Russian Orthodox Church takes a divisive political gamble on Vladimir Putin
At the peak of street protests against Vladimir Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church pitched itself as a potential moderator. Three months later, its shift towards the president-elect has become so clear – and so divisive – that it has issued an unusually tough statement saying it is under threat from anti-Russian forces for backing him.
Its decision to stand firmly behind Putin before he starts a six-year presidential term is a gamble which some experts say could yet backfire and undermine its authority in a society that has been polarised by the protests which began over alleged fraud in a December parliamentary election.
Criticism that Russia’s longest-surviving institution is working hand-in-hand with the Kremlin to suppress dissent and lend legitimacy to Putin’s dominance has been further fuelled by Church hardliners’ uncompromising stance.
“When the Church stands on the side of one political force against another political force without the universal support of society, this is a reason for serious censure,” Andrei Zubov, a historian who has studied Russian church-state relations, said.
“I have heard a lot of unhappiness from the clergy over this recently.”
Led since 2009 by Patriarch Kirill, who has widely been seen as a modernising influence, the Church has taken a more active role in politics, using its privileged status as Russia’s dominant faith to lobby for more power with the state.
Although it had long been close to the authorities, its behaviour has upset liberal groups, including some in the clergy, who see it as a violation of Russia’s secular laws and a sign that the Church’s hierarchy is out of touch with society.
Tunis reopens ancient Muslim college to counter new radical Islamists
Watched by residents of the old quarter of Tunis, a court official stepped forward and unlocked the huge wooden doors. From the gloom within, volunteers began to bring out stools and chairs that had gathered dust and cobwebs for half a century.
The school at Tunisia’s 8th-century Zaitouna Mosque, one of the world’s leading centers of Islamic learning, was closed by independence leader and secularist strongman Habib Bourguiba in 1964 as part of an effort to curb the influence of religion. Its ancient university was merged with the state’s Tunis University.
The college reopened its ancient doors to students on Monday, part of a drive by religious scholars and activists to revive Zaitouna’s moderate brand of Islam, which once dominated North Africa, and counter the spread of more radical views.
“The return of this religious educational beacon is very important in light of the increased religious extremism that we are living with,” said Fathi al-Khamiri, who heads a pressure group that obtained a court order allowing the school to reopen.
“The aim is to restore Zaitouna’s educational and religious role in Tunisia and North Africa in order to spread the principles of moderate religion.”
Zaitouna once rivaled Egypt’s Al Azhar as a centre of Islamic learning, and during the golden age of Islam generations of leading Islamic thinkers studied logic, philosophy, medicine and grammar as well as theology within its walls.
Read the full story by Tarek Amara here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
from Photographers Blog:
An egg by any other name
By Lisi Niesner
Egg. Or as it's known in other languages: Ei, яйцо, jajiko, muna, uovo, ägg, yumurta, oeuf, αβγό, tojás, vajce, بيضة, aeg, jaje, ovo, yai, 雞蛋, telur, huevo
It's the hard-shelled reproductive body produced by a bird and especially by the common domestic chicken, which is the definition that first comes to our sense. Obviously an egg is much more than the daily of decision how we like to have our breakfast: scrambled, fried or poached. Tea enthusiasts use a tea egg and we call someone naughty a bad egg. We walk on egg shells when we act cautiously as well as using eggs for certain sayings: no two eggs are exactly alike, for example.
Even scientists, theologians and philosophers have spent quite a lot of time thinking, discussing and literally quarreling about the egg. The question of how life began has always bothered mankind; we come up with approaches and theories to answer one question in particular: which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The egg plays a special role in every culture around the globe. It is the beginning and the end, life and death, birth and mortality. In many cultures, eggs were and still are symbols of cure, fertility, hope and sacrifice. They are also given on the way to the afterlife in some faiths.
Russian Orthodox Church says it’s under attack after backing Putin
Russia’s Orthodox Church said on Tuesday it was under attack from unspecified “anti-Russian forces” seeking to erode its authority after it threw its weight behind Vladimir Putin before last month’s presidential election.
The unusually strongly-worded statement listed a recent performance by an all-girl punk band in the main Moscow cathedral as well as media allegations against Patriarch Kirill as examples of such attacks.
“The attacks have become more prominent during the pre-election and post-election period, which shows their political and also anti-Russian motives,” the Supreme Church Council said in a statement posted on its website.
Patriarch Kirill, seen as a modernising figure in the Russian church, the largest in Orthodox Christianity, called the 12 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule a “miracle of God” ahead of the March 4 election, which Putin won convincingly.
The Church’s unequivocal support for the ex-KGB spy has angered many members of the anti-Kremlin protest movement in Moscow and other large cities, who saw it as political meddling that was an abuse of the church’s position in society.
Read the full story here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
France’s halal market prospers despite political polemics
Some French politicians have seized on the spread of halal food to win votes. Producers selling their wares at Paris’s annual Muslim food fair are much more sure it will bring something else: profit.
France’s halal market, now estimated at 5.5 billion euros with about 10 percent annual growth, became a political issue in recent weeks as President Nicolas Sarkozy used it in an unabashed pitch for votes from the anti-immigrant far-right.
The raw facts about halal butchering became a top issue on the election campaign trail, to the point that Sarkozy’s prime minister, Francois Fillon, said halal and kosher slaughter were outdated “ancestral traditions” that should be scrapped.
That hit a raw nerve in France’s Muslim and Jewish communities – both the largest of their kind in Europe – whose leaders complained openly. The issue has since mostly faded from the campaign for the two-round presidential election, which ends on May 6.
“It was a lot of noise for nothing,” said Aissa Osmane, who sells sharia-compliant spaghetti sauces with halal beef in the bolognese and smoked poultry cubes for bacon in the carbonara.
The halal market can only grow as the 5-million strong Muslim community further integrates into French life, said the businessman from the Paris suburb of Villetaneuse.
“Muslims live in today’s world like everybody else, they’re busy and want ready-made foods,” he said at the Paris Halal Expo fair, open on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
European far-right groups seek to build anti-Islamic network, meet protests
Far-right anti-Islam activists struggling to throw off the shadow of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik gathered in Denmark on Saturday, but met a protest many times bigger.
The rally was attended by a few hundred far-right activists from Nordic countries, Britain, France, Germany, Poland and elsewhere to try to form a European-wide anti-Islamic movement.
Breivik, who killed 77 people in a massacre in July, said in a manifesto he posted online that he had had contact with the English Defence League (EDL), the driving force behind the meeting in a park in Denmark’s second-biggest city, Aarhus.
“This is the real birthday (of a movement), this is where it starts,” Stephen Lennon, a founder of the EDL, told reporters at the gathering. “We’ll be separate organisations under one umbrella.”
The EDL has denied links to anti-Islam gunman Breivik and rejects extremist labels.
Their detractors say the groups are racists seeking to exploit tensions over immigration in Europe.
In Sinai, militant Islam flourishes – quietly
The group of 50 young men who had blocked off access to a small international military base in the Sinai desert would say nothing of who they were but their appearance held a few clues. Dressed in army fatigues and armed with AK-47s, they wore the long beards of the hardline Islamists who are increasingly a law unto themselves in this part of Egypt.
Quietly, barely noticed by outsiders fascinated by upheavals in Cairo and other Arab capitals, they are building a presence in Sinai that might offer a new haven for anti-Western militancy at the strategic junction of the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia.
When finally one of the men broke a silence that hung heavy on the barren plain, it was to explain to a reporter their demands: for the government to release five comrades jailed for bombings of tourist resorts in Sinai more than six years ago.
“We are ready to die under tanks for this,” he said, refusing to give his name and saying little else beyond muttering Islamic mottos as he toured the positions the militants had established to surround the base, inconveniencing dozens of troops from the Multinational Observer Force, a unit set up in 1979 to monitor Egypt’s U.S.-brokered peace treaty with Israel.
Under a rare rainy sky on a Thursday night in March, the men would only speak with the permission of a man they simply referred to as “sheikh”. A wolf’s cry pierced the otherwise tranquil scene outside the remote base that is home to foreign peace observers including Fijians, Americans and Spaniards.
Not a shot was fired in anger, however, and the next day, the group lifted their eight-day siege. It was not because they feared arrest or attack by the authorities. But instead they had secured their demands. The government agreed to free the men accused of being part of a group which carried out the 2004 and 2005 attacks that killed some 125 people at the Red Sea beach resorts of Sharm el-Sheikh, Dahab and Taba.
It was a scenario unthinkable a year or so ago. But with Hosni Mubarak’s removal from power after three decades, government authority has collapsed in much of Sinai, leaving a vacuum where Islamist militant groups are flourishing, posing a security risk to Egypt, neighbors including Israel, and the Suez Canal, the busy waterway linking Asia and Europe.
Egypt’s Coptic Christians quit constitution talks over Islamist domination
Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church has announced it is withdrawing from talks on a new constitution, saying Islamist domination of the drafting body made its participation “pointless”, Egypt’s state news agency said.
The decision late on Sunday followed calls by Egyptian liberals to boycott the constitution drafting committee, which is seen as failing to adequately represent the nation’s diversity.
The current constitution was suspended by the country’s army rulers in February of last year shortly after they took power from Egypt’s long-serving autocratic president, Hosni Mubarak.
The 100-member constitutional assembly selected by the parliament is dominated by Islamists, reflecting their resounding victory in parliamentary elections.
“The Coptic Orthodox Church General Council agreed with the approval of all of the council’s 20 members to withdraw from the constitutional assembly… as it found it was pointless for the church to be represented following the comments made by the national forces about the way the assembly was formed,” the state news agency said, quoting a church statement.
Coptic Christians, who form Egypt’s biggest minority group and constitute most of Egypt’s 10 percent Christian population, have long had a difficult relationship with the country’s overwhelmingly Muslim majority.
Since Mubarak’s ouster, Christians have become increasingly worried after an upsurge in attacks on churches, which they blame on hardline Islamists, although experts say local disputes are often also behind them.
Turkey passes a school reform law that secular critics view as Islamist
Turkey’s ruling party pushed through a school reform act on Friday that provoked brawls among parliamentarians and mass protests by secular Turks and teachers, who said the law was pushing an Islamic agenda and would lower education standards. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan sent shudders through the secular opposition earlier this year when he said his goal was to raise a “religious youth.” Earlier this month, his AK Party sprang the surprise proposal to overhaul the education system.
Education has been one of the main battlegrounds between religious conservatives – who form the bedrock of AKP support – and secularists since soldier statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Turkish republic in 1923. Believing that religion was holding back Turkey, one of Ataturk’s first acts was to close madrasas, religious schools. Admirers of Ataturk say the AK Party is rolling back policies hurtful to pious Muslims.
The changes approved on Friday included measures that will allow schools specialising in religious education combined with a modern curriculum, known as imam hatip schools, to take boys and girls from the age of 11 instead of 15, and to provide optional classes in Koranic studies and the life of the Prophet Mohammad in other schools.
The law stipulates that children should complete 12 years schooling, though critics say the overall quality of education will suffer as parents have the option of putting their children into technical colleges grooming them for low-paid blue-collar and service industry jobs, like hairdressing for girls, from an early age.
Opposition anger over the bill boiled over when the AK Party steamrollered it through the committee stage, provoking brawls in parliament earlier this month.
Read the full story here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
Hardline Sunnis find foothold to push Syria’s revolt toward militant Islamism
Sheikh Abu Abdullah Zahed, a Lebanese Muslim cleric with influence amongst radical youth, is part of a growing effort to push the uprising in Syria towards militant Islam.
Hardline Sunni Muslims in Lebanon are maneuvering for influence over Syrians across the border who have spent the last year fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
“At first Syrians called on the West and NATO. Now they are calling on God,” said Zahed, sitting in his library, where black Islamic flags hang on the walls.
As opposition groups abroad squabble over politics and Assad’s army pounds rebellious cities, Muslim hardliners want to make religion the unifying basis of the revolt.
Radical Islamist elements are still on the fringe, but that’s enough to make a headache for opposition activists who are struggling to convince Syrian minorities to support a revolt led mostly by the country’s Sunni majority.
Foreign powers joining exile opposition leaders at a “Friends of Syria” meeting in Istanbul this week will also want proof of whom exactly they are making friends with, if they are ever to consider arming rebel forces.
“We don’t want to accidentally wind up supporting extremist groups,” said Joseph Holliday, of the Institute for the Study of War, in Washington. “The fundamental question is: What happens in the future? And does our involvement make this turn better or worse?”
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