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The Guardian — United Kingdom, 2003-08-28
A contentious granite monument inscribed with the ten commandments and other religious references was finally removed from public
view at the Alabama state judicial building yesterday, in the face of furious protests. The removal was carried out in response
to an order by a federal judge that the monument's presence violated the constitutional separation of state and church.
...
The Rev Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said: "This is a tremendous
victory for the rule of law and for respect for religious diversity."
...
The Alabama chief justice, Roy Moore, had the monument installed, at night and on his own initiative, two years ago and it
became a big issue in the state. Last year a federal judge ordered its removal and last week the US supreme court declined to
hear Mr Moore's appeal against the order, indicating that it did not believe it had any merit. After Mr Moore refused to comply
with the order his eight fellow justices voted to remove the monument and Mr Moore was suspended on ethics charges.
...
The Alabama judiciary currently applies a selective interpretation of the commandments, specifically the injunction,
Thou shalt not kill. It is seventh in the list of states applying the death penalty, and has executed 28 people since
it was reintroduced in 1976.
The Boston Globe, 2003-08-17
EVER SINCE SEPT. 11, 2001, American scholars, pundits, and ordinary citizens have not hesitated to offer their opinions about the
state of Islam. Critics say the religion is long overdue for the kind of a thoroughgoing reformation that modernized and diversified
Christianity in the 16th century. More sympathetic voices argue that today's Islam is not an ideological monolith but a thriving
culture, with as many Islams as there are Muslims. But what has been virtually ignored is that there are Muslims, both in the
Muslim world and outside it, who want nothing to do with Islam, moderate or otherwise.
Most keep their feelings to themselves. Those Muslims who disown or even criticize their faith publicly are likely to be accused of
apostasy, a crime punishable by death under Islamic law—a penalty enforced in a number of Muslim nations, including Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. But more commonly, the punishment for speaking freely is a kind of social death as the apostate is
ostracized by family, friends, and community. Muslim moderates and Western scholars of Islam frequently cite the Koranic verse
that affirms there is no compulsion in religion. Yet the weight of Islamic tradition, including the Koran, compels a Muslim to
remain Muslim.
The Indian-born and English-educated Ibn Warraq, 57, is among the most prominent and outspoken Muslim apostates alive today.
His 1995 book "Why I Am Not a Muslim" was an impassioned polemic against almost 1,400 years of Muslim dogma and
its effect on the Islamic world. The more recent collections he has edited—"What the Koran Really Says"
(2002) and this year's "Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out"—present less confrontational, more scholarly
lines of attack.
Still, Warraq (the name is a pseudonym) aims to skewer the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of a faith that commands the allegiance
of a billion people—as well as the hypocrisies of those Western defenders of Islam who would not tolerate its strictures
in their own cultures.
To his admirers in the West and in the Muslim world, Warraq is a latter-day Voltaire who may herald an Islamic enlightenment.
...
Warraq's book cuts against the ecumenical, feel-good vision of Islam as a "religion of peace" found everywhere
from President Bush's speeches to popular books such as Karen Armstrong's "Islam: A Short History."...
Warraq also contends that Islam's apologists are so eager to perpetuate the "myth" of a tolerant Islam that
accorded liberty to its non-Muslim subjects that they concentrate almost exclusively on the relatively decent treatment of
Christians and Jews, the so-called fellow People of the Book, while ignoring the harsher fate of Arab pagans, Zoroastrians,
Hindus, and Buddhists. "Are they not human?" he asks.
...
Warraq is particularly critical of Noah Feldman, the NYU law professor whom the US government has enlisted to assist in the
drafting of Iraq's new constitution. If Feldman's new book "After Jihad" is any indication of what that document
will look like, Warraq is concerned. "How can Feldman believe there is any compatibility at all between Islamist movements
and democratic principles?" he asks. "They are democrats only in that they will use elections to take power. One man,
one vote, one time. The first people who suffer are women, and after that non-Muslims. The level of denial from Western liberals
renders me speechless."...
See also:
Washington Post, 2003-08-16
The Anglican Church is currently is a state of crisis over the controversy of same-sex marriage and
the ordination of a gay bishop. However, argues this journalist, perhaps they should be more concerned about the fact
that the future head of the church, Prince Charles, is currently "living in sin" according to Anglican
moral precepts. Further, the Church tolerates polygamy among some of its African adherents.
What is it about Anglicans and sex? With millions of children starving around the globe, thousands dying each day from AIDs and
sections of world capitals such as Baghdad and Washington turned into free-fire zones, bishops in the Anglican Communion,
including the Episcopal Church USA, have been summoned to an extraordinary meeting in England by their spiritual leader,
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury. Once gathered, they will take up the subject of fleshly union between consenting
Anglican adults of the same gender, one of whom happens to be an Episcopalian bishop. One would think that Anglican clergy had
better things to do with their time....They have, truth be told, rather sticky sexual situations in their own back yards.
...
...Charles, the Prince of Wales, the queen's eldest son and heir apparent to the throne who is also the ex-husband
of Diana, the late Princess of Wales. His accession will create what might be regarded as an unholy mess for the archbishop,
who presides over an Anglican Communion that teaches its members to abstain from having sex without the benefit of matrimony.
Word of that theological prohibition may not have reached Prince Charles, the future king, who takes on the title of supreme
governor of the Church of England when he assumes the crown. Charles, you see, moved in with his longtime mistress, Camilla
Parker Bowles, about two weeks ago.
...I am galled by the sheer hypocrisy of church leaders who would deny official recognition to same-sex couples in
committed loving relationships while simultaneously giving a wink and a nod to a future Church of England overseer who thumbs
his nose at the marriage convention.
Which gets me to my African brothers. Bishops of the Anglican Church in Africa, with a few exceptions, seem the most ruffled
by the thought of sharing their exalted positions with newly confirmed, openly gay American Bishop V. Gene Robinson. They, along
with their conservative counterparts in the United States and England, would probably take a walk if the Anglican Communion ever
got around to sanctioning same-sex unions.
But how far does their puritanical streak extend?
Well, it seems they are on board with the idea of marriage between a man and woman in lifelong union—that "monogamy is
God's plan," as delegates to the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference put it in 1988. But some of their flock on the
African continent (and, it is said, one or two of the bishops themselves) are also into the practice of stretching God's
plan to make marriage an arrangement between a man and several women—or polygamy as it is otherwise known. And what
sayeth the Anglican Communion to that?
Well, coming together in prayerful union about 15 years ago under the eyes of the archbishop of Canterbury, the "visible
symbol of Anglicanism," the assembled clergy decided that a polygamist who joined the church could keep his wives if his
community went along with the arrangement, but that he couldn't take on any more—a policy reaffirmed at the 1998 Lambeth
Conference.
Recognizing that they couldn't stop the practice—and not wanting to lose converts to the growing African church—the
primates of the Anglican Communion bought the argument, posited by Africa's polygamy proponents, that it would be unkind
for new converts to Christianity to discard their extra wives; that putting away the extras would cause social deprivation
and be regarded as rejection of African culture....
Inter Press Service News Agency, 2003-08-08
LAGOS - A claim by an Islamic group that polio vaccines, being administered on children, contain
anti-fertility agents poses serious setback for government's efforts to eradiate the disease by the end of the year,
according to health officials. Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, leader of the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, told
journalists in the northern city of Kaduna recently that the United States, through the World Health Organisation (WHO),
has been seeking to reduce the populations of Third World and Muslim countries since 1975.
...
Ahmed called for suspension of the use of oral polio vaccine until it is fully investigated by competent authorities
and found to be safe.
...
But Tom Mshindi, Unicef's Chief Communications officer in Nigeria, has refuted the Islamic group's allegation, describing
it as a plan by a small group of people to destroy the achievement of the government towards total eradication of polio.
"The claim is without basis. It is unfortunate," Mshindi said. The UN Children's Fund (Unicef), he said,
was ready to work with any agency or group wishing to carry out a test on the vaccine.
See also:
Globe and Mail — Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2003-08-07
Calcutta—A film criticizing Mother Teresa has been dropped from a festival in Calcutta that will celebrate her beatification,
after her missionary order objected, an organizer said. The Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Teresa to care for
the poor, sick and dying, objected to Hell's Angel, a British Channel 4 documentary based on a 1995 book by Christopher Hitchens.
The book accused Mother Teresa of consolling and supporting the wealthy and powerful while preaching resignation to the poor.
The order had also objected to Mother Teresa: In the Name of God's Poor, starring Geraldine Chaplin. That film will still be
screened, the Rev. C.M. Paul, chief organizer of the Celebrations Committee, told The Associated Press Wednesday.
...
Last December, Pope John Paul II approved a miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, paving the way for her beatification.
A second miracle would make her eligible for sainthood.
The Irish Times, 2003-08-02
Clergy and bishops who distribute the Vatican's latest publication describing homosexual activity as "evil"
could face prosecution under incitement to hatred legislation. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has warned that
the language in the 12-page booklet is so strong it could be interpreted as being in breach of the Act. Published by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it states that Catholics have a duty to oppose the introduction and operation
of legislation recognising same-sex unions. It identifies politicians as having a duty to vote against any such moves.
...
Ms Aisling Reidy, director of the ICCL, warned yesterday that the statement could be in violation of the 1989 Incitement
to Hatred Act. Those convicted under the Act can face jail terms of up to six months. "The document itself may not
violate the Act, but if you were to use the document to say that gays are evil, it is likely to give rise to hatred, which
is against the Act," according to Ms Reidy. "The wording is very strong and certainly goes against the spirit
of the legislation." Under the Act literature which is threatening, abusive or insulting, linked with the intent of
stirring up hatred, is illegal.
canada.com — Ottawa Citizen, 2003-08-01
The Vatican took the offensive against same-sex marriage Thursday and warned Catholic politicians around the world that
legalizing such unions would be "gravely immoral." In an attempt to stop the growing movement toward legalization
of same-sex unions in Europe and North America, the Vatican said "no ideology can erase from the human spirit the
certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman."
...
In Thursday's 12-page rebuttal of arguments in favour of same-sex marriage, the Vatican says "society owes its continued
survival to the family, which is founded on marriage." The document was approved by Pope John Paul and calls on Catholics
around the world to oppose not only the legal recognition of same-sex unions, but also the adoption of children by gays.
...
Monsignor Louis Dicaire of the Assembly of Quebec Bishops said the document didn't say anything new."It repeats rules
against homosexual marriage that have existed for 20 years, and prohibitions against homosexuality that are 18 centuries old."...
Ottawa's Archbishop Marcel Gervais has written Chretien a letter warning that as a Catholic he has lost his way if he supports
same-sex marriage, and Calgary's Bishop Fred Henry said Chretien risks his soul if he legalizes same-sex marriage. Henry suggested
Chretien risks "his eternal salvation" if he makes same-sex marriages legal. "It doesn't mean I'm throwing him
to hell," said Henry. "I don't know what it's going to take to save his soul." As a Catholic politician, Henry
said, Chretien cannot separate his faith from his political duties. "Your faith is not something you can take off like a
cloak or a mantle and hang up at the door."
Webmaster's comment:
When priests start telling political leaders to tow the line or risk eternal damnation, what we have is an
extreme violation of church/state separation. (On a lighter note, one CBC commentator suggested that Chrétien could still
get into heaven by bribing Saint Peter with a Senate post!)
Bishop Henry wants Chrétien to give Christianity priority over all other considerations in making political decisions. Exactly
the opposite must be done: religious dogma must remain in the private sphere. Political leaders are answerable to the citizens
who elect them, not to some gang of supernaturalist blackmailers who claim to speak for the King of the Universe.
Bishop Dicaire is right about one thing: homophobia is a Christian tradition dating back to the foundations of that cult.
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