Egypt’s Coptic Christians to shun Islamists in next week’s presidential vote
Egypt’s Coptic Christians complained of discrimination under Hosni Mubarak but fear it may get worse if an Islamist takes his place in next week’s presidential election.
Long-suppressed Islamists already dominate parliament. Islamist contenders for the presidency say Christians, who form about a tenth of Egypt’s 82 million mostly Muslim people, will not be sidelined, but mistrustful Copts will not vote for them.
The single biggest Coptic grievance and the source of most sectarian violence in Egypt is legislation that makes it easy to build a mosque but hard to construct or even repair a church.
A new mosque needs only a permit from the local district. A church needs extra paper work and the president himself must sign off, a task Mubarak eventually delegated to city governors.
Coptic voter Medhat Malak hopes those discriminatory rules will be changed if his choice for president wins – Mubarak’s last prime minister and former military commander Ahmed Shafiq.
He worries that an Islamist head of state would make life more uncomfortable for Copts, who blame ultra-orthodox Salafi Muslims for a surge of attacks on churches since Mubarak’s overthrow in a popular uprising 15 months ago.
“Islamist policies on Christians are vague. It is possible they would restrict our freedoms to gain popularity among strict Muslims at our expense,” said Malak, 33, whose Cairo church has been the centre of a row over whether it has a proper license.
Catholic order knew for months about scandal of popular priest’s child: Vatican official
Leaders of the scandal-plagued Legionaries of Christ religious order knew that their most famous priest had fathered a child for many months before they acknowledged it this week, a top Vatican official told Reuters on Wednesday.
The once influential religious order, still in crisis following revelations that its founder was a sexual abuser with two secret families, suffered another major blow on Tuesday when American Father Thomas Williams admitted to having fathered a child with a woman in Rome.
The question left hanging was how long the order’s leaders knew about Williams’s secret life and why they continued to let him preach, teach and appear on television around the world, particularly in the United States.
“I found out about it this year,” Italian Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, who was appointed by Pope Benedict in July, 2010 to oversee the restructuring of the order, told Reuters in a telephone conversation from his home.
Asked if he meant since the beginning of this year, he said “yes”.
Williams was the public face of the order, appearing often on American television networks to explain Church teachings. He was the author of more than a dozen books, including one called “Knowing Right From Wrong: A Christian Guide to Conscience.”
He was a big draw on the lecture circuit at Catholic institutions and had two websites, both of which were shut down on Tuesday after the order issued its statement about him.
With the post-Gaddafi state weak, Libyans look to God for help
Mohamed Salem believes it was divine intervention that saved the Muslim holy site where he works from being destroyed.
In early March, word reached the keepers of the ornate shrine, the most important of its kind in Libya, that ultra-conservative Salafis were on their way to destroy it as part of a campaign to wipe out any symbols they see as idolatrous.
The curators sent for help. Volunteer militia units came from nearby towns. They surrounded the shrine complex – which houses the tomb of the 15th-century Sufi scholar Abdel Salam al-Asmar – with pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft weapons, and waited to repel the attack.
Then a sandstorm, rare at that time of year, whipped up and shrouded the mosque from view. The attack never came.
“The dust was so thick and the wind so strong you couldn’t see your hand in front of you,” said Salem, a caretaker and religious teacher at the complex. “God protected the grave of this scholarly man and protected us from harm.”
Since last year’s revolt ended Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule over Libya, people have grown used to looking to their own resources, or to God, to help them out, because they feel they cannot count on their government.
The struggle over this shrine in Zlitan, about 160 km (90 miles) west of the Libyan capital, is the story of Libya as it struggles to re-shape itself after Gaddafi’s rule.
from Photographers Blog:
Village of joy
By Ueslei Marcelino
Deep in the Brazilian heartland, where the upper reaches of the Amazon Basin dissolve into the central plateau, I had the opportunity last week to spend a few days in the village of joy.
What I dubbed the village of joy is the home of the Yawalapiti tribe. One day last week, a group of us were escorted into the Xingu National Park by members of the government's National Indian Foundation, and arrived at the circular Yawalapiti village under an enormous full moon.
The mood was one of celebration. The Yawalapiti, one of the 14 tribes living inside the Xingu National Park, were preparing a new "quarup," a ritual held over several days to honor in death a person of great importance to them. In its original form, the quarup was a funeral ritual intended to bring the dead back to life. Today, it is a celebration of life, death and rebirth. From the very oldest to the very youngest, all the members of the Yawalapiti tribe participate in the preparations.
They wrestled, danced, fished and prepared food for the main event which will happen in August. Yawalapiti warriors held wrestling matches in a sort of qualifying round to select the best team to confront warriors from other tribes. From the inter-tribal event during the quarup will emerge the great champion.
Wonderful images, the indigenous people has much beauty and mystery to be unraveled. Congratulations for the photographs.
New York kosher law is kosher, not against religious freedom, court rules
New York’s kosher-labelling rules interfere with freedom of religion about as much as St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, a federal appeals court has decided.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld New York’s Kosher Law Protection Act, passed in 2004, ruling that it does not interfere with religion in any way and exists solely for preventing fraud.
“The labeling law has the secular purpose of protecting against fraud by informing a consumer that a particular seller believes a product is kosher,” the decision released Thursday said, affirming Brooklyn federal court judge Nina Gershon’s 2011 opinion.
Thursday’s case was the second attempt by Commack Kosher, a deli and butcher shop in Commack, New York, to convince the Circuit that New York’s kosher law improperly interferes with freedom of religion.
The first time around, the appeals court allowed the shop’s 1996 lawsuit, saying the law at the time wrongly stepped into religious matters by defining the term “kosher.” In light of the circuit decision, the legislature passed a revised law in 2004.
On Thursday, the appeals court rejected Commack’s attempt at a second bite of the apple.
Unlike its earlier version, the 2004 Kosher Act “did not define kosher or authorize state inspectors to determine the kosher nature of the products,” wrote Judge Christopher Droney. He was joined by Judges John Walker and Gerald Lynch.
In U.S., Kansas lawmakers pass an effective ban on Islamic law
Kansas lawmakers have passed legislation intended to prevent the state courts or agencies from using Islamic or other non-U.S. laws in making decisions, a measure critics have blasted as an embarrassment to the state.
The legislation, which passed 33-3 in the state Senate on Friday and 120-0 previously in the House, is widely known in Kansas as the “Sharia bill,” because the perceived goal of supporters is to keep Islamic code from being recognized in Kansas.
The bill was sent to Republican Governor Sam Brownback, who has not indicated whether he will sign it.
In interviews on Saturday, a supporter of the bill said it reassured foreigners in Kansas that state laws and the U.S. Constitution will protect them. But an opponent said the bill’s real purpose is to hold Islam out for ridicule.
Kansas Representative Peggy Mast, a lead sponsor of the bill for the past two years, said the goal was to make sure there was no confusion that American laws prevailed on American soil.
Mast said research showed more than 50 cases around the United States where courts or government agencies took laws from Sharia or other legal systems into account in decision-making.
Commonly, they involved divorce, child custody, property division or other cases where the woman was treated unfairly, Mast said.
Czech restitution may unlock vast church lands, mostly for the Catholic Church
Wires hang out of the walls, windows are smashed and the grass grows tall in the gardens of the once-elegant archbishop’s residence in Cervena Recice, a 16th-century chateau left to rot after the communists took over in 1948.
Bent on building a society free of religion, the communists seized the chateau, of the diocese of Prague, and thousands of other church properties and threw clergymen into labor camps and prisons or forced them into exile.
When Communist rule ended in 1989, the residence was caught up in a disagreement over who it belonged to, part of a bigger dispute that has tied up about six percent of the Czech Republic’s total forests and fields that once belonged to mostly Christian churches.
Now the government plans to return $4 billion of property and pay $3 billion in financial compensation over 30 years – about 3.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product combined – to the churches, about four-fifths of it to the Catholic church.
The plan, which a clear majority of Czechs oppose, was approved by the lower house of parliament in an initial vote in February when the government was enjoying the strongest majority in 20 years. Although a political crisis in April has reduced that majority to a handful of votes, the bill is still expected to pass.
“What has been stolen, has to be returned, otherwise there is no meaningful democracy here,” said Petr Gazdik, caucus leader of the coalition’s conservative TOP 09 party, the main backer of the restitution plan.
Read the full story by Robert Mueller here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
China suffers from moral crisis, corruption and lawlessness, Dalai Lama says
China is beset by a moral crisis, widespread corruption and lawlessness, leading millions of Chinese to seek solace in Buddhism, Tibet’s exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, said on Monday.
The Dalai Lama was in London to receive the $1.7 million Templeton prize for his work affirming the spiritual dimension of life.
Speaking to reporters before the award ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, he said millions of young Chinese were showing an interest in spirituality.
“Look at China now, the moral crisis, corruption – immense,” he said, adding that China had “no proper rule of law”.
A survey two years ago found that 200 million Chinese followed Buddhism, including many who followed Tibetan Buddhism, he said.
“Tibetan Buddhist culture I think (is of) immense benefit to millions of Chinese who are really passing through a difficult period like that,” he said.
Read the full story here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
People in the country do not know what to beleive, they have to worry about every subtle aspect in their lives, they are skeptical the food the purchase, the beggers in the streets are mostly organised, civil frauds are so overwelmed, people have the power in the legal system are unimaginable curropted. that can definitely explained why the attitude of the arbitrators are so inferior towards the weak groups, what absurd is that the person who decides the case even shifts the blame to the weak side. Lawyers is not able to bring their talent into full play. Corruption has been devastating the country
Christians rejoice and frown at Obama pro-gay marriage stance
Some rejoiced in the U.S. president’s courage. Others predicted hellfire at the polls. One pastor said he would reflect on the matter in prayer.
President Barack Obama’s announcement on Wednesday that he supported same-sex marriage stirred impassioned responses at places of worship across the United States, underscoring the risk he took in coming out in favor of such a controversial measure.
Gay and liberal Christians found renewed enthusiasm for Obama, who had disappointed many on the left when his 2008 message of hope and change ran into the realities of governing.
“It just makes me giddy with joy. I have been bouncing around all day,” said the Reverend Annie Steinberg-Behrman, a United Church of Christ pastor in Berkeley, California, who married her partner in 2004.
But some conservative Christians who cite the Bible in opposing gay marriage have also found a reason to campaign against Obama when he seeks re-election November 6 against presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
“This could definitely get them riled up … hopefully,” said Caryl Scales, a member of Hampton Road Baptist Church in DeSoto, Texas. “I’m not happy with it. I believe scripture. God’s word says gay marriage is wrong.”
National religious leaders with a weightier voice also came down against Obama.
When Same-Sex Marriage Was a Christian Rite
http://anthropologist.livejournal.com/13 14574.html
Jewish pilgrims stay away from Lag Ba’omer festival in Tunisia
Security concerns and threats from some Salafi Islamists kept thousands of Jewish pilgrims away from the annual Lag Ba’omer celebration on the Tunisian island of Djerba this week.
No more than 500 pilgrims attended the religious festival celebrated a month after Passover at one of Africa’s oldest synagogues on Wednesday and Thursday – an event that used to attract thousands of visitors.
Numbers have plummeted since the overthrow of authoritarian secular leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in a popular uprising in January last year, leading to months of political uncertainty, and the rise to power in October of an Islamist-led government.
Israel issued a travel advisory urging its citizens ahead of the festival to “avoid” visits to Tunisia this year, citing information suggesting they might come under attack.
Last year just 100 took part because pilgrims were reluctant to wade into the charged political environment of the Arab Spring, and organisers cancelled traditional celebrations because of security concerns.
This year, the ceremonies – which mark the deaths of ancient Jewish clerics, including a second-century mystic – went ahead amid tight security with police and soldiers lining the streets.
Read the full story by Anis Mili here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
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