Hillary Clinton seeks to smooth Islamic defamation row with OIC
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed with a major global Islamic organization on Friday to pursue new ways of resolving debates over religion without resorting to legal steps against defamation. Clinton met Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the head of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), in Istanbul to help set up new international mechanisms both protect free speech and combat religious discrimination around the world.
“Together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of religion. We are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps to fight intolerance wherever it occurs,” Clinton said.
Under heavy U.S. pressure, the OIC agreed in March to set aside its 12-year campaign to have religions protected from defamation, a step which allowed the U.N. Human Rights Council to approve a broader plan on religious tolerance. Western countries and their Latin American allies, strong opponents of the defamation concept, joined Muslim and African states in backing without vote the new approach that switches focus from protecting beliefs to protecting believers.
Ihsanoglu underscored that the OIC’s aim was not to limit free expression, but to combat religious intolerance which he said was spreading dangerously around the world. “Our cause, which stems from our general concern, should not be interpreted as calls for restriction of freedom,” he said. “We believe that mutual understanding, tolerance, respect and empathy should also be accompanying components when we advocate supremacy of freedom of expression.”
Both Ihsanoglu and Clinton outlined steps they would take to cultivate religious and cultural diversity along guidelines set by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, part of a process that will be overseen by the United Nations. “These are fundamental freedoms that belong to all people in all places and they are certainly essential to democracy,” Clinton said. “We now need to move to implementation.”
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Evangelical Christians from Global South see expanding influence
A survey of evangelical Christian leaders found a Global North-South split on how they see their prospects.
The 2010 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life revealed optimism among 58 percent of evangelical leaders in the Global South – sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East/North Africa, Latin America and most of Asia. But 66 percent of leader in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand tended to be pessimistic about evangelicals’ influence on society.
The Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders polled 2,196 leaders, finding splits on such issues as whether belief in God was required to be a moral person. There was near-universality on the Bible being the word of God.
The story on the survey, Evangelicals split on faith’s influence-survey, also revealed a more conservative bent in the South.
This is getting bad.Wake up america,get back to your bible and gods word.Time is short.This is all wrong!Jesus didn’t say to do this.
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.”
China says respects religious freedom after pope laments pressure
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it hoped the Vatican could acknowledge the reality of religious freedom in the country, after the pope said Beijing was putting pressure on the faithful who want to remain loyal to the Vatican.
“We hope the Vatican can squarely face the reality of religious freedom in China and the continuous development of Chinese Catholics, and take concrete actions to create conditions for developing Sino-Vatican ties,” ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news briefing.
China’s 8 to 12 million Catholics are divided between the state-sanctioned church that names bishops without the Vatican’s approval and an underground church wary of government ties. China forced several bishops and priests loyal to the pope to attend a meeting of the state-backed church last year, rankling the Vatican. Read the full story here.
Pope Benedict has said China’s communist authorities were putting pressure on faithful who want to remain loyal to the Vatican and he hoped the Chinese church could survive attempts to divide it from Rome. He called on Wednesday for all Catholics to pray for the faithful in China, who are not allowed to recognise the pope’s authority but forced to be members of a state-backed Church.
“We know that among our brother bishops, there are some that suffer and are under pressure,” the pope said at his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square. “By praying we can ensure that the Church in China remains one, holy and Catholic.” Read the full story here.
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I bet the catholic bishops from china won’t be able to touch the pope, without being touched by him first. 2000 years of traditional warfare tactics, and the mind of the most philophically, and tactically familiar mind of the pope will prevail, I swear on my own name.
17 Chinese churches petition parliament for religious freedom
Seventeen churches in China have appealed to China’s lawmakers to provide legal protection of religious freedom after police detained dozens of Christians from a Beijing church that has been trying to hold outdoor services. The petition, delivered on Wednesday by hand to the National People’s Congress — China’s rubber-stamp parliament — was the first of its kind and the boldest statement by the nation’s “house churches” to the central government.
It comes as the United States has sharply criticised China for its crackdown on dissent. China has jailed, detained or placed in secretive informal custody dozens of dissidents, human rights lawyers and protesters it fears will challenge Communist Party rule.
“We have observed the conflict between state and church unfolding recently in our capital Beijing and have so far seen no sign of the conflict being resolved, therefore…we are lodging this petition,” said the document, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.
“House churches” started as Bible study groups that often grew into large congregations, spawning fears in China’s ruling party that they could undermine its grip. But those worries eased in many areas in recent years, and many such churches are now much bigger than can fit into a normal house.
The petition, which was addressed to the standing committee of the National People’s Congress and its chairman, Wu Bangguo, demanded an investigation into the treatment of the Shouwang church. The Shouwang — meaning ‘watchtower’ — church has been trying to hold outdoor services for a month since its landlord terminated a rental agreement, which members blamed on official pressure.
Following the church’s call to worship outdoors, Chinese authorities put several of the church’s leaders under house arrest and forbade them to participate in services on Sunday.
Egypt vows crackdown after 12 die in Christian-Muslim strife
Egypt’s government announced measures to curb religious violence on Sunday after 12 people died in clashes in a Cairo suburb sparked by rumors that Christians had abducted a woman who converted to Islam. The fighting on Saturday was Egypt’s worst interfaith strife since 13 people died on March 9 after a church was burned, and it threw down a new challenge for generals ruling the country since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February.
Prime Minister Essam Sharaf canceled a tour of Gulf Arab states to chair a cabinet meeting where the government decided to deploy more security near religious sites and toughen laws criminalising attacks on places of worship.
“Gatherings around places of worship will be banned to protect their sanctity and ensure the security of residents and prevent sectarian strife,” Justice Minister Mohamed el-Guindy said in a statement read on state television. The army said that 190 people would be tried in military courts over Saturday’s violence.
Tension was high and the army cordoned off streets near the Saint Mina church, where about 500 conservative Salafist Muslims massed on Saturday to call on Christians to hand over the woman.
Violence broke out as more people converged on the church. Both sides traded gunfire, firebombs and stones, witnesses said. Soldiers and police fired shots in the air and used teargas to separate the sides but stone-throwing went on into the night.
Read the full story by Sarah Mikhail here.
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Of course the military’s going to “crack down.” That’s the military’s solution to every problem, especially when a problem makes them look bad. Meanwhile, what did they do to prevent violence and arson in the first place? According to a report from Cairo on Democracy Now! today, the military did practically nothing: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/9/sha rif_abdel_kouddous_reports_from_cairo
Rare rally tests Vietnam’s religious tolerance
Vietnam has deployed troops to contain a rare mass protest by ethnic Hmong people that is testing the government’s tolerance of minority Christians, just weeks after human rights activists accused leaders of persecuting another hill tribe. As many as 7,000 Hmong people began to gather several days ago in the far-flung mountains of Dien Bien Province, near the northwestern border with Laos and China, apparently for religious reasons although some were advocating an independent kingdom, according to diplomatic, government and other sources.
The unrest was unlikely to pose a threat to the government but the demonstration is the biggest involving ethnic minorities since unrest in the Central Highlands region in 2001 and 2004. Details were scant from the hard-to-access region but a Catholic priest close to the area cited followers as saying troops had been deployed and the protesters had detained at least one government official sent to negotiate.
Vietnam’s northwest is home to various hill tribes and stubborn pockets of deep poverty in a country that has emerged from the hangover of war with a fast-growing middle class and a dynamic, factory-driven economy.
“They probably have a hard time seeing their way out of (poverty),” Daniel Mont, senior poverty specialist with the World Bank, said of people in the region. He added that parts of the northwest were so remote they had never been fully integrated and many minority people spoke little Vietnamese.
The Hmong are originally from southern China. Many of them migrated over many years to mountainous parts of Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Their culture, which includes belief in shamans and animal sacrifice, contrasts with modern Vietnam, which began allowing religious practice in the early 1990s. While officially atheist, most of Vietnam’s 87 million people are Buddhist by tradition.
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Italy blocks EU religious persecution text ignoring Christians
The European Union failed to agree on a statement against the persecution of religious minorities on Monday after Italy objected to the omission of any reference to the protection of Christians. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said a draft proposed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers expressing concern about increasing numbers of attacks on places of worship and pilgrims showed an “excess of secularism”.
“The final text didn’t include any mention of Christians, as if we were talking of something else, so I asked the text to be withdrawn, so in fact it has been withdrawn,” he told reporters.
France backed Italy on the need to include references to specific minorities, including Christians and Shi’ite Muslims, diplomats said.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the 27 EU ministers had agreed to “go back and reflect” on how, in the course of backing religious freedoms and tolerance, the bloc could “make sure we recognise individual communities of whatever religion who find themselves being harassed or worse”.
Several EU states called for the discussion of persecution of Christians after a suicide bombing at a Coptic Christian church in northern Egypt on Dec. 31 in which 23 people were killed and dozens wounded.
Read the full story by David Brunnstrom here. Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
Pope Benedict decries growing Christianophobia in Europe
Pope Benedict voiced the Catholic Church’s deep concern over “hostility and prejudice” against Christianity in Europe on Thursday, saying creeping secularism was just as bad as religious fanaticism. In the message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, marked on Jan. 1, he also reiterated recent condemnations of lack of religious freedom in countries in the Middle East where Christians are a minority, such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
He said Christians were the most persecuted religious group in the world and that it was “unacceptable” that in some places they had to risk their lives to practise their faith. But he reserved his strongest words for Europe, where the Church says it is under assault by some national governments and European institutions over issues such as gay marriage, abortion and the use of Christian religious symbols in public places.
“I also express my hope that in the West, and especially in Europe, there will be an end to hostility and prejudice against Christians because they are resolved to orient their lives in a way consistent with the values and principles expressed in the Gospel,” he said in the message. “May Europe rather be reconciled to its own Christian roots, which are fundamental for understanding its past, present and future role in history.”
The Pope put what the Vatican has termed “aggressive secularism”, such as gay marriage and restrictions on religious symbols such as crucifixes, nativity scenes and other traditions, on the same level as religious fanaticism: “It should be clear that religious fundamentalism and secularism are alike in that both represent extreme forms of a rejection of legitimate pluralism and the principle of secularity.”
Church officials have expressed concerns over what they see as growing “Christianophobia” in the developed world. A top Vatican official addressed it at a recent summit of the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kazakhstan and Christian groups have set up the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians to record cases of perceived disadvantages.
Read the full story here. The full text of the pope’s message is here in English.
@SyteR – Perhaps you missed this part of the article: “He said Christians were the most persecuted religious group in the world”
As to ridicule being equivalent to prejudice… Satire is a form of ridicule. Satire is perfectly acceptable in a free society. Plenty of people make an honest living as satirists…
Are you saying all satirists are prejudiced, or just the ones who poke fun at your faith?
Russian extremism law targets religious minorities, dissenters
When armed Russian security officers forced their way into Alexander Kalistratov’s home, he hardly imagined they were after his books. The local leader of a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Siberia now faces up to two years in prison if found guilty this week of inciting religious hatred for distributing literature about his beliefs.
“They swept everything from my shelves without even bothering to sort it, even my Bible,” Kalistratov, a street sweeper, said by telephone from the Siberian town of Gorno-Altaysk, 3,600 km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow. His trial is the first of a dozen pending against Jehovah’s Witnesses and scores of others caught up in the widening net of criminal prosecutions brought under Russia’s anti-extremism law.
Rights activists say the vaguely worded legislation, first passed in 2002, is increasingly being exploited by the authorities to persecute religious minorities, intimidate the media and clamp down on opposition activists.
“It can be used to target anybody … political, religious or even completely apolitical groups such as labor union activists,” said Alexander Verkhovsky, whose SOVA rights group monitors hate crimes, extremism and religious freedoms. “In practice, it’s a universal tool.
In the case against Kalistratov, activists say local authorities are really aiming at cracking down on groups frowned upon by the Russian Orthodox Church. The Church has undergone a revival since the fall of the Soviet Union ended decades of repression under Communism and it has strong ties to the state. It has repeatedly complained that other churches are poaching converts in its territory.
The ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ basic texts has spurred over 150 police detentions and searches in a three-month period alone, according to SOVA.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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Any “religion” that hands its apostates a death sentence, such as Islam does, is no religion at all.
It is a vile, fascistic, intolerant system of repression and abuse that yokes its followers like oxen to its bilge-filled bullock cart.