Global News Journal

from FaithWorld:

Will the Arab Spring bring U.S.-style “culture wars” to the Middle East?

(From left: Olivier Roy, Cardinal Angelo Scola and Martino Diez of the Oasis Foundation at the conference on San Servolo island, Venice, June 20, 2011/Giorgia Dalle Ore/Oasis)

Where is the Arab Spring leading the Middle East? What will be the longer-term outcome of the popular protests that have shaken the region since the beginning of this year? Of course, it’s still too early to say with any certainty, even in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt that succeeded in toppling their authoritarian regimes. Some trends have emerged, however, and they’re on the agenda at a conference in Venice I’m attending entitled “Medio Oriente verso dove?” (Where is the Middle East heading?). The host is the Oasis Foundation, a group chaired by Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Roman Catholic patriarch of this historic city, and guests include Christian and Muslim religious leaders and academics from the Middle East and Europe.

In one of the most interesting -- and hotly debated -- presentations, the French Islam specialist Olivier Roy described the Arab Spring as “a break with the culture and ideologies that dominated the Arab world from the 1950s until recently.” It marks a clear change in the demographic, political and religious paradigms operating there, he said. The old dichotomy of the authoritarian regime or the Islamist state has broken down, he argued, and Islam is taking on a new role in the political process. In the end, the region -- or at least the states where the Arab Spring brings real change -- could see democratic politics marked not by major efforts to establish an Islamic state but by Muslim “culture war” controversies not unlike the way hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage emerge in U.S. political debates.

(Newly wed Egyptian anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo February 10, 2011/Dylan Martinez)

The first trend Roy cited to back up this thesis is the sharp drop in fertility levels in the Arab world since the late 1980s and the 1990s. Several Arab countries, especially those in North Africa, now have birthrates of around two children per woman, close but still above the European average. Tunisia’s birthrate is actually lower than France's.  “The generation that is now on the job market is the last generation of big families,” said Roy, who is now director of the Mediterranean Programme at the European University Institute in Florence. “It’s a generation that has many fewer children and marries much later.”

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Towards a review of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws

After two assassinations, Pakistani politicians are finally beginning to address tensions over the country's blasphemy laws.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in an interview politicians should be able to reach a cross-party consensus on preventing the misuse of the blasphemy laws, as proposed by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, head of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) religious party. "Its misuse is being, of course, taken into account and the party leaders are going to sit together as proposed by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman ... and I hope this matter can be thrashed out, whenever this meeting takes place." 

Two senior politicians, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, were assassinated this year after they called for amendments to the blasphemy laws, which critics say are often misused to settle personal scores.  The row over the blasphemy laws has become one of most incendiary issues in Pakistan, highlighting the dominance of the religious right which has been able to bring out thousands into the streets to protest against any changes to the laws.  Taseer's self-confessed killer, Mumtaz Qadri, was celebrated as a hero by many.

Fazl-ur-Rehman, who quit the Pakistan People's Party (PPP)-led government in December after a row over the sacking of one of his ministers, has been a vocal defender of the blasphemy laws. However, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying last week that “if a law is being misused against minorities we are ready to discuss this."  In a follow-up commentary, Dawn called it "a climbdown from his customary hardline position".

The row over the blasphemy laws was only part of a growing trend  towards extremism in Pakistan, it said. "However unwittingly, the JUI-F leader has also provided the key to the only conceivable way out of this frightening situation. The clear and present danger of extremism can only be countered if all parties, particularly those whose focus is spreading religious ideology, work together on a consensus that taking the law into one’s own hands, regardless of the issue at stake, is unacceptable."

Interior Minister Malik said Fazl-ur-Rehman's proposals would be likely to gain support, without giving details. "Everybody, I think will follow him in this connection."

The intervention of Fazl-ur-Rehman, who despite his pro-Taliban credentials has had good ties with the secular-leaning PPP, appears to have coincided with an improvement in relations with the ruling party after the December falling-out.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan, blasphemy, and a tale of two women

For all the bad news coming out of Pakistan, you can't help but admire the courage of two very different women who did what their political leaders failed to do -- stood up to the religious right after the killing of Punjab governor Salman Taseer over his call for changes to the country's blasphemy laws.

One is Sherry Rehman, a politician from the ruling Pakistan People's Party, who first proposed amendments to the laws. The other is actress Veena Malik, who challenged the clerical establishment for criticising her for appearing on Indian reality show Big Boss.  I'm slightly uncomfortable about grouping the two together -- the fact that both are Pakistani women does not make them any more similar than say, for example, two Pakistani men living in Rawalpindi or  London. Yet at the same time, the idea that Pakistan can produce such different and outspoken women says a lot about the diversity and energy of a country which can be too easily written off as a failing state or  bastion of the Islamist religious right.

Sherry Rehman is living as a virtual prisoner in her home in Karachi after being threatened over her support for amendments to the blasphemy laws. She has refused to leave the country for her own safety, nor indeed to accept the position adopted by her party leaders -- that now is not the time to amend the laws. Their argument appears to be that trying to amend the laws now would just add more fuel to the fire after religious leaders defended Taseer's killing and organised huge protests in favour of the current legal provisions.

"There's never a right time," Britain's Guardian newspaper quoted her as saying.  "Blasphemy cases are continually popping up, more horror stories from the ground. How do you ignore them?" 

"We know from history that appeasement doesn't pay. It only emboldens them," said Rehman.

For background, here is the text of the original law introduced into the Indian Penal Code by British colonial rulers in 1860:

Section 295: Injuring or defiling place of worship, with intent to insult the religion of any class:

from FaithWorld:

A review of Christian-Muslim conflict and a modest proposal to counter it

At a Christian-Muslim conference in Geneva this week, participants agreed to build a network for "peace teams" to intervene in crises where religious differences are invoked as the cause of the dispute. The idea is that religious differences may not be the real problem in a so-called religious conflict, but rather a means to mobilise the masses in a dispute that actually stems from political or economic rivalries.

If outside experts could help disentangle religion from the other issues, the argument goes, that could help neutralise religion's capacity to mobilise and inflame, in the hope of leading to a de-escalation of the crisis.

Is this idealistic? Maybe. However, given the number of crises throughout the world that have religion factored into the equation, it certainly seems worth the effort. Many of these conflicts are not simply battles between religious fanatics, as they may be presented, but calculated agitation by one group against another, usually for political or economic advantage. Some smokescreens are easy to see through, others almost impenetrable.

In his speech to the conference, Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal sketched out the problem facing religious experts who undertake such peace missions.  "Before considering what to do and how to do it, we are faced with a series of complex social, political and religious puzzles which we must fully understand in order not to make things worse," he said.

He then offered a brief tour d'horizon of Christian-Muslim tension and conflict in the world.  It's not complete and readers may disagree on specific points (that's what the Comments section below is for!), but it's a useful overview worth posting verbatim to highlight the problems and invite debate on them.

Ghazi said there are:

• "places where Christians are clearly severely oppressed by Muslims (such as Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan), and places where Muslims are clearly severely oppressed by Christians (such as the Philippines);

German banker bows out after stirring race, religion debate

A German central banker, Thilo Sarrazin, whose outspoken comments on race and religion sparked a fierce national debate unexpectedly quit the Bundesbank board on Thursday evening, sparing Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Christian Wulff and Bundesbank President Axel Weber a messy legal and political battle.

But Sarrazin, 65, made it clear that he will not go away and plans to use his new-found fame to press forward with the issues tackled in his best-selling book: that Muslims are undermining German society and threatening to change its character and culture with their higher birth rate. Whether Germans like his views or not, there is no denying that Sarrazin has struck a chord.

“It seemed to me to be too risky…to try to push forward against the entire political establishment and 70 percent of the media,” Sarrazin told hundreds of people at a book reading in Potsdam near Berlin. “That would have been arrogant and wouldn’t have worked. That’s why I’m making this strategic retreat now and will tackle the issues that are important to me.”

Despite widespread condemnation from political leaders, opinion polls showed there is widespread public support for at least some of Sarrazin’s observations in his bestselling book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany does away with itself”).

Some of his book’s more explosive passages include:

* ”In every European country, due to their low participation in the labour market and high claim on state welfare benefits, Muslim migrants cost the state more than they generate in added economic value. In terms of culture and civilisation, their notions of society and values are a step backwards.”

* “I don’t want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in a mostly Muslim country where Turkish and Arabic are widely spoken, women wear headscarves and the day’s rhythm is determined by the call of the muezzin.”

from Tales from the Trail:

State Dept: church Koran burning plan”un-American”

There have been lots of angry words over plans by an obscure Florida pastor to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

But State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley pulled out the biggest gun of all on Tuesday in his effort to distance the government from the pastor's incendiary proposal -- he called it "un-American."

"We are conscious that a number of voices have come out and rejected what this pastor and this community have proposed," Crowley told a news briefing. "We would like to see more Americans stand up and say 'this is inconsistent with our American values.' In fact these actions themselves are un-American."

"Un-American" is not an epithet that trips lightly off the tongue for U.S. government spokespeople, carrying as it does the tang of the 1950's witchhunt for alleged communist sympathizers  spearheaded by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center church in Florida presumably doesn't think his book burning plans are un-American, at least by his definition.

Jones said he would torch copies of the Muslim holy book on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in an effort toward "exposing Islam" as a "violent and oppressive religion."

"When do we stop backing down?...when does American stand for truth?" Jones said in an interview with CNN.

Religious leaders and the EU take tentative first steps

Top European Union officials held talks this week with religious leaders, part of a policy of holding consultations with religious groups that was enshrined in the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty, which came into force last December. But not everyone supports the move.   More than two dozen Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders — joined by a representative each from the Hindu and Sikh communities — met  the presidents of the European Parliament, European Commission and European Council on Monday to discuss how to fight poverty and social exclusion.

It was the the sixth such consultation since 2005, but the first to take place in the context of the Lisbon treaty, the EU’s latest collective agreement.  Article 17 of the treaty commits the EU to maintaining “an open, transparent and regular dialogue with … churches and (non-confessional and philosophical) organisations”.

But opponents of the guidance say that because many Europeans are secular and an increasing number practise non-Christian religions, churches should not have special rights.

“Leaders need to respect the separation between church and state,” said Jean de Brueker, deputy secretary general of the European Humanist Federation, which advocates more secularism in Europe. De Brueker’s organisation says separate consultation agreements should be limited to elected officials and those with recognised special expertise.     Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said the EU was a secular organisation but spoke about the moral significance of the 27-country bloc, hinting at the need for spiritual and religious input.      “The European Union has to be a union of values. That is our added value in the world. That is the soft power of Europe in the world,” he told reporters.     Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Poland, who spent decades in the Vatican as private secretary to Pope John Paul II — who played a subtle but intimate role in late Soviet politics — has spoken in favour of Article 17.     “I believe there is a need for such consultations with churches so as not to make mistakes on moral or ethical issues, for the benefit of societies,” Dziwisz told Reuters in December. “Let’s not forget that religion is also a great force that creates cultures and societies. It cannot be bypassed.”     The European Parliament will meet Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders on Sept. 30 to discuss how to implement Article 17, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said.

One way or another, debate over what role the Church, and by extension churches, can play in engaging with the European Union is only likely to intensify. The EU’s hopes of ‘reaching out’ to religious communities may very well end up drawing it deeper into a complex, centuries-old debate.

from UK News:

Testing the limits of animal lab experiments

A mouse that can speak? A monkey with Down's Syndrome? Dogs with human hands or feet? British scientists want to know if such experiments are acceptable, or if they go too far in the name of medical research.

The Academy of Medical Sciences has launched a study to look at the use of animals containing human material in scientific research.

Using human material in animals is not new. Scientists have already created rhesus macaque monkeys that have a human form of the Huntingdon's gene so they can investigate how the disease develops; and mice with livers made from human cells are being used to study the effects of new drugs.

But scientists say the technology to put ever greater amounts of human genetic material into animals is spreading quickly around the world -- raising the possibility that some scientists in some places may want to push boundaries.

Religious groups are among those that are uneasy about the trend. One Catholic cardinal, Keith O'Brien of Edinburgh, has branded such work "Frankenstein science."

Martin Bobrow, a professor of medical genetics at Cambridge University is chairman of a 14-member group looking into the issue.

He says: "Do most of us care if we make a mouse whose blood cells or liver are human? Probably not. But if it can speak? If it can think? Or if it is conscious in a human way? Then we're in a completely different ballpark."

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

In Pakistan, not over the moon

By Zeeshan Haider

Pakistan is battling Taliban militants, trying to patch up relations with old rival India and struggling to revive a limping economy but another issue has preoccupied the country over recent days: the sighting of the moon that markes the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

A row erupted when the Eid al Fitr holiday that follows Ramadan was celebrated in several parts of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Sunday, a day ahead of the rest of the country. Many Pakistanis say that violated a spirit of harmony and unity that should mark one of the most important events of the Islamic calender.

Some clerics in NWFP announced on Saturday evening that the crescent moon, which marks the end of a month in Islam's lunar calender, had been sighted, meaning Ramadan was over and Eid would be celebrated the next day. But a government-appointed body of clerics responsible for moon-sighting rejected the announcement, citing reports from the Meteorological Department that said the moon could not be seen on Saturday.

Clerics in  NWFP, a religiously conservative region on the Afghan border dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, have called Eid early before but this time the politicians jumped into the fray. The Awami National Party (ANP), a secular party ruling NWFP which is also part of the federal coalition, backed the clerics from its province who called Eid early.

Analysts say the ANP's stand could be a aimed at winning the support of conservative Pashtuns.

Southeast Asia’s Islamists try the domino theory

A half-century ago, Washington worried about Southeast Asian nations falling like dominoes to an international communist movement backed by Maoist China, and became bogged down in the Vietnam War.

Noordin Top, believed to be the mastermind behind most of the suicide bombings in Indonesia — including the July 17 attacks on two luxury Jakarta hotels — pronounced himself to be al Qaeda’s franchise in Southeast Asia.

Top and his allies in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) aimed to create an Islamic caliphate across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and Southern Philippines. Even before the 9/11 suicide airliner attacks, they were trying to spark an Islamic revolution with ambitious plots and attacks.

Their young foot soldiers dreamed these pro-Western nations (which had banded together to form ASEAN under the U.S. military umbrella at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967) might fall like dominoes to the righteousness of an Islamic jihad. Their martyrdom to the cause would given them a blissful reward in Heaven.

But just as Communism was not the monolith it was feared to be in the 1960s — China and the Soviet Union had split for one thing — so too has the Southeast Asian jihadist movement failed to cohere into a singular movement.

Vietnam, it turned out, was fighting what it believed to be a war of national liberation, and was (still is) historically suspicious of China. Al Qaeda’s jihad in Southeast Asia has stumbled over similar misconceptions.

JI’s former military commander, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin or “Hambali”, tried to pull together various insurgencies in the region under an al Qaeda umbrella before he was captured in Thailand in 2003. He even helped sponsor an “al Qaeda summit” with bin Laden’s lieutenants in Kuala Lumpur in 2000.