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.
Brazil’s Rousseff survives abortion row, looks set to win presidency
Dilma Rousseff, front-runner in Brazil’s presidential race, appears to have successfully shifted the focus of the campaign away from corruption and her controversial views on abortion and back to the shining economic legacy of her popular former boss, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Rousseff, a 62-year-old career civil servant and former leftist militant, fell short of the majority of votes needed to win the election outright in the October 3 first round as last-minute doubts of many evangelical Christian and Catholic voters about her support for abortion rights probably cost the Workers’ Party candidate an outright victory. Opposition challenger Jose Serra then closed her poll lead to as little as four points.
But her shift in focus appears to have re-energized her base in Brazil’s emerging lower-middle class, which has nearly doubled in size under Lula’s mix of market-friendly policies and social welfare programs, and now accounts for about half the population. Rousseff has promised to stick to Lula’s policies.
Rousseff’s support slipped precipitously in the 10 days before the first round but she has taken steps to avoid a similar fate this time. Her written promise not to change Brazil’s abortion laws, which forbid the practice in most cases, appears to have eased concerns among religious voters who abandoned her in the first round but are now coming back, a Datafolha poll showed.
Fears rise over growing anti-Muslim feeling in U.S.
Amid threats of Koran burning and a heated dispute over a planned Muslim cultural center in New York, Muslim leaders and rights activists warn of growing anti-Muslim feeling in America partly provoked for political reasons. “Many people now treat Muslims as ‘the other’ — as something to vilify and to discriminate against,” said Daniel Mach of the American Civil Liberties Union. And, he said, some people have exploited that fear in the media, “for political gain or cheap notoriety.”
The imam leading the project to build the cultural center, including a prayer room, near the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks said there was a rise of what he called “Islamophobia” and the debate had been radicalized by extremists. “The radicals in the United States and the radicals in the Muslim world feed off each other. And to a certain extent, the attention that they’ve been able to get by the media has even aggravated the problem,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in an interview with ABC news aired on Sunday.
Mistrust of Muslims has grown in recent years. A Pew poll released in August found the number of Americans with a favorable view of Islam was 30 percent, down from 41 percent in 2005. American feelings about Islam are partisan — 54 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Islam compared to 27 percent of Democrats. In November 2001 there was not the same partisan divide of opinions on Islam.
Some believe Obama could convert minds were he to mount the type of public relations campaign which saw Bush attend mosques and talk with Muslim leaders back in 2001. Alan Cooperman of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said, “Americans’ opinions of Muslims became more positive after 9/11 than they were before 9/11.”
Pew polls from 2001 found 59 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of Muslim Americans two months after the attacks compared to 45 percent in March of that year, and that the biggest improvement was among conservative Republicans. Cooperman credited the increase to Bush’s outreach to show the Muslim community as a religion of peace.
Read the full story here. Click for a slideshow of photos of the 9/11 commemorations here.
France’s “burqa ban” and the “Sarkozy shuffle” to shape it
Efforts by French politicians to “ban the burqa” hit the wall of constitutional reality today when the Council of State, France’s top administrative court, said there was no legal way Paris could completely outlaw full Islamic veils in public. The issue has been at the centre of complex and sometimes heated debate in France in recent months, but it wasn’t clear until now how far French and European law would allow the state to go. We still don’t know exactly what the law will look like, but the back story to today’s report is a tale in itself.
Sarkozy launched the veil debate last year in a replay of an earlier campaign strategy to capture votes from the anti-foreigner National Front by veering to the right. Regional elections were coming up this March and his right-wing UMP party hoped to win control of more than the 2 regions it governed out of the 22 regions in metropolitan France. In the end, they lost one of them in an embarrassing election wipeout that saw a strong showing for the National Front. So, shortly after that slap in the face, Sarkozy toughened up his stand a bit more. Among the measures he promised was a law banning the full Islamic facial veil.
“The full veil is contrary to the dignity of women,” Sarkozy said. “The response is to ban it. The Government will put forward a draft law prohibiting it.” He gave no details, though, because he was waiting for the Council of State’s opinion. The Council has now warned the government that it cannot take some of the giant steps the politicians want, and spelled out some precisely defined measures that should be constitutional.
There’s an interesting wrinkle in this procedure that could be called the “Sarkozy shuffle”. The Council of State usually rules on the legal conformity of new laws after they have been passed. Asking its advice in advance is an unusual step, which the government took to avoid the embarrassment of passing a stern law amid protests from French Muslims and other groups and then seeing it rejected by the top administrative court. Some politicians have been so vocal in demanding that facial veils be fully outlawed that legislators could well have gone too far in formulating the ban. So Sarkozy and his government promoted a sometimes raucous debate about national identity and banning Islamic veils, while consulting the Council of State in advance to make sure any law was kept within bounds.
The Council of State report (here in French, with a summary in French) makes some interesting points in the introduction to its summary:
– “There appears to the Council of State to be no legally unchallengeable justification for carrying out such a ban.”
– “However, the Council of State believes that public security and the fight against fraud, reinforced by the requirements of some public services, would be likely to justify an obligation to keep one’s face uncovered either in certain places or in performing certain procedures.”
Has anyone ever heard the criticism of ‘liberals’ that they support equal rights for everyone, unless they disagree with them? I am stunned at the anti-democratic nature of these proposals. Their argument that they are ‘liberating’ these women is so incredibly fuzzy – it’s clear the law is meant to score political points, not promote freedom. Where does the slippery slope stop? Lots of women ‘choose’ to wear indecent clothing to get the attention of males – they may be disrespecting themselves, and perhaps they feel they have ‘no other choice’. Could not the same logic be used to outlaw wearing slutty clothes in public to ‘rescue’ these women from ‘oppresion’? The whole thing is crazy. Couldn’t the government then ban any form of clothing/ activity that the government decides is ‘oppressive’ to those involved? The transparent self-righteous justification undercuts the pluralism that is supposed to be the strength of western societies. And it undermines the moral suasion that is one of our best long-term strategies to undermine Islamic fundamentalism. It robs Islamic women of a ‘middle way’ that can help bridge the gap between very different cultures.
from Global News Journal:
Austrian far-right leader isolated over Israel stance
Senior figures from across Austria's political spectrum have condemned the head of the far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, over his party's European election campaign directed against Israel and Turkey.
In an advertisement in the newspaper Kronen Zeitung, Freedom opposes the accession of Turkey and Israel to the European Union. Although Turkey is in EU accession talks, Israel is not.
Heinz-Christian Strache prepares for a TV discussion in Vienna, Sept. 17, 2008. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader (AUSTRIA)
"What is the most distasteful and despicable is the style," says Ernst Strasser, the conservatives' candidate in next month's elections for the European Parliament, referring to Strache's campaign. "This style is abusive. He vilifies other religions and ethnicities."
According to Chancellor Werner Faymann, Strache is "a hate monger, a disgrace".
"It makes absolutely no sense for Israel to be mentioned. Israel is not a candidate for accession. There isn't even an accession process. The only reason to mention Israel is to serve anti-Semitic prejudices. It is disgraceful."
It is a shame for Austria population to have a far right candidate that try to manipulate and not respect the population of Austria as a country, also to use antisemitism and discrimination as a tool to gain popularity.
He is puting down the inner values of Austria’s population, worse and more affected after the WWII role.
More puting a shadow in the EU elctions. With these kind of opportunism the population of the other countries belonging to EU are for sure not trusting the leadership an EU role and less the future election . Must be a clean of the house and policy inside EU and not let use kind of proselitism and not let any candidate the use of the democratic way of opinion like the right to vote as a tool to manipulate and non respect the Austria population in this case and in consequence the rest of European population.
In name of FREEDOM right radicalism in Austria can start dividing and confusing the youth and manipulating old fears still in the air of the past WWII and cold war.
The only good thing of these is that now in the global era this kind of attitudes can be inmediately pointed out and resolved , there is no excuse now , technology and dialogue allows to fix dialogue and eliminate shadows and manipulation….the only condition maybe be to be direct to the point in dialogue.No middle words.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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