South African Muslims come to life in “Material” film
A low-budget movie about a young Muslim man’s quest to make it on the Johannesburg comedy circuit is wowing audiences across South Africa, and its powerful portrayal of the clash between youth, tradition and religion may lead to global recognition.
Set in the Muslim Indian enclave of Fordsburg in Africa’s “City of Gold”, “Material” charts the tempestuous relationship between Cassim Kaif, played by local stand-up comedian Riaad Moosa, and his ageing father, Ebrahim, whose one dream is for his son to take over the family’s struggling fabric shop.
Shot on a shoe-string $1 million budget, the movie combines moments of heart-wrenching family and personal drama with hilarious snippets of stand-up comedy and everyday life in one of the continent’s most cosmopolitan cities.
“The film celebrates the goodness of South Africa’s spirit and the legacy of a unique and historical part of this land,” said producer Ronnie Apteker, a successful Internet entrepreneur whose energies are now dedicated to film-making.
“It is not a Bollywood film, but a contemporary Indian story. It is a movie for the whole family, contains no profanity, and should be able to be enjoyed by people of all ages both in South Africa and the rest of the world.”
In the past three weeks, box office takings show it holding its own against major Hollywood releases, and it is generating considerable buzz in local media and among a South African public not renowned for its movie-going.
It is also a rare example of a film that explores the plight of the sizeable Indian community, rather than focus on the more well-known struggle of the black majority against the white-minority rule that ended in 1994.
Building a socially responsible investment portfolio
It’s a different kind of value investing.
A growing number of Americans are deciding to base their investment decisions on principles ranging from their religion to their concerns about the environment. Financial advisers managed nearly $3.1 trillion in assets in 2010 using so-called socially responsible strategies, according to industry group US SIF, up from just $600 billion in 1995.
It’s a long way from the late 1970s, when most social investors were more concerned about what they wouldn’t buy than what they would. Typical taboo lists included companies involved in the production of tobacco, alcohol, weapons or nuclear energy.
Now, however, some socially-minded investors are starting to put as high a value on performance as well. For financial advisers, that means managing a client’s socially screened portfolio can require an additional layer of research to keep pace with or outperform the broader market.
Read the full story by David K. Randall here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
Iraqi Shi’ite militia stone youths to death for Western-style “emo” punk clothes
At least 14 youths have been stoned to death in Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shi’ite militants against youths wearing Western-style “emo” clothes and haircuts, security and hospital sources say.
Militants in Shi’ite neighborhoods where the stonings have taken place circulated lists on Saturday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.
The killings have taken place since Iraq’s interior ministry drew attention to the “emo” subculture last month, labeling it “Satanism” and ordering a community police force to stamp it out.
“Emo” is a form of punk music developed in the United States. Fans are known for their distinctive dress, often including tight jeans, T-shirts with logos and distinctive long or spiky haircuts.
At least 14 bodies of youths have been brought to three hospitals in eastern Baghdad bearing signs of having been beaten to death with rocks or bricks, security and hospital sources told Reuters under condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Nine bodies were brought to hospitals in Sadr City, a vast, poor Shi’ite neighborhood, three were brought to East Baghdad’s main al-Kindi hospital and two were brought to the central morgue, medical sources said.
Six other young people, including two girls, were wounded in beatings intended as warnings, the security sources said.
Pope Benedict and Archbishop Rowan Williams pray together but skirt problems
Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, met and prayed together on Saturday but made only glancing references to the divisions between their Churches.
Archbishop Rowan Williams spoke of the “certain but imperfect” link between the two Christian traditions during his address to the congregation at a joint service at the church of St Gregory the Great near Rome’s Colosseum.
The 84-year-old German pope, who earlier held a private meeting with the archbishop at the Vatican, urged all Christians to “renew their commitment to pray constantly and to work for unity” at the same service.
Past popes and Anglican leaders have been much more outspoken about their differences – over issues ranging from women priests and homosexuality to church doctrine – during their meetings.
The fact that none of them were addressed publicly on Saturday will be seen as a sign by many of just how entrenched those differences have become.
The Anglicans broke away from the Catholic Church when King Henry VIII set himself up at the head of the new Church of England in 1534.
Pope Benedict made one of his church’s boldest appeals to bring disaffected traditionalist Anglicans back into the fold in 2009 when he said he would set up a parallel hierarchy for them and let them keep some of their traditions inside the Catholic Church.
UK churches launch attack on conservative government’s gay-marriage plan
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England will be the latest church leader to try to ambush the prime minister’s attempt to legalise same-sex marriage when he launches his “no” campaign from the pulpit this weekend.
Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols has written a pastoral letter to be read out during Mass in the London diocese’s 214 parishes over the weekend of March 10 -11, warning about the dangers of changing the legal definition of marriage.
Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron is already facing a religious backlash from many in the Anglican mother church, the Church of England, which is sometimes called “the Conservative Party at prayer.” Its head, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has said a new law for gay couples would amount to forcing unwanted change on the rest of the nation.
The argument echoes others elsewhere in Europe and beyond. On Friday, Pope Benedict denounced the “powerful political and cultural currents” seeking to legalise gay marriage in the United States, where Maryland has just become the eighth state to allow it.
The British government is planning this month to launch a formal consultation document on allowing homosexual couples to marry, spearheaded by a minister from the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the government coalition. Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone argues churches do not “own” marriage law.
Read the full story here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
The Guardian had a more coherent report, Reuters likes to skew the news
(quote) “Churches unite against gay marriage”
Senior Anglican and Catholic archbishops warn ministers that they are pushing for an ‘unjustified change’ in the law
Some of the most senior bishops in the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in Britain have united to warn that legalising gay marriage would be a dangerous and unjustified change in the law.
The archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “I happen to believe that to change the law in the end would be forcing an unjustified change.”
John Sentamu said there was a difference between civil partnerships and marriage, which did not mean one was better than another.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/11 /legalising-gay-marriage-unjustified-ar chbishops
from Photographers Blog:
Two worlds of Purim
By Nir Elias
As an Israeli and a resident of “ultra” secular Tel Aviv for most of my adult life, Purim -- the celebration of the Jews' salvation from genocide in ancient Persia, as recounted in the Book of Esther -- has always been a time of partying and dressing up, for me.
Images of Orthodox Jews celebrating Purim were always very familiar. But being present at one of these celebrations was a different experience altogether.
This year I went to photograph the Vizhnitz Hasidic community in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city some 7 km (4 miles) from Tel Aviv. The Vizhnitz community members tend to emphasize the joyous gatherings and celebrations commemorated in the Jewish tradition.
When I arrived at their huge hall, it was mostly empty, but within less than an hour it was packed. The atmosphere was welcoming and warm. Thousands stood on grand-stands surrounding the hall and waited for their Rabbi to arrive. When he entered, there was a burst of singing and clapping and one could clearly feel the excitement. They sang songs praising God and emphasizing the importance of being happy during the festival with enthusiasm even though they had fasted the whole day, as is customary on Purim. They also read in unison from The Book of Esther. The atmosphere was electrifying. Looking around, many of them seemed entranced as they joined in to the loud singing and dancing.
from MediaFile:
A new iPad, the same iEthics
Several days after the launch of the new iPad 3, HD, or whatever it’s called, we all know about it’s blazing 4G capabilities, including its ability to be a hotspot, carrier permitting, of course. We know about its Retina display, which makes the painful, insufferable scourge of image pixelization a thing of the past. We know about Infinity Blade. We know that to pack all this in, Apple’s designers had to let out the new iPad’s aluminum waist to accommodate some unfortunate but really quite microscopic weight gain. We know the iPad’s battery life is still amazing, and its price point is altogether unchanged. We know Apple has adopted a cunning new strategy of putting the previous-generation iPad, as it did with the iPhone 4, on a sort of permanent sale, to scoop up the low end of the high-end market. (We wonder if this was Steve Jobs’s last decree or Tim Cook’s first.) We know a lot about the iPad.
But what we don’t know: How many of Foxconn’s nearly 100,000 employees will harm themselves, intentionally or inadvertently -- or their families or loved ones -- in the manufacture of it? And will the developed world ever acknowledge the dark side of these truly transformative technologies, like the iPad, or will we continue to tell ourselves fables to explain away the havoc our addictions wreak on the developing world? Is a device really magic if to pull a rabbit out of a hat, you have to kill a disappearing dove?
Those of us who have been technology journalists have long been subjected to the cult of Steve Jobs’s Apple, and those of us who are fans of technology are mostly well aware of the stark elegance and extreme usability -- even the words seem inadequate -- that come with using, let alone experiencing, Apple products. But the rumblings about Apple’s manufacturing processes started years ago, and the recent New York Times series on the ignobility of Foxconn as an employer blew a hole in the side of that particular ship of willful ignorance. Few Apple consumers can claim not to understand the human sacrifice behind their glowing screens -- the death, diseases, exhaustion, mental and emotional stress, and superhuman expectations placed upon the workers who bring these magic devices to life. It’s not just in the papers -- Mike Daisey’s This American Life podcast exposé on Foxconn and Apple is a mere click away, and most mainstream media have given at least passing coverage to the working conditions reflected in the Gorilla Glass on our devices.
Update, 3/16/2012: Mike Daisey's account of working conditions at Foxconn for This American Life has been retracted by the radio show. Other reporting linked to here describing similar episodes and working conditions has not been retracted as of this update.
To be sure, Apple isn’t the first company to exploit a developing society’s cheap labor. That’s a tradition that proudly goes back hundreds of years, arguably to the first triangle trades, or perhaps to Roman times. Maybe things have come full circle for China, and this is just another version of Marco Polo and the Silk Road. But there’s something insidious about a near-perfect system where the only factor beyond design is the human one. (Especially when those humans decide to jump off buildings.)
Apple has given more than lip service to the problem, and worker suicides appear to be down. But when will American consumers care how their iPads are built? When will they be told how many human hands had to touch the elegant machine, including the last pair that wiped off all the fingerprints with powerful solvents, and how many yuans were put in those hands at the end of the workweek? With technology taking an ever greater place in our culture and our society, when do we consumers begin to demand ethical technology, the way some of us now demand ethical meat and ethical investing?
The apps that run on these devices -- not just iPhones and iPads, but Kindle Fires and Samsung Galaxy Tabs -- enable social connection and sharing as never before. Communication across time, distance and borders has become free, or just pennies a minute. But few, if any, apps enable any sort of social organizing around things more important than discounted lunches or happy hours. In fact Groupon founder Andrew Mason famously abandoned his social-change startup to focus on the far more popular idea of building a coupon site. We like -- love -- the social tooling our devices allow us, as long as they cater to our essential selfishness as consumers.
As one that has actually lived in the ‘developing world’ and seen first hand the kind of poverty that Americans are utterly unaccustomed to, I find this type of willful blindness to the realities of life in other countries frustrating.
At the surface, the author aligning himself with the plight of the Foxconn workers is admirable and thoroughly do-gooder we should all want to stand up and clap for him. I understand that the conditions that they are subjected to are awful and something we would never allow ourselves or our own children to be placed under. However, and this is where the willful blindness comes in, there is no regard for what kind of life that rest the of the working poor in China (or most other developing countries) lives under. While many the West appease their collective guilt of using their shiny new toys by singling out the company that made them, the reality is that there are thousands (millions?) of people that would see the opportunity to work in such “terrible” conditions as a huge step up from their current situation.
Where is the moral outrage for poverty stricken who live in far worse conditions? The reality is the majority of the wealthy world are simply uninterested in helping. It has been that way for long time and no passing phase of guilt will make material difference for those who could truly use your sympathies.
from The Great Debate:
How to tackle the child marriage crisis
By the end of today another 25,000 young children will have been robbed of their childhoods, cheated of their right to an education, exposed to life-threatening health risks, and set on a path that often leads to a life of servitude and poverty. Their plight is the result of widespread and systematic human rights violations. Yet the source of the injustice they suffer is hidden in the shadows of debates on international development: They are child brides.
Each year, 1.5 million girls -- many just starting their adolescent years -- become child brides. It was shocking for us to discover the sheer scale of the problem and to understand its impact on human rights and the life cycle of opportunities, and most tragically of all, on maternal and infant death rates.
Early marriage is a hidden crisis. Because the victims are overwhelmingly young, poor and female, their voices are seldom heard by governments. Their concerns do not register on the agendas of global summits. But early marriage is destroying human potential and reinforcing gender inequalities on a global scale. It is subjecting young girls to the elevated health risks that come with early pregnancy and childbirth. It is reinforcing the subordination of women. And it is holding back progress toward the United Nation’s 2015 goal of universal primary education. Without educating girls who are not in school today and preventing them from marrying, we cannot ever hope to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
The full extent of child marriage is not widely recognized. A new report just published by my office identified 16 countries in which over half of the young women were married by the age of 18. On a regional basis, West Africa has the highest incidence of child marriage, with Mali, Chad and Niger recording rates in excess of 70 percent. The practice is also widespread across sub-Saharan Africa, and in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, where many children marry at a far younger age than 18.
Yet one of the gravest injustices suffered by child brides is the denial of education. Marriage and premature pregnancies keep millions of girls out of school, imprisoned in a world of diminished opportunity. Once married or pregnant, few child brides make it back into school. For example, our research shows that only 2 percent of married girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in Nigeria attend school, compared with 69 percent of unmarried girls. Denied the chance to realize their potential through education, many of these girls will be condemned to lives blighted by poverty, illiteracy and powerlessness.
A casualty of child marriage, education is also a fundamental solution to the problem. Women who are educated marry later, especially if they reach secondary school. Compared with women who have either no education or just primary schooling, the median age of marriage among girls with a secondary education is more than two years higher in Bangladesh and Nigeria, three years higher in Ethiopia and Mali, and four years higher in Chad.
Keeping girls in school and out of child marriages will also save lives. If, through a combination of education and other policies, half of the world’s teenagers delayed birth until after the age of 20, the associated decline in infant mortality rates would save 166,000 young lives a year -- or over half a million lives in the three and a half years until the 2015 Millennium Development Goal on child mortality. And not only would children's lives be saved, but mothers' as well. Over 70,000 teenage mothers die in pregnancy or childbirth every year, a number that has remained static while it appears that for older women the figures have been coming down.
If Gordon Brown is just finding out that everyone isn’t like his English constituents he should be ashamed. Thet have done perfectly well with their own culture in those countries. Of course, he and his American masters would change the whole world into their corrupted image!
U.S. banks foreclosing on many churches with deadbeat mortgages
Banks are foreclosing on America’s churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data. The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance.
Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.
In 2011, 138 churches were sold by banks, an annual record, with no sign that these religious foreclosures are abating, according to CoStar. That compares to just 24 sales in 2008 and only a handful in the decade before.
The church foreclosures have hit all denominations across America, black and white, but with small to medium size houses of worship the worst. Most of these institutions have ended up being purchased by other churches.
The highest percentage have occurred in some of the states hardest hit by the home foreclosure crisis: California, Georgia, Florida and Michigan.
“Churches are among the final institutions to get foreclosed upon because banks have not wanted to look like they are being heavy handed with the churches,” said Scott Rolfs, managing director of Religious and Education finance at the investment bank Ziegler.
Church defaults differ from residential foreclosures. Most of the loans in question are not 30-year mortgages but rather commercial loans that typically mature after just five years when the full balance becomes due immediately. Its common practice for banks to refinance such loans when they come due. But banks have become increasingly reluctant to do that because of pressure from regulators to clean up their balance sheets, said Rolfs.
from David Rohde:
Inside Islam’s culture war
ISTANBUL – In a state-of-the-art television studio here, the Islamic world's version of America's culture war is playing out in a lavishly re-created 16th century palace.
A dashing Turkish actor plays Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman ruler who conquered vast swaths of the Middle East and Europe, granted basic rights to Christians and Jews, and promoted education, science and art.
To Turkish conservatives, the series maligns a revered ruler known as "the lawgiver" whose military prowess and legal reforms placed the Ottomans at the zenith of their power. Set in the palace harem, early episodes featured a young Suleiman cavorting with scantily clad women and drinking wine. The sex was frequent.
The show's producers point to other themes. The dominant character is a woman, a real-life, Ukrainian slave-turned-concubine who eventually became Suleiman's queen. And in the program, members of different faiths coexist.
"This is the most important thing of the Ottoman Empire, that allowed one family to rule for centuries," Halit Ergenc, the actor who plays Suleiman, told me during a break in filming. "Sharing the same land with different cultures and different religions and respecting their rights."
After its January 2011 debut, critics hurled eggs at billboards advertising the program, protested outside the production company's office and filed more than 70,000 complaints with the Turkish government television agency. The show's producers shortened kissing scenes and toned down certain elements.
Today, Magnificent Century is the most popular program in Turkey and one of the most popular shows in the Middle East. Aired in 45 countries, it is the latest Turkish soap opera to take the region by storm. And according to Turkish academics, the programs are subtly changing cultural norms.
It is now 2012 and the Turks finally discover the cultural value of the Soap Opera. To them it is like watching the TV series Star Trek for the very first time. When real life is so oppressive then a good dose of Soap Opera should sedate the ignorant masses.
A very enlightened society, indeed.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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