Arab Spring Islamist leaders to Davos: invest in us, don’t fear us
Leaders of the Arab Spring sought to assure the world’s elite in Davos that the rise of political Islam is not a threat to democracy, and pleaded for help creating jobs and satisfying the hunger of their people for a better life. Politicians, activists and entrepreneurs from countries that have cast off dictators and held free elections in the last 12 months were prized guests at the World Economic Forum, where they asked for patience, understanding and investment.
The new prime ministers of Tunisia and Morocco, both chosen from Islamic parties, dismissed Western worries about a surge of political Islam across North Africa and sought to dispel the notion that the promise of last year’s protests had faded.
“I do not believe the new regimes should be called political Islamist regimes. We must be careful with our terminology… For the first time in the Arab world, we have free and honest elections that led to democratic regimes,” Tunisian Prime Minister Hammadi Jebali told a Davos panel.
Twelve months ago, stunned Davos delegates watched live television images of crowds surging into Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a political earthquake few had anticipated. Arab officials and civil society activists urged Western executives and commentators not to demonize the Islamic movements that have gone from prison to parliament and the corridors of power in a year of stunning transformation.
“I would like to ask the businessmen in the room. Have you suffered from the victory of the Islamists? You supported the dictatorships in the past,” Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane said.
“Today we can guarantee your interests more than they did in the past.”
Read the full story by Warren Strobel and Paul Taylor here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
Vatican whistle-blower begged to continue his anti-crony crusade, letter shows
A senior Vatican official who was transferred after he exposed a web of corruption begged to be allowed to continue his crusade and denounced a “vulgar and insolent” cleric behind a plot to destroy him, according to a leaked letter on Friday.
The letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who is now the Vatican’s ambassador to Washington, will increase consternation in the Vatican which has been put on the defensive by the growing scandal.
Vigano wrote on May 8, 2011, to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone imploring “your eminence to radically change your opinion of me,” according to the letter published by the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, one of two news organizations which have been leaked the correspondence. He wrote that letter nearly two months after Bertone, the second-most powerful man in the Vatican after the pope, informed him that he was being removed from his position three years before the scheduled end of his tenure.
Letters broadcast on Wednesday by the investigative program “The Untouchables” on the private television La7 showed Vigano was transferred against his will after complaining to Bertone and Pope Benedict about corruption and mismanagement. The Vatican has not contested the authenticity of the letters, which sometimes read like a Renaissance drama of court intrigue, but has criticized the media’s handling of them.
As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state’s gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure. Vigano said in one of the earlier letters that when he took the job he discovered corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices.
In one letter, Vigano writes of a smear campaign against him by other Vatican officials who were upset that he had taken drastic steps to clean up the purchasing procedures. In the May 8, 2011, letter published on Friday Vigano, who has not yet commented on the letters, makes a desperate attempt to keep his job and salvage his reputation.
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British Museum Haj show seeks to explain Islamic ritual to non-Muslims and Muslims
Billed as the first major exhibition devoted to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, “Hajj: journey at the heart of Islam” at the British Museum aims to lift the veil on a ritual that is a mystery to many in the non-Muslim world. Curators also said they hoped the show, which runs from January 26-April 15 at the London venue, would be visited by Muslims as well as non-Muslims who are not allowed to join the haj.
“People who don’t believe in the religion of Islam aren’t allowed (on the haj) and therefore know very little, but you’d be surprised how little Muslims know about the history of the haj also,” said Qaisra Khan, co-curator of the exhibition. “For me personally it’s been a huge learning curve over the past two years,” she told Reuters. “In terms of the mystery surrounding the haj, I think we try and break the back of that in this exhibition so you learn a lot more about something you can’t witness.”
Pakistan-born Khan believed that its message of peace was particularly important because the outside world’s image of the Middle East had been associated in recent years with violence and upheaval. “If you look at the last five years, even if not the last 12 months, there is a lot about Islam and the Middle East in the press and it doesn’t always get good press as we know.
“I think what the exhibition does is to talk about the one facet of Islam we don’t know much about and that it’s very much about peace.”
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U.S. Muslims urge New York police chief to quit over “Third Jihad” video screenings
U.S. Muslim civil rights groups demanded the resignation of New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on Wednesday amid a controversy over the repeated screening of an offensive video. Kelly said he regretted cooperating with the makers of “The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America,” which shows footage of suicide attacks and says “the true agenda of much of Muslim leadership here in America” is to “infiltrate and dominate America.”
Kelly came under fire following reports that the video had been screened many more times than previously acknowledged. When the video first came to light a year ago, police said it had been screened only a few times. In fact, it was shown to more than 1,400 officers over a period of months, the New York Times reported on Tuesday based on documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent Muslim civil liberties organization, said Kelly had disqualified himself to head the country’s largest and most prominent police force. “As leaders of the nation’s largest police department, Commissioner Kelly and Deputy Commissioner (Paul) Browne’s actions set a tone for relations with law enforcement that impact American Muslims nationwide,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “It’s time for change.”
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Nigeria’s President Jonathan tells Boko Haram Islamists to come out and talk
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan challenged the violent Islamist Boko Haram sect on Thursday to identify themselves and state clearly their demands as a basis for talks, while acknowledging that military confrontation alone will not end their insurgency.
In an interview with Reuters at the presidential villa in the capital Abuja, Jonathan said there was no doubt that Boko Haram had links with other jihadist groups outside Nigeria.
The sect killed more than 500 people last year and more than 250 in the first weeks of 2012 in gun and bomb attacks in Africa’s top oil producer, Human Rights Watch said this week.
Coordinated attacks in the northern city of Kano killed 186 people on Friday in its most deadly strike to date, prompting the president to visit surviving victims.
“If they clearly identify themselves now and say this is the reason why we are resisting, this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroy some innocent people and their properties … then there will be a basis for dialogue,” said Jonathan.
“We will dialogue, let us know your problems and we will solve your problem but if they don’t identify themselves, who will you dialogue with?”
Jonathan, who won an election last year that observers said was Nigeria’s cleanest since the end of military rule in 1999, has been criticized for dealing with the insurgency in the north using purely military means.
Corruption scandal shakes Vatican as internal letters on crony contracts leaked
The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.
The show “The Untouchables” on the respected private television network La 7 Wednesday night showed what it said were several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in 2011 about the corruption.
The Vatican issued a statement Thursday criticizing the “methods” used in the journalistic investigation. But it confirmed that the letters were authentic by expressing “sadness over the publication of reserved documents.”
As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state’s gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure.
Vigano, currently the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, said in the letters that when he took the job in 2009 he discovered a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices.
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from The Great Debate:
How religion is infiltrating public schools
On Sept. 1, 2011, the students of New Heights Middle School in Jefferson, South Carolina trooped into the gymnasium to hear the Christian rapper known as “B-SCHOC” tell them that Jesus alone could save them. They cheered as a pastor named Christian Chapman vied to win their souls for Christ. At the end of the show, they were asked to fill in a form indicating whether they had accepted Jesus as their savior. In a video posted on YouTube, B-SHOC exults that “324 kids at this school have made a decision for Jesus Christ.”
Wherever one chooses to draw the line between church and public school, there can’t be much doubt that the B-SHOC assembly at New Heights lay pretty far on the other side. Even the organizers of the assembly knew that. “Your principal went to me today, and I said, ‘How are you getting away with this?’” Pastor Chapman told a group of parents. “And he said, ‘I’m not … I want these kids to know that eternal life is real, and I don’t care what happens to me, they’re going to hear it today.”’
In fact, the school board voted to settle a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in which Jonathan Anderson, a parent whose son was harassed at the school for his non-belief, alleged that religion was all over the New Heights Middle School. School-sponsored prayers routinely opened and closed assemblies and performances. Religious messages made their way into lesson plans, and religious iconography decorated the walls. Students were punished for minor infractions by being told to write out sentences proclaiming their faith in God.
A number of these activities — such as the B-SHOC event — appear to be violations of the clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution intended to maintain separation between church and state. And the school board admits as much in its proposed settlement of the ACLU case. Yet an even greater number of religious activities in public schools have recently become legal as a result of novel interpretations of the Constitution handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Ironically, had the administration of New Heights been a little smarter, it could have achieved its apparent goal of using the school’s position of authority to spread the word of God among its captive students without running the risk of being sued. Thousands of other schools across the country do just that.
Four weeks after the B-SHOC assembly, for example, a large number of New Heights students gathered around the flagpole in front of the school one morning and prayed to Jesus for their classmates and their school. It was the annual “See You at the Pole” prayer event, and it happens at schools nationwide on the same day. On the understanding that the event is student-initiated and student-led, it is deemed to be constitutional. In recent years — at least when it comes to religion — the Supreme Court has made a firm distinction between school-sponsored speech, which is constrained by the Establishment Clause, and student speech, which is protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
Of course, within the appropriate context that a school setting demands, students should always be free to talk about religion at school. Children can and should have the right to pray in school, discuss their faith and even proselytize their classmates. Yet, as in many other schools, the loud calls for “religious liberty” and the “free speech” of students is often just a convoluted way for adults to use the authority of the school to promote their own religious views and practices among students. The prayers at “See You at the Pole” may be student-led, yet the event is organized and promoted on national and local levels by adults. At events I attended, pastors from nearby churches played a central role in urging their kids to participate and supplied them with sophisticated sound systems and other props. At New Heights, Principal Larry Stinson led the prayers around the pole, and he was joined by a number of parents, teachers and other adults.
The idea that “it’s all right as long as the kids do it” is now so pervasive among those who view the public schools as missionary fields that it has a technical name: “peer evangelism.” A leader of the Life Book Movement — a project of The Gideons International, which provides high school students with “teenage” evangelical Christian tracts that they are expected to deliver to other kids in the school — calls it “a God-given loophole.” In the two and a half years since the inception of this peer evangelism initiative, they have distributed nearly 2 million “Life Books.”
This is a really insidious and dangerous thing to allow to go on in our Public Schools. It does not surprise me that Religious Organizations would find such an underhanded way to skulk their way into our children’s lives nor is it surprising that SCOTUS would endorse it. What IS a surprise is that the Enlightened and Educated people in Society would tolerate it without a fight. The U.S. has been so blatant in previous years that they are pushing for a Theocracy here in this country and we are very foolish to act as if they will simply ‘ Stop,and Go Away’ and thus do absolutely nothing to end it while we still have the chance. Do people here in America REALLY want to live in a Theocracy like IRAN? We are not far from living that way now and if we don’t put an end to it while we can we will wake up one day and have to deal with the OFFICIAL RELIGIOUS POLICE to our own peril.
from India Insight:
Indians furious at Jay Leno joke on Sikhism’s holiest shrine
By Ariana Wardak
American host Jay Leno has sparked anger among Sikhs with a joke about their holiest shrine and the Indian government is making its displeasure known.
In his 'Tonight Show' last week, the comedian poked fun at the wealth of U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney, suggesting that Sikhism’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, was his vacation home.
A complaint against Leno will be officially filed by India's ambassador to the United States, Nirupama Rao, after 2,000 people signed an online petition.
"The Right to Speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution excludes defamation and spreading hate, incitement and false advertising," the petition urged.
Leno's Golden Temple jibe comes just as India is juggling with another clash between religious sensitivities and freedom of speech.
On Tuesday, the Jaipur Literature Festival cancelled a video-link speech by author Salman Rushdie just minutes before it was scheduled to begin, after death threats to the organisers and fears of violent riots at the event by Muslim groups. Rushdie, whose 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" is banned in India, last week cancelled plans to travel to Jaipur to address the festival in person after reported assassination threats against him.
Nigerian police find bomb-filled cars in Kano after Boko Haram attacks killed 178
Nigerian police said they found cars and vans filled with explosives in the northern city of Kano on Monday, three days after Islamist sect Boko Haram carried out a deadly attack there. Security in Nigeria’s second largest city has been beefed up since Friday when bomb attacks and fierce gun battles between the sect and police killed at least 178 people.
“The police were on a stop-and-search today and in two of the checkpoints, the Boko Haram members on sighting the checkpoints abandoned their vehicles and ran,” a high-level police officer told Reuters, asking not to be named. “The vehicles were later checked and the cars were loaded with explosives. Two brand new Hilux open pick-up vans were also found packed with explosives in the Bompai area of Kano.”
Boko Haram, a Hausa term meaning “Western education is sinful”, is loosely modelled on Afghanistan’s Taliban. The sect focuses its attacks mostly on the police, military and government, but has attacked Christians more recently. It says it is fighting enemies who have wronged its members through violence, arrests or economic neglect and corruption.
Read the full story by Mike Oboh and Ibrahim Mshelizza here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
Egypt’s Islamist-led parliament meets amid rivalries, God issue at swearing in
Egypt’s first free parliament in six decades got to work on Monday with Islamists holding by far the most seats and opponents comparing their grip on the chamber to that enjoyed by the now defunct party of deposed President Hosni Mubarak. With almost half the seats in the assembly, the Muslim Brotherhood is promising to cooperate with the military generals, who took power last February when Mubarak was overthrown, in their transition to civilian rule.
Thousands of pro-democracy activists who fear a deal between the Islamists and the generals to carve up power cried “down with the military government” behind a police cordon near the parliament building. A credible chamber would help Egypt’s new political class prove it can govern and the Brotherhood has said it wants to be inclusive and ensure all voices in Egypt are heard.
The session began in sombre mood as parliament’s acting speaker, automatically chosen as its oldest member, invited deputies to hold a silent prayer in memory of the hundreds who died in the uprising that ousted Mubarak in February last year. “The blood of the martyrs is what brought this day,” said speaker, Mahmoud al-Saqa, 81. Some deputies wore yellow sashes in protest at the army’s policy to try thousands of civilians in military courts.
The session became more raucous when one Islamist member, Mamdouh Ismail, read the oath that vows allegiance to the nation and its laws but added his own words “so long as it does not oppose God’s law”, prompting the speaker to tell him to repeat it without his addition.
Read the full story by Marwa Awad and Shaimaa Fayed here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
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