Michelle Obama dons headscarf at Indonesian mosque
U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama donned a headscarf on a visit to an mosque in Indonesia on Wednesday, not a requirement for a non-Muslim but a sign of the Obamas’ efforts to show respect for the Islamic world.
Wearing a beige headscarf adorned with gold beads and a flowing chartreuse trouser suit, she toured Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, while on a short state visit to the world’s most populous Muslim country.
U.S. President Barack Obama had been expected to visit another major religious site during his Asian tour, the Sikh Golden Temple in India, but media reports said the visit was canceled after aides balked at the idea of the president wearing a scarf or skullcap required at the site.
Barack Obama is a Christian but faces persistent sniping among some members of the U.S. public that he is a Muslim and, the reports said, aides feared pictures of him wearing such headgear could fuel such rumors.
Obama, who is using the Indonesia visit as a platform to reach out to the wider Islamic world by praising Indonesia’s pluralism in a speech on Wednesday, pointed out that the city’s Catholic cathedral was opposite the mosque, which was designed by a Christian architect.
As the shoeless Obamas crossed the mosque’s wide courtyard, the president told reporters that the churchgoers used the mosque’s parking lot at Christmas and said that was “an example of the kind of cooperation” between religions in Indonesia.
from Tales from the Trail:
No decision yet on Obama Golden Temple visit: White House
Hold onto your, er, hats.
Talk that U.S. President Barack Obama has canceled a visit to The Golden Temple in Amritsar because of a dispute over headgear may be premature, the White House said on Wednesday.
"We pick sites on foreign trips based on what the president wants to accomplish," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters traveling on Air Force One. Not, presumably, the outfit he might have to wear at a given site.
Obama had been expected to visit the Golden Temple in northern India, a pilgrimage site for Sikhs, during his tour of the country next month. But Indian media reports said Obama's handlers balked at the idea of the U.S. president wearing a headscarf or skullcap while touring the site.
Obama faces persistent talk among some members of the U.S. public that he is a Muslim and, the reports said, aides said pictures of him wearing such headgear could fuel such rumors.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a Sikh.
Gibbs said Obama's final itinerary during his India trip had yet to be finalized, but he expected it would be in the course of the next week.
Being an Indian let me tell the American public one thing, it does not matter if he does not visit the temple, he can just skip the whole visit itself, visiting, looking into the structure makes no special impact on the relationship, chill, its perfectly okay, the president will not be mistaken or misunderstood, democrats or his citizens need not judge him on this, it has nothing to do with ‘looks like a Malaysian songkok’ the president lived in Indonesia, which was predominatly Muslim, it is obvious he is secular in all aspects.
President Karzai votes for female Hindu candidate in Afghan election: sources
Afghan President Hamid Karzai chose a female, Hindu candidate when he voted in Saturday’s parliamentary election, two palace officials close to him said. Just two Hindu candidates were on the list of about 600 vying for parliamentary seats in the Afghan capital. Karzai’s choice could annoy supporters in deeply conservative, Muslim Afghanistan.
His backers include powerful ex-warlords who were fielding their own candidates and religious conservatives who are opposed to female politicians and unlikely to be happy Karzai is backing a non-Muslim.
“It was Anar Kali Honaryar,” one palace official told Reuters, giving the name of a female activist who largely relied on Muslim supporters during her campaigning.
Hindus lived in Afghanistan long before the advent of Islam in the 7th century. Their numbers shrank over the centuries and tens of thousands of those who remained fled Afghanistan after civil war broke out in 1992, leaving just a few thousand behind.
Afghan Hindus and Sikhs grapple with uncertain future
They thrived long before the arrival of Islam in the seventh century and for a long time dominated the country’s economy, but Sikh and Hindu Afghans now find themselves struggling for survival.
“We have no shelter, no land and no authority,” says Awtar Singh, a senator and the only non-Muslim voice in Afghanistan’s parliament. “No one in the government listens to us, but we have to be patient, because we have no other options,” says the 47-year-old Sikh.
In a brief idyll in 1992, after the fall of the Moscow backed-government but before civil war erupted, there were around 200,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan compared with around just a few thousand today.
When warring factions fought over Kabul, razing entire neighbourhoods in deadly rocket barrages, the two communities became targets partly because of their religion, but also because they didn’t have a militia of their own for protection.
Ironically the rise to power of the hardline Islamist Taliban marked an improvement in the lives of those who remained — and some emigres even started to return. Since the Taliban’s fall, Afghanistan’s new constitution promises religious minorities greater freedoms than before, but it is harder to ensure in practical terms.
A week after riots, Thai capital prays for peace
Thousands of Thais prayed for peace and unity in Bangkok on Wednesday, a week after a deadly military crackdown on protesters sparked a terrifying night of arson and riots that levelled buildings and killed 54 people.
But analysts say without major reforms to a political system that protesters claim favours an “establishment elite” over the rural masses, such prayers and forgiveness will not end a polarising crisis costing the economy billions of dollars.
Hundreds of saffron-robed Buddhist monks received food from well wishers along a shopping mall occupied by anti-government protesters for six weeks until they were dispersed by troops and armoured vehicles last week.
Next to them were Christian, Muslim and Sikh leaders, who also conducted prayers to bless the riot-torn city of 15 million people as predominantly Buddhist Thailand grapples with widening social and political rifts that have spiralled dangerously into the open in the past five years.
“It is very important for all of us in Bangkok to forgive and move ahead,” said Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra, who hosted the “Restore the City With Religious Ceremony” event.
French Muslim rejects polygamist charge, says has wife and 3 lovers
France’s debate about Muslim face veils has taken an ironic twist. An Algerian-born Muslim man who is a naturalised French citizen has fought back against charges of polygamy by saying he doesn’t have four wives, but one wife and three mistresses (and 12 children among them). What could be more French than that? he asked journalists on Monday as politicians debated how they could strip him of his citizenship.
“If one can be stripped of one’s French nationality for having mistresses, then many French could lose theirs,” Liès Hebbadj, a halal butcher in the western city of Nantes, said after visiting the lawyer for his wife, who was fined for driving while wearing a full facial veil.
That moving violation is what got this curious story rolling. After Mrs. Hebbadj — a French-born woman who goes by the assumed name Anne in this saga — was fined, it emerged that her husband was believed to be a polygamist drawing family support payments for each wife separately. The DWV (driving while veiled) charge would have been enough to fan the fire of a national debate about banning full facial veils such as niqabs or burqas.
The polygamy link suddenly added additional fuel. Indeed, it seems to have overtaken the debate among the politicians in Paris. It’s hard to say what will happen, but this could lead to closer scrutiny of polygamy among immigrants, in addition to the “burqa ban” that President Nicolas Sarkozy seems intent to push through. There appears to be some polygamy among a tiny minority of Muslim and non-Muslim African immigrants, but I haven’t seen any overall figures on this. The police intelligence services may have their own internal figure, but it hasn’t become a media factoid yet like their famous 2,000 guesstimate for veiled women.
If this is the opening shot in a wider debate about polygamy, Hebbadj has responded with an interesting push-back. It wasn’t too long ago — 1996, in fact — that former President François Mitterrand’s longtime mistress and their daughter very publicly walked in his funeral procession. The out-of-wedlock daughter Mazarine walked in the front row, with the president’s widow Danielle and Mitterrand’s two sons by her, while Mazarine’s mother Anne Pingeot followed only a step or two behind.
Hebbadj became a French citizen by marrying the French-born Anne in a civil ceremony in 1999. The civil marriage ceremony is the only one recognised by the French state and even couples who want a religious ceremony must first go to city hall to tie the knot legally. So if Hebbadj did this, what he did with the other women should arguably be his own business. Even if he had Islamic religious ceremonies for the other, what should that mean for the French authorities? They always say religious marriages are irrelevant in their eyes.
Naturalised citizens can have their French passport taken away if they acquired it through fraud — if, for example, Hebbadj hid an existing marriage when he married Anne. Officials in Nantes are presumably searching through their files right now to see if he had civil ceremonies with the other women. If he did, he could be heading back to his native Algeria sometime soon.
Liès Hebbadj who is a muslim,is a polygamist and he knows it. He is milking France to pay for his twisted life style. And he will be lying all the way to the bank. It is true that Muslims are permitted to lie. In Islam a Muslim can speak as lie but in three cases: In battle, the words of the husband to his wife, the words of a wife to her husband (and among friends) (Sahid Muslim, Book 032, Number 6303)
Islam’s “Noble” Qur’an also tells Muslims to lie Qur’an (16:106) (40:28) (2:225) (66:2). Even the god of Islam is the best liar of them all. Qur’an (3:54) – “And they disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against them): and Allah is the best of “makara” which literally means deceiver”
Having read the comments posted by Muslims, it is horribly wrong if the only way to make your religion look good is to lie or be ignorant. Come all of you to the truth.
Climate change debate spurs warm feelings in London
It is rare that religion and science find agreement, but that is what happened when Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks spoke at a meeting on saving the earth from climate change.
“The great Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson published a book in 2007 called “Creation”, subtitled An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,” Sacks told leaders of all the major faiths meeting at Lambeth Palace in London on Thursday.
“I thought that was a very good book. E.O. Wilson is known not to be religious, but what this book was was a call to religious people and scientists to call off the war between religion and science and work together for the sake of the future of life on earth.
“And I felt that was a very generous and appropriate call by a non-religious scientist.”
He said “that science and religion despite their apparent friction actually converge on a profoundly scientific and at the same time religious idea that there is a kinship of life and hence a covenant of life”.
Not only did such a high-profile religious figure agree with the scientific world, but faith leaders found harmony among themselves at the same meeting.
Sitting next to Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the Anglican Church, was the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, who only days earlier had delivered the Pope’s offer to disaffected Anglicans the chance to convert to Rome.
October a busy month for Indian religious festivals
October is a busy month for Indian religious festivals in India. Here are Reuters videos from three of them.
Diwali, the five-day festival of lights, was celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the country with fireworks and prayers. It marks the return of Lord Raama to his kingdom Ayodhya after defeating Ravana, the ruler of Lanka, in the ancient epic Ramayana.
The three-day Chhath Puja, an ancient Hindu festival dedicated to Surya, the chief solar deity, concluded on Sunday with thousands of devotees offering prayers to Sun God across India. Most devotees are married women praying for their families.
Women in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh prayed for the long life of their brothers on the occasion of Bhai Dooj, a one-day Hindu sibling festival celebrated during Diwali. According to the Hindu tradition, both the brother and the sister take a holy dip in the river together, after which the sister applies vermilion mark on the forehead of her brother wishing him a long life.
George Ric is what we call in Hindi a “chootiya” ie fool of the worst kind.
from India Insight:
What makes a religious symbol conspicuous?
Last week, a college in Mangalore in India banned a student wearing a burqa from attending class. The principal told local media the college had a policy of not allowing symbols of religion.
The media did not say if there were students on campus with a 'bindi' (dot) on their foreheads or crucifixes around their necks or turbans on their heads, other symbols of religion one commonly sees in India, besides the ubiquitous "Om" scarves and t-shirts.
Mangalore, a cosmopolitan city, is no stranger to controversy; it was recently in the news for attacks on bars and women by a fundamentalist Hindu outfit that declared they were against Indian culture.
Nor is the controversy over headscarves and burqas limited to India. UK's Jack Straw sparked a heated debate when he asked Muslim women in his constituency to remove their veils to promote better relations between people.
Turkey last year lifted a ban on women wearing headscarves at universities, ruling it violated the country's secular constitution.
More recently, French president Sarkozy said burqas have no place in the country because they are a symbol of the subjugation of women. The issue has divided France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, over how to reconcile secular values with religious freedom.
A 2004 French law bans students from wearing "conspicuous" signs of their religion in state schools, prompting Sikhs to launch a protest to allow them to keep their turbans on.
If every religion were to emphasize peaceful co-existance with all others, there would be no problem with religious symbols. When however, religious symbols represent such notions as (i) My God is better than yours (ii) My God is the only way to heavan (iii) those who do not believe in my God are infidels, the symbols become an instrument of hatred,fear,mistrust, and ultimately violance. There is nothing wrong with religious symbols as long as they are carried or worn for one’s own faith and tranquility and not to intimidate or belittle the faith of others.
Sikh temple project sparks dispute over copying holy sites
Are some holy sites so holy or so unique that they shouldn’t be copied? Should monuments like the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican or the Western Wall in Jerusalem have a kind of copyright so nobody can replicate them elsewhere?
It seems unlikely that believers of any faith would undertake such a project, if for no other reason that most holy sites are quite complex, with artwork that would be very expensive to reproduce. But some Sikhs in India are building what looks like a copy of the Golden Temple, their religion’s holiest shrine, in Sangrur, 265 miles (427 km) southeast of the temple in Amritsar. The project has sparked off a debate in the Sikh community and the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), which maintains gurdwaras in India’s Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh states, has protested against it and called on the religion’s five high priests to intervene. The Sikhs building the new gurdwara deny they’re copying the famous temple, simply giving a facelift to their dilapidated gurdwara.
As Mumbai’s DNA daily put it: “Imitation is sometimes not the most acceptable form of flattery.”
Here’s an IBN-CNN video on the dispute, accompanied by a written report with more background.
How much hard anyone may try but they cannot copy the peace and tranquility that the original Golden Temple Imparts to the mind .
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