European Jewish groups vow to fight Dutch ritual slaughter ban
Two leading Jewish organizations in Europe vowed on Wednesday to fight a looming ban on ritual animal slaughter in the Netherlands approved by the lower house of the Dutch parliament in a bid to protect animal rights.
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) announced it was considering taking legal action to block the ban, which it said violated the freedom of religion enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights.
The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) appealed to the Dutch Senate, which must approve the bill before it can become law, to block the ban that the lower house approved on Tuesday.
The bill by the small Animal Rights Party united both Jews and Muslims in protest because it would ban kosher and halal slaughter, which requires animals be conscious when killed.
European Union regulations say animals must be stunned before slaughter to minimize pain, but allow exceptions for the ancient religious traditions behind kosher and halal laws.
Animal Rights Party leader Marianne Thieme said she would also lobby Senate members. “I’m completely confident that I can remove any concerns that still exist,” she told the daily De Telegraaf. “This is absolutely not a religious issue.”
San Francisco may vote on banning male circumcision
A group opposed to male circumcision said they have collected more than enough signatures to qualify a proposal to ban the practice in San Francisco as a ballot measure for November elections.
But legal experts said that even if it were approved by a majority of the city’s voters, such a measure would almost certainly face a legal challenge as an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of religion.
Circumcision is a ritual obligation for infant Jewish boys, and is also a common rite among Muslims, who account for the largest share of circumcised men worldwide.
The leading proponent of a ban, Lloyd Schofield, 59, acknowledged circumcision is widely socially accepted but he said it should still be outlawed.
“It’s excruciatingly painful and permanently damaging surgery that’s forced on men when they’re at their weakest and most vulnerable,” he told Reuters.
Read the full story by Gabrielle Saveri here.
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Religious freedom, um, cuts both ways. The child also has a right to grow up to choose his own religion when he is old enough, and not have one cut into his flesh before he can resist. We already acknowledge this with a complete ban on female cutting, no matter how minor, with no exemption for the parents’ religion or culture. In Malaysia and Indonesia, millions of girls are cut (in a much less gruesome way than in Africa) in the name of Islam.
Only 3% of US circumcision is Jewish, and this ban, based on ethics and human rights, is not aimed at any particular reason for doing it.
France starts ban on full-face veil, factbox on veils in Europe
France’s ban on full face veils, a first in Europe, went into force on Monday, making anyone wearing the Muslim niqab or burqa in public liable to a fine of 150 euros or lessons in French citizenship.
Mainstream Muslim groups, which had a six-month grace period after the law was passed to explain it to their supporters, opted not to protest at its entry into force. “We’ve already had our debate about the law and now our position is clear: we respect French law 100 percent,” said a spokesman for the French Council of the Muslim Faith.
Police said they had detained five people, two men and three women, at the small protest in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. The protestors were held for identity checks because their demonstration had not been authorised, not because they were wearing forbidden clothing, a policeman told Reuters.
“It’s so stupid what they’ve done with this law, because now people will wear the (full-face veil) not out of faith but because they are looking for a confrontation,” said Hager Amer, a 27-year-old Muslim woman.
France’s five-million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe’s largest, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full face veil. Many still oppose the law, however, on the grounds of the precedent it sets.
Read the full story by Nick Vinocur here. An earlier story can be found here: France’s ban on full face veils goes into force .
I feel better about the French law against appearing veiled in public after learning that it applies also to Christian students: They too cannot wear large or conspicuous emblems in national buildings, which in France includes schools. It would have been better, removing the perception of anti-Muslim bias had this too been extended to persons in other public places.
France fought back more than a century ago against the evil tide of religious superstition which has done so much damage to my own USA. Kudos to her in persevering in this effort.
France’s ban on full face veils goes into force
France’s ban on full face veils, a first in Europe, went into force Monday, exposing anyone who wears the Muslim niqab or burqa in public to fines of 150 euros (£131.90). France’s five-million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe’s largest, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full face veil. Many Muslim leaders have said they support neither the veil nor the law banning it.
The timing is sensitive after France’s ruling political party, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP, called a debate on the place of Islam in France, a move that some say risked stigmatising a portion of the population.
Police received a guide last week to help implement the ban. It tells them not to remove veils by force. It also notes that the ban does not apply inside private cars but reminds policemen such cases can be dealt with under road safety rules.
A Muslim property dealer, who is urging women to keep wearing the veil if they want to, has urged supporters to meet outside Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris for a silent prayer during the day. He has also pledged to auction off a house near Paris to raise one million euros for a fund to pay the fees for any woman fined for wearing a full face veil in public.
French police arrested 59 people Saturday who turned up for a banned protest over the veil ban, one of them on arrival in France from Britain, according to a police spokesman. Twenty of those arrested had turned up for the prohibited protest at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris wearing the full veil.
Rachid Nekkaz, the man who called for the Notre Dame prayer, said in a webcast that he was putting a property worth around two million euros up for sale to help fund his campaign. “I am calling on all free women who so wish, to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience,” he said. Here is his statement in French: (Rachid Nekkaz: “Je paierai les amendes… by oumma)
For more on the ban, see the government’s website “The Republic lives with an open face” (La République se vit à visage découvert) in French. It includes an information pamphlet and a copy of the Marianne poster pictured above that is meant to be printed out and distributed locally.
Chinese police break up planned service by evicted Protestant church
Hundreds of Chinese police scrambled to prevent a planned outdoor service by a “homeless” church on Sunday, shoving people into vans and buses in the latest show of the Communist Party’s determination to smother dissent and protests. The Shouwang Church, a Protestant group with about 1,000 members, had urged members to gather for the outdoor service after they said official pressure forced the church out of a place of worship it had been renting.
But hundreds of police officers covered the area in the Zhongguancun commercial district, where the Shouwang Church had planned to worship, deterring any effort by church members and supporters to gather for the morning service.
The government has been alarmed about calls for protests inspired by anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Middle East, and that appears to have prompted Beijing to move against the church. Police cordoned off the broad, elevated walkway where a mobile phone text message said the service would happen.
Police and plain clothes guards took away dozens of people, although it was unclear how many were church members, supporters or bystanders. Police monitoring vans, bristling with antennae and communications dishes, stood nearby.
“I think this reflects the overall panic mood of the government leadership over what’s happening in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Bob Fu of the China Aid Association, a Texas-based group critical of China’s controls on religion, which has monitored the Shouwang Church dispute.
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“Accusing China of human rights abuse is sure to lead to internal riots and result in massive instability”
It’s been 20 years that the US and its western allies launched non-stop attacks on Chinese human rights issues, and during this period, more and more common Chinese appreciate better their government. If I were you, I would ask where the relative truth stands.
French police arrest protesters before burqa ban goes into effect
French police have arrested 59 people who turned up for a banned protest over the banning of the Muslim full face veil, a police spokesman said. The measure goes into force on Monday and prohibits wearing the full veil, the burqa, in all public places, with a 150 euro ($216) fine for offenders.
The spokesman said 20 of those arrested on Saturday had turned up for the prohibited protest at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris wearing the full veil. One person was arrested on arrival in France from Britain and one came from Belgium.
President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ruling conservative party, the UMP, face presidential and parliamentary elections in the second quarter of 2012 and have angered many moderates by calling for a debate on the place of Islam in France.
Most French people are of Roman Catholic background but France is home to around 5 million Muslims.
Five of those arrested have been detained in custody, one on a count of possessing a weapon, the police spokesman said. All were being questioned.
via French police arrest protesters before burqa ban | News by Country | Reuters.
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France to enforce ban on full Muslim face veils from April
France will start enforcing a ban next month on full Islamic face veils, officials said on Thursday, meaning any veiled woman can be summoned to a police station and asked to remove her face-covering or pay a fine. Officials say the law is mainly symbolic and police will not call in every veiled woman they see to avoid stigmatising Muslims.
The ban forbids wearing any garment concealing the face in a public space, namely the street, public transport, shops, schools, courtrooms, hospitals and government buildings. From April 11, police are instructed to summon veil-wearers to a station, where they will be asked to remove the garment for “identification” and leave it off. If the wearer refuses to remove it they will be fined up to 150 euros ($208).
When France passed the ban on full face veils last year, Muslim leaders voiced concern it could lead to veiled women being unfairly treated by police or singled out for harassment. “My gut reaction is to say this is all a bit clumsy,” said Moussa Niambele, the imam of a mosque in the north of Paris. “You are stopped in public by the police and forced to follow them to the station like an undesirable person. This is altogether too much ceremony.”
France’s Muslim community of 5 million is Europe’s largest. Fewer than 3,000 women wear the face veil, the goverment says. As part of its public relations effort, the government plans to roll out a website with the URL “www.visage-decourvert.gouv.fr” (which translates as “uncovered-face.gouv.fr”) and print posters and pamphlets to be passed out in city halls.
Read the full story by Nick Vinocur here. Here is the full text of the decree in French.
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Condoms still banned for birth control: Vatican
Pope Benedict’s acknowledgement that using condoms may be justified to stop the spread of AIDS did not signify a change in the Catholic Church’s ban on their use as contraception, the Vatican said Tuesday.
In a statement, the Vatican’s doctrinal department said there had been “erroneous interpretations” of the pope’s words which had caused confusion concerning the Church’s views on sexual morality. In a book published last month entitled “Light of the World”, the pope used the example of a prostitute to say there were cases where using a condom to avoid transmitting HIV could be justified as a “first step” toward moralization, even though condoms were “not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.”
Liberal Catholics welcomed the comments in the book but the conservative wing of the Church expressed concern and Tuesday’s statement appeared partly aimed at reassuring them.
The two-page statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (click here for full text in six languages) said the pope’s words on condoms had been “repeatedly manipulated for ends and interests which are entirely foreign to the meaning of his words.”
“The idea that anyone could deduce from the words of Benedict XVI that it is somehow legitimate, in certain situations, to use condoms to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is completely arbitrary and is in no way justified either by his words or in his thought.”
Read the full report here. For more on a debate among theologians about Benedict’s comments, see Sandro Magister’s “Sexual Ethics. Six Professors Discuss the Ratzinger Case.”
European far right courts Israel in stepped-up anti-Islam drive
Far-right political parties in Europe are stepping up their anti-Muslim rhetoric and forging ties across borders, even going so far as to visit Israel to hail the Jewish state as a bulwark against militant Islam.
Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front has shocked the French political elite in recent days by comparing Muslims who pray outside crowded mosques — a common sight especially during the holy month of Ramadan — to the World War Two Nazi occupation. Oskar Freysinger, a champion of the Swiss ban on minarets, warned a far-right meeting in Paris on Saturday against “the demographic, sociological and psychological Islamisation of Europe”. German and Belgian activists also addressed the crowd.
Geert Wilders, whose populist far-right party supports the Dutch minority government, told Reuters last week he was organising an “international freedom alliance” to link grass-roots groups active in “the fight against Islam”. Earlier this month, Wilders visited Israel and backed its West Bank settlements, saying Palestinians there should move to Jordan. Like-minded German, Austrian, Belgian, Swedish and other far-rightists were on their own Israel tour at the same time. “Our culture is based on Christianity, Judaism and humanism and (the Israelis) are fighting our fight,” Wilders said. “If Jerusalem falls, Amsterdam and New York will be next.”
Campaigns aimed at Muslims have been gaining ground in Europe, most notably with the Swiss minaret ban last year and France’s law this year against full facial veils in public, which Wilders said the Netherlands should copy next year. Support for these steps has spread beyond anti-immigrant parties and towards the political centre as globalisation and the ageing of Europe’s population fuel voters’ concerns about national sovereignty, according to leading French analyst Dominique Reynié.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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To suggest that repugnant acts are beyond question only because someone invokes the magical word religion is preposterous! Cruel and barbaric behavior should not be allowed to hide behind the shield of religious freedom any longer! And what rational person believes that the blood of sacrificial animals appeases their god???