Youth volunteers sought for campaign against bigotry
Two U.S. State Department employees — one who speaks out against anti-Semitism, the other against Islamaphobia – have teamed up to promote a global campaign to get young people to combat racial, ethnic and religious bigotry by volunteering their time for people unlike them.
“For instance, a young Jewish person could volunteer five hours at a clinic that services a Muslim community. Or a Muslim could volunteer several hours to read books to a Christian pre-school. The list goes on and on,” said Hanna Rosenthal, the State Department’s special envoy focused on anti-Semitism.
The campaign, “2011 Hours Against Hate,” grew out of Rosenthal’s friendship with Farah Pandith, the State Department’s special representative to Muslim Communities. Attending a conference two years ago in Kazakhstan, the two arranged to swap speeches decrying hatred against Jews and Muslims, catching the the ear of conferees.
They were accompanied by young people from six non-governmental organizations who asked them to promote deeds, not just statements. They said they were inspired by U.S. President Barack Obama’s call for more volunteerism and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s appeals for ”citizen diplomacy.” The concept also paralleled Europe’s declaration of 2011 as the year of volunteerism.
So, on February 17 at another conference in Vienna, the two introduced their idea.
“Over a dozen ambassadors came up to us and said, ‘This is great. We want something for our governments to do to reach out to our younger generation.’ We’re seeing young people embrace this wholeheartedly,” Rosenthal said in a conference call with reporters.
“One can look at this and think this is a gimmick … and it’s not. It’s beyond religion. It’s about gender, it’s about race, it’s about ethnicity,” Pandith said.
Majority of U.S. Catholics back gay rights in survey
In spite of, or perhaps because of, Roman Catholic church teachings condemning homosexuality, many lay Catholics in the United States be more accepting toward same-sex relationships than the general public, a new survey found.
“The big finding here is that American Catholics are at least 5 points more supportive than the general population across a range of gay and lesbian issues,” said Robert Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, which conducted telephone surveys of 3,000 Americans.
The survey’s conclusions go against the popular conception that Roman Catholics – the largest U.S. religious denomination at some one in four Americans – are conservative on social issues, said Stephen Schneck of The Catholic University of America, who was asked to comment on the survey by the researchers.
“Catholics appear to like civil unions as an alternative to same-sex marriage,” Schneck said, suggesting that while Catholics accept the rights of same-sex couples to be together there may be resistance to couples joined in what many see as a sacred rite.
Overall, the survey found 53 percent of Catholics supported the idea of same-sex marriage, while the general public is evenly divided on the issue. Fifty-six percent of Catholics did not believe sexual relations between two adults of the same gender constituted a sin, compared to 46 percent of the general population.
Sixty percent of Catholics favored adoption rights for same-sex couples, 49 percent think gays should be allowed to be ordained as clergy, and 73 percent believe they should have legal protections in the workplace – all higher percentages than found in the general population, PRRI said.
There was a powerful generation gap found in the survey, with Catholics under 35 much more liberal than those 65 and older. The influx of Hispanic Catholics into the U.S. church in recent years did not skew the results, as the young newcomers were divided between liberal and conservative views of homosexuality.
Let’s be clear here. CINOs may back gay rights but practing Catholics do not.
from India Insight:
Headscarf headache to cancel Obama Temple visit
Ask any travel agent, globe-trotter or gap-year student: The Golden Temple in Amritsar, north India, is both a site of pilgrimage for Sikhs and a must-see on any tourists' Indian itinerary.
But India's most famous foreign tourist, U.S. President Barack Obama, who will tour the country next month, may have to forego his visit.
It was supposed to be Obama's only religious appointment on the 4-day trip to India, but a politically-sensitive row over the required headwear for the temple threatens to derail his plans.
According to local media reports, the President's team has balked at the idea of Obama wearing a headscarf or skullcap -- required for any visitor to the holy site -- due to fears it may feed rumours circulating about his alleged Muslim beliefs.
The sight of droves of foreign tourists sporting colourful headscarves, most provided by the Temple, is as much a part of the dazzling experience as the temple itself.
Reportedly, the President's aides proposed a modified version of Obama's now customary baseball cap as a compromise. But sports caps fall foul of Temple regulations, placing him in a delicate position.
The White House is hoping to use the trip to strike firmer bonds with New Delhi, but officials are wary of any negative press back home with the crucial U.S. mid-term elections barely a fortnight away.
I thought Obama was cool. Knowledgeable of other cultures. But, turns out, he’s just another political diva. Sad commentary on the level of political discourse in the U.S, if the people can’t tell the difference between a Sikh temple and a mosque.
“MOOZ-lum” film depicts challenges for black U.S. Muslims
The makers of a new movie about family life for black Muslims in America want to highlight challenges facing followers of Islam, just as Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” revealed the racism and harsh realities facing black youth in Brooklyn two decades ago.
“MOOZ-lum” was filmed in Michigan, which has a large Muslim population, and premiered to packed theaters at the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York last Friday.
“I hope people can walk out of the theater thinking more and trying to understand what we’re facing here,” said director Qasim Basir, adding the movie’s portrayal of discrimination mirrored his own Muslim-American experience. “I’m hoping to give Muslim-Americans a film that reflects them. I want it to be something the audience can look at and say, ‘This represents me,’” he told Reuters in an interview.
The movie, which has yet to find a distributor and so is not in commercial cinematic release, emerges amid a heated dispute over a planned Muslim cultural center in New York. Urbanworld founder Stacy Spikes said the buzz surrounding “MOOZ-lum” had been helped by the debate.
Read the full story here. Below is the official trailer from YouTube andhere’s a link to the film’s Facebook page, which already has over 66,000 fans:
U.S. Jesuits honour ABC Williams with prize named after English martyr
Poor Rowan Williams. Only a few weeks ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion was caught offguard by a Vatican offer of a new Roman home for Anglicans who cannot accept the idea of women bishops. At a joint news conference with London’s Catholic Archbishop Vincent Nichols, he did his ecumenical best to present this as a quite normal gesture among friendly Christian churches and not — as some media presented it — a Roman strategy to poach wandering sheep from the divided Anglican flock. It was proof of his sharp intellect and deep commitment to the ecumenical cause that Williams found a way to finesse this very trying situation.
Now another challenge has come not from across the Tiber, but across the Atlantic. The New York-based Jesuit weekly magazine America has just said it is “ proud to announce that The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is the 2009 recipient of the Campion Award. The award is given on a regular basis to a noted Christian person of letters. It is named after St. Edmund Campion, S.J., who is patron of America’s communications ministry.”
What an award to give to the world’s top Anglican! As the press release explains about the man to whom the prize is dedicated, “a martyr of the English Reformation, Edmund Campion stirred Elizabethan England with his daring missionary efforts and the great power of his pen.” What it politely skates over is the fact that Campion was drawn and quartered for refusing to renounce his Catholic faith (see image below). For more about the Catholic view of Campion’s life, just click over to the Catholic Encyclopedia. The quick takeaway from all this is that the archbishop of the Church of England will be honoured with an award named after an English Jesuit martyred for his heroic struggle against — the Church of England!
Anyone who knows the magazine America and the American Jesuits who produce it know they mean this as a sincere appreciation of the archbishop and his tireless work for ecumenical and interfaith understanding. Williams will surely accept it with grace and wit, in the spirit in which it was offered. But while times have changed and relations between Catholics and Anglicans are vastly improved, it still seems a bit strange to present an Archbishop of Canterbury with an award named after Edmund Campion. But that’s the name of America magazine’s highest award, and we have to assume its award is sincerely meant. Maybe the ability to look beyond these limitations is at the heart of ecumenical understanding.
The America announcement notes helpfully that “the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England remember Campion in their calendars of saints.” All the better. Still, this will require quite some finessing. It will be interesting to see how Williams handles this in his acceptance speech. The award will be presented in New York on January 25, at the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
Most U.S. Protestant pastors see Islam as dangerous – survey
Here’s an interesting survey that was released on Monday by LifeWay Research, which is the number crunching arm of the South Baptist Convention, America’s largest evangelical group.
It says that two-thirds of Protestant pastors in America regard Islam as a dangerous religion. You can see their press release here. The full survey has not been posted on their site.
But in a nut shell, the survey of over 1,000 pastors of different Protestant denominations found that 45 percent strongly agreed with the statement “I believe Islam is a dangerous religion,” while 21 percent agreed to it “somewhat.”
The survey was conducted in October, before the massacre at the Fort Hood army base in Texas allegedly by a Muslim soldier.
Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, said: “… our survey asked whether pastors viewed Islam as ‘dangerous,’ but that does not necessarily mean ‘violent.’ ‘Dangerous’ can be defined in a variety of ways, including from the perspective of spiritual influence. Regardless of the definition, the numbers tell us that Protestant pastors are concerned.”
Given the very conservative cast of the SBC and strong evangelical Protestant support over the years for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some people will automatically take the survey with a grain of salt. But the survey did include clergy from mainline Protestant denominations as well as evangelicals.
Not surprisingly, it found that: “Mainline denomination pastors are less likely than evangelicals to say Islam is “a dangerous religion.” While 77 percent of evangelical pastors either somewhat or strongly agree Islam is dangerous, only 44 percent of mainline pastors feel the same way, and 38 percent strongly disagree.”
I dont know what topic is discussing here. i am a Muslim by birth. i m 31 years of age . worked in very famous banks in Pakistan as wel as dubai. i want to convert as Christan, if i announced here in Pakistan or UAE every one would feel honor to kill me. can any one guide me how i can get the amnesty and conversion
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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