Qaeda threat to Egyptian Christians may stir militants
Militants may feel emboldened by an al Qaeda threat against Egypt’s Christians, even if the network itself might struggle to mount such an assault.
The al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq, which launched an attack on a Baghdad church on Sunday that left 52 dead, has also threatened Egypt’s church.
While there are no signs of a re-emergence of a 1990s-style Islamist insurgency, Egypt remains alert to anything that could stir communal tension that sometimes boils up over issues such as cross-faith relationships and conversions.
Egyptian authorities were quick to condemn the al Qaeda threat and to boost security at churches in the country, where Christians make up 10 percent of the 78 million people, the biggest Christian population in the Middle East.
“This threat is not directed only at Christians but at the Egyptian state. Egypt’s security ended terrorism in the 1990s and it is capable today of eradicating these threats,” said Father Abdel Maseeh Baseet of the Coptic Orthodox church, the biggest Christian community in Egypt.
Libya’s Gaddafi upsets Italy with bid to convert women to Islam
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s attempt to convert dozens of young women to Islam during a visit to Italy led to an angry reaction from Italian media on Monday. The mercurial Gaddafi invited a large group of young women hired by a hostessing agency to an event at a Libyan cultural centre in Rome on Sunday and tried to convert them to Islam.
“What would happen if a European head of state went to Libya or another Islamic country and invited everyone to convert to Christianity?” asked the daily Il Messagero. “We believe it would provoke very strong reactions across the Islamic world.”
Press reports said three women had converted, but there was no way to verify if that was true. The event, due to be repeated on Monday, followed a similar reception involving some 200 women on a previous visit by Gaddafi to Rome last year.
Italy is now Libya’s biggest trading partner and buys much of its oil and gas from the energy-rich North African state. Libya is also a big investor in the Italian economy. But many commentators were not happy. “The national interest does not justify and certainly does not require anyone to agree to playing host to grotesque acts of clowning,” wrote La Stampa in an editorial.
Read the whole story here and tell us what you think. What would be the reaction if a Christian leader tried to convert Muslims while visiting a Muslim country?
when did preaching become an issue? in fact preaching Christianity does take place in the U.A.E and many other Muslim countries.
Malaysia court hears landmark dispute on religious conversion
Malaysia’s highest court has begun proceedings on a landmark inter-religious child custody dispute whose outcome could further raise political tension in this mainly Muslim country. The Federal Court heard objections by lawyers for an ethnic Indian couple fighting each other for custody of their two children and adjourned for two weeks before hearing the case.
A Hindu woman, Shamala Sathiyaseelan, won temporary custody of her two children in 2004 following her husband’s conversion to Islam. She is seeking full custody and a declaration that it is illegal under Malaysia’s constitution for a parent to convert a minor to Islam without the other’s consent.
Malaysia’s dual-track legal system where Muslims fall under Islamic family laws while non-Muslims come under civil laws has led to overlaps and unresolved religious disputes that have fuelled minority unhappiness and raised political tensions.
“This is a fundamental constitutional question being brought up for the first time, and a lot of other cases will abide by the ruling on this case,” Shamala’s lawyer, Cyrus Das, told reporters.
UK court accused of interfering in Jewish identity
Britain’s top court was accused of interfering in religious matters after it ruled on Wednesday that a Jewish school was guilty of discrimination by refusing entry to a boy whose mother was a Jew by conversion, not birth.
The Supreme Court said the policy employed by the popular JFS school in London broke race laws by using ethnicity to decide which pupils to admit. “Essentially we must now apply a ‘non-Jewish definition of who is Jewish’,” said Simon Hochhauser, president of the United Synagogue.
The case was brought after the school refused to admit a boy, known as M, whose father was a practicing Jew and whose mother had converted to Judaism at a non-orthodox synagogue. The over-subscribed school gave precedence to children recognized as ethnically Jewish by the Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth.
This stipulates that a person is Jewish if they are descended through the maternal line from a woman who is Jewish, or if they have undergone an orthodox Jewish conversion course.
Read the whole story here and tell us whether you think this is reasonsable or unacceptable interference.
Egypt Christian group seeks to change Muslim status
Ayman Raafa, an Egyptian born a Christian, was nine months old when the father he never knew converted to Islam. Now 23, Raafa is fighting to get the Christian faith he professes recognised by the state and registered on his identity documents vital to daily life.
Raafa was raised a Christian but the state says children automatically become Muslim on a father’s conversion, a policy that places dozens of people in limbo in a society that does not — in practice — recognise conversion away from Islam. He is one of a group of 40 facing the same identity conundrum and now filing a lawsuit to have their Christian faith recognised, touching a raw spot in relations between Muslims and 10 percent of Egypt’s 77 million people who are Christian.
“I graduated last year and I cannot get a job because I do not have a national ID,” Raafa said at his lawyer’s office, near a well-known Coptic Christian church and hospital in Cairo.
Interior Ministry official Hany Abdel-Latif, like other officials, insisted no such discriminatory rules existed. But Lawyer Peter El-Naggar said in practice children of converts away from Islam would not get approval for a new ID card stating their Christian faith. He said such applications are usually returned with a request to correct “mistakes”.
Christians and Muslims are destroyer of a nation because they have faith alien to the nation they are born in. Their faith and their allegiance lies elsewhere than the nation.
Israel to fund Reform conversions to Judaism? Not so fast.
The latest front in the ongoing conflict in Israel between ultra-Orthodox Judaism and less observant movements — the subject of a brief blog yesterday on Faithworld — heated up with a front page article in the Jerusalem Post on Thursday that quoted an ultra-Orthodox parliament member calling Reform Jews, among other things, “trecherous backstabbers to Judaism”.
The rather harsh, though not unprecedented, comments were reportedly made by Moshe Gafni from the religious United Torah Judaism party. Gafni is chairman of Israel’s finance committee and was quoted in a phone interview following a high court decision that ordered federal funding of non-Orthodox Jewish conversions.
Gafni’s office could not be reached to confirm the quote.
It’s not clear if Gafni will have any influence in this specific ruling, but his promise to try to block any attempts to allocate funds could certainly take the quarrel up a notch.
I really don’t understand why they keep using the term ‘ultra-Orthodox’. This is the main stream of observant Jews who follow the religion, they constitute a significant part of the popluation, and the public generally relies on they rulings on all religious matters. The people who are trying to undermine their authority are almost always secular people who do not care about religion in the first place.
Reform Judaism in Israel wins small battle for recognition
The Reform Judaism movement in Israel claimed a small victory in its fight for recognition when the High Court this week ruled in favor of state funding for non-Orthodox conversions.
For years Reform and Conservative rabbis in Israel have been trying to break the monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinic Court, which is the sole authority for Jewish ceremonies like weddings and conversions. That’s an especially big responsiblity in a country where there is no civil marriage, essentially forcing all Jewish Israelis to seek an Orthodox rabbi when they wish to wed — or go abroad.
The more modern, liberal movements have a less strict interpretation and observance of Jewish law than the Orthodox, who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.
This week’s ruling came after the Reform movement petitioned the court, seeking state funding for conversions carried out by non-Orthodox movements. Whether it will have any real impact is unclear, since the Jewish state still only recognises Orthodox conversions for legal purposes.
Why do we tend to view theocracies with contempt, except Israel?
U.S. troop conversion allegations diplomatic minefield
U.S. President Barack Obama may face a new minefield on the battlefields of Afghanistan — one that combines a potent mix of religion and culture.
Explosive allegations have emerged that U.S. soldiers have been attempting to convert Afghanis to Christianity, a scenario sure to stir passions and even anger in the overwhelming Islamic country. You can see our story on the issue here by my colleague Peter Graff in Kabul.
The U.S. military denied Monday it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages.
Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed footage of a church service at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of the Afghan capital Kabul, in which soldiers had a stack of Bibles in the local languages, Pashtu and Dari.
A military chaplain was shown delivering a sermon to other soldiers, saying: “The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down.”
Critics have long contended that parts of the U.S. military have been unduly influenced by a powerful evangelical Christian wing which has pressured men and women in uniform to convert or conform.
“I congratulate those evangelical soldiers who converts muslims to Christianity without using violence.”
Hahaha. SOLDIERS carry guns, you dolt.
What’s in a name: Are God and Allah the same?
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of Allah.”
Malaysian Catholics recite this prayer in Malay daily at Masses across the country such as a recent one in St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Keningau, a sprawling timber town in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo island that Niluksi Koswanage visited for this feature about tensions between Christians and the majority Muslims.
Muslims object to Christians using the word “Allah” in their services and publications, even though it is the normal word for God in Malay. The Muslims say it could undermine Islam and aims to convert Muslims. The row over the use of Allah to describe the Christian God feeds into a long-running feud over conversions between the government of a country where all Malays must be Muslims, and other faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism that are practised by ethnic Indians and Chinese.
It is illegal in Malaysia to convert from Islam to any other religion, although conversions to Islam are allowed. Malaysian Muslim activists and officials see using the word Allah in Christian publications including bibles as attempts to proselytise. Those concerns led to a ban on the main Catholic newspaper in Malaysia, the Catholic Herald, on using the word “Allah” to denote God. The government partially lifted the ban in mid-February, only to reimpose it later that month. The Herald is now suing the government to overturn the ruling.
Some leading Muslim scholars here say the issue is being blown out of proportion and that the risk of conversions among the 60 percent Muslim population is tiny. They see it, instead, as an attempt by the government that has ruled Malaysia uninterrupted for 51 years since independence from Britain to hold on to power by identifying ethnicity with religion.
That hegemony is now under threat after the opposition scored its best-ever election result in 2008 when it deprived the government of its two-thirds parliamentary majority and ended up in control of five of Malaysia’s 13 states.
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is now targeting the voters of Borneo in an effort to keep up pressure on the government and the first test will come in a state assembly by-election in early April. That may give a chance for voters in a constituency near St Francis Xavier to flex their muscles.
the disciples asked jesus what god was like?, and his reply “if you have seen me you have seen the father.”he is not only god, but he is the likeness of god.i know nothing about allah but if he fits this description then i would be inclined to call him god as well.
Traditional Anglicans at the Vatican gates? Not so fast
Amid all the controversy over the Vatican’s handling of the return of four excommunicated ultra-traditionalist bishops, some newspapers are reporting that Pope Benedict is now preparing to welcome a far larger group into the Church — the 400,000-strong Traditional Anglican Communion. We noted speculation about this last June. The Italian daily La Stampa wrote today that this group would be accepted into the Roman Catholic Church by Easter. Its headline was “Goodbye Canterbury, Benedict Takes Back Even the Anglicans.”
But it doesn’t look like it’s going to be that way. The Vatican can wait, something it normally is very good at. The arguments I’m hearing here against such a move anytime soon are:
- Large group conversions can be unwieldy and full of surprises.
- After the controversy over the botched PR for the lifting of bans on the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) bishops, you can bet a lot more homework will be done on this one first.
Jan, you missed my last comment about the universe. It is so vast and creation is so immense that this earth is a minute part of it. What do our religions mean to the other 99.999999% of the cosmos? Perhaps they do contain some truths and help us live together but I think it may be time for a new understanding of the Creator, the First Mover, That of Which Nothing Greater Can Be Thought. Relating to the article again, it was in the Anglican liturgy that my deepest thoughts swelled about spirituality, the savoring of the liturgy, in magestic respectable language. I have been a RC seminarian. I came to know the inner circle of the clergy and knew bishops and priests. I found the laity more religious than them. And so, therefore, I think I have gone past that stage and understanding and get more pious now when I look at the stars in the sky and can truly wonder and be awed. It is a cleaner “altar” than the others I frequented in the past. In a set doctrine now I find rigidity, lack of patience, “pat answers” to contain inquisitiveness, intolerance and a failure to seek the wonder and awe which the Creator offers as temptation to expand the “Fab Three”: Faith, Hope and Love.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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