EU assures religious leaders it backs freedom of belief in Middle East
European Union leaders assured senior religious figures on Monday they would defend the freedom of belief in the Middle East as part of their support for the spread of democracy in the Arab world. European Commission President Jose Barroso told about 20 Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist leaders at an annual consultation in Brussels that the EU aimed to promote democracy and human rights both in Europe and in its neighbouring countries.
Several of the Christian representatives present expressed concern about religious freedom in the mostly Muslim Arab world, which has seen more freedom of speech in recent months but also more violent attacks on Christian minorities in some countries.
Barroso said the changes in the Arab world were “of historic proportions” and compared the challenge of anchoring democracy there to the task the EU found in post-communist Europe. “I strongly believe these challenges cannot be met without the active contribution of the religious communities,” Barroso told the meeting. Democratic rights included freedom of religion and belief, he stressed.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said “there is no contradiction between Islam and democracy. This period of openness must be maintained after the revolutions and religious and other minorities must be respected.”
Rotterdam Bishop Adrianus van Luyn, head of the COMECE commission of Roman Catholic bishops conferences in the EU, said the progress and stability the EU sought in the Arab world would depend on an improved relationship between religions there. “This requires freedom for all faiths, an end to the discrimination of smaller religious communities and the participation of moderate forces in the construction of society,” he said.
In recent months, Arab Christians and Muslims have both prayed together and clashed, he said. “Religious differences have often been manipulated or even whipped up on purpose,” he said. “The role of the different regimes in this is unclear.”
Warsaw Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz said Christians in Europe were watching events in the Arab world “with hope, but also with fear for the future of those societies.” “Repeated attacks on Christian communities are additional reasons for concern,” he said. “If one day the Christian communities in the Middle East disappeared … moderate Muslims would lose their natural partners.”
Dead Sea scrolls going digital on Internet
Scholars and anyone with an Internet connection will be able to take a new look into the Biblical past through an online archive of high-resolution images of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls.
Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the custodian of the scrolls that shed light on the life of Jews and early Christians at the time of Jesus, said on Tuesday it was collaborating with Google’s research and development center in Israel to upload digitized images of the entire collection.
Advanced imaging technology will be installed in the IAA’s laboratories early next year and high-resolution images of each of the scrolls’ 30,000 fragments will be freely accessible on the Internet. The IAA conducted a pilot imaging project in 2008.
“The images will be equal in quality to the actual physical viewing of the scrolls, thus eliminating the need for re-exposure of the Scrolls and allowing their preservation for future generations,” the Authority said in a statement.
It said that the new technology would help to expose writing that has faded over the centuries and promote further research into one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century.
The scrolls, most of them on parchment, are the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible and include secular text dating from the third century BC to the first century AD. For many years after Bedouin shepherds first came upon the scrolls in caves near the Dead Sea in 1947, only a small number of scholars were allowed to view the fragments. But access has since been widened and they were published in their entirety nine years ago. A few large pieces of scroll are on permanent display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Egypt Christians say intolerance grows, close ranks
Minarets and church towers mingle on Cairo’s skyline, but tensions mar Egypt’s record of religious coexistence and a perception of growing intolerance is leading some Christians to shun their Muslim compatriots.
Amira Helmy, from a middle-class area of the capital, was brought up by a Muslim neighbour after her mother died and attended a state school alongside Muslim children. “Most of my friends were Muslims. We used to go on outings together and some would call to me from below my house so we could walk to school,” recalls Helmy with a smile.
Now a housewife in her 40s, she sends her daughter Christine and son Kirollos to a private Christian school and forbids them from mingling with Muslim children to protect them from insults. Around a tenth of Egypt’s 78 million people are Christians, mostly Orthodox Copts — descendents of Christian communities that founded monasticism in the early centuries after Jesus.
Christian and Muslim clerics stress sectarian harmony, but communal tensions can erupt into criminality and violence, usually sparked by land disputes or cross-faith relationships. Such spats could multiply if the state ignores Christian grievances on issues such as an Islam-focused school curriculum and laws making it easier to build mosques than churches.
Read the full story by Sarah Mikhail here. See also our factbox on Christians in the Middle East and analysis Vatican synod to mull Middle East Christian exodus.
from AxisMundi Jerusalem:
Jerusalem Power
To spend the past few days in the crowded, narrow streets of Jerusalem's Old City, among the multilingual throngs marking Passover or Easter, was to get an unforgettable sense of the power this place has over the minds of millions. It also gives an insight into some of the ways Jerusalem, and control of access to its holy sites, plays into global power politics.
For the majority of Palestinians who are Muslim, as well as for the Islamic world beyond, the Jewish state of Israel's hold on the city since its capture from Jordan in the 1967 war is a deep grievance. Sporadic violence around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque has flared again this year.
But with the confluence this year of the Easter calendars of both Western and Eastern churches, as well as the Jewish Passover celebrations, it was the issue of Christian access and the competing claims of different Christian denominations to the holy sites of Jerusalem, that was particularly in focus this past week. And if it was American-accented English that dominated among the visiting Jewish families crowding towards prayers at the Western Wall and which served as a reminder of the powerful alliance Israel enjoys, despite current turbulence, with the United States, it was the Russian spoken by many of the Christian pilgrims which indicated one of the main trends changing the balance of power within that fractured religious community.
The Israeli state insists on its commitment to free access to the Old City for all religion. Complaints over Easter from the Palestinian Christian minority have been met by Israeli assurances that permission to enter Jerusalem is granted where possible and by pleas for understanding of security concerns in a city blighted by violence. There are also concerns about crowd control. Some Israelis also point out that, under Jordanian control from 1948 to 1967, Jews had virtually no access. Local Christians in the, predominantly Greek Orthodox, Christian Quarter and in the Armenian Quarter now complain however, like their neighbours in the Old City's Muslim Quarter, of encroachment on territory by Jewish groups seeking property. Israel says its laws are fair to all. Some among the Old City's Christian minority, notably clergy, complain of intimidation by Jewish radicals, including spitting on them in the street.
The treatment of minority Christians by Jerusalem's rulers has long been an issue in diplomacy. In the 19th century, it was the Muslim Turks who found themselves on the receiving end of pressure from the Christian powers of Europe. Even today, codes regulating relations among the Christian denominations are the product of Ottoman attempts to appease international pressure or to keep the peace among the different churches competing for a slice of hallowed ground around the traditional tomb of Jesus.
Standing amid the rumbustious and noisy sectarian jostling at the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Saturday, as the Eastern churches took part in the millennium-old ritual of the Holy Fire, it was this competition among the Christians that was most visible, and also the subject of plenty of conversation in the hours of waiting before the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, followed by a senior Armenian cleric, emerged from the tomb at the heart of the church bearing flaming torches symbolic of the resurrection. Essentially, local Armenians and Greek Orthodox worshipers were asking "Will the Russians take over?"
During the centuries of Ottoman control, as subjects of the sultan, the Greeks had favoured access to Jerusalem while Western churches were left out in the cold. Armenians, too, had insiders' rights within the Ottoman empire. But as the sultans' grip weakened, Roman Catholics and Protestants, backed by the rising European imperial powers, staked their claims in the city in the second half of the 19th century. Russia, repeatedly at war with the Turks during that time, was a relative latecomer, however.
Fewer Americans see Islam as violent-Pew poll
The percentage of Americans who believe Islam encourages violence has declined and very basic knowledge about the faith has shown modest increases, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Thirty-eight percent of those polled believed Islam was more likely than other faiths to encourage violence, down from the 45 percent who held this view two years earlier.
Most Americans — 58 percent – also believe Muslims are discriminated against. In fact, they see them as a group second only to gays and lesbians in terms of the discrimination they face. These findings suggest unexpected empathy for a community whose leaders often claim they are regarded with suspicion and hostility.
The survey also reports that Americans are generally learning more about Islam and that increasing familiarity with the religion correlates with a decline in belief that Islam promotes violence.
The poll’s findings, released ahead of the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, come against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s attempts to reach out to the Islamic world and eroding public support for the war in Muslim Afghanistan as U.S. combat deaths there rise to record levels.
You can see a link to the survey here and you can see our report here.
Islam means the submission to allah. Islam can also mean that the power structure of islamic countries uses their merged state-mosque structure to manipulate the lower class muslims and use them essentially as cannon fodder in their wars holy or otherwise.
What happens after islam becomes predominant in a region? Look at what happened to Lebannon.
Why do most islamic countries appear to be strife with massive social unrest and essentially dysfunctional societies (with the exception of Turkey as the army continues to be loyal to Ataturk’s ideals)?
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Attack on Pakistani Christians revives Punjab worries
The mob violence against Christians in central Pakistan at the weekend appears to have hit a particularly raw nerve in a country already jittery about the spreading influence of Islamist militants. The deaths of eight Christians in the town of Gojra following unsubstantiated allegations that a Christian had desecrated the Koran has both revived debate about Pakistan's blasphemy laws and renewed worries about the potential for instability in its heartland Punjab province.
According to Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah, the violence may have been orchestrated by the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), an outlawed pro-Taliban Sunni Muslim sectarian group, and its al Qaeda-linked offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). He said that masked men had come from the nearby district of Jhang, birthplace of both SSP and LeJ, to incite the anti-Christian rioting, and that the government had received an intelligence report two months ago suggesting that militants were switching from suicide bombings to inciting sectarian strife.
Dawn newspaper called in an editorial for the repeal of blasphemy laws imposing severe punishment on those accused of insulting Islam.
"These laws have become a ticket in the hands of the majority to persecute and victimise the minority communities if they don’t easily submit to their inferior status in society," it said. "In not being blind to the faith of each individual, the state is supporting bias and bigotry against non-Muslims. The narrow-minded who spew venom through their sermons against religious minorities are only the loudest and most abominable symbols of such discrimination and their growing following is an unmistakable sign of the frightening future that we are heading towards."
Pakistani bloggers made the same demand - Sana Saleem at Mystified Justice and Kalsoom at Changing Up Pakistan both have excellent round-ups on the laws and the treatment of minorities in Pakistan.
Looking more broadly at the potential for instability in Punjab, former foreign secretary Nadmuddin A Shaikh wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Times that the Gojra violence highlighted the power of Islamist militant groups based in the province - of which the biggest is the Lashkar-e-Taiba, accused of organising last November's attack on Mumbai.
"This was a brute display of the strength that the extremist organisations, be it the Sipah-e-Sahaba, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or the Lashkar-e-Taiba, can continue to muster and the extent to which they can play upon the emotions of local residents who may in this case, as in previous such incidents, also have had the ulterior motive of wanting to seize the properties of the minority community," he said.
Pakistani Christians burnt alive, sparking protests
Christian minorities in Pakistan protest against sectarian violence that saw seven burnt alive in their homes at the weekend. See our video report here.
UPDATE: Here is our report on Monday about Christian schools closing down for three days to mourn the deaths. Here is the original report on the attack.
This is a case of one tribal religion against another tribal religion.
PAPA DIXIT: preaching family values and interfaith in Nazareth
Pope Benedict spent Thursday in Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up in what is now the northern part of Israel. With no pressing political issues there, his sermon and speeches had a more religious focus than some recent ones.
AT MASS ON THE MOUNT OF PRECIPICE:
MARRIAGE: “All of us need… to return to Nazareth, to contemplate ever anew the silence and love of the Holy Family, the model of all Christian family life. Here, in the example of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, we come to appreciate even more fully the sacredness of the family, which in God’s plan is based on the lifelong fidelity of a man and a woman consecrated by the marriage covenant and accepting of God’s gift of new life. How much the men and women of our time need to reappropriate this fundamental truth, which stands at the foundation of society, and how important is the witness of married couples for the formation of sound consciences and the building of a civilization of love!”
FAMILY: “In God’s plan for the family, the love of husband and wife bears fruit in new life, and finds daily expression in the loving efforts of parents to ensure an integral human and spiritual formation for their chIldren. In the family each person, whether the smallest child or the oldest relative, is valued for himself or herself, and not seen simply as a means to some other end. Here we begin to glimpse something of the essential role of the family as the first buildingblock of a well-ordered and welcoming society. We also come to appreciate, within the wider community, the duty of the State to support families in their mission of education, to protect the institution of the family and its inherent rights, and to ensure that all families can live and flourish in conditions of dignity.”
WOMEN: “Nazareth reminds us of our need to acknowledge and respect the God-given dignity and proper role of women, as well as their particular charisms and talents. Whether as mothers in families, as a vital presence in the work force and the institutions of society, or in the particular vocation of following our Lord by the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, women have an indispensable role in creating that “human ecology” (cf. Centesimus Annus, 39) which our world, and this land, so urgently needs: a milieu in which children learn to love and to cherish others, to be honest and respectful to all, to practice the virtues of mercy and forgiveness.”
MEN: “From Joseph’s strong and fatherly example Jesus learned the virtues of a manly piety, fidelity to one’s word, integrity and hard work. In the carpenter of Nazareth he saw how authority placed at the service of love is infinitely more fruitful than the power which seeks to dominate. How much our world needs the example, guidance and quiet strength of men like Joseph!”
CHILDREN:“I would simply like to leave a particular thought with the young people here. The Second Vatican Council teaches that children have a special role to play in the growth of their parents in holiness… let the example of Jesus guide you, not only in showing respect for your parents, but also helping them to discover more fully the love which gives our lives their deepest meaning. In the Holy Family of Nazareth, it was Jesus who taught Mary and Joseph something of the greatness of the love of God his heavenly Father…”
Palestinians & Israelis like Jesus, int’l community like Apostles?
It’s not often you hear the Palestinians and Israelis compared to Jesus or the international community likened to Christ’s closest disciples. But the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, did just that in his address at Pope Benedict’s Mass in the Valley of Josephat today. This is the valley just east of the old city of Jerusalem, close to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed in agony before he was arrested by the Romans led by Judas. The Apostles Peter, James and John had accompanied him but they stayed a short distance away and fell asleep while Jesus prayed. Twal used this image to make a link between that Gospel episode and current day Middle East politics:
“Just a few yards from here, Jesus said to his most favored disciples “Remain here, and watch with me” (Mt. 26:39). But these same disciples closed their eyes, not losing sleep over Jesus’ agony, only a short distance away in the Garden of Gethsemane.”
“Holy Father, today, in many ways, the situation has not changed: around us, we have the agony of the Palestinian people, who dream of living in a free and independent Palestinian State, but have not found its realization; and the agony of the Israeli people, who dream of a normal life in peace and security and, despite all their military and mass media might, have not found its realization.
“And the international community, just like Jesus’ beloved disciples, stands apart, eyes drooping with indifference, unconcerned with the agony of the Holy Land, which has gone on for sixty-one years, and does not seriously rouse itself, to find a just solution. In this Valley of Jehosephat, a valley of tears, we raise our prayer for the realization of the dreams of these two peoples. We raise our prayer for Jerusalem, to be shared by the two peoples and three religions.
“On this very Mount of Olives, Jesus wept in vain over Jerusalem, and continues to do so, with the disillusioned refugees, without any hope of return, with the widows of the victims of violence and the many families in this city, who every day see their homes demolished because, it is said, “they were built illegally,” when the whole situation is illegal and still looking for a solution.
“Above where we stand now, Our Lord cried out: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children – all your children, Jews, Christians and Muslim – and you would not!” (Lk 13:34)
Unlike his predecessor Michel Sabbah, Twal — who became patriarch last year — is not Palestinian but Jordanian.
Archbishop Twal refers to the “situation” being illegal. What situation? The settling of land by the Hebrews as promised by God? The UN Mandate establishing the State of Israel? Rubbish! Also,the quote above attributed to Luke 13:34 references a hen or bird gathering her brood. There is no mention of “Jews, Christians, Muslim” in the New Testament within the cited text. We cannot take, or allowed to be taken, the words of Christ out of context, nor can we try to be politically correct by putting words into the Lord’s mouth. The solution is simple: Christians must remember that Jesus was not and is not a Christian but a Jew, a teacher, a rabbi. As a Christian I feel a kinship to the Jews because our Saviour is a Jew. Muslims must remember and respect the fact that God gave the Hebrews/Jews the land of Israel in Palestine and to wage terror on Israel is to defile the word of God. And Israel must share the bounty that God has given her by extending and continuing to extend the olive branch of peace toward Palestinians who can and want to live in peace, ignoring the political rhetoric of both sides.
from AxisMundi Jerusalem:
Holy Video
...and for those who prefer their pictures moving - here's a couple of videos of the Pope's visit to Jerusalem's holy sites. In the first video we see the Pope on his way to the Dome of the Rock, the first Pope ever to make such a visit, before visiting the Western Wall.
(For an explanation of the significance of Jerusalem's holy sites to Christians, Jews and Muslims - click here for an informative factbox)
...the video below is the Pope actually inside the Dome of the Rock where he met Jerusalem's Grand Mufti. It also includes excerpts from a press conference by Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi in which he responds to criticism of the Pope's speech at Yad Vashem.
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