How (not) to make sure your war doesn’t look like a religious war.
Latest Updates: religion RSS
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thabet
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thabet
Malaysia defends inaction over Catholic ‘desecration’:
The archbishop of Kuala Lumpur Murphy Pakiam has criticised the government’s “failure to act” over the incident, in which the pair joined a Catholic service to investigate claims Muslims were illegally converting.
“The journalists have displayed utmost disrespect for the Catholic community when they admit receiving and spitting out the Holy Communion,” he told a press conference Thursday.
However, the government’s top lawyer, Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail, said the pair did not understand the significance of the wafer, which Catholics believe represents the body of Jesus Christ.
“The actions of the two reporters may have hurt the feelings of the people but I was satisfied that they did not intend to offend anyone. It was an act of sheer ignorance,” he said in a statement late Thursday.
According to the BBC report the two journalists spat out the communion wafer.
Not that some Muslims, and certainly not those in Malaysia, have a reputation for getting upset at something they deem offensive.
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aziz
Incredible discovery of the oldest known temple in existence – predating the Pyramids by 7000 years. It has the potential to invert the traditional narrative of how agriculture came first, leading to cities and then organized religion. Couuld this be the birthplace of revelation itself?
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arif
Another leader with the doomsday warning.
“It’s not an accident that a great earthquake took place in Chile,” Farrakhan, 76, said an hour into his three-hour address. “It was a precipitate of what I have to tell you today of what’s coming to America. You will not escape.”
“I will speak to the kings and rulers of the world. I will speak to the pope and the religious leaders because you have to know that your time has come,” he said. “I desire to guide you and warn you of things that are coming that you must try to prepare yourselves for because we are absolutely living in the change of worlds.”
Ah, the business of religion!
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thabet
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plimfix
In the long running saga to reform sex education in British schools, the UK government tabled a last minute ammendment to the Children, Schools and Families Bill which will allow sex education to be taught in England in a way that reflects a school’s “religious character”. Secularists have described the ammendment as an ‘opt out’ for faith schools, a charge denied by schools minister Jim Knight. “There’s no other subject that schools would be allowed to teach with their own version of the truth,” claims atheist Mark Steel, who mocks the ammendment as absurd and unworkable. The Head of a Muslim faith school interviewed on Radio 4 was asked how a gay pupil would feel being taught that his sexuality was wrong. “He’d have to think very deeply.” He said. The Bill will come into effect in September 2011. In a letter to The Guardian, Ed Balls, Secretary of state for children, schools and families, has stated all schools must have “a zero-tolerance approach to bullying” and “specific guidance on tackling homophobic bullying” will be issued in due course.
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willow
This is your brain on God, new studies in ‘neurotheology’ claim. The stuff about the measurable ability of prayer to heal a sick body is fascinating.
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thabet
Far-left party reveals ‘veiled’ female candidate:
All the more so because the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party), led by Trotskyist postman Olivier Besancenot, is a party that generates headlines for its extreme left wing position on issues including militant secularism.
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thabet
The National Secular Society has lodged a complaint after a decision by Cherie Booth (the wife of Tony Blair) to spare a man jail ‘because of his religious beliefs’:
Shamso Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, broke a man’s jaw following a row in a bank queue.
Sitting as a judge, Ms Booth – wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair – said she would suspend his sentence on the basis of his religious belief.[...]
Ms Booth told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.
She added: “You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”
The National Secular Society has complained to the Office for Judicial Complaints, suggesting that Mrs Blair acted in an unjust and discriminatory way, and suggesting that she might have treated a non-religious person less leniently.
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thabet
Sh. Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi was dismissed from his job as the leader of Friday prayers at a Damascus mosque for using his sermon to criticise the Grand Mufti. He was responding to these remarks made by the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sh Ahmed Hassoun:
(via DeenPort.)
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thabet
I suggest some of you who have an interest in this sort of thing head over to Midwinterspring’s latest post.
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thabet
The British Social Attitudes survey shows how ‘perceptions’ are just as important as ‘reality’:
A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.
Around 3% of the population in England and Wales, less than 1% of the population in Scotland, and barely 0.1% of the population in Northern Ireland, would be call themselves Muslim (and all these people must be considered ‘nominally’ Muslim for the purposes of statistics, unless the census is accompanied with a detailed checklist on what these individuals believe). How then can Britain be even remotely ‘divided’ along ‘religious’ lines? Where are these ‘divisions’? There is nothing even close to genuine religious divides that are part of Britain’s history. There are other, far more pressing divisions, which threaten the country; it is a shame these are not fully debated (especially not by politicians who want to have ‘debates’ on cheap political scoring points).
The attitudes identified by the BSA are not new though, and that might be most alarming aspect. How much of these attitudes are related to the drip-feed of stories about ‘cultural backwardness’ of Muslims, or magnifying problems their context, or even just outright lies?
As Andrew Brown notes, while ‘freedom of speech’ is trumpeted as a ‘core value’ by numerous liberal pundits, especially an act of faith which distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’, the survey shows many Britons don’t buy into that argument:
This makes odd reading in the face of continuing propaganda about how freedom of speech is one of the core values we defend against Islamists.
This might seem odd given the BSA also show Britons are also becoming socially liberal on issues such as homosexuality and cohabitation.
Or it may just be that liberals, like their ‘enemies’, are forced into adopting cultural protectionism when they feel under threat?
(The two newspapers I link to above also highlight their editorial biases. The Daily Telegraph concentrates on the suspicion towards religious groups, especially Muslims. The Guardian meanwhile sticks with reporting the views on social liberalism.)
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arif
But what about emails, sms, texts containing scriptures and polemics people bombard each other with on daily basis? Egypt mufti wants to put prayer ringtone on silent.
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arif
German public schools now teach Islam, why not, USA is in the waiting – or fear – mode I guess.
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aziz
Razib says
a form of Islam which requires less marking off from the “kufar,” and implicit dominance of Muslim norms in the public space, can persist and flourish. Shared practices and values, broadly construed, is entirely compatible with starkly contradictory views on the nature of God, or the appropriate manner in which to worship God within religious establishments.
and I agree, though I do disagree with his larger premise in that I believe it’s precisely the multicultural tolerance he derides, and not a generalized “Protestantism”, which is the cultural foundation for America. The latter derives from the former, not the other way around.
Critics of multiculturalism like to mis-represent it as an orthodoxy unto itself, but its actually the absence of one. This is why America can be simultaneously deeply Protestantist and also the greatest Islamic country on Earth.
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aasem
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thabet
Charles Tripp says the politics needs to be put back into analysis of ‘Islamist politics’ in his review of Gilles Kepel’s Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East and Ali A. Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilization.
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thabet
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thabet
Rough and ready view of the Enlightenment and religion:
1. French Enlightenment: Eliminate or replace religion.
2. English Enlightenment: Politically control religion.
3. Scottish Enlightenment: Ignore or dismiss religion.
4. German Enlightenment: Rehabilitate religion.
This is a very simplistic view (I can see many weaknesses), put up largely to provoke discussion.
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thabet
Emir of Qatar ‘helped Jack Straw win election’:
The justice secretary’s help in fixing the gift was used by the Labour party to woo the Muslim vote, it was claimed this weekend.
MPs, security experts and moderate Islamic leaders said Straw’s role raised serious concerns about the way some foreign states were trying to sway the religious views of British Muslims.
Straw wrote a letter of introduction to help his friend and political ally Lord Patel of Blackburn persuade the emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, to part with £1.5m.
It is always worth investigating where money coming into mosques and Muslim institutions (usually registered charities), but I am not sure Haras Rafiq or Patrick Mercer, both quoted in The Times article above, have much in the way of credibility if this is the game they wish to play. Rafiq is part of the Sufi Muslim Council (enough said), and Mercer has not properly answered questions about his role in the terror headline scandal involving Glen Jenvey.
Jack Straw’s links with the Blackburn Muslim community were subject to attention during the 2005 General Election, most notably a campaign by Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, and (separately) Craig Murray, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who stood as a candidate against Straw.
These links to Muslim groups were under scrutiny again last week, although this time from MI5:
A senior security figure who has seen the report said it underlined concern among cabinet colleagues that Straw could be “too close” to the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), a prominent Muslim umbrella group. The government formally severed links with the group after a blazing row over extremism earlier this year.
“Jack’s a bit too close to the MCB — he sometimes appears to suggest they are the only game in town. There is a concern that proximity to them may colour [his] judgment,” the insider said.
Since we don’t live in a millet system, it might be better to reduce reliance on these acronyms altogether.
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thabet
A member of the Church of England’s ethical advisory group described protectionist attitudes towards Africa as “a fucking disgrace” at an event hosted by the Phoney Grinning Lying Warmongering Bastard Faux Faith Foundation on Wednesday night.
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thabet
A report which explores the philosophical and theological perspectives on what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today has been published by the Centre for Middle East and Islamic Studies at Cambridge:
The group agreed that Muslims should assert and teach what they see to be the truth of their faith, but also recognise the existence of different religions and the right of others to do the same. Their study urges Muslims to identify shared values between Islam and other world views, pointing out the Qu’ran’s emphasis on qualities such as good neighbourliness, charity, hospitality and non-aggression.
The report also redefines a number of terms which the authors believe have been misinterpreted. It notes, for example, that both Muslims and non-Muslims often have “skewed understanding of the term Shari’ah, which conjures up images of floggings and beheadings.”
In fact, it stresses, Shari’ah is a way of life based on an ethical code that emphasises dignity, equality and justice for all. Islam, it says, teaches the equality of all human beings regardless of gender.
The report was produced by 26 British Islamademics, and there’s a foreward by the Grand Mufti of Bosnia. It’s 80-odd pages long so I haven’t in great detail yet, only skimmed through it quickly: they seem to be seeking to reconcile topics such as human rights and the sharia; politics, citizenship and God’s sovereignty; and secularism and religion.
(Via Yahya.)
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thabet
Is so-called New Atheism in the US an elitist movement?
(I am a little wary of someone asserting “it’s obvious” without some data.)
Theos, a Christian think-tank, did a survey to look at religion, class and atheism in the UK too:
One of the questions, adapted from an earlier BBC/ICM survey, asked people not simply what they believed (about God) but whether they had changed their mind, and by cross-tabulating these results with standard demographic questions, we can get a reasonably detailed picture of the class composition of atheism and theism in the UK.
[I]n summary the study found that lifelong theists (“I have always believed in God”) are disproportionately from lower socio-economic grades (DE: semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers or those unemployed or on state benefits), whereas lifelong atheists (“I have never believed in God”) are disproportionately from upper social grades (AB: higher or intermediate managerial or administrative professionals).
No surprise there. The default position in the UK (and seemingly in humans themselves) has long been belief in God, so you would expect theism to be a mass movement and atheism a more select one.
What is interesting – and surprising – is that “converts” to theism (“I believe in God now but have not always done so”) are disproportionately from upper and upper-middle social grades (ABC1: as above plus supervisory, clerical, junior managerial or administrative professionals), whereas “converts” to atheism (“I used to believe in God but I no longer do so”) are disproportionately from lower social grades (DE).
Your thoughts?
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thabet
A man dressed in some of the most expensive garms money can buy is lecturing some of the poorest people on the planet about the dangers of materialism:
Pope Benedict has warned that a form of colonialism continues to blight Africa.
Opening a three-week synod of African bishops, he said political colonialism was over.
But he said the developed world continued to export materialism – which he called “toxic spiritual rubbish” – to the continent.
Benedict XVI is also planning a visit to the UK in the new year, including a stop in Northern Ireland which has upset a few people:
And they have revealed they will be working with Protestants right across the UK in a bid to co-ordinate opposition to any visit by Pope Benedict XVI.
Mr McCrea had posted his view that a papal visit would “face the vent of Protestant opposition” in a strongly worded statement on his website recently.
Andrew Brown is right to note that the visit of the Pope will be another nail in the coffin of the Church of England, an institution which was always largely a political vehicle. Its time as an arm of the state is now over (the country no longer faces invasion by Catholic empires) and is on the way to being disestablished, especially as the Anglican Right grows stronger.
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thabet
The double standards of Daniel Pipes (which are not surprising).
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thabet
Inayat Bunglawala writes on a topic which will get him panned amongst most Muslims:
The ongoing change of Bunglawala is quite interesting (consider his admission that he was wrong about the publication of The Satanic Verses). I wonder how the hierarchy in the Muslim Council of Britain see him?
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thabet
Egyptian authority will issue an edict banning ‘full veils’:
Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, dean of al-Azhar university, called full-face veiling a custom that has nothing to do with the Islamic faith.
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thabet
Not surprising really:
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thabet
Buried in this lengthy and typically meandering essay (good luck reading it) by Slavoj Zizek is this interesting fact claim:
Zizek’s contention is that failure of leftist movements leads to an upsurge in fundamentalism (he cites any number of Muslim countries). That might be an interesting point for debate, but I found the above interesting in and of itself. Anyone who knows more (i.e. Americans) care to comment? The source for the above claim is What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.
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thabet
Shabbir Akhtar is a very interesting figure, though many of you may not have heard of him. Even if you know who he is, you will be hard pressed to find out what he’s been up to for the last decade or so.
