can choose a religion other than Islam?
So here's some information about the man himself and the text of the original essay in its original context.
The man:
Since 2003, Dr. Ali Gomaa has served as the Grand Mufti of the Arab Republic of Egypt, a position of religious authority second only to the Sheikh al-Azhar. As an Egyptian native and one of Islam’s most respected scholars of Islamic law, Dr. Ali Gomaa oversees Dar al-Ifta, Egypt’s highest body for delivering opinions on religious law. Prior to his appointment as Grand Mufti, Dr. Gomaa served as a Professor of Jurisprudence at al-Azhar University, where he specialized in usul al-fiqh, the science of religious law. There, he published over 25 books on various topics in Islam. He has also issued a number fatwas during his tenure on topics ranging from gender equality to democracy. The Grand Mufti sets himself apart from peers by having earned his first academic agree, a B.A. in commerce, from a secular institution. In addition to regular media appearances on Egyptian television, the Grand Mufti has been especially vocal in reaching out to non-Muslim media outlets as a means of promoting Islamic institutions in the non-Muslim world. Western media outlets have heralded Gomaa’s approach to Islam as anti-extremist and aware of modern realities.
The context:
This Washington Post forum - July 21, 2007
The relevant text of the Grand Mufti's essay:
Freedom of Religion in Islam
The essential question before us is can a person who is Muslim choose a religion other than Islam? The answer is yes, they can, because the Quran says, “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion,” [Quran, 109:6], and, “Whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve,” [Quran, 18:29], and, “There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is distinct from error,” [Quran, 2:256].
These verses from the Quran discuss a freedom that God affords all people. But from a religious perspective, the act of abandoning one’s religion is a sin punishable by God on the Day of Judgment. If the case in question is one of merely rejecting faith, then there is no worldly punishment. If, however, the crime of undermining the foundations of the society is added to the sin of apostasy, then the case must be referred to a judicial system whose role is to protect the integrity of the society. Otherwise, the matter is left until the Day of Judgment, and it is not to be dealt with in the life of this world. It is an issue of conscience, and it is between the individual and God. In the life of this world, “There is no compulsion in religion,” in the life of this world, “Unto you your religion and unto me my religion,” and in the life of this world, “He who wills believes and he who wills disbelieves,” while bearing in mind that God will punish this sin on the Day of Judgment, unless it is combined with an attempt to undermine the stability of the society, in which case it is the society that holds them to account, not Islam.
The summary:
So freedom of conscience in this lifetime (It's not illegal) and punishment in the future life (its still a sin).
The caveat: Is this conversion undermining the foundations of the society? If so, it then becomes a matter for the state.
This is very important since it reflects creeping recognition of the rights of individual conscience at some of the highest levels of Islam. Christians in the aftermath of the Reformation also wrestled with the issue of freedom of religion vs."the foundations of society" - because just like many Muslims today, earlier generations of Christians found it difficult to imagine a stable society that was not united religiously.
Of course, there is always the cultural kicker.
Three weeks after the Mufti wrote those words, the International Herald Tribune carried this story of a real life former Muslim in Egypt who was trying to change his religion on his identity card so that his unborn child could be officially raised as a Christian, marry as a Christian, etc. since in Egypt the official religion of the father automatically becomes the religion of the son. (Consider how American assumptions that healthy adults reconsider and re-choose their religious identity, if any, after they are grown - per the Pew Survey - is dramatically at odds with Egyptian practice.)
The problem is that 25 year old Mohammed Hegazy was the first MBB to attempt to change his legal identity in Egypt and a huge storm developed.
An Islamist cleric has vowed to seek Mohammed Hegazy's execution as an apostate, his family has shunned him, and Hegazy raised a storm of controversy when pictures of him posing for journalists with a poster of the Virgin Mary were published in the newspapers.
Hegazy said he received death threats by phone before he went into hiding, in an apartment bare of furniture where he lives with his wife, who is also a convert from Islam and is four months pregnant. He would not say where the apartment was located.
"I know there are fatwas (religious edicts) to shed my blood, but I will not give up and I will not leave the country," Hegazy said.
There is no law on the books in Egypt against converting from Islam to Christianity, but in this case tradition trumps the law. Under a widespread interpretation of Islamic law, converting from Islam is apostasy and is punishable by death — though killings are rare and the state has never ordered or carried out an execution.
Most Muslims who convert usually practice their new religion quietly, seeking to avoid attention, or flee the country to the West. In Egypt, at the very least they face ostracism by their families, but if their conversion becomes known they can receive death threats from militants, or harassment by police, who use laws against "insulting religion" or "disturbing public order" as a pretext to target them.
The overwhelming taboo against conversion has made even trying to get official recognition unthinkable, leaving it unknown if a court would accept it. Christians who become Muslims are able to get their new religion entered on their ID and face little trouble from officials — though they too are usually thrown out by their families.
So much more powerful than the law is entrenched culture and taboo. And interestingly, it doesn't just cut one way, While Christians who become Muslim get little flak from officials, Egyptian Christian families also tend to regard conversion as an unforgivable betrayal and throw the defiant child out.
Cultural norms that transcend law and religion?
Source blog entitled: Intentional Disciples by the Siena Institute.
invite the secularist scrooges to dinner
By Richelle WisemanDecember 14, 2008
Like clockwork every year around this time, the secular Scrooges emerge across the land, targeting Samaritan's Purse's
Operation Christmas Child program, which operates in some public schools.
Last week, the Nanaimo, B. C., District Teachers' Association filed a grievance with the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district after receiving complaints from a number of teachers who felt it was inappropriate for a student council at a Nanaimo public school to support Operation Christmas Child. Samaritan's Purse, they note, is an evangelical not-for-profit charity.
This debate has come up in Calgary, and in school districts elsewhere in the country. Yet across North America, churches, corporations, small businesses, grocery chains and individuals have promoted the simple act of filling shoeboxes with pencil crayons, toothbrushes, small toys and T-shirts, to be delivered to children in developing countries.
Last year, almost 700.000 boxes were collected in Canada alone.
Here, secularism reveals itself to be an ideology--a set of beliefs, ironically, almost religious in its anti-religious fervour.
Teachers' groups fear the distribution of shoeboxes to children in developing countries is a covert way to distribute Christian literature or coerce children into listening to a Christian presentation. That is simply untrue.
"There is never any Christian literature in any of the boxes," says Michael Ulrich of Samaritan's Purse. "Where culturally appropriate, we consult with the locals we work with to ask if we may distribute literature, but it is not linked to the boxes. They are distributed regardless of race or religion, as a gift and a sign that someone cares."
Samaritan's Purse is one of many Canadian faith-based charities that work on relief and development projects around the world. In fact, the Canadian government, through the Canadian International Development Agency, partners with a variety of religiously based non-governmental organizations such as: the Aga Khan Foundation, Canadian Foodgrains Bank, Canadian Lutheran World Re-lief, Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Economic Development Authority, Presbyterian World Service and Development, World Vision, and the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund. CIDA also helps to fund Samaritan's Purse water sanitation projects around the world.
Since the charge of "proselytizing" is bogus, the fact that Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization should not in any way exclude public schools from assisting the Operation Christmas Child project.
But secularists have a knee-jerk reaction to the notion of religion and religious values being introduced into public schools, or indeed, the public square. This is a monumentally misguided position.
Secularists believe religion has no place in public life, yet their "belief" in secularism is just one more of those beliefs in the marketplace of ideas. Ironically, many of these same people would agree that Canada is a pluralistic society.
Pluralism invites all belief systems, world views and religions to engage each other in the public square. The secularists' place is next to the Buddhists, agnostics, Zoroastrians, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and pagans. Public institutions in Canada, including our governments, schools and hospitals, are places where people of a wide range of beliefs interact and shape policy, curriculum and legislation. They do so using democratic principles, and--that most lauded of Canadian values --tolerance for differences.
In Canada, there has never been the degree of separation of church and state as there is in the United States. As a result, a rich and diverse multicultural and multi-faith country has developed, where religious and cultural groups have played important roles in building our country's institutions.
The pluralist accepts all belief systems and treats them as equals; everyone is welcome at the public table of our diverse society.
The secularists, on the other hand, exclude people of faith. They see themselves as superior because they are neutral. And they contend that religious beliefs are to be held privately, have no relevance, and indeed are dangerous, when brought into the public sphere.
People of faith don't want to exclude secularists. But they do want them to recognize they are but one of many voices.
In pluralistic Canada, we invite secular Scrooges to the dinner table, and hope they eventually adopt the tolerance towards religion they hold so dearly towards other beliefs.
Richelle Wiseman is the executive director of the centre for faith and the Media.
By Richelle WisemanDecember 14, 2008
Like clockwork every year around this time, the secular Scrooges emerge across the land, targeting Samaritan's Purse's
Operation Christmas Child program, which operates in some public schools.
Last week, the Nanaimo, B. C., District Teachers' Association filed a grievance with the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district after receiving complaints from a number of teachers who felt it was inappropriate for a student council at a Nanaimo public school to support Operation Christmas Child. Samaritan's Purse, they note, is an evangelical not-for-profit charity.
This debate has come up in Calgary, and in school districts elsewhere in the country. Yet across North America, churches, corporations, small businesses, grocery chains and individuals have promoted the simple act of filling shoeboxes with pencil crayons, toothbrushes, small toys and T-shirts, to be delivered to children in developing countries.
Last year, almost 700.000 boxes were collected in Canada alone.
Here, secularism reveals itself to be an ideology--a set of beliefs, ironically, almost religious in its anti-religious fervour.
Teachers' groups fear the distribution of shoeboxes to children in developing countries is a covert way to distribute Christian literature or coerce children into listening to a Christian presentation. That is simply untrue.
"There is never any Christian literature in any of the boxes," says Michael Ulrich of Samaritan's Purse. "Where culturally appropriate, we consult with the locals we work with to ask if we may distribute literature, but it is not linked to the boxes. They are distributed regardless of race or religion, as a gift and a sign that someone cares."
Samaritan's Purse is one of many Canadian faith-based charities that work on relief and development projects around the world. In fact, the Canadian government, through the Canadian International Development Agency, partners with a variety of religiously based non-governmental organizations such as: the Aga Khan Foundation, Canadian Foodgrains Bank, Canadian Lutheran World Re-lief, Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Economic Development Authority, Presbyterian World Service and Development, World Vision, and the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund. CIDA also helps to fund Samaritan's Purse water sanitation projects around the world.
Since the charge of "proselytizing" is bogus, the fact that Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization should not in any way exclude public schools from assisting the Operation Christmas Child project.
But secularists have a knee-jerk reaction to the notion of religion and religious values being introduced into public schools, or indeed, the public square. This is a monumentally misguided position.
Secularists believe religion has no place in public life, yet their "belief" in secularism is just one more of those beliefs in the marketplace of ideas. Ironically, many of these same people would agree that Canada is a pluralistic society.
Pluralism invites all belief systems, world views and religions to engage each other in the public square. The secularists' place is next to the Buddhists, agnostics, Zoroastrians, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and pagans. Public institutions in Canada, including our governments, schools and hospitals, are places where people of a wide range of beliefs interact and shape policy, curriculum and legislation. They do so using democratic principles, and--that most lauded of Canadian values --tolerance for differences.
In Canada, there has never been the degree of separation of church and state as there is in the United States. As a result, a rich and diverse multicultural and multi-faith country has developed, where religious and cultural groups have played important roles in building our country's institutions.
The pluralist accepts all belief systems and treats them as equals; everyone is welcome at the public table of our diverse society.
The secularists, on the other hand, exclude people of faith. They see themselves as superior because they are neutral. And they contend that religious beliefs are to be held privately, have no relevance, and indeed are dangerous, when brought into the public sphere.
People of faith don't want to exclude secularists. But they do want them to recognize they are but one of many voices.
In pluralistic Canada, we invite secular Scrooges to the dinner table, and hope they eventually adopt the tolerance towards religion they hold so dearly towards other beliefs.
Richelle Wiseman is the executive director of the centre for faith and the Media.
Basic freedoms challenged by Quebec religious course
December 21, 2008 9:01 AM
An authentic course in comparative religion examines the major faiths as a scholarly exercise and from a neutral vantage point. It is also inevitably an option course, not part of any core curriculum, except perhaps in specialized theological studies, such as in divinity school or for a university degree in religious studies. The mandatory nature of Quebec's new Ethics and Religious Culture course, strongly suggests there's more to this curriculum than an innocent overview of religious pluralism.
Thousands of Quebec parents are rightly furious they cannot have their children opt out of the course, which was introduced into public and private schools last fall. The course examines the major roles Catholicism and Protestantism have played in Quebec and Canadian society, but it places everything else on equal footing with these two predominant faiths, including Wicca and Raelianism--the bizarre cult that was in the news a few years ago when its members erroneously claimed to have cloned a human.The whole thing reeks of a politically correct, value-equal smorgasbord that encourages children to pick and choose from among religions and cults as if making a choice is as trivial as whether to take the tuna sandwich on white or on whole-wheat. The underlying message being sent to malleable children, who are still in the process of having their identities and faiths shaped by their families'religious and cultural milieux, is that all religions and ethics are equal, and without regard for history or parental teachings, you can choose to be anything you like. Be a Catholic or be a Jew. Be a Muslim, follow aboriginal spirituality, practise Wicca, become an animist or join the Raelians --it's all the same.
According to Education, Loisir et Sport Quebec, the course allows children to "explore . . . different ways in which Quebec's religious heritage is present in his/her immediate or broader environment,"and "learn about elements of other religious traditions present in Quebec." That sounds fairly innocuous--except that the underlying agenda has been revealed in comments such as that from one of the course developers who said, "Students must learn to shake up a too-solid identity." Huh? Since when do parents pay taxes and send their kids to school for that?
The curriculum is also intended to "facilitate" students' spirituality and sense of fulfilment. That is unequivocally the role of parents, not the schools. And young children need to be solidly rooted in their own identities--again, the parents'domain--in order to develop a proper perspective on, and appreciation for, the beliefs and identities of others.
If there weren't an insidious agenda at work here to socially engineer children's minds into a politically correct and phoney religious egalitarianism, the course would be optional. Instead, children are being suspended from school because they or their parents have refused to allow them to participate in the course. Granby, Que., teen Jonathan Gagne faces expulsion for boycotting the course, and a legal challenge is underway.The courts need to come down squarely on the side of freedom of conscience and family and parental rights in this one; anything less is an affront to their basic freedoms.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
December 21, 2008 9:01 AM
An authentic course in comparative religion examines the major faiths as a scholarly exercise and from a neutral vantage point. It is also inevitably an option course, not part of any core curriculum, except perhaps in specialized theological studies, such as in divinity school or for a university degree in religious studies. The mandatory nature of Quebec's new Ethics and Religious Culture course, strongly suggests there's more to this curriculum than an innocent overview of religious pluralism.
Thousands of Quebec parents are rightly furious they cannot have their children opt out of the course, which was introduced into public and private schools last fall. The course examines the major roles Catholicism and Protestantism have played in Quebec and Canadian society, but it places everything else on equal footing with these two predominant faiths, including Wicca and Raelianism--the bizarre cult that was in the news a few years ago when its members erroneously claimed to have cloned a human.The whole thing reeks of a politically correct, value-equal smorgasbord that encourages children to pick and choose from among religions and cults as if making a choice is as trivial as whether to take the tuna sandwich on white or on whole-wheat. The underlying message being sent to malleable children, who are still in the process of having their identities and faiths shaped by their families'religious and cultural milieux, is that all religions and ethics are equal, and without regard for history or parental teachings, you can choose to be anything you like. Be a Catholic or be a Jew. Be a Muslim, follow aboriginal spirituality, practise Wicca, become an animist or join the Raelians --it's all the same.
According to Education, Loisir et Sport Quebec, the course allows children to "explore . . . different ways in which Quebec's religious heritage is present in his/her immediate or broader environment,"and "learn about elements of other religious traditions present in Quebec." That sounds fairly innocuous--except that the underlying agenda has been revealed in comments such as that from one of the course developers who said, "Students must learn to shake up a too-solid identity." Huh? Since when do parents pay taxes and send their kids to school for that?
The curriculum is also intended to "facilitate" students' spirituality and sense of fulfilment. That is unequivocally the role of parents, not the schools. And young children need to be solidly rooted in their own identities--again, the parents'domain--in order to develop a proper perspective on, and appreciation for, the beliefs and identities of others.
If there weren't an insidious agenda at work here to socially engineer children's minds into a politically correct and phoney religious egalitarianism, the course would be optional. Instead, children are being suspended from school because they or their parents have refused to allow them to participate in the course. Granby, Que., teen Jonathan Gagne faces expulsion for boycotting the course, and a legal challenge is underway.The courts need to come down squarely on the side of freedom of conscience and family and parental rights in this one; anything less is an affront to their basic freedoms.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
December 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Heaven for the Godless?
By CHARLES M. BLOW
In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.
This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that.
The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they?
So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.
And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.
What on earth does this mean?
One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith. As Alan Segal, a professor of religion at Barnard College told me: “We are a multicultural society, and people expect this American life to continue the same way in heaven.” He explained that in our society, we meet so many good people of different faiths that it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell. In fact, in the most recent survey, Pew asked people what they thought determined whether a person would achieve eternal life. Nearly as many Christians said you could achieve eternal life by just being a good person as said that you had to believe in Jesus.
Also, many Christians apparently view their didactic text as flexible. According to Pew’s August survey, only 39 percent of Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and 18 percent think that it’s just a book written by men and not the word of God at all. In fact, on the question in the Pew survey about what it would take to achieve eternal life, only 1 percent of Christians said living life in accordance with the Bible.
Now, there remains the possibility that some of those polled may not have understood the implications of their answers. As John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said, “The capacity of ignorance to influence survey outcomes should never be underestimated.” But I don’t think that they are ignorant about this most basic tenet of their faith. I think that they are choosing to ignore it ... for goodness sake.
E-mail chblow@nytimes.com
Op-Ed Columnist
Heaven for the Godless?
By CHARLES M. BLOW
In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.
This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that.
The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they?
So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.
And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.
What on earth does this mean?
One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith. As Alan Segal, a professor of religion at Barnard College told me: “We are a multicultural society, and people expect this American life to continue the same way in heaven.” He explained that in our society, we meet so many good people of different faiths that it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell. In fact, in the most recent survey, Pew asked people what they thought determined whether a person would achieve eternal life. Nearly as many Christians said you could achieve eternal life by just being a good person as said that you had to believe in Jesus.
Also, many Christians apparently view their didactic text as flexible. According to Pew’s August survey, only 39 percent of Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and 18 percent think that it’s just a book written by men and not the word of God at all. In fact, on the question in the Pew survey about what it would take to achieve eternal life, only 1 percent of Christians said living life in accordance with the Bible.
Now, there remains the possibility that some of those polled may not have understood the implications of their answers. As John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said, “The capacity of ignorance to influence survey outcomes should never be underestimated.” But I don’t think that they are ignorant about this most basic tenet of their faith. I think that they are choosing to ignore it ... for goodness sake.
E-mail chblow@nytimes.com
An interesting book out on Islam-Christianity misunderstanding.
A DEADLY MISUNDERSTANDING
A Congressman's Quest to Bridge The Muslim - Christian Divide
We emerged and stood for a moment, blinking under the glare of the Mideastern sun and chatting with our Israeli security guard, when suddenly a shot rang out.
Mark Siljander
From the Introduction to A Deadly Misunderstanding
An Excerpt from A Deadly Misunderstanding
With its glamorous history, mix of European and Arab influences and liberal, cosmopolitan culture, Beirut had once been known as “the Paris of the Mideast.” But those days were long past. There was no mistaking the street where I stood: we were in the center of a war zone.
It was the fall of 1982. Israeli troops were poised all along the country’s southern border, ready to go in and wipe out the Palestinians who were dug in along that same border and determined to repel the Israelis at any cost. It was a standoff ready to explode at the smallest spark. I had just spent an hour visiting Camille Chamoun, the eighty-two-year-old Christian former president of Lebanon, hoping to get his read on the situation. The conversation had been inconclusive.
Chamoun’s house was located on the Christian side of the barren strip of scorched earth that divided Beirut into its two warring, irreconcilable halves: East and West, Muslim and Christian. The desolate strip of land had been dubbed, with an irony I’m sure nobody intended, the Green Line. I’d never seen anything less fertile, less evocative of life, less green, than this parched place.
We emerged and stood for a moment, blinking under the glare of the Mideastern sun and chatting with our Israeli security guard, when suddenly a shot rang out.
I should have ducked, but instead I froze. This was only my second trip to the Mideast, and I hadn’t yet acquired the war-zone reflexes that would come in the years to follow. Like a carpenter’s calluses or coal miner’s cough, a kind of hair-trigger vigilance comes with the territory, part and parcel of the seasoned diplomat’s trade. In central Africa, you learn how to cope with mosquitoes: in Beirut, you learn how to duck bombs and bullets. But as a freshman congressman just learning the ropes, I was pretty green myself, and I was still staring dumbly at the rubble-strewn streets, looking vaguely for the source of the sound when I was grabbed and yanked roughly to the ground—and a sharp pinnnggg! rang out, tearing a small cloud of dust from the wall just inches from where my head had been. The young Israeli dragged me ten or fifteen feet to a bus, pitched me in, and jerked the door closed. Palestinian snipers were closing in.
With the sound of my heartbeat pumping in my ears, one thought flooded through my racing brain: What the hell am I doing here?
Once the danger passed, I stayed on and surveyed the area for a while, climbing through the rubble, hoping to catch a clear glimpse of the PLO forces on the other side of the Green Line, the Muslim side. At the time, I didn’t realize what a vivid metaphor this effort was for the direction the rest of my life would take.
Suddenly I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and the next moment I was staring into the barrel of an Uzi. I had stumbled onto an Israeli lookout post hidden among the rubble and a young Israeli soldier, having no way of knowing who or what I was, was about to blow my head off. Nobody was reading anyone any Miranda rights here—this was war, kill or be killed.
My reflexes were a little sharper this time, and fortunately I had learned a bit of Hebrew since my first trip to the Mideast some months earlier. I knew just enough to shout out, “B’vaka sha, ani esh-congress!” Please, I’m a congressman! The boy’s finger froze on the trigger and he slowly lowered his Uzi.
In a few short hours, I had nearly been killed twice, and whether delivered by a bullet from the Christian side or Muslim side of that deadly Green Line, my death would have been just as final. No matter which side of an armed conflict one supports, both sides are ultimately sponsors of the same end: destruction.
This is not a book about Beirut, but it is a book about a world rift by its own Green Line, split like a macrocosmic Lebanon into two warring, seemingly irreconcilable halves. More particularly, it is about the efforts of one man, clambering about the rubble straddling that pervasive Green Line, to peer over at the other side and see what ground the two sides might possibly share.
This was not the path I set out to follow twenty-five years ago, as a conservative Republican congressman and Evangelical Christian just entering the world of Washington politics. At the time, I believed that Islam was a religion of violence, that the Qur’an preached the destruction of all non-Muslims, and that the Qur’an and Islam were of the devil, as godless as the great evil of communism whose defeat was then the defining purpose of American foreign policy. I believed that Islam and Christianity were contradictory at their core, that the Eastern Islamic and Western Judeo-Christian cultures were irretrievably opposed to one another, and that the only possible solution to this conflict was the conversion of “them” so they would come to think like “us.” My worldview could not have been clearer or simpler—or more myopic.
In the years that followed I was led to question the truth of these axioms. In time, I learned that every one of them was utterly, categorically false. I learned that when we stop buying into our cultures’ prejudices, assumptions, and prevailing habits of thought and begin to investigate the texts of our different holy books in their original languages, conflicts between crucial terms and entire passages that have traditionally been viewed as irreconcilable begin to evaporate.
I learned that the deadly misunderstanding dividing our world today need not do so tomorrow.
What follows in these pages is not some new form of ecumenism or syncretism where Christians, Muslims, or anyone else is expected to give up cherished and long-held beliefs or creeds. It is rather a chronicle of one person’s search for a rich common ground that exists between these faiths and cultures. It has been a constant source of both astonishment and inspiration to find that this common ground is not some far-fetched ideal but is textually sound and eminently practicable. In some extremely delicate and hostile political situations, I’ve seen it work miracles.
Mark D. Siljander
http://www.adeadlymisunderstanding.com/book.php
****
There are interviews with the author in the YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 2E10D74841
A DEADLY MISUNDERSTANDING
A Congressman's Quest to Bridge The Muslim - Christian Divide
We emerged and stood for a moment, blinking under the glare of the Mideastern sun and chatting with our Israeli security guard, when suddenly a shot rang out.
Mark Siljander
From the Introduction to A Deadly Misunderstanding
An Excerpt from A Deadly Misunderstanding
With its glamorous history, mix of European and Arab influences and liberal, cosmopolitan culture, Beirut had once been known as “the Paris of the Mideast.” But those days were long past. There was no mistaking the street where I stood: we were in the center of a war zone.
It was the fall of 1982. Israeli troops were poised all along the country’s southern border, ready to go in and wipe out the Palestinians who were dug in along that same border and determined to repel the Israelis at any cost. It was a standoff ready to explode at the smallest spark. I had just spent an hour visiting Camille Chamoun, the eighty-two-year-old Christian former president of Lebanon, hoping to get his read on the situation. The conversation had been inconclusive.
Chamoun’s house was located on the Christian side of the barren strip of scorched earth that divided Beirut into its two warring, irreconcilable halves: East and West, Muslim and Christian. The desolate strip of land had been dubbed, with an irony I’m sure nobody intended, the Green Line. I’d never seen anything less fertile, less evocative of life, less green, than this parched place.
We emerged and stood for a moment, blinking under the glare of the Mideastern sun and chatting with our Israeli security guard, when suddenly a shot rang out.
I should have ducked, but instead I froze. This was only my second trip to the Mideast, and I hadn’t yet acquired the war-zone reflexes that would come in the years to follow. Like a carpenter’s calluses or coal miner’s cough, a kind of hair-trigger vigilance comes with the territory, part and parcel of the seasoned diplomat’s trade. In central Africa, you learn how to cope with mosquitoes: in Beirut, you learn how to duck bombs and bullets. But as a freshman congressman just learning the ropes, I was pretty green myself, and I was still staring dumbly at the rubble-strewn streets, looking vaguely for the source of the sound when I was grabbed and yanked roughly to the ground—and a sharp pinnnggg! rang out, tearing a small cloud of dust from the wall just inches from where my head had been. The young Israeli dragged me ten or fifteen feet to a bus, pitched me in, and jerked the door closed. Palestinian snipers were closing in.
With the sound of my heartbeat pumping in my ears, one thought flooded through my racing brain: What the hell am I doing here?
Once the danger passed, I stayed on and surveyed the area for a while, climbing through the rubble, hoping to catch a clear glimpse of the PLO forces on the other side of the Green Line, the Muslim side. At the time, I didn’t realize what a vivid metaphor this effort was for the direction the rest of my life would take.
Suddenly I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and the next moment I was staring into the barrel of an Uzi. I had stumbled onto an Israeli lookout post hidden among the rubble and a young Israeli soldier, having no way of knowing who or what I was, was about to blow my head off. Nobody was reading anyone any Miranda rights here—this was war, kill or be killed.
My reflexes were a little sharper this time, and fortunately I had learned a bit of Hebrew since my first trip to the Mideast some months earlier. I knew just enough to shout out, “B’vaka sha, ani esh-congress!” Please, I’m a congressman! The boy’s finger froze on the trigger and he slowly lowered his Uzi.
In a few short hours, I had nearly been killed twice, and whether delivered by a bullet from the Christian side or Muslim side of that deadly Green Line, my death would have been just as final. No matter which side of an armed conflict one supports, both sides are ultimately sponsors of the same end: destruction.
This is not a book about Beirut, but it is a book about a world rift by its own Green Line, split like a macrocosmic Lebanon into two warring, seemingly irreconcilable halves. More particularly, it is about the efforts of one man, clambering about the rubble straddling that pervasive Green Line, to peer over at the other side and see what ground the two sides might possibly share.
This was not the path I set out to follow twenty-five years ago, as a conservative Republican congressman and Evangelical Christian just entering the world of Washington politics. At the time, I believed that Islam was a religion of violence, that the Qur’an preached the destruction of all non-Muslims, and that the Qur’an and Islam were of the devil, as godless as the great evil of communism whose defeat was then the defining purpose of American foreign policy. I believed that Islam and Christianity were contradictory at their core, that the Eastern Islamic and Western Judeo-Christian cultures were irretrievably opposed to one another, and that the only possible solution to this conflict was the conversion of “them” so they would come to think like “us.” My worldview could not have been clearer or simpler—or more myopic.
In the years that followed I was led to question the truth of these axioms. In time, I learned that every one of them was utterly, categorically false. I learned that when we stop buying into our cultures’ prejudices, assumptions, and prevailing habits of thought and begin to investigate the texts of our different holy books in their original languages, conflicts between crucial terms and entire passages that have traditionally been viewed as irreconcilable begin to evaporate.
I learned that the deadly misunderstanding dividing our world today need not do so tomorrow.
What follows in these pages is not some new form of ecumenism or syncretism where Christians, Muslims, or anyone else is expected to give up cherished and long-held beliefs or creeds. It is rather a chronicle of one person’s search for a rich common ground that exists between these faiths and cultures. It has been a constant source of both astonishment and inspiration to find that this common ground is not some far-fetched ideal but is textually sound and eminently practicable. In some extremely delicate and hostile political situations, I’ve seen it work miracles.
Mark D. Siljander
http://www.adeadlymisunderstanding.com/book.php
****
There are interviews with the author in the YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 2E10D74841
Last edited by kmaherali on Sun Feb 08, 2009 12:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
More Hindus than Muslims in Some West Bengal Madrassas!
By Sreya Basu
Jan 20, 2009
Kolkata
Contrary to popular belief that madrassas are schools for fundamentalist Islamic teaching, madrassas in West Bengal are attracting an increasing number of Hindu students with their shift in focus from Islamist education to science and technology.
Hindu students now outnumber Muslims in four madrassas of the state.
These include Kasba MM High Madrassa in Uttar Dinajpur district, Ekmukha Safiabad High Madrassa in Cooch Behar district, Orgram Chatuspalli High Madrassa at Burdwan district and Chandrakona Islamia High Madrassa at West Midnapore district.
"The percentage of Hindu students vary from 57 percent to 64 percent in these institutes, which stand out as proof that madrassas (Islamic seminaries) and secularism are not anachronistic," West Bengal Board of Madrassah Education president Sohrab Hussain told IANS.
He said 618 out of the 1,077 students in Kasba, 554 out of 868 students at Orgram, 201 out of 312 at Chandrakona and 290 out of total 480 students at Ekmukha are Hindus.
Denying that madrassas impart only Islamist education, he said the institutes lay more stress on modern subjects.
"It's a misconception that our students only learn Islam-related subjects at madrassas. Time is changing and so are we. Now, we lay more stress on science and technology than religion.
"Already 42 madrassas have computer laboratories; we will increase the number by another 100 labs in 2009. Over 100 madrassas offer vocational training in not only tailoring but even mobile applications technology," Hussain said.
He said an increasing number of Hindu students were choosing madrassas over other schools because they had more credibility.
"Madrassas have been successful in winning the confidence of students and guardians. Mostly first generation learners from backward classes come to study here as they know they won't be looked down upon. Besides, madrassa certificates are at par with other national-level examinations," said Hussain.
There are 506 madrassas in West Bengal and 52 more will come up by the end of 2009. Overall, 17 percent of the students and 11 percent of the teachers in these institutions are non-Muslims.
"All students are treated equally... there is no religious bias in the madrassas. Even the syllabus of the madrassas are no different from the Madhyamik - the state secondary examinations.
"The only difference is our students have to sit for a 100-mark extra paper on Arabic and Islamic studies, which in a way is good for Hindu students too. They can learn a new language at the same time," Hussain said.
Golum Mustafa, headmaster of Kasba madrassa, said all students study and play together irrespective of their religion.
"If anyone asks me why Hindu students study at madrassas, I ask them, 'Why not?' Be it school or madrassa - they are meant for imparting education. There are many Hindu students who passed out from Kasba and are well-established in life," Mustafa said on phone.
Bibhas Chandra Ghorui, a Hindu assistant teacher at Chandrakona, echoed Mustafa.
"There are seven schools within one km of this madrassa. But still people send their wards here, mostly because of affordability. One has to pay Rs.375 at general schools while the fees at the madrassa is only Rs.110.
"As for religious tolerance, if a Muslim student can study Baishnav Padavali - a Hindu religious hymns - then why can't a Hindu student study Islam or Arabic?" Ghorui said on phone.
By Sreya Basu
Jan 20, 2009
Kolkata
Contrary to popular belief that madrassas are schools for fundamentalist Islamic teaching, madrassas in West Bengal are attracting an increasing number of Hindu students with their shift in focus from Islamist education to science and technology.
Hindu students now outnumber Muslims in four madrassas of the state.
These include Kasba MM High Madrassa in Uttar Dinajpur district, Ekmukha Safiabad High Madrassa in Cooch Behar district, Orgram Chatuspalli High Madrassa at Burdwan district and Chandrakona Islamia High Madrassa at West Midnapore district.
"The percentage of Hindu students vary from 57 percent to 64 percent in these institutes, which stand out as proof that madrassas (Islamic seminaries) and secularism are not anachronistic," West Bengal Board of Madrassah Education president Sohrab Hussain told IANS.
He said 618 out of the 1,077 students in Kasba, 554 out of 868 students at Orgram, 201 out of 312 at Chandrakona and 290 out of total 480 students at Ekmukha are Hindus.
Denying that madrassas impart only Islamist education, he said the institutes lay more stress on modern subjects.
"It's a misconception that our students only learn Islam-related subjects at madrassas. Time is changing and so are we. Now, we lay more stress on science and technology than religion.
"Already 42 madrassas have computer laboratories; we will increase the number by another 100 labs in 2009. Over 100 madrassas offer vocational training in not only tailoring but even mobile applications technology," Hussain said.
He said an increasing number of Hindu students were choosing madrassas over other schools because they had more credibility.
"Madrassas have been successful in winning the confidence of students and guardians. Mostly first generation learners from backward classes come to study here as they know they won't be looked down upon. Besides, madrassa certificates are at par with other national-level examinations," said Hussain.
There are 506 madrassas in West Bengal and 52 more will come up by the end of 2009. Overall, 17 percent of the students and 11 percent of the teachers in these institutions are non-Muslims.
"All students are treated equally... there is no religious bias in the madrassas. Even the syllabus of the madrassas are no different from the Madhyamik - the state secondary examinations.
"The only difference is our students have to sit for a 100-mark extra paper on Arabic and Islamic studies, which in a way is good for Hindu students too. They can learn a new language at the same time," Hussain said.
Golum Mustafa, headmaster of Kasba madrassa, said all students study and play together irrespective of their religion.
"If anyone asks me why Hindu students study at madrassas, I ask them, 'Why not?' Be it school or madrassa - they are meant for imparting education. There are many Hindu students who passed out from Kasba and are well-established in life," Mustafa said on phone.
Bibhas Chandra Ghorui, a Hindu assistant teacher at Chandrakona, echoed Mustafa.
"There are seven schools within one km of this madrassa. But still people send their wards here, mostly because of affordability. One has to pay Rs.375 at general schools while the fees at the madrassa is only Rs.110.
"As for religious tolerance, if a Muslim student can study Baishnav Padavali - a Hindu religious hymns - then why can't a Hindu student study Islam or Arabic?" Ghorui said on phone.
At least atheists got mentioned
By Kevin Brooker, For The Calgary HeraldJanuary 26, 2009
People appear very keen for a lot of things to change on the Obama watch. One of those hopes is that Christianity would revert more to a private choice rather than the state religion it often appeared to be under George W. Bush.
With his frequent invocation of Christian principles and things like "faith-based" public expenditures, Bush only amplified the discomfort many people feel about being out of the loop in spiritual matters.
It always seemed rather dissonant in a nation where citizens frequently fight for and win the right, for example, not to be obliged to recite Christian prayer at the start of each school day. But many Americans are loath to accept a non-denominational commons. The separation of church and state may be enshrined in the U. S. Constitution, but look how long it took for that statue of the Ten Commandments to be removed from the Alabama legislature.
Then came Barack Obama's inauguration, though it was hardly a break from the past. By the time the celebrations were over, God and Jesus had been appealed to more often than at a Georgia prayer breakfast.
Still, many observers were heartened that Obama made an overt plea to bring all types of people into his tent when he said in his speech, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus --and non-believers."
It's a good start, I suppose. On the other hand, that line stood out to me, and not in a good way.
Non-believers?
That's hardly a flattering term when it follows up a grocery list of superstar faiths. Really, just the one catch-all for the Buddhists, atheists and pagans among us?
In one sense the term can even be considered a slur. To call atheists non-believers is to subtly reinforce the malign notion that they don't believe in anything apart from their hedonistic impulses.
In fact, to thoughtful people, being atheist is every bit as much spiritual work as being a Roman Catholic. You just don't see that work being done, is all.
Many atheists, for example, take "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" far more seriously than some Sunday hypocrites. Still others have performed a far-reaching exploration of the religion of others, and though they can't rationally accept that the universe is created by and for some sort of godhead, they nevertheless can accept--and believe in--a whole host of plausible cosmic powers.
I for one believe in the existence of karma, though I conceive of it as a possibly physical or perhaps energetic life force. I thus believe intuition somehow involves the flow of electrons in ways we've yet to fully grasp. I believe animals can know earthquakes are about to hap-pen, just as humans can have a sense of who is in the next room.
These beliefs, I readily acknowledge, are every bit as impossible to prove as the existence of a god in a heaven. Which is just one reason why I wouldn't dream of inflicting my beliefs on anyone else.
And there is another thing atheists allow themselves to believe: that religions, while perhaps founded on benign spiritual principles, can provoke grave consequences when inserted into political affairs. Throughout history most of the world's conflicts seem to have had religious input. The bloodiest battles of our time are being fought by zealous parties which, in the view of non-religious outsiders, have negligible differences separating their faiths.
Thus, though it's still unfortunately steeped in a Christian-first culture, Obama's inclusiveness might yet produce positive results. If all faiths are truly accepted, it will organically lead to a world where one or two faiths are less dominant, even oppressive.
Many observers have noted that the America of Obama's dreams is the multicultural Canada we've been living in for 40 years. If so, I'd like to believe it's the one where Christianity is not automatically presumed.
Kevin BrooKer is a Calgary freelance writer. His Column appears every Monday.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
By Kevin Brooker, For The Calgary HeraldJanuary 26, 2009
People appear very keen for a lot of things to change on the Obama watch. One of those hopes is that Christianity would revert more to a private choice rather than the state religion it often appeared to be under George W. Bush.
With his frequent invocation of Christian principles and things like "faith-based" public expenditures, Bush only amplified the discomfort many people feel about being out of the loop in spiritual matters.
It always seemed rather dissonant in a nation where citizens frequently fight for and win the right, for example, not to be obliged to recite Christian prayer at the start of each school day. But many Americans are loath to accept a non-denominational commons. The separation of church and state may be enshrined in the U. S. Constitution, but look how long it took for that statue of the Ten Commandments to be removed from the Alabama legislature.
Then came Barack Obama's inauguration, though it was hardly a break from the past. By the time the celebrations were over, God and Jesus had been appealed to more often than at a Georgia prayer breakfast.
Still, many observers were heartened that Obama made an overt plea to bring all types of people into his tent when he said in his speech, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus --and non-believers."
It's a good start, I suppose. On the other hand, that line stood out to me, and not in a good way.
Non-believers?
That's hardly a flattering term when it follows up a grocery list of superstar faiths. Really, just the one catch-all for the Buddhists, atheists and pagans among us?
In one sense the term can even be considered a slur. To call atheists non-believers is to subtly reinforce the malign notion that they don't believe in anything apart from their hedonistic impulses.
In fact, to thoughtful people, being atheist is every bit as much spiritual work as being a Roman Catholic. You just don't see that work being done, is all.
Many atheists, for example, take "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" far more seriously than some Sunday hypocrites. Still others have performed a far-reaching exploration of the religion of others, and though they can't rationally accept that the universe is created by and for some sort of godhead, they nevertheless can accept--and believe in--a whole host of plausible cosmic powers.
I for one believe in the existence of karma, though I conceive of it as a possibly physical or perhaps energetic life force. I thus believe intuition somehow involves the flow of electrons in ways we've yet to fully grasp. I believe animals can know earthquakes are about to hap-pen, just as humans can have a sense of who is in the next room.
These beliefs, I readily acknowledge, are every bit as impossible to prove as the existence of a god in a heaven. Which is just one reason why I wouldn't dream of inflicting my beliefs on anyone else.
And there is another thing atheists allow themselves to believe: that religions, while perhaps founded on benign spiritual principles, can provoke grave consequences when inserted into political affairs. Throughout history most of the world's conflicts seem to have had religious input. The bloodiest battles of our time are being fought by zealous parties which, in the view of non-religious outsiders, have negligible differences separating their faiths.
Thus, though it's still unfortunately steeped in a Christian-first culture, Obama's inclusiveness might yet produce positive results. If all faiths are truly accepted, it will organically lead to a world where one or two faiths are less dominant, even oppressive.
Many observers have noted that the America of Obama's dreams is the multicultural Canada we've been living in for 40 years. If so, I'd like to believe it's the one where Christianity is not automatically presumed.
Kevin BrooKer is a Calgary freelance writer. His Column appears every Monday.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Memories of the Alhambra
words: Dilara Hafiz
Andalusia, Spain’s southernmost province, is not only home to breathtaking scenery and delicious tapas but also to a rich history that is relatively unknown. Since 711-718 when the Umayyads invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Muslim peoples deeply influenced Andalusian culture through their practices, religion, language, and scholarly traditions. It was here that grandeur, artistry, and tolerance were the hallmarks of an 800-year Muslim rule of Andalusia.
Centuries of trade and exchange between Spain and Morocco have muffled the borders that many now envision to be rigid markers of distinct cultures and continents. Geographically speaking, Spain is the closest part of Europe to the African continent. Take the Strait of Gibraltar for example, the narrow waterway which divides Spain and Morocco; the name ‘Gibraltar’ is known to originate from the Arabic phrase Jebel Tariq meaning ‘mountain of Tariq’ and refers to the famous general Tariq ibn-Ziyad who led the Islamic conquest of Spain in 711.
Under Muslim rule, universities were established in Andalusia as peoples of various religious backgrounds, namely Moors and Jews, helped to revive and preserve the Greek disciplines of medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. At this time, economic prosperity reigned and Andalusia boasted Cordoba as the largest and richest city in Western Europe. Arabic language, literature, and music also flourished which is why the word ‘troubadour’ is known to have Arabic roots.
In The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Roza Menocal, 13th century Granada is described as ‘one of the Shangri-Las of the West.’ Dr. Menocal, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, ably describes the fruitful intermingling that the three Abrahamic faiths enjoyed during the centuries of largely peaceful interaction in Southern Spain.
Vestiges of this coexistence can be seen everywhere in present day Granada. Tourist shops sell T-shirts emblazoned with Arabic calligraphy next to colorful, hand-painted ceramic platters with a prominent Star of David motif in their centers. Crucifixes hang from every wall and glass rosaries as well as tasbihs can be found decorating the entranceways of these shops. German, French, Spanish, English and Japanese are just a few of the languages to be heard echoing around the stone ramparts of the fortress and amongst the green gardens of the ‘Generalife’ - the summer retreat at Alhambra, and also the second most visited tourist site in Europe.
Visitors to Alhambra can see the stuccoed archways, fountains, reflecting pools, and geometric tile work that are recognizably of Islamic artistic origin. They can also glimpse a bygone age in which economic political and social interactions of the ruling class emphasized tolerance and peaceful coexistence for the greater good of the entire citizenry, be they Muslim, Christian, or Jew.
http://www.elanthemag.com/index.php/sit ... _alhambra/
words: Dilara Hafiz
Andalusia, Spain’s southernmost province, is not only home to breathtaking scenery and delicious tapas but also to a rich history that is relatively unknown. Since 711-718 when the Umayyads invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Muslim peoples deeply influenced Andalusian culture through their practices, religion, language, and scholarly traditions. It was here that grandeur, artistry, and tolerance were the hallmarks of an 800-year Muslim rule of Andalusia.
Centuries of trade and exchange between Spain and Morocco have muffled the borders that many now envision to be rigid markers of distinct cultures and continents. Geographically speaking, Spain is the closest part of Europe to the African continent. Take the Strait of Gibraltar for example, the narrow waterway which divides Spain and Morocco; the name ‘Gibraltar’ is known to originate from the Arabic phrase Jebel Tariq meaning ‘mountain of Tariq’ and refers to the famous general Tariq ibn-Ziyad who led the Islamic conquest of Spain in 711.
Under Muslim rule, universities were established in Andalusia as peoples of various religious backgrounds, namely Moors and Jews, helped to revive and preserve the Greek disciplines of medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. At this time, economic prosperity reigned and Andalusia boasted Cordoba as the largest and richest city in Western Europe. Arabic language, literature, and music also flourished which is why the word ‘troubadour’ is known to have Arabic roots.
In The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Roza Menocal, 13th century Granada is described as ‘one of the Shangri-Las of the West.’ Dr. Menocal, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, ably describes the fruitful intermingling that the three Abrahamic faiths enjoyed during the centuries of largely peaceful interaction in Southern Spain.
Vestiges of this coexistence can be seen everywhere in present day Granada. Tourist shops sell T-shirts emblazoned with Arabic calligraphy next to colorful, hand-painted ceramic platters with a prominent Star of David motif in their centers. Crucifixes hang from every wall and glass rosaries as well as tasbihs can be found decorating the entranceways of these shops. German, French, Spanish, English and Japanese are just a few of the languages to be heard echoing around the stone ramparts of the fortress and amongst the green gardens of the ‘Generalife’ - the summer retreat at Alhambra, and also the second most visited tourist site in Europe.
Visitors to Alhambra can see the stuccoed archways, fountains, reflecting pools, and geometric tile work that are recognizably of Islamic artistic origin. They can also glimpse a bygone age in which economic political and social interactions of the ruling class emphasized tolerance and peaceful coexistence for the greater good of the entire citizenry, be they Muslim, Christian, or Jew.
http://www.elanthemag.com/index.php/sit ... _alhambra/
Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Obama Announces White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release
February 5, 2009
Obama Announces White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Washington (February 5, 2009) – President Barack Obama today signed an executive order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will work on behalf of Americans committed to improving their communities, no matter their religious or political beliefs.
"Over the past few days and weeks, there has been much talk about what our government’s role should be during this period of economic emergency. That is as it should be – because there is much that government can and must do to help people in need," said President Obama. "But no matter how much money we invest or how sensibly we design our policies, the change that Americans are looking for will not come from government alone. There is a force for good greater than government. It is an expression of faith, this yearning to give back, this hungering for a purpose larger than our own, that reveals itself not simply in places of worship, but in senior centers and shelters, schools and hospitals, and any place an American decides."
The White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will be a resource for nonprofits and community organizations, both secular and faith based, looking for ways to make a bigger impact in their communities, learn their obligations under the law, cut through red tape, and make the most of what the federal government has to offer.
President Obama appointed Joshua DuBois, a former associate pastor and advisor to the President in his U.S. Senate office and campaign Director of Religious Affairs, to lead this office. "Joshua understands the issues at stake, knows the people involved, and will be able to bring everyone together – from both the secular and faith-based communities, from academia and politics – around our common goals," said President Obama.
The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will focus on four key priorities, to be carried out by working closely with the President’s Cabinet Secretaries and each of the eleven agency offices for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships:
The Office’s top priority will be making community groups an integral part of our economic recovery and poverty a burden fewer have to bear when recovery is complete.
It will be one voice among several in the administration that will look at how we support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion.
The Office will strive to support fathers who stand by their families, which involves working to get young men off the streets and into well-paying jobs, and encouraging responsible fatherhood.
Finally, beyond American shores this Office will work with the National Security Council to foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars around the world.
As the priorities of this Office are carried out, it will be done in a way that upholds the Constitution – by ensuring that both existing programs and new proposals are consistent with American laws and values. The separation of church and state is a principle President Obama supports firmly – not only because it protects our democracy, but also because it protects the plurality of America’s religious and civic life. The Executive Order President Obama will sign today strengthens this by adding a new mechanism for the Executive Director of the Office to work through the White House Counsel to seek the advice of the Attorney General on difficult legal and constitutional issues.
The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will include a new President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds. There will be 25 members of the Council, appointed to 1-year terms.
Members of the Council include:
Judith N. Vredenburgh, President and Chief Executive Officer, Big Brothers / Big Sisters of America
Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi David N. Saperstein, Director & Counsel, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and noted church/state expert
Washington, DC
Dr. Frank S. Page, President emeritus, Southern Baptist Convention
Taylors, SC
Father Larry J. Snyder, President, Catholic Charities USA
Alexandria, VA
Rev. Otis Moss, Jr., Pastor emeritus, Olivet Institutional Baptist Church
Cleveland, OH
Eboo S. Patel, Founder & Executive Director, Interfaith Youth Corps
Chicago, IL
Fred Davie, President, Public / Private Ventures, a secular non-profit intermediary
New York, NY
Dr. William J. Shaw, President, National Baptist Convention, USA
Philadelphia, PA
Melissa Rogers, Director, Wake Forest School of Divinity Center for Religion and Public Affairs and expert on church/state issues
Winston-Salem, NC
Pastor Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland, a Church Distributed
Lakeland, FL
Dr. Arturo Chavez, Ph.D., President & CEO, Mexican American Cultural Center
San Antonio, TX
Rev. Jim Wallis, President & Executive Director, Sojourners
Washington, DC
Bishop Vashti M. McKenzie, Presiding Bishop, 13th Episcopal District, African Methodist Episcopal Church
Knoxville, TN
Diane Baillargeon, President & CEO, Seedco, a secular national operating intermediary
New York, NY
Richard Stearns, President, World Vision
Bellevue, WA
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_off ... tnerships/
Obama Announces White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release
February 5, 2009
Obama Announces White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Washington (February 5, 2009) – President Barack Obama today signed an executive order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will work on behalf of Americans committed to improving their communities, no matter their religious or political beliefs.
"Over the past few days and weeks, there has been much talk about what our government’s role should be during this period of economic emergency. That is as it should be – because there is much that government can and must do to help people in need," said President Obama. "But no matter how much money we invest or how sensibly we design our policies, the change that Americans are looking for will not come from government alone. There is a force for good greater than government. It is an expression of faith, this yearning to give back, this hungering for a purpose larger than our own, that reveals itself not simply in places of worship, but in senior centers and shelters, schools and hospitals, and any place an American decides."
The White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will be a resource for nonprofits and community organizations, both secular and faith based, looking for ways to make a bigger impact in their communities, learn their obligations under the law, cut through red tape, and make the most of what the federal government has to offer.
President Obama appointed Joshua DuBois, a former associate pastor and advisor to the President in his U.S. Senate office and campaign Director of Religious Affairs, to lead this office. "Joshua understands the issues at stake, knows the people involved, and will be able to bring everyone together – from both the secular and faith-based communities, from academia and politics – around our common goals," said President Obama.
The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will focus on four key priorities, to be carried out by working closely with the President’s Cabinet Secretaries and each of the eleven agency offices for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships:
The Office’s top priority will be making community groups an integral part of our economic recovery and poverty a burden fewer have to bear when recovery is complete.
It will be one voice among several in the administration that will look at how we support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion.
The Office will strive to support fathers who stand by their families, which involves working to get young men off the streets and into well-paying jobs, and encouraging responsible fatherhood.
Finally, beyond American shores this Office will work with the National Security Council to foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars around the world.
As the priorities of this Office are carried out, it will be done in a way that upholds the Constitution – by ensuring that both existing programs and new proposals are consistent with American laws and values. The separation of church and state is a principle President Obama supports firmly – not only because it protects our democracy, but also because it protects the plurality of America’s religious and civic life. The Executive Order President Obama will sign today strengthens this by adding a new mechanism for the Executive Director of the Office to work through the White House Counsel to seek the advice of the Attorney General on difficult legal and constitutional issues.
The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will include a new President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds. There will be 25 members of the Council, appointed to 1-year terms.
Members of the Council include:
Judith N. Vredenburgh, President and Chief Executive Officer, Big Brothers / Big Sisters of America
Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi David N. Saperstein, Director & Counsel, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and noted church/state expert
Washington, DC
Dr. Frank S. Page, President emeritus, Southern Baptist Convention
Taylors, SC
Father Larry J. Snyder, President, Catholic Charities USA
Alexandria, VA
Rev. Otis Moss, Jr., Pastor emeritus, Olivet Institutional Baptist Church
Cleveland, OH
Eboo S. Patel, Founder & Executive Director, Interfaith Youth Corps
Chicago, IL
Fred Davie, President, Public / Private Ventures, a secular non-profit intermediary
New York, NY
Dr. William J. Shaw, President, National Baptist Convention, USA
Philadelphia, PA
Melissa Rogers, Director, Wake Forest School of Divinity Center for Religion and Public Affairs and expert on church/state issues
Winston-Salem, NC
Pastor Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland, a Church Distributed
Lakeland, FL
Dr. Arturo Chavez, Ph.D., President & CEO, Mexican American Cultural Center
San Antonio, TX
Rev. Jim Wallis, President & Executive Director, Sojourners
Washington, DC
Bishop Vashti M. McKenzie, Presiding Bishop, 13th Episcopal District, African Methodist Episcopal Church
Knoxville, TN
Diane Baillargeon, President & CEO, Seedco, a secular national operating intermediary
New York, NY
Richard Stearns, President, World Vision
Bellevue, WA
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_off ... tnerships/
Activists push progressive religious agendas
Social justice, poverty now prime issues
By Jacqueline L. Salmon And Michelle Boorstein, The Washington PostFebruary 8, 2009 8:01 AM
With a president they view as more sympathetic to their causes, progressive religious activists are pushing the new Obama administration for aggressive action on poverty, the environment and social justice issues that would mark a significant shift in the faith agenda that dominated the Bush years.
Many faith groups close to President George W. Bush focused on abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage. But now, liberal and centrist evangelicals and other activists say they are getting a voice and trying to turn the debate.
"The last administration showed no interest in talking to a large chunk of the religious community," said Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
"We're already seeing change. . . . This administration, so far as I can see, is not making a similar mistake."
The change, however, represents more than a new agenda. It also sets up potential conflicts for President Obama, who has reached out to religious activists across the spectrum. He runs the risk of alienating supporters and detractors alike as his administration attempts a dialogue on a host of issues and begins new policies, such as his decision this month to lift the ban on federal funding to international groups that provide abortions and abortion counselling.
Faith groups praised the administration's outreach during the transition. Between the election and the inauguration, Obama's staff held more than 20 meetings with a diverse mix of religious groups that included main line Protestant organizations such as Lutheran Services in America as well as the Salvation Army, Prison Fellowship and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
Those attending said administration officials were seeking advice on how the new White House can work with faith organizations through Obama's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The meetings also focused on such issues as the environment, AIDS worldwide, Middle East policy, detainee interrogations, criminal justice reform and the economy.
High-level Obama staff members attended the sessions, which were held at the transition headquarters, or participated through teleconference. They included Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council; Heather Higginbottom, the council's deputy director; and Michael Strautmanis, Obama's director of intergovernmental relations.
Last week, Obama named Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal pastor who ran religious outreach for the campaign, to head the White House's new office for faithbased programs, a White House aide said.
DuBois is close to the president, and faith leaders see his ascent as a sign of the importance of their causes to the new administration.
While the progressive groups are emphasizing social justice, many also are urging Obama to help reduce abortions. The fight over the issue has always been complex and is likely to become even more so. While many liberal groups say they want abortions reduced, other anti-abortion groups remain adamant about seeking a prohibition.
Catholic bishops, for example, will find Obama a "mixed bag," said Stephen Schneck, director of the Life Cycle Institute and a professor of politics at Catholic University. While many of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' positions on social justice align with those of the Obama administration, the bishops' firm opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research will put them at odds with the president.
"Clearly for the bishops, first and foremost, are these life issues," Schneck said.
"While they're certainly willing to work with the Obama administration on everything else, for them the key to a long-term relationship with the administration has to revolve around abortion."
Other areas of dispute also are becoming clear. The National Religious Campaign Against Torture praised Obama's decision to close the U. S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and end harsh interrogation techniques, but criticized his creation of a task force to study whether the CIA should be able to use additional interrogation techniques. "We cannot afford to risk a return to the secret abuses of the past," said a statement from the group, which represents 257 religious organizations.
Many have also expressed concern about Obama's stated desire to reverse the Bush policy of allowing religious groups to hire only people of their own faith in federally funded projects.
When Obama announced his plan for an office for faithbased initiatives, he said that groups receiving federal funding could not discriminate in hiring. Obama officials have been largely vague on this point since. Religious hiring rights are a priority for many religious groups.
And even groups more ideologically aligned with Obama may find themselves squaring off with him as he attempts to balance their competing interests with his agenda in other areas, such as the economy.
Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group, intends to keep the pressure up with a march in April, the Mobilization Against Poverty, that will call on the president to cut the poverty rate in half within 10 years.
The organizations say they are only attempting to help Obama stay on the course he has promised.
Said Sojourners organizer Jim Wallis: "We're trying to help him fulfil his commitment and hold his administration accountable at the same time."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Social justice, poverty now prime issues
By Jacqueline L. Salmon And Michelle Boorstein, The Washington PostFebruary 8, 2009 8:01 AM
With a president they view as more sympathetic to their causes, progressive religious activists are pushing the new Obama administration for aggressive action on poverty, the environment and social justice issues that would mark a significant shift in the faith agenda that dominated the Bush years.
Many faith groups close to President George W. Bush focused on abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage. But now, liberal and centrist evangelicals and other activists say they are getting a voice and trying to turn the debate.
"The last administration showed no interest in talking to a large chunk of the religious community," said Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
"We're already seeing change. . . . This administration, so far as I can see, is not making a similar mistake."
The change, however, represents more than a new agenda. It also sets up potential conflicts for President Obama, who has reached out to religious activists across the spectrum. He runs the risk of alienating supporters and detractors alike as his administration attempts a dialogue on a host of issues and begins new policies, such as his decision this month to lift the ban on federal funding to international groups that provide abortions and abortion counselling.
Faith groups praised the administration's outreach during the transition. Between the election and the inauguration, Obama's staff held more than 20 meetings with a diverse mix of religious groups that included main line Protestant organizations such as Lutheran Services in America as well as the Salvation Army, Prison Fellowship and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
Those attending said administration officials were seeking advice on how the new White House can work with faith organizations through Obama's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The meetings also focused on such issues as the environment, AIDS worldwide, Middle East policy, detainee interrogations, criminal justice reform and the economy.
High-level Obama staff members attended the sessions, which were held at the transition headquarters, or participated through teleconference. They included Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council; Heather Higginbottom, the council's deputy director; and Michael Strautmanis, Obama's director of intergovernmental relations.
Last week, Obama named Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal pastor who ran religious outreach for the campaign, to head the White House's new office for faithbased programs, a White House aide said.
DuBois is close to the president, and faith leaders see his ascent as a sign of the importance of their causes to the new administration.
While the progressive groups are emphasizing social justice, many also are urging Obama to help reduce abortions. The fight over the issue has always been complex and is likely to become even more so. While many liberal groups say they want abortions reduced, other anti-abortion groups remain adamant about seeking a prohibition.
Catholic bishops, for example, will find Obama a "mixed bag," said Stephen Schneck, director of the Life Cycle Institute and a professor of politics at Catholic University. While many of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' positions on social justice align with those of the Obama administration, the bishops' firm opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research will put them at odds with the president.
"Clearly for the bishops, first and foremost, are these life issues," Schneck said.
"While they're certainly willing to work with the Obama administration on everything else, for them the key to a long-term relationship with the administration has to revolve around abortion."
Other areas of dispute also are becoming clear. The National Religious Campaign Against Torture praised Obama's decision to close the U. S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and end harsh interrogation techniques, but criticized his creation of a task force to study whether the CIA should be able to use additional interrogation techniques. "We cannot afford to risk a return to the secret abuses of the past," said a statement from the group, which represents 257 religious organizations.
Many have also expressed concern about Obama's stated desire to reverse the Bush policy of allowing religious groups to hire only people of their own faith in federally funded projects.
When Obama announced his plan for an office for faithbased initiatives, he said that groups receiving federal funding could not discriminate in hiring. Obama officials have been largely vague on this point since. Religious hiring rights are a priority for many religious groups.
And even groups more ideologically aligned with Obama may find themselves squaring off with him as he attempts to balance their competing interests with his agenda in other areas, such as the economy.
Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group, intends to keep the pressure up with a march in April, the Mobilization Against Poverty, that will call on the president to cut the poverty rate in half within 10 years.
The organizations say they are only attempting to help Obama stay on the course he has promised.
Said Sojourners organizer Jim Wallis: "We're trying to help him fulfil his commitment and hold his administration accountable at the same time."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Faith leaders plan to counter atheist ads in Calgary
Billboards will appear on city buses
By Graeme Morton, Calgary HeraldFebruary 19, 2009 8:02 AM
A Muslim leader wants Calgarians of faith to counter an advertising campaign by atheists that questions the existence of God.
Syed Soharwardy said Wednesday he plans to meet with local religious leaders and groups to gather moral support and money to mount an ad campaign on city buses offering a faith-based message.
"In a free society, if the atheists have a right to express their opinion, then people of faith should come forward and speak up," said Soharwardy. "We want to convey positive messages about God; that God is with you.
"This campaign message will not be a particular Muslim, Jewish or Christian point of view. Our concept of God may be a little different, but we all believe in a divine power, a creator -- that's our commonality," Soharwardy said.
Public transit signs reading, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life," have run in European and American cities in recent months. The Freethought Association of Canada, a national atheist organization, has raised $43,000 in donations to buy similar ads, including on Calgary Transit buses.
Justin Trottier, Freethought Association president, said the ads made their debut in Toronto last week and will be added to streetcars and subways in the near future. He said requests to run similar ads have been rejected by civic officials in Halifax, Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, London, Ont., and Ottawa.
"We wanted Canadians to understand that there is a large demographic of nonbelievers in this country, but I'm pleased that the ads have sparked a wider debate on religion and free speech," said Trottier.
Cliff Erasmus, a local atheist spokesman, said he'll order the ads soon and hopes they'll be on Calgary Transit buses for a four-week run beginning in March.
"If there's a group that's going to run ads countering our message, that's great, let's have the discussion," said Erasmus. "I just hope they are original and don't simply change our wording."
Soharwardy said he wants the faith-based ads to run at the same time as the atheist campaign.
Pastor Brent Trask, president of the Calgary Evangelical Ministerial Association, welcomes the debate on faith, but wonders if the side of publicly funded buses is the best place to conduct it.
"Whether it's Muslims, Hindus or Christians, people who feel passionate about their faith have been expressing that for centuries and should continue to do that," said Trask.
"The Freethought society is welcome to express their position. But I don't think what they are doing raises the need to somehow counterbalance it. Truth is never afraid of diversity. Truth is truth, people will ultimately discover it through dialogue, and we've got the welcome mat out," Trask said.
The United Church of Canada has already weighed into the debate.
It has taken out newspaper ads quoting the atheist message and suggesting, "There's probably a God.Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." It invites people to vote on the two statements on its website, www.wondercafe.ca.
At last count, God's existence was leading 54 to 46 per cent after about 9,200 votes.
gmorton@tHeHerald.Canwest.Com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Billboards will appear on city buses
By Graeme Morton, Calgary HeraldFebruary 19, 2009 8:02 AM
A Muslim leader wants Calgarians of faith to counter an advertising campaign by atheists that questions the existence of God.
Syed Soharwardy said Wednesday he plans to meet with local religious leaders and groups to gather moral support and money to mount an ad campaign on city buses offering a faith-based message.
"In a free society, if the atheists have a right to express their opinion, then people of faith should come forward and speak up," said Soharwardy. "We want to convey positive messages about God; that God is with you.
"This campaign message will not be a particular Muslim, Jewish or Christian point of view. Our concept of God may be a little different, but we all believe in a divine power, a creator -- that's our commonality," Soharwardy said.
Public transit signs reading, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life," have run in European and American cities in recent months. The Freethought Association of Canada, a national atheist organization, has raised $43,000 in donations to buy similar ads, including on Calgary Transit buses.
Justin Trottier, Freethought Association president, said the ads made their debut in Toronto last week and will be added to streetcars and subways in the near future. He said requests to run similar ads have been rejected by civic officials in Halifax, Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, London, Ont., and Ottawa.
"We wanted Canadians to understand that there is a large demographic of nonbelievers in this country, but I'm pleased that the ads have sparked a wider debate on religion and free speech," said Trottier.
Cliff Erasmus, a local atheist spokesman, said he'll order the ads soon and hopes they'll be on Calgary Transit buses for a four-week run beginning in March.
"If there's a group that's going to run ads countering our message, that's great, let's have the discussion," said Erasmus. "I just hope they are original and don't simply change our wording."
Soharwardy said he wants the faith-based ads to run at the same time as the atheist campaign.
Pastor Brent Trask, president of the Calgary Evangelical Ministerial Association, welcomes the debate on faith, but wonders if the side of publicly funded buses is the best place to conduct it.
"Whether it's Muslims, Hindus or Christians, people who feel passionate about their faith have been expressing that for centuries and should continue to do that," said Trask.
"The Freethought society is welcome to express their position. But I don't think what they are doing raises the need to somehow counterbalance it. Truth is never afraid of diversity. Truth is truth, people will ultimately discover it through dialogue, and we've got the welcome mat out," Trask said.
The United Church of Canada has already weighed into the debate.
It has taken out newspaper ads quoting the atheist message and suggesting, "There's probably a God.Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." It invites people to vote on the two statements on its website, www.wondercafe.ca.
At last count, God's existence was leading 54 to 46 per cent after about 9,200 votes.
gmorton@tHeHerald.Canwest.Com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Muslim students recount personal experiences in Christian environment
By: Desiree Grimes
Posted: 2/26/09
This is the second of a four-part series on religious diversity on campus.
When she walked onto campus, she fell in love with the atmosphere, realizing that when people are close to God they reflect his kindness. This is why senior Madiha Abbasi chose to pursue a degree that will forever testify that she attended Houston Baptist University.
Muslims at a Christian university
"To me, there is little difference between Islam and Christianity, and I would rather be in a Christian environment where people are kind than a non-Christian environment. I was shy at first, but a lot of very devout Christians became my best friends. I never thought that could happen," Abbasi said.
Other Muslim students report similar positive experiences.
Freshman Nida Hassan said she found people on campus to be open and inquisitive out of a desire to learn about her religion. She also thinks it is important for Muslims to learn about the Christian faith.
"If I'm at a Christian university, I might as well grasp as much knowledge as possible. The Community Life and Worship options provide good experiences for Muslim students to see how Christians pray and come together."
Junior Saba Iyoob agreed.
"In the past three years, I have learned so much about everything."
Abbasi said she hopes the University will see that if it allowed religiously and culturally diverse organizations it would help define the University as Christian and take the teachings of Jesus to a higher level.
Muslim students interviewed for this story expressed enthusiasm over the possibility of others learning more about Islam to dispel common misconceptions about their religion.
Basic beliefs of Islam
According to the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, Islam, which means "peace" or "surrender and submission to God's will," was formed in Arabia in the year A.D. 611 when, according to Muslim tradition, Muhammad of Mecca received a revelation from God. The angel Gabriel, who told Muhammad he had been chosen as the new messenger of God, delivered the revelation. Revelations came to Muhammad over the next 23 years, and these were compiled into the Quran.
"Truly submitting to God is one of the most fundamental things about Islam," senior Farah Mithani said.
To become Muslim, one must profess that there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. Muslims must also believe in six truths, which are God, angels, revealed books, divine messengers, afterlife and divine plans, according to the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion.
Iyoob said the five major pillars of Islam are Shadah, which is faith in the oneness of God and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad; Salah, which is the establishment of daily prayers; Zakat, which is concern for and almsgiving to the needy; Sawm, which is self-purification through fasting; and Hajj, which is the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.
Muslims believe in five prophets from God: Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.
The Quran
Hassan said the Quran, which is the foundation of Islam, was revealed to the prophet Muhammad, who then revealed it to the world.
"The Quran is the book of guidance," Iyoob said. "It places emphasis on the moral significance of a historical event. Muslims believe the Quran itself is a miracle of Muhammad and the proof of his prophet-hood."
Mithani said that the major difference between the Quran and the Bible is the New Testament. The Quran contains stories that are also in the Old Testament as well as stories of Muhammad and his teachings.
Muslims have a special holding place for the Quran, Hassan said. It is called a kursi, which is Arabic for throne.
"You can carry the Quran around with you, but I wouldn't throw it around like a text book," Mithani said. "It's holy, so you have to respect it."
In addition to the Quran, the establishment of daily prayers known as Salah, is another fundamental practice of Islam.
Prayer in Islam
Hassan said Muslims pray at specific times during the day, three to five times a day depending on which sect they belong to. They pray on a special rug or a clean area if they are not able to go to a Mosque to pray.
Hassan is a Shiite Imami Ismaili Muslim. "We say our prayers, chant hymns and listen to our Imam's teachings. Our Imam, Aga Khan, is a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. On the other hand, Sunni Muslims recite Quran verses in their Mosque."
Mithani, a Shiite Ismaili Muslim, said, "We pray three times a day - once in the morning before sunrise and twice at sunset. We repeat the same prayers, which are taken from the Quran."
Mithani added Muslims also have prayer beads, called Tasbih. They have either 11 or 33 beads on them, which are used to repeat the three prayers "Ya Ali, Ya Muhammad and Ya Allah" 99 times.
"Shiite Ismaili Muslms attend Jamat Khanne, which is similar to Mosque," Mithani said. "The difference is that anyone can enter a mosque, where as one has to be Muslim to enter the prayer hall of Jamat Khanne. The prayer hall opens at 4 a.m., and people come in and take their shoes off to pray and meditate."
Abbasi, a Sunni Muslim, said she prays by lying prostrate facing northeast toward Mecca.
The sects of Islam
The two major sects in Islam are Sunni and Shiite. Shiites believe that Muhammad chose his son-in-law Ali as the next leader of Islam, where Sunni believe that the leadership stopped at Muhammad, Hassan said.
Abbasi said there really are not huge differences between the two sects. It only appears that there is animosity between them because of the war in Iraq.
"I have many Shiite friends," Abbasi said. "It's the same as Baptists and Methodists sitting together."
In addition to clarifying this misconception, the students explained many other misunderstandings about Islam.
Myths about Islam
"We don't believe in a different God," Mithani said. "The name Allah is simply 'God' translated into Arabic."
While Arabic is the language of the Quran and Muslim prayers, not all Muslims are Arabs, and all Arabs are not Muslim, Iyoob said.
It was also reiterated multiple times that all Muslims are not terrorists.
"Violence is not an option for us," Hassan said. "Islam is a religion of peace."
Mithani agreed.
"We have a holy war called Jihad, which is the struggle to do good. It's similar to spiritual warfare in Christianity, but some people misinterpret Jihad to mean real war. I don't consider terrorists true Muslims."
Abbasi said she wished people understood that Islam is not a religion of coercion or force, but that the Quran teaches openness and tolerance of others' beliefs.
Islam and Christianity
Hassan said one of the most basic differences between Islam and Christianity is that Muslims believe in one God without a trinity. This is because Muslims do not attribute human characteristics to God, so he cannot have a son or daughter.
Jesus, called Isa in Islam, is a prophet, but Muslims do not believe he, or any other prophet, was divine.
"The Quran says Jesus was born to the virgin Maryam, and that he was not killed but raised up to heaven alive. Islamic traditions narrate that he will return to Earth near the Day of Judgement to restore justice," Iyoob said.
"I don't believe there is a correct path like Christians do," Mithani said. "We're all submissive to God and seeking heaven. Islam is the right path for me, but everyone has their own path."
If you are Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish and would like your voice to be heard in this series, please contact grimesdn@hbu.edu.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright 2009 The Collegian - Houston Baptist University
http://media.www.hbucollegian.com/media ... 9829.shtml
By: Desiree Grimes
Posted: 2/26/09
This is the second of a four-part series on religious diversity on campus.
When she walked onto campus, she fell in love with the atmosphere, realizing that when people are close to God they reflect his kindness. This is why senior Madiha Abbasi chose to pursue a degree that will forever testify that she attended Houston Baptist University.
Muslims at a Christian university
"To me, there is little difference between Islam and Christianity, and I would rather be in a Christian environment where people are kind than a non-Christian environment. I was shy at first, but a lot of very devout Christians became my best friends. I never thought that could happen," Abbasi said.
Other Muslim students report similar positive experiences.
Freshman Nida Hassan said she found people on campus to be open and inquisitive out of a desire to learn about her religion. She also thinks it is important for Muslims to learn about the Christian faith.
"If I'm at a Christian university, I might as well grasp as much knowledge as possible. The Community Life and Worship options provide good experiences for Muslim students to see how Christians pray and come together."
Junior Saba Iyoob agreed.
"In the past three years, I have learned so much about everything."
Abbasi said she hopes the University will see that if it allowed religiously and culturally diverse organizations it would help define the University as Christian and take the teachings of Jesus to a higher level.
Muslim students interviewed for this story expressed enthusiasm over the possibility of others learning more about Islam to dispel common misconceptions about their religion.
Basic beliefs of Islam
According to the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, Islam, which means "peace" or "surrender and submission to God's will," was formed in Arabia in the year A.D. 611 when, according to Muslim tradition, Muhammad of Mecca received a revelation from God. The angel Gabriel, who told Muhammad he had been chosen as the new messenger of God, delivered the revelation. Revelations came to Muhammad over the next 23 years, and these were compiled into the Quran.
"Truly submitting to God is one of the most fundamental things about Islam," senior Farah Mithani said.
To become Muslim, one must profess that there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. Muslims must also believe in six truths, which are God, angels, revealed books, divine messengers, afterlife and divine plans, according to the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion.
Iyoob said the five major pillars of Islam are Shadah, which is faith in the oneness of God and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad; Salah, which is the establishment of daily prayers; Zakat, which is concern for and almsgiving to the needy; Sawm, which is self-purification through fasting; and Hajj, which is the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.
Muslims believe in five prophets from God: Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.
The Quran
Hassan said the Quran, which is the foundation of Islam, was revealed to the prophet Muhammad, who then revealed it to the world.
"The Quran is the book of guidance," Iyoob said. "It places emphasis on the moral significance of a historical event. Muslims believe the Quran itself is a miracle of Muhammad and the proof of his prophet-hood."
Mithani said that the major difference between the Quran and the Bible is the New Testament. The Quran contains stories that are also in the Old Testament as well as stories of Muhammad and his teachings.
Muslims have a special holding place for the Quran, Hassan said. It is called a kursi, which is Arabic for throne.
"You can carry the Quran around with you, but I wouldn't throw it around like a text book," Mithani said. "It's holy, so you have to respect it."
In addition to the Quran, the establishment of daily prayers known as Salah, is another fundamental practice of Islam.
Prayer in Islam
Hassan said Muslims pray at specific times during the day, three to five times a day depending on which sect they belong to. They pray on a special rug or a clean area if they are not able to go to a Mosque to pray.
Hassan is a Shiite Imami Ismaili Muslim. "We say our prayers, chant hymns and listen to our Imam's teachings. Our Imam, Aga Khan, is a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. On the other hand, Sunni Muslims recite Quran verses in their Mosque."
Mithani, a Shiite Ismaili Muslim, said, "We pray three times a day - once in the morning before sunrise and twice at sunset. We repeat the same prayers, which are taken from the Quran."
Mithani added Muslims also have prayer beads, called Tasbih. They have either 11 or 33 beads on them, which are used to repeat the three prayers "Ya Ali, Ya Muhammad and Ya Allah" 99 times.
"Shiite Ismaili Muslms attend Jamat Khanne, which is similar to Mosque," Mithani said. "The difference is that anyone can enter a mosque, where as one has to be Muslim to enter the prayer hall of Jamat Khanne. The prayer hall opens at 4 a.m., and people come in and take their shoes off to pray and meditate."
Abbasi, a Sunni Muslim, said she prays by lying prostrate facing northeast toward Mecca.
The sects of Islam
The two major sects in Islam are Sunni and Shiite. Shiites believe that Muhammad chose his son-in-law Ali as the next leader of Islam, where Sunni believe that the leadership stopped at Muhammad, Hassan said.
Abbasi said there really are not huge differences between the two sects. It only appears that there is animosity between them because of the war in Iraq.
"I have many Shiite friends," Abbasi said. "It's the same as Baptists and Methodists sitting together."
In addition to clarifying this misconception, the students explained many other misunderstandings about Islam.
Myths about Islam
"We don't believe in a different God," Mithani said. "The name Allah is simply 'God' translated into Arabic."
While Arabic is the language of the Quran and Muslim prayers, not all Muslims are Arabs, and all Arabs are not Muslim, Iyoob said.
It was also reiterated multiple times that all Muslims are not terrorists.
"Violence is not an option for us," Hassan said. "Islam is a religion of peace."
Mithani agreed.
"We have a holy war called Jihad, which is the struggle to do good. It's similar to spiritual warfare in Christianity, but some people misinterpret Jihad to mean real war. I don't consider terrorists true Muslims."
Abbasi said she wished people understood that Islam is not a religion of coercion or force, but that the Quran teaches openness and tolerance of others' beliefs.
Islam and Christianity
Hassan said one of the most basic differences between Islam and Christianity is that Muslims believe in one God without a trinity. This is because Muslims do not attribute human characteristics to God, so he cannot have a son or daughter.
Jesus, called Isa in Islam, is a prophet, but Muslims do not believe he, or any other prophet, was divine.
"The Quran says Jesus was born to the virgin Maryam, and that he was not killed but raised up to heaven alive. Islamic traditions narrate that he will return to Earth near the Day of Judgement to restore justice," Iyoob said.
"I don't believe there is a correct path like Christians do," Mithani said. "We're all submissive to God and seeking heaven. Islam is the right path for me, but everyone has their own path."
If you are Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish and would like your voice to be heard in this series, please contact grimesdn@hbu.edu.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright 2009 The Collegian - Houston Baptist University
http://media.www.hbucollegian.com/media ... 9829.shtml
Muslim-Catholic Meeting Statement
"A Culture of Peace Should Permeate All Aspects of Life"
ROME, FEB. 26, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is the final statement from the
Joint Committee for Dialogue of the Pontifical Council for
Interreligious Dialogue and the Cairo-based Permanent Committee of
al-Azhar for Dialogue Among the Monotheistic Religions. The group had
their annual meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The participants listened to the presentation of the theme "The
Promotion of a Pedagogy and Culture of Peace with Particular Reference
to the Role of Religions" from the point of view of Catholics, by Dr.
Bernard Sabella, and from the Islamic point of view by Cheikh Ali
Shahata.
The discussions took place in a spirit of mutual respect, openness, and
friendship. They were inspired by the conviction of the importance of
good relations between Christians and Muslims and of their specific
contribution to peace in the world.
The participants agreed on the following:
1. Peace and security are much needed in our present world marked by
many conflicts and a feeling of insecurity.
2. Both Christians and Muslims consider peace a gift from God and, at
the same time, the fruit of human endeavor. No true and lasting peace
can be achieved without justice and equality among persons and
communities.
3. Religious leaders, especially Muslims and Christians, have the duty
to promote a culture of peace, each within his respective community,
especially through teaching and preaching.
4. A culture of peace should permeate all aspects of life: religious
formation, education, interpersonal relations and the arts in their
diverse forms. To this end, scholastic books should be revised in order
not to contain material which may offend the religious sentiments of
other believers, at times through the erroneous presentation of dogmas,
morals or history of other religions.
5. The media have a major role and responsibility in the promotion of
positive and respectful relations among the faithful of various
religions.
6. Recognizing the strong link between peace and human rights, special
attention was given to the defense of the dignity of the human person
and his/her rights, especially regarding freedom of conscience and of
religion.
7. Youth, the future of all religions and of humanity itself, need
special care in order to be protected from fanaticism and violence, and
to become peace builders for a better world.
8. Mindful of the suffering endured by the peoples of the Middle East
due to non-resolved conflicts, the participants, in respect of the
competence of the political leaders, ask to make use, through dialogue,
of the resources of international law to solve the problems at stake in
truth and justice.
Grateful to Almighty God for the abundant fruits of this meeting, the
participants agreed to have the next meeting of the Committee in Cairo,
from Tuesday, Feb. 23 to Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010.
Cheikh Ali Abd al-Baqi Shahata
Head of al-Azhar Delegation
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran
Head of the Catholic Delegation
"A Culture of Peace Should Permeate All Aspects of Life"
ROME, FEB. 26, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is the final statement from the
Joint Committee for Dialogue of the Pontifical Council for
Interreligious Dialogue and the Cairo-based Permanent Committee of
al-Azhar for Dialogue Among the Monotheistic Religions. The group had
their annual meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The participants listened to the presentation of the theme "The
Promotion of a Pedagogy and Culture of Peace with Particular Reference
to the Role of Religions" from the point of view of Catholics, by Dr.
Bernard Sabella, and from the Islamic point of view by Cheikh Ali
Shahata.
The discussions took place in a spirit of mutual respect, openness, and
friendship. They were inspired by the conviction of the importance of
good relations between Christians and Muslims and of their specific
contribution to peace in the world.
The participants agreed on the following:
1. Peace and security are much needed in our present world marked by
many conflicts and a feeling of insecurity.
2. Both Christians and Muslims consider peace a gift from God and, at
the same time, the fruit of human endeavor. No true and lasting peace
can be achieved without justice and equality among persons and
communities.
3. Religious leaders, especially Muslims and Christians, have the duty
to promote a culture of peace, each within his respective community,
especially through teaching and preaching.
4. A culture of peace should permeate all aspects of life: religious
formation, education, interpersonal relations and the arts in their
diverse forms. To this end, scholastic books should be revised in order
not to contain material which may offend the religious sentiments of
other believers, at times through the erroneous presentation of dogmas,
morals or history of other religions.
5. The media have a major role and responsibility in the promotion of
positive and respectful relations among the faithful of various
religions.
6. Recognizing the strong link between peace and human rights, special
attention was given to the defense of the dignity of the human person
and his/her rights, especially regarding freedom of conscience and of
religion.
7. Youth, the future of all religions and of humanity itself, need
special care in order to be protected from fanaticism and violence, and
to become peace builders for a better world.
8. Mindful of the suffering endured by the peoples of the Middle East
due to non-resolved conflicts, the participants, in respect of the
competence of the political leaders, ask to make use, through dialogue,
of the resources of international law to solve the problems at stake in
truth and justice.
Grateful to Almighty God for the abundant fruits of this meeting, the
participants agreed to have the next meeting of the Committee in Cairo,
from Tuesday, Feb. 23 to Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010.
Cheikh Ali Abd al-Baqi Shahata
Head of al-Azhar Delegation
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran
Head of the Catholic Delegation
Published on National Catholic Reporter (http://ncronline.org)
The connections start here
By Joan Chittister
Created Mar 05, 2009
Swiss flagOne thing is for sure: I never in my life expected to be in an
interfaith meeting like the one that ended in Switzerland Feb. 26. After
all, I grew up in a world in which every religious denomination was
very, very sure of its uniqueness, its absolute monopoly on truth, its
special status, its need to protect itself against heretics and
infidels, against indifferentism and syncretism, against the great and
wild "others." Whoever they might be. And those lines, one did not
cross.
Then World War I and World War II, global business and globalization,
the League of Nations and the United Nations, the G-8, the G-7, the
G-20, and the European Union began to spring up everywhere. Fences came down everywhere. Borders ceased to exist. The world had, indeed, become a village. China was a day trip. Apartheid and genocide and
nuclearization and the loss of the rain forests became local issues.
But not religion. Religion tended to cling to the local turf with all
its claims of total truth and total privilege. There were, after all,
issues yet unresolved. Slavery and the Holocaust, for instance, with all
the theological overtones triggered by each. Or the crusades. Or
colonialism with its inclination to convert Jews, Moslems and Native
Americans at the end of a sword. Divisions along these lines were bitter
and deep, theological and cast in God-talk: a lethal brew.
Nevertheless, the new realities of pluralism were outrunning the
long-time dominance of past religious confines. The religious geography
of the world was seeping across national boundaries just as surely as
had its political and economic counterparts.
Signs of religious bonding began to emerge -- quietly, tentatively --
everywhere. Among others: After a 100 year hiatus, the Parliament of
Religion held its second international gathering, and then its third and
its fourth and now, soon, its fifth. The World Council of Churches
reached out across denominations to organize the Christian world for the
sake of the global community. Vatican II, Roman Catholicism's move into
the 20th century after 400 years of parochial isolation, published a
document on the church's relationship with both Christian and
non-Christian religions that would open dialogue among the faiths for
years to come. And, in 1986, Pope John Paul II's call for a Day of
Prayer in Assisi, Italy, among the leaders of all the great faith
traditions on the planet, gave world religion a human face and its
praying selves a common bond.
All of those, of course, were "official" -- and therefore cautious --
forays into the ecclesiastical world. Fueled by the communication
revolution as surely as the printing press upended religion before it.
However, another impulse was afoot.
Several months ago, TED, a program launched in 1984 for the collection
and pursuit of new ideas in science, business and the arts, gave its
Make A Wish award to Karen Armstrong. (TED stands for Technology,
Entertainment, Design.) Armstrong's wish, after years of religious
scholarship and writing, was that TED would help create a universal
charter for compassion among all the major religions of the world --
Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (See Armstrong's
TED speech [1].)
Then technology -- the value of which we judge as either a new creation
or the end of the world, depending on the day we judge it -- took over.
TED, originally begun to concentrate on new ideas in technology,
education and design, built a Web site that invited people all over the
world, in multiple languages, out of every perspective, to contribute
ideas for the charter and to evaluate these statements for power, impact
and inspirational effect. This may, in fact, be the first example of a
universally created document in the history of the world.
And that's where the meeting in Switzerland came in. Having built a Web
site that gathered the responses of people from all these traditions
from one end of the planet to the other, TED gathered a "Council of
Sages," made up of scholars and religious leaders, to review the ideas
and mold them into their final form.
Never had I seen a mixed council of people like this work on a single
document, together pouring out the ideals dearest to them about the very
foundations of their faiths, in one group. They were Islamic scholars, a
Hindu and a Christian nun, a Christian bishop and an ordained
clergywoman, Jewish rabbis and even a Grand Mufti from Egypt. (See
Council of Sages [2].)
And what happened? At the end of the day, they all discovered that their
separate religions had formed them well. Compassion, they agreed, is the
universal in each of our faiths, the glue meant to hold the world
together.
Compassion, the Council said, is not pity since pity assumes
superiority. Compassion is not an idea, it is an action that lifts the
burden of the other because the other is of us. It is the determination
to end the suffering of the other by spending oneself to do it.
Compassion is fundamental to every faith and more urgently needed now
more than ever. When whole people can be held hostage to robotized
weapons of war and the kinds of "religious commitment" that makes the
slaughter of innocents a holy act, compassion is needed.
But the purpose of the Charter is not to publish one more document. It's
purpose is to create a movement that not only binds humanity together
around the Golden Rule but provides a world-wide antidote to the use of
religion in the justification of violence.
The work is nothing less than the attempt to create a common movement
among Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus to delegitimize
the use of religion as a technique of either state or personal violence.
There will be public launch sites named, plaques raised, posters
printed, the signatures of 1,000 major religious leaders gathered, and
people everywhere engaged to be part of one great cry for Compassion.
As TED puts it on the Charter's website:
The Charter will change the tenor of the conversation around religion.
It will be a clarion call to the world.
The Charter will show that the voice of negativity and violence so often
associated with religion is the minority and that the voice of
compassion is the majority.
From where I stand, it's clear that religious people everywhere are
trying to do what their own official leadership has failed to do in both
church and state because what we've been doing, even as religions, is
not working anymore.
If I were you, I'd follow this movement closely. Get a copy of the
charter; distribute it; mount and display the plaque, spread the Web
site; change the world. The change has to start somewhere, and it's
obviously not going to start at the top. That leaves us.
From Where I Stand
Copyright (c) The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company
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The connections start here
By Joan Chittister
Created Mar 05, 2009
Swiss flagOne thing is for sure: I never in my life expected to be in an
interfaith meeting like the one that ended in Switzerland Feb. 26. After
all, I grew up in a world in which every religious denomination was
very, very sure of its uniqueness, its absolute monopoly on truth, its
special status, its need to protect itself against heretics and
infidels, against indifferentism and syncretism, against the great and
wild "others." Whoever they might be. And those lines, one did not
cross.
Then World War I and World War II, global business and globalization,
the League of Nations and the United Nations, the G-8, the G-7, the
G-20, and the European Union began to spring up everywhere. Fences came down everywhere. Borders ceased to exist. The world had, indeed, become a village. China was a day trip. Apartheid and genocide and
nuclearization and the loss of the rain forests became local issues.
But not religion. Religion tended to cling to the local turf with all
its claims of total truth and total privilege. There were, after all,
issues yet unresolved. Slavery and the Holocaust, for instance, with all
the theological overtones triggered by each. Or the crusades. Or
colonialism with its inclination to convert Jews, Moslems and Native
Americans at the end of a sword. Divisions along these lines were bitter
and deep, theological and cast in God-talk: a lethal brew.
Nevertheless, the new realities of pluralism were outrunning the
long-time dominance of past religious confines. The religious geography
of the world was seeping across national boundaries just as surely as
had its political and economic counterparts.
Signs of religious bonding began to emerge -- quietly, tentatively --
everywhere. Among others: After a 100 year hiatus, the Parliament of
Religion held its second international gathering, and then its third and
its fourth and now, soon, its fifth. The World Council of Churches
reached out across denominations to organize the Christian world for the
sake of the global community. Vatican II, Roman Catholicism's move into
the 20th century after 400 years of parochial isolation, published a
document on the church's relationship with both Christian and
non-Christian religions that would open dialogue among the faiths for
years to come. And, in 1986, Pope John Paul II's call for a Day of
Prayer in Assisi, Italy, among the leaders of all the great faith
traditions on the planet, gave world religion a human face and its
praying selves a common bond.
All of those, of course, were "official" -- and therefore cautious --
forays into the ecclesiastical world. Fueled by the communication
revolution as surely as the printing press upended religion before it.
However, another impulse was afoot.
Several months ago, TED, a program launched in 1984 for the collection
and pursuit of new ideas in science, business and the arts, gave its
Make A Wish award to Karen Armstrong. (TED stands for Technology,
Entertainment, Design.) Armstrong's wish, after years of religious
scholarship and writing, was that TED would help create a universal
charter for compassion among all the major religions of the world --
Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (See Armstrong's
TED speech [1].)
Then technology -- the value of which we judge as either a new creation
or the end of the world, depending on the day we judge it -- took over.
TED, originally begun to concentrate on new ideas in technology,
education and design, built a Web site that invited people all over the
world, in multiple languages, out of every perspective, to contribute
ideas for the charter and to evaluate these statements for power, impact
and inspirational effect. This may, in fact, be the first example of a
universally created document in the history of the world.
And that's where the meeting in Switzerland came in. Having built a Web
site that gathered the responses of people from all these traditions
from one end of the planet to the other, TED gathered a "Council of
Sages," made up of scholars and religious leaders, to review the ideas
and mold them into their final form.
Never had I seen a mixed council of people like this work on a single
document, together pouring out the ideals dearest to them about the very
foundations of their faiths, in one group. They were Islamic scholars, a
Hindu and a Christian nun, a Christian bishop and an ordained
clergywoman, Jewish rabbis and even a Grand Mufti from Egypt. (See
Council of Sages [2].)
And what happened? At the end of the day, they all discovered that their
separate religions had formed them well. Compassion, they agreed, is the
universal in each of our faiths, the glue meant to hold the world
together.
Compassion, the Council said, is not pity since pity assumes
superiority. Compassion is not an idea, it is an action that lifts the
burden of the other because the other is of us. It is the determination
to end the suffering of the other by spending oneself to do it.
Compassion is fundamental to every faith and more urgently needed now
more than ever. When whole people can be held hostage to robotized
weapons of war and the kinds of "religious commitment" that makes the
slaughter of innocents a holy act, compassion is needed.
But the purpose of the Charter is not to publish one more document. It's
purpose is to create a movement that not only binds humanity together
around the Golden Rule but provides a world-wide antidote to the use of
religion in the justification of violence.
The work is nothing less than the attempt to create a common movement
among Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus to delegitimize
the use of religion as a technique of either state or personal violence.
There will be public launch sites named, plaques raised, posters
printed, the signatures of 1,000 major religious leaders gathered, and
people everywhere engaged to be part of one great cry for Compassion.
As TED puts it on the Charter's website:
The Charter will change the tenor of the conversation around religion.
It will be a clarion call to the world.
The Charter will show that the voice of negativity and violence so often
associated with religion is the minority and that the voice of
compassion is the majority.
From where I stand, it's clear that religious people everywhere are
trying to do what their own official leadership has failed to do in both
church and state because what we've been doing, even as religions, is
not working anymore.
If I were you, I'd follow this movement closely. Get a copy of the
charter; distribute it; mount and display the plaque, spread the Web
site; change the world. The change has to start somewhere, and it's
obviously not going to start at the top. That leaves us.
From Where I Stand
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