International and Interreligious News

Peace Covenant Program on New Year's Eve

2008-12-31T12:42:00.002-05:00

This New Years Eve don't fill up on the spirits, come to the Sanctuary of Eternal Truth and let the Spirit fill you.

The School of Metaphysics is hosting a Peace Covenant at the SET, with singing, prayers of Peace and a reading of the Peace Covenant at midnight. The doors will open at 11:00.

Please join us in this worth while cause as the Peace> > Covenant is read around the world at the beginning of the New Year, let's bring wishes of peace to all mankind. SET (Sanctuary of Eternal Truth) 1002 East Market St. New Albany, In 47150 812-945-3707 Directions to SET from Louisville via I64 West across the Sherman Minton Bridge, Take the 1st exit, continue> straight on Elm, turn right on 10th St. Go two blocks The church is on the corner of 10th and Market. Alternate directions from Louisville on I65 North. Take exit 1 and follow signs to New Albany, go up and over I65 and follow to New Albany, go thru 3 traffic lights> turn left on 10th St., go 1 block and the church is on the corner of 10th and Market.

Louisville's Jewish community faces change; Organizations seek ways to handle societal changes

2008-08-27T09:34:00.002-04:00

Courier-Journal

August 24, 2008
By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com

Growing up in a Connecticut suburb, Ben Slen attended a Jewish day school and was active in his synagogue and other Jewish community activities.
He found many of those same offerings in Louisville, long home to a small but thriving Jewish community, when he moved here seven years ago.
"It's important to have a vibrant community that has a number of different activities," said Slen, 33, the father of two preschoolers. "… That's something I hope we can preserve."
But he and other Jewish residents are recognizing that preserving those offerings is a growing challenge as some disappear and others feel the strain of population shifts and tight budgets.
In recent months, the city's only non-Orthodox Jewish day school closed, as did its only kosher restaurant.
Two synagogues are in merger talks.
The Jewish Community Center is negotiating a consolidation with another agency.
And some are talking about moving the community center, located in the St. Matthews area, and other agencies further east in Jefferson County, now home to nearly half of Louisville's increasingly spread-out Jewish population.
It all adds up to the biggest institutional flux in the Jewish community since the 1950s and '60s, when families left Louisville's urban core for its eastern neighborhoods and suburbs.
Today, Louisville's Jewish population is aging and slightly declining, with large numbers of Jews married to people of other faiths -- echoing trends in other Jewish communities in the Midwest and beyond.
Though small -- at roughly 8,300 today -- the Jewish population has played an influential role in Louisville since immigrants began arriving from Europe in significant numbers in the 1840s, producing such figures as legendary U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.
Its members today are prominent in medical and legal professions, interfaith activities, social service agencies and politics, including Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson and U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd.
"The good news is that the Jewish community in Louisville is fully assimilated, and no longer do members of the Jewish community feel that they have to live in the same neighborhood, that they have to attend the same cultural events, that they have to attend the same athletic facilities, and so on," said Helene Kramer, co-chair of a committee exploring a merger of the community center with the Jewish Community Federation of Louisville, an umbrella fundraising and policy-making body.
Pressure on synagogues
But that puts new pressures on synagogues and other organizations that count on the loyalty and attendance of Jewish residents.
"We are in competition for both the Jewish and the non-Jewish customer," Kramer said.
"And we cannot take members of the Jewish community for granted," she said. "Not only do we have to offer programming, we have to offer great programming."
The community center -- which offers fitness programs, performing arts, summer camps and Jewish educational programs -- currently has a balanced budget of $4.5 million, executive director Robin Stratton said.
But it faces competition from other health clubs and cultural centers and has a 50-year old facility prone to expensive breakdowns, she said.
The center has more than 8,000 members, about 38 percent of whom are Jewish, she said.
It closed Café J, its on-site kosher restaurant, because of declining demand, although it continues to offer kosher catering.
The federation -- which raises money for an array of Jewish programs and agencies -- has seen fundraising levels remain flat for the past five years, its most recent annual campaign raising $2.8 million.
Combining the two agencies could "create a very strong team," Kramer said.
While Jewish leaders have pondered moving the community center and other offices to eastern Jefferson County, no decision is imminent, and some prefer the current St. Matthews site because it is centrally located.
Synagogues ponder consolidation
Besides the proposed federation-community center merger, two Conservative-denomination synagogues also discussing a consolidation -- Adath Jeshurun and Keneseth Israel.
"It's a demographic inevitability that you have to consolidate," said Slen, an Adath Jeshurun member. "I just don't think there will be as many people to support as many institutions as there were in the past."
But Michael Jackman, a Keneseth Israel member, believes the opposite.
Having more, smaller synagogues would enable people to be in touch with issues in various neighborhoods and ensures that "social action favors the city and people don't just retreat to the suburbs. (That) is a strong value to me as a committed Jew," he said.
The congregations are studying the merger proposal and plan to vote on it in November.
The federation is trying to get more such opinions from rank-and-file members of the Jewish community. It's conducting a written survey on what institutions people value and where they should be located, and it's also planning focus groups.
These actions follow the release of a 2006 study indicating that the local Jewish population has slightly declined since the last study in 1991 -- from 8,700 to 8,307. The drop occurred despite an influx of hundreds of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
Twenty-six percent of Jewish residents are older than 65 -- twice the Jefferson County average.
"Louisville is facing the problem which many Midwestern communities are facing," said Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. "The Jewish community has moved significantly toward the Sunbelt regions and coastal regions, and so the Jewish communities are literally shrinking in some of these communities."
Nationally, the Jewish population declined from 5.5 million to 5.2 million between 1990 and 2001, according to two major surveys. Others estimate there are 6 million Jews in America.
Presbyterians, Episcopalians and other religious groups that share characteristics with the Jewish community, such as high rates of education, have also experienced declines in birth rates and membership.
Interfaith marriages
Another major demographic shift is the high rate of intermarriage involving Jews.
Thirty-seven percent of Louisville households including Jews are headed by interfaith couples.
That's similar to national figures, with higher rates among younger couples, leading to fears of a dilution of Jewish heritage.
The Louisville survey didn't ask interfaith couples how they were raising their children, but a recent Boston survey found 60 percent of children in such families being raised Jewish.
"It puts the whole conversation of intermarriage on its head," said Rabbi Joe Rooks Rapport of The Temple, Louisville's largest synagogue, which has many interfaith couples. "That says in theory that intermarriage would be a population gain."
The federation is promoting new efforts such as a study group for non-Jewish mothers raising their children as Jewish.
"We're not looking at it as maybe our grandparents looked at it, maybe as a loss," said Sara Wagner, who is organizing a study group for non-Jewish mothers who are married to Jews. "But this is reality, this is who we are."
Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.

Dalai Lama, battling exhaustion, cancels trips

2008-08-27T09:32:00.000-04:00

August 27, 2008
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:20 a.m. ET

DHARMSALA, India (AP) -- The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was suffering from exhaustion and has canceled two planned international trips to undergo medical tests, his office said Wednesday.
The 73-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner had been ''experiencing some discomfort in the past couple of days,'' a statement from his office said, adding that his doctors had diagnosed him as suffering from ''exhaustion.''
The Dalai Lama spends several months a year traveling the globe to highlight the struggle of Tibetans for greater freedom from China and to teach Buddhism.
He canceled two upcoming trips to Mexico and the Dominican Republic and would rest over the next three weeks, said Thupten Samphel, the spokesman of the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile.
Samphel said the holy man would travel to Mumbai for medical tests before returning to the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala to recuperate. He gave no further details on his condition.
The Dalai Lama has had his headquarters in Dharmsala since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after an abortive uprising against China.

God’s Home Gets Rehab, and Japan Sneaks Peek

2008-08-27T09:30:00.002-04:00

The New York Times
August 27, 2008

Izumo Journal
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

IZUMO, Japan — With the longtime occupant safely moved out of the main building and ensconced in temporary housing, long-needed renovations could begin here at Izumo Taisha, one of Japan’s oldest and most famous Shinto shrines.
But not before a once-in-a-lifetime open house of sorts was held. For the first time in six decades, Izumo’s main shrine — the house of a Shinto god who, wrapped in a piece of cloth, was moved to a temporary shrine in April — was opened to the general public.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have journeyed to this remote corner of western Japan to peek into the main shrine, as well as into the inner workings of a religion that, despite its ties to Japan’s founding myths, remains a mystery to many Japanese.
The cost of the renovations — in particular the roof, made of the bark of Japanese cypress, which needed to be rethatched — will exceed $73 million, with about a third to be borne by taxpayers. Repairs to the shrine, classified a national treasure, will start soon and take five years, during which it will remain closed to visitors.
“Then the god will return here, so it won’t be possible for human beings to come inside in a carefree manner and sully the place,” said Kunimaro Senge, 34, the son of Izumo’s chief priest and his expected successor.
The main shrine will be closed, again, to all but Shinto priests and members of the imperial family until the next renovations. “People will have to wait another 60 years,” Mr. Senge added.
One recent day, visitors to the shrine seemed lulled by the fierce summer heat, their voices barely audible above the drone of the cicadas and the squeaks of songbirds in the trees outside the shrine’s moss-covered walls. The day before, one visitor had fainted from the heat.
The midday sun’s harsh light emphasized the main shrine’s wan, wooden facade and the balding patches on its high-pitched roof. Fifteen steep stairs lead up to the structure, which rests on nine pillars made of tree trunks. Inside, seven clouds are painted on the shrine’s ceiling, a bright contrast to the exterior’s austerity. And an inner wall facing the entrance hides the exact spot where the god had rested.
Like most visitors interviewed, Satoshi Kadowaki, 20, who saw the main shrine with his parents, said that he had not felt moved spiritually but that he had more than satisfied his curiosity.
“I’d never thought I could see the inside of this place,” Mr. Kadowaki said. “So in my high school yearbook, I wrote down that my dream was to enter the main shrine.”
According to Japanese myth, the shrine’s main god, Okuninushi no Mikoto, ruled over this world but yielded it to the divine ancestors of the imperial family. No one knows the shrine’s exact age, though pillars dating from the 13th century were discovered underground a few years ago.
The main shrine, rebuilt in its present form in 1744, was first formally opened to the general public during renovations six decades ago, though back then the general public was limited to men.
Normally, priests are allowed inside the main shrine to clean only a few times a year before certain festivals. The chief priest gives an offering of rice or sake before the shrine every day.
Like other Shinto shrines, Izumo also kept its rituals — and, above all, its object of worship — a secret. In keeping with Shinto’s polytheist and animist traditions, each shrine venerates a different god embodied by a sacred object of worship. Here, priests were not allowed to look at the object, and it was not clear whether the chief priest himself was. “There are many theories — that it’s a mirror, a sword, or a wooden idol,” Mr. Senge, the chief priest’s son, said. “But when people ask me what the object is, I can only reply that it is too awesome to put into words.”
He added, “Basically, it’s not that we’re not showing the god, but it’s much more about the fact that human beings should be filled with such awe and dread that we shouldn’t dare look at the god.”
And so, when the god was transferred out of the main shrine in an evening ceremony in April, he was carried inside a portable shrine wrapped in a white cloth. When the god passed before them, the people gathered here lowered their eyes.
“Every human being has an inquiring mind, but I believe there are things that human beings should not inquire into,” Mr. Senge said.
Though designated since birth as a future chief priest, because he was the family’s oldest son, Mr. Senge said there were rituals that his father had yet to teach him.
“It’s not that I don’t know certain things yet, but that I shouldn’t know them yet,” he said.
For example, each morning, his father performs rituals inside a room in the family residence.
“I was told since early childhood that I was never to enter that room, so there’s a room in my own home that I’ve never entered once since birth,” Mr. Senge said, as the midday heat gave way to clouds and evening showers.
For centuries, the oldest sons of two families, including Mr. Senge’s, had alternated as the shrine’s chief priests. Because the Senges had exclusively taken over the role in the 19th century, Mr. Senge grew up watching his grandfather and then his father pray each morning for the nation, the imperial family and the world.
“In general, people may have some doubts about the road to choose in life,” he said, “but I naturally took this road, and considered myself lucky.”
Yet some visitors here, even after being allowed in to see the main shrine, left with unanswered questions.
Kazuko Morikawa, 53, who had come with her husband, said the shrine might lose its value if it were opened to the public more often. But displaying the god, she said, would not be a bad idea.
“Even if they went, ‘Here, we’ll just show you a photograph,’ it’d be O.K.,” she said. “I’m not sure, but is that asking too much?”

An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama

2008-08-08T20:36:00.001-04:00

August 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

When the Olympics open on Friday, the Dalai Lama won’t be there. Each side put out feelers about his attendance and was tantalized by the idea, but in the end the mutual distrust was too great to overcome.
Tibet is one of the major shadows over the Olympics and over China’s rise as a great power, sullying its international image and triggering unrest that is likely to worsen in coming years. Yet that doesn’t have to be.
In June, I sat down for a private meeting with the Dalai Lama, and we talked at length about what kind of a deal he and China might be willing to accept. He was far more flexible and pragmatic about a resolution of the Tibet question than public statements had led me to believe. But he also wonders if his engagement policy with China is getting anywhere: If the stalemate continues, he may just give up on Beijing.
I have continued the discussion with Tibetan officials since then (just as I have had similar discussions with Chinese officials), and China’s perception of the Dalai Lama as sticking rigidly to old positions is mistaken. The Dalai Lama recognizes that time is running out, and he is signaling a willingness to deal — comparable to the way President Richard Nixon sent signals to Beijing that he was ready to rethink the China-U.S. relationship before his visit to China in 1972.
One signal is this: For the first time, the Dalai Lama is willing to state that he can accept the socialist system in Tibet under Communist Party rule. This is something that Beijing has always demanded, and, after long discussion, the Dalai Lama has agreed to do so.
“The main thing is to preserve our culture, to preserve the character of Tibet,” the Dalai Lama told me. “That is what is most important, not politics.”
That is a significant concession, and China must now reciprocate. The present track of talks between the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department and the Dalai Lama’s representatives will never get anywhere. The only hope is for Beijing to pluck Tibetan affairs from the United Front officials and hold direct talks between the Dalai Lama and either President Hu Jintao or Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, negotiating until a deal is reached.
In one sign that Chinese leaders are also thinking creatively about new approaches, Beijing secretly raised the idea of the Dalai Lama visiting China and participating in a memorial service for those who died in May’s Sichuan earthquake. That was bold; the Dalai Lama has not entered China since 1959. Both sides should now aim for a visit to mark the earthquake’s six-month anniversary in November, followed by serious negotiations.
It’s possible to devise an agreement that leaves both China and the Tibetans much better off — if they hurry. Once the Dalai Lama dies — he is 73 — then a deal could be impossible for another generation because no one would be able to unify the Tibetan people behind a new plan. By then much of Tibet is likely to have been drowned in a sea of Chinese migration, and some frustrated young Tibetans may have turned to terrorism. In my interviews in Tibetan areas of China this year, young people told me repeatedly of their frustration that the Dalai Lama is too conciliatory and that a violent liberation movement would be necessary after his death.
Here is one plausible outline of what a settlement might look like, although both sides would surely flinch at some terms:
The Dalai Lama would dial back to some degree on demands for political autonomy for Tibet, while the Chinese government would offer more cultural and religious freedoms. There would be no “one country, two systems” approach as there is for Hong Kong, and the existing Communist Party control mechanisms would remain in place.
As the Dalai Lama has said, he would play no political role after a settlement, but he would be free to enter and leave China with his aides and to communicate freely. He could travel within Tibetan areas, in coordination with the Public Security Ministry, to ensure that there are no upheavals. China would also release all Tibetans imprisoned for political offenses — though not for crimes of violence — upon the signing of a deal.
Much more sensitive is the Dalai Lama’s call for all Tibetan areas to be placed under one administration. That is usually interpreted to mean a huge expansion of the political boundaries of the Tibet Autonomous Region to encompass about one-fourth of China, taking in parts of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. Chinese leaders were open to redrawing the boundaries in the past, but today China is as determined not to make such changes as Tibetans are to get them.
One way to bridge that gulf would be to create a Regional Authority for Tibetan Affairs that would administer key aspects of life in all Tibetan areas, particularly education, culture and religion. Already, for example, Tibetan-language school textbooks are harmonized in different provinces, and this regional authority would likewise oversee practical aspects of life in areas with Tibetan populations, all under Chinese law. This would allow Tibetan areas to be placed under a single administration without changing political boundaries.
On the Chinese side, the crucial concession would be to restrict migration into all Tibetan areas, inside and outside the “autonomous region,” through China’s existing system of residence permits. The Chinese authorities would stop issuing resident permits, known as hukou, to non-Tibetans for any Tibetan area, and would grant temporary residence permits, or zhanzhuzheng, only when no Tibetan is available to take a job. This would halt the flood of Han Chinese into Tibetan areas.
The Chinese government would also ease restrictions on monasteries and on the intake of monks, and curb the mandatory “patriotic education” campaigns that only leave Tibetans feeling less patriotic. Young boys would be allowed to enter monasteries, but the monasteries would then be obliged to teach the boys the Chinese state curriculum, including Chinese language, in addition to religious education.
The Tibetan language would also be used in government offices in all Tibetan areas, alongside Chinese, and there would be a new push (as there was in the 1980s) to increase the proportion of ethnic Tibetans holding government and party positions. The upshot would be a Tibet that remains politically under the control of the Communist Party. It would not be a democracy or a multiparty system, but it would be able to preserve its character indefinitely as a distinctly Tibetan and Buddhist region, both inside and outside the formal Tibet Autonomous Region. And Tibet can be free only if it is first preserved.
For the Chinese, such an agreement would resolve the Tibet question and end an international embarrassment, as well as prevent the rise of protests and terrorism for decades to come.
My conversations with both sides make me think that this is achievable. The Dalai Lama recognizes that his past efforts haven’t worked in the face of increasingly hard-line Chinese policies, so he is willing to try new approaches.
As for China, it has raised Tibetan standards of living impressively over the last 20 years, but its repression has lost Tibetan hearts and minds. Vicious Chinese denunciations of the Dalai Lama, and particularly the contempt that some local Chinese officials display toward Tibetan culture, exacerbate the resentment. As a start, China should remove the hot-headed Communist Party secretary for Tibet, Zhang Qingli, who brightens any room by leaving it.
The Dalai Lama knows that other peacemakers have broken the ice with bold initiatives to prove their seriousness; we discussed Sadat’s visit to Israel as one such move. So the Dalai Lama is reaching out. That is one reason he agreed that I could report his acceptance of Communist Party rule.
“On account of Buddhism’s emphasis on rational thinking, the Tibetans are capable of embracing reality by accepting some of the de facto situation on the ground,” added Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama’s envoy to talks with China.
The senior Chinese leadership should respond by expressing serious interest in talks at the presidential or prime ministerial level. In ancient days, the Olympics were a time to suspend conflict. In that spirit, the two sides should get to work to prepare for a visit by the Dalai Lama in November, followed by top-level negotiations aimed at a historic resolution of the Tibet question.
The ball is in the Chinese court.
Join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.

Religious Conversions: The Moment of Truth

2008-08-05T14:37:00.002-04:00

Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

In many parts of the world, the right to change one's beliefs is under threat.
AS AN intellectually gifted Jewish New Yorker who had reached manhood in the mid-1950s, Marc Schleifer was relentless in his pursuit of new cultural and spiritual experiences. He dallied with Anglo-Catholicism, intrigued by the ritual but not quite able to believe the doctrine, and went through a phase of admiration for Latin American socialism. Experimenting with lifestyles as well as creeds, he tried respectability as an advertising executive, and a more bohemian life in the raffish expatriate scene of North Africa.
Returning from Morocco to his home city, he was shocked by the harsh anonymity of life in the urban West. And one day, riding the New York subway, he opened the Koran at a passage which spoke of the mystery of God: beyond human understanding, but as close as a jugular vein. Suddenly, everything fell into place. It was only a matter of time before he embraced Islam by pronouncing before witnesses that “there is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.”
Some 40 years on from that life-changing moment—not untypical of the turning points that many individuals experience—Abdallah Schleifer has won distinction as a Muslim intellectual. Last year he was one of 138 Muslim thinkers who signed an open letter to Christian leaders calling for a deeper theological dialogue. The list of signatories included (along with the muftis from Cairo, Damascus and Jakarta) several other people who had made surprising journeys. One grew up as an English nonconformist; another as a Catholic farm boy from Oregon; another in the more refined Catholic world of bourgeois Italy.
Sometimes conversion is gradual, but quite commonly things come to a head in a single instant, which can be triggered by a text, an image, a ceremony or some private realisation. A religious person would call such a moment a summons from God; a psychologist might speak of an instant when the walls between the conscious and unconscious break down, perhaps because an external stimulus—words, a picture, a rite—connects with something very deep inside. For people of an artistic bent, the catalyst is often a religious image which serves as a window into a new reality. One recurring theme in conversion stories is that cultural forms which are, on the face of it, foreign to the convert somehow feel familiar, like a homecoming. That, the convert feels, “is what I have always believed without being fully aware of it.”
Take Jennie Baker, an ethnic Chinese nurse who moved from Malaysia to England. She was an evangelical, practising but not quite satisfied with a Christianity that eschews aids to worship such as pictures, incense or elaborate rites. When she first walked into an Orthodox church, and took in the icons that occupied every inch of wall-space, everything in this “new” world made sense to her, and some teachings, like the idea that every home should have a corner for icons and prayer, resonated with her Asian heritage. Soon she and her English husband helped establish a Greek Orthodox parish in Lancashire.

Following the heart
In the West it is generally taken for granted that people have a perfect, indeed sacred, right to follow their own religious path, and indeed to invite—though never compel—other people to join them. The liberal understanding of religion lays great emphasis on the right to change belief. Earlier this year, a poll found that one in four Americans moves on from the faith of their upbringing.
America’s foundation as a refuge for Europe’s Christian dissidents has endowed it with a deep sense of the right to follow and propagate any form of religion, with no impediment, or help, from the state. In the 1980s America saw some lively debates over whether new-fangled “cults” should be distinguished from conventional forms of religion, and curbed; but in the end a purely libertarian view prevailed. The promotion of religious liberty is an axiom of American foreign policy, not just in places where freedom is obviously under threat, but even in Germany, which gets gentle scoldings for its treatment of Scientology.
But America’s religious free-for-all is very much the exception, not the rule, in human history—and increasingly rare, some would say, in the world today. In most human societies, conversion has been seen as an act whose consequences are as much social and political as spiritual; and it has been assumed that the wider community, in the form of the family, the village or the state, has every right to take an interest in the matter. The biggest reason why conversion is becoming a hot international topic is the Muslim belief that leaving Islam is at best a grave sin, at worst a crime that merits execution (see article). Another factor in a growing global controversy is the belief in some Christian circles that Christianity must retain the right to seek and receive converts, even in parts of the world where this may be viewed as a form of cultural or spiritual aggression.

A fighting matter
The idea that religion constitutes a community (where the loss or gain of even one member is a matter of deep, legitimate concern to all other members) is as old as religion itself. Christianity teaches that the recovery of a “lost sheep” causes rejoicing in heaven; for a Muslim, there is no human category more important than the umma, the worldwide community of believers.
But in most human societies the reasons why conversion causes controversy have little do with religious dogma, and much to do with power structures (within the family or the state) and politics. Conversion will never be seen as a purely individual matter when one religiously-defined community is at war or armed standoff with another. During Northern Ireland’s Troubles a move across the Catholic-Protestant divide could be life-threatening, at least in working-class Belfast—and not merely because people felt strongly about papal infallibility.
And in any situation where religion and authority (whether political, economic or personal) are bound up, changes of spiritual allegiance cause shock-waves. In the Ottoman empire, the status of Christians and Jews was at once underpinned and circumscribed by a regime that saw religion as an all-important distinction. Non-Muslims were exempt from the army, but barred from many of the highest offices, and obliged to pay extra taxes. When a village in, say, Crete or Bosnia converted en masse from Christianity to Islam, this was seen as betrayal by those who stayed Christian, in part because it reduced the population from which the Ottomans expected a given amount of tax.
In the days of British rule over the south of Ireland, it was hard for Catholics to hold land, although they were the overwhelming majority. An opportunistic conversion to the rulers’ religion was seen as “letting the side down” by those who kept the faith. Similar inter-communal tensions arose in many European countries where Jews converted to Christianity in order to enter university or public service.
In most modern societies, the elaborate discrimination which made religious allegiance into a public matter is felt to be a thing of the past. But is this so? In almost every post-Ottoman country, traces exist of the mentality that treats religion as a civic category, where entry and exit is a matter of public negotiation, not just private belief. Perhaps Lebanon, where political power is allocated along confessional lines (and boat-rocking changes of religious affiliation are virtually impossible) is the most perfectly post-Ottoman state. But there are other holdovers. In “secular” Turkey, the Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish minorities have certain poorly observed rights that no other religious minority enjoys; isolated Christians, or dissident Muslims, face great social pressure to conform to standard Sunni Islam. In Greece, it is unconstitutional to proselytise; that makes life hard for Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. In Egypt, the fact that building a Christian church requires leave from the head of state is a direct legacy of a (liberalising) Ottoman decree of 1856.

Tactical manoeuvres
But the Ottoman empire is by no means the only semi-theocratic realm whose influence is still palpable in the governance of religious affairs, including conversion. In an odd way, the Soviet Union continued the legacy of the tsars by dividing citizens into groups (including Jews or some Muslim ethnicities) where membership had big consequences but was not a matter of individual choice. In post-Soviet Russia, the prevailing Orthodox church rejects the notion of a free market in ideas. It seeks (and often gets) state preference for “traditional” faiths, defined as Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. This implies that other forms of Christianity are “poaching” if they seek to recruit Russians.
But issues of conversion are also painful in some former territories of the British empire, which allowed its subjects to follow their own communal laws. Take India, which once aspired to be a secular state, and whose constitution calls for a uniform civil code for all citizens. That prospect is now remote, and the fact that different religious groups live by different family laws, and are treated unequally by the state and society, has created incentives for “expedient” conversion. A colourful body of jurisprudence, dating from the British Raj, concerns people who changed faith to solve a personal dilemma—like men who switched from Hinduism to Islam so as to annul their marriage and wed somebody else. In 1995, the Supreme Court tried to stop this by saying people could not dodge social obligations, or avoid bigamy charges, by changing faith. What India’s case law shows, says Marco Ventura, a religious-law professor, is the contrast between conversion in rich, liberal societies and traditional ones, where discrimination tempts people to make tactical moves.
And in many ways religious freedom is receding, not advancing, in India. Half a dozen Indian states have introduced laws that make it hard for people to leave Hinduism. These states are mostly ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But last year Himachal Pradesh became the first state led by the more secular Congress party to bring in such legislation: such is the power of Hindu sentiment that even non-religious parties pander to it.
The state’s new law is billed as a “freedom of religion” measure, but it has the opposite effect: anyone wishing to switch faiths must tell the district magistrate 30 days before or risk a fine. If a person converts another “by the use of force or by inducement or by any other fraudulent means”, they can be jailed for up to two years, fined, or both. Local pastors say “inducement” could be taken to mean anything, including giving alms to the poor.
Supporters of such laws say proselytisers, or alleluia wallahs, are converting poor Hindus by force. It is true that Christian evangelism is in full swing in parts of India, especially in its eastern tribal belt, and that it enjoys some success. Officially, fewer than 3% of India’s 1.1 billion people are Christian. But some Christians say the real total may be double that. Christian converts, most of whom are born as dalits at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, often hide their new faith for fear of losing their rights to state jobs and university places kept for the lower castes.
But it is unlikely that many Hindu-to-Christian switches are forced. In states with anti-conversion laws, credible allegations of conversion under duress have very rarely been made.
Anyway, India’s arguments have more to do with politics than theology. Hindutva, the teaching that India is a Hindu nation and that Christians and Muslims are outsiders, has been a vote-winner for the BJP. Even in Himachal Pradesh, voters were unmoved by the Congress party’s attempt to ride the religious bandwagon; the BJP still won the latest elections.
The contest between theocratic politics and a notionally secular state looks even more unequal in another ex-British land, Malaysia, where freedom of choice in religion is enshrined in the federal constitution, but Islamic law is imposed with growing strictness on the Muslim majority.
Until the mid-1990s, say Malaysian civil-rights advocates like Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, the federal authorities enforced religious freedom; the National Registration Department, a federal agency, would comply when anybody asked to record a change of religion. More recently, both that agency and Malaysia’s top judges have deferred to the sharia courts, which enjoy increasing power in all 13 states of the Malaysian federation; and those courts rarely let a registered Muslim quit the fold. A recent exception was an ethnic Chinese woman who was briefly married to an Iranian; a sharia court let her re-embrace Buddhism, but only on the ground that she was never fully Muslim, so the idea of “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim” remained intact.
A more telling sign of the times was the verdict in the case of Lina Joy, a Malay convert from Islam to Christianity who asked a federal court to register the change on her ID card. By two to one the judges rejected her bid, arguing that one “cannot, at one’s whims or fancies, renounce or embrace a religion”. Too bad, then, for any Malaysians who have a moment of truth on the subway, especially if the faith to which they are called happens not to be Islam.

Islam And apostasy: In Death's Shadow

2008-08-05T14:33:00.002-04:00

Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

With some exceptions, an increasingly hard line across the Muslim world
“CAN a person who is Muslim choose a religion other than Islam?” When Egypt’s grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, pondered that dilemma in an article published last year, many of his co-religionists were shocked that the question could even be asked.
And they were even more scandalised by his conclusion. The answer, he wrote, was yes, they can, in the light of three verses in the Koran: first, “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion”; second, “Whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve”; and, most famously, “There is no compulsion in religion.”

The sheikh’s pronouncement was certainly not that of a wet liberal; he agrees that anyone who deserts Islam is committing a sin and will pay a price in the hereafter, and also that in some historical circumstances (presumably war between Muslims and non-Muslims) an individual’s sin may also amount to “sedition against one’s society”. But his opinion caused a sensation because it went against the political and judicial trends in many parts of the Muslim world, and also against the mood in places where Muslims feel defensive.
In the West, many prominent Muslims would agree with the mufti’s scripturally-based view that leaving Islam is a matter between the believer and God, not for the state. But awkwardly, the main traditions of scholarship and jurisprudence in Islam—both the Shia school and the four main Sunni ones—draw on Hadiths (words and deeds ascribed with varying credibility to Muhammad) to argue in support of death for apostates. And in recent years sentiment in the Muslim world has been hardening. In every big “apostasy” case, the authorities have faced pressure from sections of public opinion, and from Islamist factions, to take the toughest possible stance.
In Malaysia, people who try to desert Islam can face compulsory “re-education”. Under the far harsher regime of Afghanistan, death for apostasy is still on the statute book, despite the country’s American-backed “liberation” from the tyranny of the Taliban. The Western world realised this when Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who had lived in Germany, was sentenced to die after police found him with a Bible. After pressure from Western governments, he was allowed to go to Italy. What especially startled Westerners was the fact that Afghanistan’s parliament, a product of the democracy for which NATO soldiers are dying, tried to bar Mr Rahman’s exit, and that street protests called for his execution.
The fact that he fled to Italy is one of the factors that have made the issue of Muslim-Christian conversion a hot topic in that country. There are several others. During this year’s Easter celebrations, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born journalist who is now a columnist in Italy, was publicly baptised as a Catholic by Pope Benedict; the convert hailed his “liberation” from Islam, and has used his column to celebrate other cases of Muslims becoming Christian. To the delight of some Catholics and the dismay of others, he has defended the right of Christians to proselytise among Muslims, and denounced liberal churchmen who are “soft” on Islam.
Muslims in Italy and elsewhere have called Mr Allam a provocateur and chided Pope Benedict for abetting him. But given that many of Italy’s Muslims are converts (and beneficiaries of Europe’s tolerance), Mr Allam says his critics are hypocrites, denying him a liberty which they themselves have enjoyed.

If there is any issue on which Islam’s diaspora—experiencing the relative calmness of inter-faith relations in the West—might be able to give a clearer moral lead, it is surely this one. But even in the West, speaking out for the legal and civil right to “apostasise” can carry a cost. Usama Hasan, an influential young British imam, recently made the case for the right to change religions—only to find himself furiously denounced and threatened on Islamist websites, many of them produced in the West.

Israel and Syria Say They Are Holding Peace Talks in Turkey

2008-05-21T13:07:00.000-04:00

May 22, 2008
By ETHAN BRONNER and GRAHAM BOWLEY

JERUSALEM — Israel and Syria have begun indirect peace talks, mediated by Turkey, aimed at reaching a comprehensive peace accord, the three governments announced in a coordinated statement Wednesday. The disclosure was the first public confirmation of the negotiations by all three sides.
The two most senior officials in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office have been leading the Israeli negotiations and were in Istanbul on Wednesday, talking through Turkish mediators to their Syrian counterparts, Mr. Olmert’s office said.
The disclosure of the talks is official confirmation of what was already widely suspected of being ongoing contact between Syria and Israel, directed by Turkey. In the past months, Israel had been reluctant to make the negotiations public. But the negotiations now seem to have made enough progress that all sides decided they should acknowledge the meetings.
A senior official in Mr. Olmert’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the talks with Syria and the decision to make them public had been coordinated and agreed with the United States.
The public disclosure that Israel, albeit indirectly, is talking with Syria, one of its most implacable enemies and a sponsor of groups that both Israel and the United States consider terrorists, came less than a week after President Bush, speaking to the Israeli Parliament, created a stir by criticizing those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals.”
Mr. Bush’s remarks have become an issue in the American presidential campaign because they were widely perceived as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic front-runner, who has advocated the kind of engagement that Israel and Syria are now undertaking.
The United States on Wednesday praised Turkey’s mediation role and said it had been informed of the discussions.
“I think Turkey played a good and useful role in this regard,” said senior State Department official David Welch, Reuters reported. “Israel and Turkey have apprised us in the past of these discussions and kept us informed," he said.
Referring to Israel and Syria, a statement from Mr. Olmert’s office said: “The two sides stated their intention to conduct these talks in good faith and with an open mind.” It added: “They decided to pursue the dialogue between them in a serious and continuous way, in order to achieve the goal of comprehensive peace.”
Turkey is a close ally of the United States. It is also Syria’s neighbor and has an interest in securing regional peace.
The office of the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, confirmed the talks in Istanbul, but refused to say where in the city they were being held, or when they began. Mr. Erdogan has been working on convening negotiations for some time, an official in his office said, including holding phone conversations with leaders on both sides, and assigning a special envoy to handle the diplomatic back-and-forth.
Turkey, Israel and Syria agreed not to disclose details about the talks and to limit themselves to written public statements like those on Wednesday, the official said. “It’s a good beginning,” the official said. “We’ve reached an important phase.”
Turkey, a Muslim country whose government is secular, has positioned itself as an important mediator in international politics in recent years, particularly with the Muslim world.
Talks between Iranian and European officials on nuclear enrichment were held in the Turkish capital, Ankara, last year. The government has even invited Hamas, though backpedaled after American officials protested. The new role as mediator, Western officials say, reflects Turkey’s increased confidence and independence, after decades of unquestioned support of American policy.
The statement, however, gave no details of what progress might have been made between Israel and Syria.
Negotiations between the two countries broke off in 2000 amid disagreement over the extent of a possible withdrawal by Israel from the Golan Heights. Israel captured the area from Syria in 1967 and extended Israeli law and administration to the area in 1981.
In April, a Syrian cabinet minister said that Mr. Olmert had sent a message to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to the effect that Israel would be willing to withdraw from all the Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria.
At the time, the Syrian expatriate affairs minister, Buthaina Shaaban, told Al Jazeera television, “Olmert is ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of international conditions; on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights in full to Syria.”
The new talks date back to Mr. Olmert’s first visit to Turkey in Feb. 2007 when he and Mr. Erdogan held a one-on-one meeting and decided that Ankara would play a role as mediator, a senior official in the Israeli prime minister’s office who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.
In the latest talks, the Israeli officials — led by Mr. Olmert’s chief of staff and his chief diplomatic adviser — had been in the Turkish capital since Monday and were due to return to Israel on Thursday, the official in Mr. Olmert’s office said. The official said the sides had examined carefully past efforts at seeking a peace accord and were aware where mistakes had been made.
Critics of Mr. Olmert in Israel, where the prime minister is maintaining his innocence in a bribery investigation, contend that he is using the diplomatic initiative to divert attention from his domestic troubles, but Mr. Olmert’s office denied there was any relation between the two issues.
Withdrawal from the Golan Heights is a contentious issue in Israel. The territory is a strategic plateau that overlooks a large swath of northern Israel. Israel has objected to past Syrian demands for access to the shore of the Sea of Galilee, a main water source for Israel.
Those in Israel who favor a deal with Syria, however, contend it would take Syria out of the Iranian sphere and end Syrian support for some groups hostile to Israel, such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem and Graham Bowley from New York. Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.

Envoys of Dalai Lama to Travel to China

2008-05-05T12:25:00.001-04:00

May 2, 2008
By REUTERS
Filed at 9:52 a.m. ET

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Senior envoys of the Dalai Lama are traveling to China to meet the government over the crisis in Tibet, the government-in-exile said on Friday, only three months before the Beijing Olympics open.
After a crackdown on protests against Chinese rule in Tibet, an international diplomatic chorus earlier this year urged dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Beijing abruptly announced in late April that it intended to meet his aides.
"During this brief visit, the envoys will take up the urgent issue of the current crisis in the Tibetan areas," the government-in-exile said in a statement on its website.
Shen Kaiyun, the deputy director of the official government information department in Tibet, said he supported the Chinese government's move to talk to representatives of the Dalai Lama, but expected the spiritual leader to back his non-separatist words with deeds.
"As early as 1978, Deng Xiaoping said it was not too late to let bygones be bygones, so our policy is consistent," Shen told Reuters in an interview in Tibet.
"But we have pre-condition -- that is being patriotic. I hope the 14th Dalai Lama will back up his words with deeds."
Tibet has become a flashpoint for anti-China protests that have disrupted the Olympic torch relay around the world and has led to calls for state leaders to boycott the Beijing Games, which open on August 8.
The talks will be the first since violent protests broke out in Tibet in March. It was not clear where they would take place.
Some experts say the meeting will achieve nothing. There have been six rounds of dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama's envoys since 2002 with no breakthrough.
"China's main objective is the successful completion of the Olympics," said Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. "These talks are just a public relations exercise."
EXPERIENCED ENVOYS
The two envoys are due to arrive in China on Saturday for what the Tibetan side called "informal talks." The envoys, Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, are both senior and experienced representatives of the Dalai Lama, experts say.
"We are hopeful that the Chinese are willing to address the Tibet issue realistically," Tenzin Taklha, a spokesman of the Dalai Lama, told Reuters from India, where the self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile is based.
Despite the offer of talks, China has accused Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, who fled Tibet after a failed 1959 uprising against Communist rule, of manipulating opinion and governments in the West.
China has blamed the exiled Buddhist leader's "clique" for unrest in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas, which it says was aimed at upstaging the Olympic Games.
The Dalai Lama says he is campaigning for autonomy for the strategic Himalayan border region. But China, which says it sent troops in 1950 to Tibet to liberate the country from feudal serfdom, says he is bent on independence.
Some analysts said they may be a chance for some progress with the talks.
"Both sides know there is nowhere to go apart from talks," said Prof. Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, emeritus fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi.
"And with the Olympic Games coming, China will be a little more anxious for them (the talks) to help."
The Olympic torch was run through Hong Kong on Friday, in a festive return to China after protests in other cities across the world. But tensions flared again as patriotic crowds heckled protesters and police briefly detained eight demonstrators.
(Additional reporting by Bappa Majumdar in New Delhi, James Pomfret in Hong Kong and Benjamin Kang Lim in Beijing; Editing by Simon Denyer and Alex Richardson)

THIS PUBLIC PEACE PROCESS

2008-04-22T15:14:00.000-04:00

THIS PUBLIC PEACE PROCESS In Summer, 1991, the "public peace process" was formally named. SEE 1991 TV news of the historic signing of the FRAMEWORK FOR A PUBLIC PEACE PROCESS streaming at: http://easylink.playstream.com/ltraubman/bwnews.wmv It defined the fundamental purpose of citizens outside government to come together in Sustained Dialogue to design and enact steps to change the fundamental relationship between communities. This citizen-driven process of face-to-face relationship building stands apart from formal mediation and negotiation of governments. Yet, it is required to complement, support, energize, and work in parallel with the official peace process. "The longer-term goal is to immunize the society against the recurrence of violence," clarified Dr. Harold Saunders in his classic 1999 book, PUBLIC PEACE PROCESS: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts." Modern living examples abound and increase, yet under-reported. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ South America The Intercultural Dialogue between Arab and Jewish Youth (DIJO) - http://dialogochile.cl - meets in Chile, South America. Jewish and Arab youth in Santiago have been gathering and communicating for two years. They are shepherded by Arab sociologist, Lorenzo Agar ( LAgar@abello.dic.uchile.cl ) and Jewish educator, Abraham Magendzo ( AbrahamMagendzo@gmail.com ). They also identify with Fundacion IDEAS - http://ideas.cl/ - a Chilean think-tank for civil society. One of DIJO's supporters and admirers in Santiago is historian and journalist, Monica Vicuna ( Monica.Vicuna@gmail.com ) . See PHOTOS at http://dialogochile.cl/noticias.php .Jerusalem In March, The Jerusalem Peacemakers and TRUST-Emun persisted with outreached hands to add to the ever-growing public peace process. In spite of - for some, because of - recent Spring, 2008 violence, 50 Palestinian and Israeli women and men sat down to eat, speak and listen face to face in the Holy Land. Refusing to remain enemies and apart, they traveled from East and West Jerusalem, and from Ramallah, Hebron, and Bethlehem READ their inspired stories, and SEE them redefine the Power of Trust - http://trust-emun.org/gpage1.html . The 45 Arab and Jewish CHEFS FOR PEACE also stayed firmly together.
Published by BBC News - 25 February 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7262779.stm
COOKING FOR PEACE
Jerusalem Diary: Monday 25 February CHEFS FOR PEACE sprang out of a visit, 12 years ago, by four chefs - two Jewish Israeli, one Christian Arab Israeli and one Muslim Palestinian - to a slow food festival in Italy. Nabil Aho, the Head Chef Instructor at the Pontifical Institute in Jerusalem, was one of the four. To him the progression was obvious: "We use the same ingredients. If you can't work together in the kitchen, then where can you?" Moshe Basson agrees. When it comes to cooking, he says, "Palestinian, Jewish, Greek, Turkish - we all take from each other". Moshe is happy to add: "My best teachers are Palestinian mothers." "In the kitchen, we use the most dangerous utensil, the knife," adds Armenian chef Kevork Alemian, the Maitre d'Hotel at the American Colony in East Jerusalem. "But here all of us - Muslim, Christian, Jew - we use it to make beautiful food." Washington, DC SUMMIT 2008: Imagining A More Civil Society - http://hillel.org/summit/ - brought together during March 24-26, 2008 in Washington, DC, visionaries and innovators from academia, philanthropy, journalism, even the U.S. Department of State. 700 women and men - 300 were expected - old and young arrived from over 120 universities and colleges. Participants included campus students, presidents, administrators and faculty. Among several hundred community volunteers and professionals were those from the sponsoring Hillel, whose traditional focus on Jewish campus life continues expanding toward inclusiveness. DEMYSTIFYING DIALOGUE was a popular, standing-room-only, participatory workshop that included Palestinian and Jewish exemplars with past Dialogue experience. Later, CAMPUS SHOWCASE invited Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue representatives to engage Summit attendees and exhibit displays and free how-to printings and videos. See PHOTOS of the workshop and exhibit at: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtmbJq0aMm-M~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ These are beginnings of cures - beyond bandages for wounds and symptoms of the disease. Human connections. Heart contact. Acts of sustained engagement and kindness that transform people, relationships, and decisions. The end of ignorance and beginning of familiarity. The end of fear and beginning of trust and creativity. Applying the medicine. The preventive and cure. Excellent relationships. Because "the longer-term goal is to immunize the society against the recurrence of violence." Together, we can, and we're living this new life together - the predictable antidote.

Tip of the Iraq Iceberg

2008-04-22T12:50:00.003-04:00

Dave Wiley from San Diego Vets for Peace created the graphic below. You can contact him at sdpeaceguy@gmail.com or through his blog http://sdpeaceguyblogger.blogspot.com/

Here are the links referenced in the graphic:http://icasualties.org/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml http://icasualties.org/oif/woundedchart.aspx http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html_______________________________________________Sdcpj mailing listSdcpj@lists.quantumimagery.commailto:listSdcpj@lists.quantumimagery.comhttp://lists.quantumimagery.com/listinfo.cgi/sdcpj-quantumimagery.com

World Moves Closer to Abolition of the Death Penalty

2008-04-22T12:15:00.001-04:00

In 2007 the world continued to move closer to the universal abolition of the capital punishment. Historical landmark towards the worldwide abolition of death penalty is the resolution on moratorium on executions endorsed by the United Nations 62nd General Assembly on 18 December 2007. 104 UN member states voted in favour of the ground-breaking resolution. 54 countries voted against, while 29 abstained. The resolution was supported by 87 governments from all regions of the world, as well as by NGOs including the World Coalition against the Death Penalty, the Community of Sant'Egidio, Hands Off Cain and Amnesty International.
More than two thirds of the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice. By the end of the 2007, 91 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. During the year, three countries (Albania, Cook Islands and Rwanda) abolished the death penalty for all crimes and one country (Kyrgyzstan) abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes. One state of the USA (New Jersey) joined the global trend towards ending the capital punishment. New Jersey was the first US state to abolish the capital punishment by law since the death penalty was reintroduced in the US in 1972.
In 2007 at least 33 countries were abolitionist in practice: they had not carried out any executions for the previous 10 years or more and were either believed to have an established practice of not carrying out executions or had made an international commitment not to do so. AI reclassified four retentionist countries to abolitionist in practice (Eritrea, Gabon, Laos and South Korea) in 2007. The death penalty has now been abolished in law or practice by 135 countries as Uzbekistan abolished the death penalty in January 2008.
63 other countries and territories retained the death penalty, but only 24 countries carried out executions and 51 passed death sentences in 2007. During 2007, at least 1252 people were executed and at least 3347 people were sentenced to death in 51 countries. These were only minimum figures; the true figures were certainly higher.
As in previous years, the vast majority of executions worldwide were carried out in a small handful of countries. In 2007, 88 per cent of all known executions took place in five countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA. Saudi Arabia had the highest number of executions per capita, followed by Iran and Libya.
Worst offenders
1)
China
470+
2)
Iran
317+
3)
Saudi Arabia
143+
4)
Pakistan
135+
5)
USA
42
In 2007 the Chinese authorities again refused to publish statistics on the government's use of the death penalty leaving the world in the dark about the number of executions carried out. Amnesty International believes there is likely to have been a significant drop in executions during 2007 after Supreme People’s Court (SPC) review for all death sentences was restored on 1 January. In 2007 470 executions were recorded by AI, but this number is based on public reports available and serves as an absolute minimum. The US-based organization “Dui Hua Foundation” estimates that 6,000 people were executed last year based on figures obtained from local officials. In a country as vast as China with tight government controls on information and the media only the authorities know the reality behind the use of the death penalty.
TAKE ACTION!Urge China's Prime Minister to Abolish the Death Penalty Based on public reports, Amnesty International estimates that at least 1,010 people were executed and 2,790 sentenced to death in 2006 in China. The death penalty violates the Olympic ideal of preserving human dignity. » Download the petition (PDF) to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao urging him to respect the Olympic ideal, and to take positive steps towards abolishing the death penalty in China.

Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution

2008-04-16T15:16:00.001-04:00

April 17, 2008
Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Kentucky’s method of putting criminals to death by lethal injection, not only clearing the way for Kentucky to resume executions but ending an unofficial moratorium in the 35 other states that have the death penalty.
However, Justice John Paul Stevens, while concurring reluctantly with the judgment of the court, wrote that he now believed capital punishment itself is unconstitutional, and that Wednesday’s ruling might serve to reignite the debate over whether it should exist in the United States.
By 7 to 2, the court rejected challenges to the Kentucky execution procedure brought by two death-row inmates, holding that they had failed to show that the risks of pain from mistakes in an otherwise “humane lethal execution protocol” amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by the Constitution.
The prisoners had contended that the three-drug procedure used on death row — one drug each to sedate, paralyze and end life — was unconstitutional, and that in any event there were strong indications that Kentucky had bungled some executions, creating unnecessary pain for the condemned. Through their lawyers, they maintained that problems could be largely solved by administering a single overwhelming dose of a barbiturate, as opposed to the three-drug procedure.
The prisoners’ challenge had implications far beyond Kentucky. Of the 36 states with the death penalty, all but Nebraska, which uses the electric chair, rely on the same three-drug procedure that Kentucky uses. So does the federal government. Now, with the Kentucky challenge disposed of, other states that had set aside executions seem poised to begin them again.
Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia quickly announced that his state would lift its moratorium on executions, and the Rev. Pat Delahanty, head of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said, “We’re going to be facing some executions soon,” The Associated Press reported.
Executions across the country have been on hold since last September, when the Supreme Court decided to take the Kentucky case. About two dozen executions did not go forward as scheduled while the case was pending, death penalty opponents told the A.P. Because pre-execution procedures can be time-consuming, there was no immediate way to gauge how quickly they might resume. One prisoner who could be facing death soon, in view of the Governor Kaine’s remarks, is Edward Bell, who is on Virginia’s death row for killing a Winchester police officer. Mr. Bell’s execution had been set for April 8.
In a decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., which weighed the Kentucky prisoners’ claims that they faced an unacceptably high risk of suffering at the hands of their executioners, the court concluded that “Kentucky’s continued use of the three-drug protocol cannot be viewed as posing an ‘objectively intolerable risk’ when no other state has adopted the one-drug method and petitioners have proffered no study showing that it is an equally effective manner of imposing a death sentence.”
The prisoners who brought the challenge were Ralph Baze, who killed a sheriff and a deputy who were trying to serve him with a warrant, and Thomas C. Bowling, who killed a couple whose car he had damaged in a parking lot.
The procedure that they challenged uses a barbiturate, then pancuronium bromide, a paralyzing agent, followed by potassium chloride, which stops the heart and brings about death — but with terrible pain if the barbiturate does not work as intended, the condemned men’s lawyers maintained. And because of the paralyzing agent, a prisoner could appear peaceful and relaxed even while suffering, they argued.
Lawyers for the prisoners contended that the barbiturate-only method is widely used by veterinarians, who are barred in many states from using the same paralyzing agent employed in executing people. But the court rejected that argument, stating that “veterinary practice for animals is not an appropriate guide for humane practices for humans.” The justices who concurred in the judgment — with varying degrees of agreement — were Anthony M. Kennedy, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer, as well as Justice Stevens.
Alluding to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, the court said history leads to the conclusion that “an execution method violates the Eighth Amendment only if it is deliberately designed to inflict pain,” a standard that bars disemboweling, burning alive and other excruciating ways of bringing about death. “Judged under that standard, this is an easy case,” the court held.
But the deliberations were not easy, if the number of opinions is any indicator. Although seven members concurred in the judgment of the court, only Justices Kennedy and Alito (who filed a concurring opinion of his own) joined Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion. Justices Scalia and Thomas joined each other’s concurring opinions.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter dissented from the court’s judgment. “I would not dispose of the case so swiftly given the character of the risk at stake,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, declaring that she would have sent the case back to the Kentucky courts for further scrutiny of the condemned men’s claims.
Perhaps most interestingly, Justice Stevens filed an opinion concurring in the judgment of the court, but turning against capital punishment itself. Indeed, he asserted that recent decisions by state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court itself to preserve the death penalty “are the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process that weighs the costs and risks” of the ultimate punishment.
Justice Stevens noted that in the 1976 decision in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment, Gregg v. Georgia, the court declared that “three societal purposes” justified the death penalty: “incapacitation, deterrence and retribution.”
“In the past three decades, however, each of these rationales has been called into question,” Justice Stevens said. The possibility of a life sentence without parole, he said, has often caused people to soften their positions in favor of inflicting death.
“Full recognition of the diminishing force of the principal rationales for retaining the death penalty should lead this court and legislatures to re-examine” the ultimate question, Justice Stevens wrote, using a phrase used by a former Texas prosecutor and judge: “Is it time to kill the death penalty?”
Coming from Justice Stevens, those words were especially significant. The justice (who will turn 88 on Sunday) was one of the seven justices who voted in 1976 to uphold capital punishment. Since then, he has heard many challenges to various aspects of the death penalty and the “evolving standards of decency” often invoked by its opponents. In 2002, Justice Stevens was in the majority as the court ruled that mentally retarded killers could not be executed, and in 2005 he was in the majority as the court banned the death penalty against juvenile offenders.
Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor, said further death-penalty litigation is all but certain in light of the court’s “heavily splintered” opinions on Wednesday, in part because the court recognized that “a risk of harm can qualify as an Eighth Amendment violation.”
On Wednesday, after handing down their opinions in the Kentucky case, the justices heard arguments in a death penalty case from Louisiana. The question was whether the Constitution allows capital punishment for the rape of a child who is not killed.

What's Behind the Saudi Monotheism Summit?

2008-04-12T00:03:00.001-04:00

April 8, 2008
by Caryle Murphy
Religion News Service

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A group of visiting Japanese scholars was making a routine courtesy call recently on King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz when the monarch raised a subject that, as he put it, had "obsessed me since two years ago."
Distressed by what he described as disintegrating family ties, a rise in atheism and "an imbalance of reason, ethics and humanity," the king announced plans for a new interfaith dialogue in which "believers of the three main religions: the Torah, Bible and Quran will be of priority."
In other words, Jews, Christians and Muslims.
The proposal made headlines because of Saudi Arabia's austere, exclusivist version of Sunni Islam, which bans the open practice of all other faiths, and regards even Shiite Muslims as heretics. For the most part, this Wahhabist strain of Islam has rejected inter-religious dialogue with non-Muslim "infidels."
Abdullah's stature as "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" in Mecca and Medina, however, gives him some authority in religious matters. So, if as he said, the aim of the dialogue "is to request all religions to sit together with their brothers faithfully and sincerely as we all believe in the same God," something significant has occurred.
The monarch also said Saudi religious scholars "have agreed" to such a dialogue. "God willing, I will start this matter soon. If we meet and agree," he added, "I will then address the United Nations."
The king's seemingly ambitious proposal comes at a time of escalating violence and distrust between the Islamic world and the West, with both ensnared in a wide array of grievances ranging from Muhammad cartoons regarded as blasphemous by Muslims, to restrictions on religious freedoms in some Islamic countries, to the lack of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A desire among some Western religious and political leaders to defuse these precarious relations is apparently one reason why Abdullah's proposal was widely and warmly welcomed, including by the White House.
"When you have someone like the king of Saudi Arabia, and all of his stature, that is recommending such a dialogue, it can only give us hope that there would be further recognition of everyone's right to ... freedom of expression and religion," said presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino. "So we are encouraged by it."
John L. Esposito, founding director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, said Abdullah's proposal "is potentially an important and significant move forward in terms of the king sending a signal -- not only to the world but also to the more rejectionist types who are theologically very narrow-minded -- that we're going to open up."
The dialogue proposal is popular among Saudis who support the king's reformist agenda of slowly introducing political and social changes. "It's unprecedented ... (for) Saudi leaders to call for dialogue between the three religions," said Khalil Al Khalil, a member of the quasi-parliamentary Shura Council.
Hardline religious figures who may not be happy about Abdullah's plans are mute so far, and there have been only mildly worded warnings floated to the king. For example, a young cleric blogging at the internet forum Al Saha recalled how Muslims engaging in past dialogues with Christians had come away disillusioned.
"I advise King Abdullah," wrote Sulaiman Al Khuraishy, that he get his interlocutors to "acknowledge Islam as a holy religion and ... Muhammed as God's Prophet. If they refuse these, how on Earth can we have a conference with those who don't acknowledge your religion and your Prophet?"
A far greater challenge than internal opposition, perhaps, is whether Abdullah's envisioned dialogue can have meaningful impact, unlike so many past religious conferences. The answer to that question revolves around two dilemmas for the king's advisers -- namely, what to put on the agenda and who to invite.
The king said the purpose of a dialogue would be "to agree on something that would maintain humanity against those who tamper (with) religions, ethics and family systems."
On the one hand, an agenda that addresses such issues as family values, the need for world peace, and other already universally agreed upon matters, runs the risk of drawing a global yawn. In such a case, the outcome will match the prediction of one Saudi lawyer who called it "a wonderful gimmick (that) ... will change nothing."
Yet, an interfaith dialogue that tackles the most vexing issues in the widening rift between Islam and the West could quickly lead the conversation into an impasse. That is because most of these contentious matters are political ones, ranging from U.S. foreign policy to France's ban on Islamic head scarves in public schools.
"I don't see where it would be appropriate to get involved in hard-core political issues" in such a dialogue, Esposito said. The challenge for organizers, he added, will be to "develop a program of substance where issues can be discussed both conceptually and practically."
One Saudi official, speaking on background, declined to discuss specifics but said the agenda "will surprise you. It's going to be big."
A second dilemma for the Saudis is who would participate, and specifically would Israeli Jews be on the roster? In the absence of a conclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, it is difficult to imagine Israelis being invited to a Saudi-organized interfaith conference, whether it was held in the kingdom or elsewhere.
Jewish reaction to Abdullah's announcement was swift and favorable. Israel's Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press: "Our hand is outstretched to any peace initiative and any dialogue that is aimed at bringing an end to terror and violence."
The Jerusalem Post called it "a remarkable development that should be warmly welcomed by the Jewish people." At the same time, the paper said, "it makes as much sense to reach out to Jews and boycott Israel as it would to reach out to Christians and boycott the pope, or to reach out to Muslims and boycott the Saudis, for that matter. The Saudis should understand that Jews are indivisible, since they claim the same for Muslims."
At a recent press conference, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud bin Faisal bin Abdul Aziz deflected a question about Israeli attendance, saying that "it is an interfaith (initiative), which means the three monotheistic religions, so the Jewish faith of course is part of that."
For the moment, said one of Saud's aides, "no one will answer this question."

Research explores what 1.3 billion Muslims think

2008-04-11T12:23:00.000-04:00

Research explores what 1.3 billion Muslims think
Mon Apr 7, 2008 10:44am EDT
REUTERS
By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - In the years since the September 11 attacks on the United States, much has been said about the Muslim world, but little, it is argued, has been gathered on what Muslims truly think of the West.

Now Gallup, the global polling group, has conducted research in 35 Muslim countries, interviewing more than 50,000 people over a six-year period, to come up with what it is calling the first comprehensive survey of Muslim world opinion.

The results, published in a book called "Who Speaks for Islam? What a billion Muslims really think", provide often surprising clues as to how Muslims perceive the West and how misunderstanding on both sides -- often perpetuated by politicians and the media -- can fuel suspicion and conflict.

"The conflict between Muslims and Western communities is far from inevitable," co-author Dalia Mogahed said on Monday, laying out one of the fundamental conclusions she and John Esposito, a professor at Georgetown University, drew from the reams of data.

"It is more about policy than principles... Despite widespread anti-American and anti-British sentiment, Muslims around the world said they in fact admired much of what the West holds dear", including freedom of speech, democracy, technological progress and access to knowledge.

"Muslims do not see the West as monolithic -- their perception of different nations falls along policy, not cultural or religious lines," she said.

The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, where it is closely backed by Britain, have done much to color the perception of the two in the Muslim world, where they are widely regarded "unfavorably" and described as "aggressive".

Yet both Britain and the United States are at the same time held up by many Muslims as the best representatives of what is most admired about the West -- the freedom of its citizens.

"MISUNDERSTANDING ISLAM"

While admiring Western values, many Muslims feel they are not respected by the West and that the values the West espouses, such as democracy, are only given lip service when it comes to applying them in the Muslim world.

A recent example was the 2006 election in the Palestinian territories, which the Islamist movement Hamas won in a free and fair poll. The United States and Israel have since done much to ignore the result and try to push Hamas out of office.

"More than 65 percent of Egyptians, Jordanians and Iranians believe that the United States will not allow people in their region to fashion their own political future the way they see fit without direct U.S. influence," Mogahed said.

"When we asked Muslims around the world what the West can do to improve relations with the Muslim world, the most frequent responses were for the West to demonstrate more respect for Islam and to regard Muslims as equals, not as inferior."

U.S. surveys show that Americans do in fact have a low opinion of Muslims, with only 34 percent of those polled by Gallup saying they had no prejudice towards Muslims and 19 percent saying they had a "great deal" of prejudice.

When the authors looked at where opinions of the West were lowest in the Muslim world, it tended to correlate with where conflicts were going on -- nations bordering Iraq or Israel and the Palestinian territories were more negative in their views.

The most positive Muslim nations were those in sub-Saharan Africa, especially Sierra Leone, where U.S. and British aid have done much to improve opinion after years of conflict.

A factor overlaying each side's view of the other has been media coverage. Mogahed said media-content analysis showed the majority of U.S. TV news coverage was "sharply negative" of Islam, whereas when Christianity was discussed on Muslim TV stations, the coverage was flat -- neither good nor bad.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Vatican fence-mending campaign with Jews draws mixed reviews

2008-04-11T12:14:00.000-04:00

Vatican fence-mending campaign with Jews draws mixed reviews
Posted on Apr 4, 2008 08:07am CST.
National Catholic Reporter

Efforts to mute criticism of a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews in the old Latin liturgy of the Catholic Church, which have escalated ever since Pope Benedict XVI announced the revival of the Latin Mass last July, intensified this week.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops announced two additions to the program of Pope Benedict while he’s in the United States in mid-April, both directed at Jews. After a general April 17 session with 200 leaders of other faiths in Washington, D.C., the pope will also meet briefly in private with the Jewish delegation. On April 18, Benedict will make a stop at New York’s Park East Synagogue, located near the Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.

While the official motive is for the pope to offer greetings for Passover, which begins on April 19, the clear subtext would seem to be a desire to reassure Jews that the pope remains committed to Catholic/Jewish dialogue, despite recent turbulence.

Today, the Vatican released the text of a statement from the Secretariat of State, its central administrative authority, asserting that the Good Friday prayer does not signal any change in the church’s commitment to better relations with Jews.

The statement was released in both Italian and English, in part so that it would be readily understood by Jewish readers, but in part, too, suggesting that the timing is related to the pope's upcoming trip to the United States.

Early reaction in the Jewish world appears mixed, with the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League asserting that it represents "two steps forward and three steps backward" in Catholic/Jewish relations.

Benedict's decision to approve the old Latin Mass for wider use was never intended, papal spokespersons have repeatedly said, as a statement about Catholic/Jewish relations, but rather as an intra-Catholic stimulus to a stronger sense of traditional Catholic identity. Nevertheless, revival of a Good Friday prayer was interpreted by some Jewish groups as a retreat from the outreach associated with the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the papacy of John Paul II.

Responding to those concerns, Benedict XVI issued a revised version of the prayer, removing pejorative language about Jews but preserving the reference to conversion. Several Jewish leaders and organizations, as well as some Catholic veterans of dialogue with Judaism, signalled diappointment with the result. Today's statement attempt to offer an official framework for interpreting the pope's intent with the revised prayer.

(As a bit of insider baseball, it’s interesting to note that the Vatican clearly wanted this statement to be perceived as coming from the very highest level, representing the personal will of the pope – hence it was issued by the Secretariat of State, not the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, even though it arguably addresses a matter of Catholic teaching. It’s a small but telling sign of the ascendancy of Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State, who has successfully consolidated a remarkable degree of power and visibility in his office.)

The full text of the statement follows:

“Following the publication of the new Prayer for the Jews for the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, some groups within the Jewish community have expressed disappointment that it is not in harmony with the official declarations and statements of the Holy See regarding the Jewish people and their faith which have marked the progress of friendly relations between the Jews and the Catholic Church over the last forty years.

“The Holy See wishes to reassure that the new formulation of the Prayer, which modifies certain expressions of the 1962 Missal, in no way intends to indicate a change in the Catholic Church's regard for the Jews which has evolved from the basis of the Second Vatican Council, particularly the Declaration Nostra Aetate. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI, in an audience with the Chief Rabbis of Israel on 15 September 2005, remarked that this document "has proven to be a milestone on the road towards the reconciliation of Christians with the Jewish people." The continuation of the position found in Nostra Aetate is clearly shown by the fact that the prayer contained in the 1970 Missal continues to be in full use, and is the ordinary form of the prayer of Catholics.

“In the context of other affirmations of the Council - on Sacred Scripture (Dei Verbum, 14) and on the Church (Lumen Gentium, 16) - Nostra Aetate presents the fundamental principles which have sustained and today continue to sustain the bonds of esteem, dialogue, love, solidarity and collaboration between Catholics and Jews. It is precisely while examining the mystery of the Church that Nostra Aetate recalls the unique bond with which the people of the New Testament is spiritually linked with the stock of Abraham and rejects every attitude of contempt or discrimination against Jews, firmly repudiating any kind of anti-Semitism.

“The Holy See hopes that the explanations made in this statement will help to clarify any misunderstanding. It reiterates the unwavering desire that the concrete progress made in mutual understanding and the growth in esteem between Jews and Christians will continue to develop.”

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, issued the following reaction to the Vatican statement:

"On this issue the Vatican has taken two steps forward and three steps backward. It is reassuring that the Catholic Church remains committed to the ideals of Nostra Aetate and to an approach toward relations with the Jewish people based on cordiality and mutual respect.

"Yet it is troubling that the statement still does not specifically say that the Catholic Church is opposed to proselytizing Jews. While they say it does not change Nostra Aetate, the statement does not go far enough to allay concerns about how the message of this prayer will be understood by the people in the pews. The Latin prayer is still out there, and stands by itself, and unless this statement will be read along with the prayer, it will not repair or mitigate the impact of the words of the prayer itself, with its call for Jews to recognize Jesus as the savior of all men and its hope that ‘all Israel will be saved.’

"The impact of those words is undeniable, and we wish the Vatican had explicitly rejected calls to conversion or to proselytizing Jews."

Rabbi Eugene Korn, executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University, said in an e-mail that the Vatican statement does not address the core Jewish concern about the Good Friday Prayer: "Will there be new attempts — in dialogue, formal relations, or informal relations — to convert Jews to the Church?"

» John L Allen Jr Daily Column

Israeli and Palestinian Leaders Resume Peace Talks

2008-04-07T15:30:00.000-04:00

The New York Times

April 7, 2008
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:45 p.m. ET

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli and Palestinian leaders resumed face-to-face negotiations Monday, trying to push forward peace efforts after nearly two months marred by heavy Gaza Strip violence and new Israeli plans to expand settlements.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spent much of the three-hour meeting discussing Israeli settlements on disputed territory and gaps on the contentious issue were wide, a Palestinian negotiator said.
The two leaders pledged to resume more frequent talks, about every two weeks, and renewed a commitment to wrap up a peace deal by the end of the year.
However, the differences over the settlements, military checkpoints in the West Bank, violence by Palestinian militants and Hamas control over the Gaza Strip make that date look increasingly unrealistic.
Under a U.S.-backed peace plan, Israel is required to freeze settlement expansion, but Olmert has said construction will continue in settlements Israel wants to keep in a final peace deal.
''The settlement activities occupied a large part of the negotiations,'' said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who attended Monday's meeting. ''The president (Abbas) showed documents, maps, and emphasized the necessity to stop the settlement expansion.''
With U.S. backing, the two leaders have pledged to reach a final peace deal by the end of the year. But it remains unclear how much progress they have made. Negotiating teams have met dozens of times, and officials privately say that all key issues are under discussion.
But there have been few visible signs of change on the ground. Israel continues to build in Jewish settlements, it has done little to improve Palestinian living conditions in the West Bank and the Hamas militant group, which regularly attacks Israeli targets, remains firmly in control of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Monday's discussions included meetings between negotiating teams as well as the one-on-one session between Olmert and Abbas.
The two leaders formally relaunched peace talks last November at a summit hosted by President Bush in Annapolis, Md.
''Both leaders reiterated their commitment to the Annapolis process and to reaching a historic agreement by the end of the year,'' Regev said. ''Both sides today raised concerns, but they agreed that the negotiations will go on.''
He said the Palestinians discussed Israeli settlement construction and humanitarian issues in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel raised its security concerns and called on the Palestinians to rein in militants.
Erekat said Olmert also gave tentative approval to Abbas' request to grant West Bank residency to 10,000 Palestinians who now have expired visas.
In all, a total of 54,000 Palestinians would receive residency rights, and 12,000 requests were approved in the past, he said. Israel largely closed the option of immigration to the West Bank after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, and tens of thousands of Palestinians live in the West Bank in legal limbo.
The talks between Olmert and Abbas are supposed to be based on the ''road map,'' a U.S.-backed peace plan that sets a series of stages meant to lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
As initial obligations, the road map calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity and for the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups. Neither side has met its obligations.
Since the Annapolis conference, Israel has announced plans to build hundreds of new homes in the West Bank and east Jerusalem -- areas claimed by the Palestinians for their future state. Abbas has repeatedly condemned the construction.
At the same time, Hamas militants have fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel from Gaza. Israel has warned that it will not carry out any peace agreement until Abbas regains control of Gaza. Hamas violently seized control of the coastal strip last June after routing Abbas' forces there.
Israel launched a broad offensive in Hamas-controlled Gaza in late February in response to especially heavy rocket fire. The offensive, which killed more than 120 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, prompted Abbas to suspend his regular biweekly meetings with Olmert. Monday's meeting was the first between the men since Feb. 19.
------
Associated Press writer Laurie Copans contributed to this article.

Dr. Yacoub Yacoub Honored by Louisville Mayor with Proclamation

2008-03-25T13:02:00.001-04:00

Whereas: we celebrate and honor Dr. Yacoub’s tireless dedication and activism in fostering understanding, peace, and goodwill in our own community and in the
Middle East; and

Whereas: we recognize Dr. Yacoub’s strong commitment to sharing the beauty of his culture and bridging gaps of cultural understanding across many borders; and

Whereas: we commend Dr. Yacoub’s leadership and action in the pursuit of peacemaking and a peaceful resolution to all conflicts; and

Whereas: we salute Dr. Yacoub’s strong heart and spirit which inspired true and meaningful dialogue around polarizing cultural, political, and religious issues; and

Whereas: we honor Dr. Yacoub’s role as an ambassador for the universal civil rights of all people; and

Whereas: we celebrate the life work of Dr. Yacoub and the enrichment he has brought to the Louisville community.

Monday, March 24th, 2008 as Dr. Yacoub E. Yacoub Life and Legacy Remembrance Day

Abbas Cool to Unilateral Palestinian Independence

2008-02-20T09:43:00.001-05:00

February 20, 2008

By REUTERS
Filed at 7:33 a.m. ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Feb 20 - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruled out on Wednesday any unilateral declaration of statehood in the near future, responding to an aide's call to take the step if peace talks with Israel continued to falter.
Abbas made the remarks a day after he and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met to accelerate U.S.-backed peace talks launched at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.
"We will pursue negotiations in order to reach a peace agreement during 2008 that includes the settlement of all final status issues including Jerusalem," Abbas said in a statement.
"But if we cannot achieve that, and we reach a deadlock, we will go back to our Arab nation to take the necessary decision at the highest level," he said, without mentioning any options.
Earlier, aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said Palestinians should declare independence unilaterally "if things are not going in the direction of (Israel) actually halting settlement activities, if things are not going in the direction of continuous and serious negotiations."
The peace talks, which Washington hopes will yield a statehood deal this year, have been stalled by disputes over Israeli plans to build new homes on occupied land and Olmert's insistence on putting off talks about the future of Jerusalem.
Abbas's authority has also been limited to the occupied West Bank since Hamas Islamists, who oppose his peace efforts with Israel, seized the Gaza Strip in June. A Hamas spokesman said Abed Rabbo's suggestion was not worth listening to.
"Our Palestinian people are not in need of more failed experiences from some failed people," said Sami Abu Zuhri.
CARAVANS
In a move that could further anger Palestinians, Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said on Wednesday right-wing activists had placed 27 caravans in the West Bank despite a pledge by Olmert at Annapolis to halt settlement activity.
Peace Now said activists were circumventing a ban on new settlement construction by putting the caravans on a site near the Eli settlement north of the West Bank town of Ramallah.
"Olmert talked about a settlement freeze at Annapolis but it's all blah blah because we see construction all over the West Bank," said Hagit Ofran, head of monitoring at Peace Now.
Olmert and Abbas agreed at Annapolis to abide by a 2003 U.S. peace "road map" which requires Israel to halt settlement activity and the Palestinians to rein in militants. Each side accuses the other of failing to meet those commitments.
A spokesman at Israel's military-run Civil Administration department, which oversees the West Bank, could not be reached for comment.
Abed Rabbo drew an analogy between the Palestinians and Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia on Sunday.
"Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence," Abed Rabbo said.
But fellow negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestine Liberation Organisation had declared independence in 1988.
"Now we need real independence, not a declaration. We need real independence by ending the occupation. We are not Kosovo. We are under Israeli occupation and for independence we need to acquire independence," Erekat said.
(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in Ramallah, Rebecca Harrison in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Congress Passes ALLMEP Proposal - $9 Million To Focus on Arab-Israeli People-to-People Efforts!

2008-01-04T10:27:00.000-05:00

Dear ALLMEP Supporters and Friends,
As 2007 comes to a close, we are thrilled to report that this week, Congress approved $9 million in new funding dedicated to supporting people-to-people coexistence and reconciliation activities between Israelis and Palestinian, Arabs, Jews, and Muslims in the Middle East. ALLMEP first proposed such funding last year. Here's a news release of this great news, with thanks to you all and the many members of Congress who made sure this funding became a reality (see below). Below that, please find a reminder of the great ways you can support ALLMEP now and in the new year.
Thank you for your continued support of ALLMEP and Middle East coexistence efforts.
Best wishes for happy holidays and a happy, healthy, PEACEFUL new year!
- The Members and Volunteers of the Alliance for Middle East Peace

Congress Adopts ALLMEP Proposal, Dedicates $9 Million for People-to-People Projects in the Middle East
Dec. 21 (Washington, DC) -- With a final vote of approval in the House of Representatives this week, Congress passed a massive omnibus spending bill for the federal government that included $9 million in funding for people-to-people coexistence and reconciliation activities aimed at building grassroots support for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. The funding stems from a proposal by the Alliance for Middle East Peace ("ALLMEP"), a coalition of non-governmental organizations that bring together individuals and communities across conflict lines to cooperate on joint projects involving education, medicine, the environment, business, sports, culture, religion, and other areas of everyday life.
Congress allocated the funds as part of the U.S. "Economic Support Fund" that provides most U.S. foreign aid. Earlier in the year, the House included $11 million for these activities after a bi-partisan, Arab-Jewish-Christian coalition of 35 members of the House, led by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), circulated a letter to appropriators seeking the funding. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), Chair of the House Appropriations Sub-committee on Foreign Operations, played a key role in supporting the funding as appropriators drafted the legislation.
In a parallel effort, a full 25% of the U.S. Senate signed a bi-partisan letter to appropriators in support of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence funding, led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), and Sen. John Sununu (R-NH).
Other appropriators believed to have played a key role in supporting this funding include: House Foreign Operations Sub-Committee Ranking Member Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Senate Foreign Operations Sub-Committee Chair Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), and Sub-Committee members Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS).
"All of these people-to-people projects are working to change attitudes and build positive relations between ordinary citizens on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict," said ALLMEP Executive Director, Susan Mirbach. "At a time when the world is focused on trying to solve the conflict, this much-needed funding by Congress is a critical step toward building strong and active grassroots support for peace. Without significantly expanding these efforts, there simply won't be the vocal public support needed for a peace deal to arrive or survive."
Copies of the House and Senate letters showing all members who signed on in support are available at ALLMEP's web site: House letter Senate letter.
Until this vote, U.S. funding for reconciliation projects in the Middle East had declined to zero in the last two years even as U.S. funds for reconciliation efforts worldwide had almost doubled as a result of ALLMEP's advocacy. Since the need for people-to-people activities to counter the Arab-Israeli conflict is so great and since so many grassroots initiatives are already underway but in need of significant support, ALLMEP first proposed a dedicated fund for Middle East people-to-people efforts in 2006 but Congress failed to complete its appropriations bills that year.
In addition to proposing dedicated funding for this work, since 2003, ALLMEP has raised considerable awareness about the scope and value of people-to-people projects involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, enabling both public and private sector funders to understand the need for increasing funds for this sector.
# # # #

Support Peace in the New Year With Year-End Giving and New Year's Resolutions

Looking for meaningful causes to support with your 2007 charitable contributions? Thinking about new year's resolutions and ways to make a difference in the year ahead? Tired of sitting on the sidelines and hoping for peace? Look no further! ALLMEP provides you with a concrete way to help those who are building peace every day!
Please consider these ways to support our work:
1. Make your tax-deductible donation today!
In order to expand its impact and bring greater support to Middle East people-to-people projects in the year ahead, ALLMEP is transitioning from an all-volunteer operation to a professional one. In 2008, ALLMEP (now a recognized 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization) hopes to hire its first paid staff. Given all that ALLMEP has accomplished with the hard work of dedicated volunteers, imagine the potential of having professionals carry on this work full-time!
Consider that since ALLMEP's members first joined together informally in 2003, ALLMEP has been entirely volunteer-powered. Without a single paid professional, we've arranged for hundreds of meetings between leading coexistence groups and policymakers. We've created a safe space where Americans from every religious and political background who yearn for peace can work together in support of brave peacemakers on the ground. Imagine pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian Americans - Muslims, Christians, and Jews - sitting at the same table, sharing Middle Eastern food and at a Capitol Hill event while listening to a panel discussion of Middle East ambassadors discussing the power of grassroots peace efforts! With "just" volunteers, ALLMEP made this and so much more happen.
When policymakers and private sector leaders see all of this, they understand the need to provide critical resources and support to civil society projects. 46 organizations have now joined together under the ALLMEP umbrella to raise the profile of their work in the U.S., cooperate on joint programs in the region, and increase the resources available to support people-to-people activities. Please consider supporting our efforts to "go pro" and support these important grassroots activities by making a secure online donation today!

2. Become a part of the solution in 2008…
What better new year's resolution than deciding to do something for Middle East peace in 2008? There are many ways you can give of your time, expertise, contacts, and energy to support grassroots peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews. You can start by making sure you, your friends, and your family sign up for our email updates. Next, learn more about our member organizations and their work. Consider joining us for our March 2008 outreach event in Washington, D.C. (tentatively scheduled for March 12, 2008 - further details TBA). Sign up as a volunteer to help spread the good word about people-to-people efforts to your elected officials, religious community, and neighbors. Contact us if you would like to be in touch with any of ALLMEP's member organizations to volunteer or contribute to their important work.
Thanks for your support and Happy Holidays!

If you do not wish to receive any further emails from ALLMEP, please reply to this message with the subject "unsubscribe."
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From: invite@allmep.orgTo: invite@allmep.orgSent: 12/21/2007 2:15:52 P.M. Eastern Standard TimeSubj: Congress Passes ALLMEP Proposal - $9 Million To Focus on Arab-Israeli People-to-People Efforts!