How Religious Were the Founding Fathers? – Gordon Wood

Historian Gordon Wood explains that Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington were not “emotionally religious.” He outlines the development of religion in the early United States, stating that as American society became more democratic, “the evangelicals took over.”

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Pulitzer Prize for History recipient Gordon Wood traces the history of American efforts to promote democracy around the world from the French Revolution to current involvement in the Middle East.

As far back as the 19th century, the identity of America has been linked to its central role in sparking republican revolutions around the world. – Chautauqua Institution

Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. He received his B.A. degree from Tufts University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at Brown in 1969.

He is the author of many works, including The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969), which won the Bancroft Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize in 1970, and The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize in 1993.

NYPD rewords report that some say insulted Muslims

NEW YORK — The New York Police Department has revised a highly touted report on the threat of homegrown terrorism in response to complaints that it was an insult to law-abiding, observant Muslims.

A coalition of Muslim groups on Wednesday applauded the two-page clarification tucked into “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat” — a study first circulated in law enforcement circles and on the Internet in 2007. The new wording says the NYPD “understands that it is a tiny minority of Muslims who subscribe to al-Qaida’s ideology of war and terror.”

The clarification also calls the city’s Muslim community “our ally,” and “as such, the NYPD report should not be read to characterize Muslims as intrinsically dangerous or intrinsically linked to terrorism, and that it cannot be a license for racial, religious, or ethnic profiling.”

Despite welcoming the changes, the New York-based Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition accused the NYPD of not doing enough to publicize them. Also, the study still has passages that “criminalize religious behaviors,” said Aliya Latif of the New York office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a coalition member.

Police officials have denied the report stereotypes Muslims, even in its original form. The changes merely “make explicit what was already implicit” regarding the departments’ respect for the community, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

Conintue reading: ASSOCIATED PRESS (GOOGLE)

The Paradox of Muslim Weakness

Islamists, even when not in power, wield fear and faith to pressure their societies in conservative directions

Seven years after 9/11, views on the Islamist threat remain polarized and both are flawed, argues journalist and author Sadanand Dhume: The right overplays the danger to Europe and the United States, while the left underestimates its impact on Muslim-majority countries. Ironically, the very patterns of weakness in Muslim societies strengthen minority Islamists, among the most organized and motivated players in many Muslim nations. Islamic culture prohibits any criticism of Islamic traditions and leads to the suggestion that a lack of faith, rather than failure to embrace modernity, spur poverty and inequality, explains Dhume. Education and economic development carry less priority than rigid faith. Therefore, he concludes, the threat posed by Islamism and its extremist tactics is indirect for the West, immediate and serious for moderation and the liberal democracies of developing Muslim nations.

(Continue reading: YaleGlobal)

Afghan teacher shot dead after condemning suicide bombings as un-Islamic

A teacher was shot to death in northern Afghanistan after he gave a speech condemning suicide bombings, it was revealed today.

Abdul Hadi claimed the attacks were un-Islamic and un-Afghan during a speech yesterday in the Archi district of Kunduz province.

He spoke at a gathering of about 700 people, including the Kunduz governor, and was on his way home when he was killed, Khair Mohammad Subat said.

Kunduz police chief General Mohammad Ayub Salangi said police were investigating and that no arrests have been made so far.

(Continue reading: The Daily Mail)

The High Price of Diplomacy With China

Two investigative reports uncover the Bush administration’s efforts to suppress legal proceedings against high-ranking Chinese officials—former Trade Minister Bo Xilai and Beijing’s Olympic Organizing Committee President Liu Qi—accused of torturing religious group members.

On Secular Fundamentalism

AP photos / left: Gautam Singh / right: Uwe Lein

By Chris Hedges
Source: Truthdig

Chris Hedges, who went to seminary at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of “I Don’t Believe in Atheists.” This essay is adapted from the book, which was inspired in part by Hedges’ debate with Sam Harris.

The battle under way in America is not a battle between religion and science. It is a battle between religious and secular fundamentalists. It is a battle between two groups intoxicated with the utopian and magical belief that humankind can perfect itself and master its destiny.

We live in an age of faith. We are assured we are advancing as a species toward a world that will be made perfect by reason, technology, science or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Evil can be eradicated. War has been declared on nebulous forces or cultures that stand as impediments to progress. Religion, if you are secular, is blamed for genocide, injustice, persecution, backwardness and intellectual and sexual repression. Secular humanism, if you are born again, is branded as a tool of Satan.

The folly of humankind, however, is pervasive. It infects all human endeavors. It has not exempted itself from institutional religion or the cult of science and reason. The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists. It comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.

Those who insist we are morally advancing as a species are deluding themselves. There is nothing in science or human history or human nature to support this idea. Human individuals can make moral advances, as can human societies, but they also make moral reverses. Our personal and collective histories are not linear. We alternate between periods of light and periods of darkness. We can move forward materially, but we do not move forward morally. The belief in collective moral advancement ignores the endemic flaws in human nature as well as the tragic reality of human history. This belief in inevitable moral progress, whether it comes in secular or religious form, is magical thinking. The secular version of this myth peddles fables no less fantastic, and no less delusional, than those preached from many church pulpits.

The word utopia was coined by Thomas More in 1516 from the Greek words for no and place. To be a utopian, to live for the creation of a fantastic and unreal world, was to live in no place, to remove oneself from reality. It is only by building an ethic based on reality, one that takes into account the dangers and limits of human nature and human power, that we can begin to adjust our behavior to cope with social and political problems. All utopian schemes of impossible advances and glorious conclusions end in moral squalor, criminality and fanaticism.

The current “war on terror” by the United States is a utopian vision. It is being fought so that evil can be violently uprooted. Its proponents promise a world that will become “reasonable,” a “civil” world ruled by the “rational” forces of global capitalism. Those who support the “war on terror” speak as if victory in any tangible sense is possible. This noble vision of a world in harmony is used to turn us into criminals, beasts who carry out needless murder and torture in Iraq and our offshore penal colonies in the name of human progress.

The desire for emancipation, universal happiness and prosperity has a seductive pull on the human imagination. It preoccupied the early church, which was infused with exclusivist, utopian sects. We are comforted by the thought that we progress morally as a species. We want things to get better. We want to believe we are moving forward. This hope is more reassuring than reality. But all the signs in our present world point to a coming anarchy, a massive dislocation of populations that will result from ecological devastation and climate change, multiple pollutions, the weight of overpopulation and wars fought over dwindling natural resources. Science, which should be used to address these looming disasters, has largely become a tool of corporations that seek not to protect us but make a profit and stimulate the economy. New technologies that are potentially threatening, such as genetically modified organisms and nanotechnologies, are being unleashed with no understanding of the impact on the biosphere. The global population is expected to jump from about 2 billion in 1930 to 8 or 9 billion in the mid-21st century, and this means that if growth is left unchecked we will no longer be able to sustain ourselves, especially as nations such as China seek the consumption levels of the industrialized nations in Europe and North America. Nearly two-thirds of the life-support services provided to us by nature are already in precipitous decline worldwide. The old wars of conquest, expansion and exploitation will be replaced by wars fought for the basic necessities of air, food, sustainable living conditions and water. And as we race toward this catastrophe, scientists continue to make discoveries, set these discoveries upon us and walk away from the impact.

The belief that science and reason will save us makes it possible to ignore or minimize these looming catastrophes. We drift toward disaster with the comforting thought that the god of science will intervene on our behalf. It is dispiriting to live in a world where things are not moving forward and will most probably get worse. We prefer to believe that we are the culmination of a process, the end result of centuries of human advancement, rather than creatures trapped in the irrevocable limitations and blunders of human nature. The idea of inevitable progress gives us comfort in times of turmoil. It allows us to place ourselves at the center of creation, to exalt ourselves above others. It translates our narrow self-interest into a universal good. But it is morally irresponsible. It permits us to avert our eyes from reality and place our hopes in an absurdist faith.

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels and divine intervention. Scientific methods, part of the process of changing the material world, are nearly useless in the nebulous world of politics, ideas, values and ethics. But the belief in the possibility of collective moral progress, in our ability to advance as a species spiritually and ethically, is seductive. It is what has doomed populations in the past that have chased after impossible dreams, and it threatens to doom us again. It is, at its core, the enticement that we can be more than human, that we can become gods.

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God. We have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgement that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility or the illusion that the human species makes moral advances along with the material advances in science and technology. To turn away from God is harmless. Saints have been trying to do it for centuries. To turn away from sin is catastrophic. Religious fundamentalists, who believe they know and can carry out the will of God, disregard their severe human limitations. They act as if they are free from sin. The secular utopians from Richard Dawkins to Sam Harris to Daniel Dennett to Christopher Hitchens have also forgotten they are human. Both they and religious fundamentalists peddle absolutes. Those who do not see as they see, speak as they speak and act as they act are worthy only of conversion or eradication.

The belief that human nature can be improved and perfected, that we are moving throughout history toward a glorious culmination, is malformed theology. It permits wild, eschatological visions to be built under religious or secular banners. It is this belief that is dangerous. And it colors the thought of the new crop of atheist writers. They will tell us what is right and wrong, not in the eyes of God, but according to the purity of the rational mind. They too seek to destroy those who do not conform to their vision. They too wrap their intolerance in Enlightenment virtues.

“Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them,” Sam Harris writes. “This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.”

Any form of knowledge that claims to be absolute ceases to be knowledge. It is a form of faith. Harris and the other atheist authors mistake a tiny subset of criminals and terrorists for 1 billion Muslims. They justify the unjustifiable in the name of civilization. The passions of these atheists, hidden under the jargon of reason and science, are as bankrupt as the passions of Christian and Islamic fundamentalists who sanctify mass slaughter in the name of their utopia. Religious fundamentalists pervert and distort religion to serve their own fears and self-aggrandizement. Atheists do the same with science and reason. These two groups peddle the myth that we can conquer human nature, overcome our imperfections and build the perfect society.

These atheists and Christian radicals have built squalid little belief systems that are in the service of themselves and their own power. They urge us forward into a nonreality-based world, one where force and violence, where self-exaltation and blind nationalism, are an unquestioned good. They seek to make us afraid of what we do not know or understand. They use this fear to justify cruelty and war. They ask us to kneel before little idols that look and act like them, telling us that one day, if we trust enough in God or reason, we will have everything we desire.

We must accept the severe limitations of being human. We must face reality, a reality which in the coming decades is going to be bleak and difficult. Those who are blinded by utopian visions inevitably turn to force to make their impossible dreams and their noble ideals real. They believe that the ends, no matter how barbaric, justify the means. Utopian ideologues, armed with the technology and mechanisms of industrial slaughter, have killed tens of millions of people over the last century. They ask us to inflict suffering and death in the name of virtue and truth. The atheists, in the end, offer us a new version of an old and dangerous faith. It is one we have seen before. It is one we must fight.

Factor military duty into criticism

In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.

In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy’s premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief’s medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.

What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America’s biggest cities.

This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades.

Since these comments became public we have heard criticisms, condemnations, denouncements and rejections of his comments and him.

We’ve seen on television, in a seemingly endless loop, sound bites of a select few of Rev. Wright’s many sermons.

Some of the Wright’s comments are inexcusable and inappropriate and should be condemned, but in calling him “unpatriotic,” let us not forget that this is a man who gave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country.

How many of Wright’s detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many.

While words do count, so do actions.

Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism.

Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss are, respectively, Navy and Marine Corps veterans. They work at The Center For American Progress. Korb served as assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration.

//chicago tribune//

Jewish leader calls Hagee ‘extremist’

The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism said Wednesday that synagogues in the movement shouldn’t work with the Rev. John Hagee, a Christian Zionist, calling him an “extremist” on Israeli policy who disparages other faiths.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said Hagee and his group, Christians United For Israel, reject any Israeli land concessions to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

Reform Judaism supports creating a Palestinian state; Hagee sees a biblical mandate for the territory so End Times prophecy can be fulfilled.

Yoffie also condemned Hagee’s views on Roman Catholicism and Islam. The San Antonio pastor has suggested that Catholic anti-Semitism shaped Adolf Hitler, among other comments.

Hagee has vehemently denied he is anti-Catholic and said his remarks have been mischaracterized.

But Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, distanced himself from Hagee last month, after the pastor endorsed him, following an uproar over Hagee’s views of Catholicism.

“On Israeli-Palestinian politics, John Hagee and the CUFI are extremists,” Yoffie said, in a speech to Reform rabbis meeting in Cincinnati. “In expressing contempt for other religions and rejecting territorial compromise under any and all circumstances, their views run against the American grain.”

The Union for Reform Judaism represents more than 900 North American synagogues.

//associated press//

Wilders’ Political Propaganda

Geert Wilders has kept his word. He has circulated his film Fitna before April 1 and has, as he puts it, been ‘properly’ restrained. The film, which nevertheless appeared unexpectedly on the Internet on Thursday, is indeed not as shocking as expected during the hyped-up prelude to the premiere.

So the film seems like an anticlimax. It goes no further than making suggestive comments: the suggestion that the Koran is the source of all the violence in the world; the suggestion that Islam is a threat to everyone’s freedom, like Hitler and Stalin. But in Fitna, the Koran is not destroyed and the bomb in the prophet’s turban, drawn by the Danish cartoonist, doesn’t quite explode.

Has Wilders been successful in giving an example of his political and artistic skills with Fitna? Certainly not when it comes to his artistic capacity. Wilders doesn’t have enough creative talent and is sloppy in his approach.

This might still prove a problem and he will probably have to explain himself before the courts. For example he used material from the Danish cartoonist without asking permission and wrongly said a photograph of a rapper was the murderer of film-maker Theo van Gogh. And he has dragged others along with him – proof of a stunning lack of responsibility. The Dutch public prosecution department is also looking into whether Fitna incites hatred in the legal sense.

Freedom of expression, one of the fundamental concepts of every democratic state, can cope with this amateurish attack. This confidence is confirmed by the muted reactions to the film to date. Earlier prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende had almost precipitated a sort of emergency by using the word ‘crisis’. But when the hour of reckoning arrived, the prime minister limited himself to a declaration in which he said the government ‘regretted’ the film.

Representatives from Islamic organisations used a similar tone. Some reacted completely laconically. The question now is whether Fitna will be seen in the same way in less articulate circles in the Netherlands and abroad. After all, action and reaction belong together. Governments and individual agitators could use the film as an excuse to get even for other things. But the calm way the film has been received up to now gives hope.

Both left and right-wing politicians have dismissed the film as old hat. They saw ‘nothing new’ in the footage. But such comments show a misunderstanding of Wilders’ political goal. He doesn’t want to bring new insights or promote dialogue. Fitna is just a weapon in his propaganda war. His politics stand or fall with the concept of the ’self-fulfilling prophecy’. In this sense Wilders hasn’t done himself or the citizens of the Netherlands a service. And that too must be said in public.

//spiegel online//

ANALYSIS: Iraq fighting a reality check

A declaration Sunday by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to pull his Mahdi Army fighters off the streets may help bring an end to the wave of violence that swept Baghdad and Shiite areas after the government launched a crackdown against militias in Basra.

That will ease the violence which has claimed more than 300 lives. But it won’t bring an end to the power struggle between Shiite parties that triggered the confrontation.

Nor will it ensure government control of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city and headquarters of the vital oil industry.

And it could leave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki politically weakened because he put his prestige on the line with promises to crush Basra’s “criminal gangs,” some of which he said were “worse than al-Qaida.”

The crackdown has already dragged the United States into a bloody inner-Shiite fight at a time when the U.S. administration would prefer to talk about success against Sunni extremists and to argue that Iraq is finally on the road to stability.

Instead, the bloody confrontation serves as a reality check about the situation in Iraq — even as the top U.S. officials in Baghdad prepare to brief a skeptical Congress for two days starting April 8 about prospects for bringing home the troops and leaving a relatively stable country behind.

President Bush called the Basra crisis “a defining moment” because the Maliki-led Iraqi government was finally taking on the Shiite militias.

But the crisis speaks volumes about the reality of Iraqi society and raises new questions about the effectiveness of the country’s leadership as America debates whether continuing the mission here is worth the sacrifice.

Iraqi and American officials portrayed the crackdown as a move to crush outlaw militias — some with close ties to Iran — that have effectively ruled the streets of the country’s second-largest city for nearly three years.

Many of those armed groups are without question deep into oil smuggling, extortion, murder and robbery.

But the picture is more complex. It involves deep-seated rivalries within the majority Shiite community.

Numerous other militias and armed groups operate in Basra and elsewhere in the south — some with close ties to political parties in the national and provincial governments.

All signs indicate that the crackdown was directed primarily at the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of al-Sadr’s political movement.

The Sadrists believe the goal was to weaken their movement before provincial elections this fall. Al-Sadr’s followers expect to make major gains in the regional voting at the expense of al-Maliki’s Shiite partners in the government.

That points to a significant difference between the Shiite crisis and the war against Sunni insurgents. Al-Qaida has been severely weakened because it lost much of its support within the Sunni community.

By contrast, al-Sadr’s movement commands a wide following especially among impoverished Shiites who feel estranged from Shiite parties that appeal more to the better-educated urban classes.

For months, al-Sadr and other Shiite parties have been locked in a bitter power struggle for control of the Shiite south — which contains the bulk of the country’s proven oil reserves as well as major religious shrines that attract millions of pilgrims.

Last August, al-Sadr proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire nationwide in an effort to reorganize the force and rein in factions that had branched out into crime.

U.S. commanders acknowledge that truce helped bring down violence in Baghdad.

Nonetheless, U.S. and Iraqi forces continued to chip away at the Sadrists with raids and arrests in Baghdad and elsewhere. American officials insist the target was not al-Sadr’s movement but Iranian-backed renegades who did not abide by al-Sadr’s cease-fire.

Al-Sadr’s followers didn’t see it that way.

Once the crackdown began in Basra, they rose up all over the Shiite heartland, launching rockets into the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad, firing on American patrols, burning offices of al-Maliki’s political party and attacking government installations.

The fact that al-Maliki apparently miscalculated the response casts doubt on his judgment and raises serious questions about his commitment to the U.S. goal of national reconciliation.

Despite the Mahdi Army’s unsavory image, a number of key U.S. commanders and officials here have long maintained that it is a mistake to demonize the entire Sadrist movement, which enjoys a substantial following among millions of Iraqi Shiites.

It would be a mistake to assume that U.S. goals and al-Maliki’s goals are fully aligned, said Middle East expert Jon Alterman.

“Our (the U.S.) preference is for many voices to be reflected in whatever Iraqi government emerges from five years of conflict,” Alterman said. But, “al-Maliki is playing a long-term game for all the marbles.”

The Basra confrontation also served as a test for the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, which are majority Shiite and include many al-Sadr supporters.

In the campaign’s first days, Iraqi forces made little headway against Mahdi fighters, who unleashed rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire every time government troops tried to enter their neighborhoods.

The headquarters of the Iraqi army’s Basra operation has come under fire regularly since the fighting began. Iraqi commanders have had to turn to the British and American warplanes to take out militia fighters blocking their advance.

At least a dozen police, including some elite commandos, defected to the Sadrists in Baghdad. AP Television News video showed Mahdi fighters in Basra unloading weapons from an Iraqi army vehicle.

The vehicle didn’t have a scratch on it, suggesting it was either abandoned by the Iraqi soldiers or delivered to the Mahdi Army.

//associated press//

Bin Laden: Pope Helps Anti-Islam Crusade

By PAUL SCHEMM

Osama bin Laden accused Pope Benedict XVI of helping in a “new Crusade” against Islam and warned of a “severe” reaction to European publications of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that insulted many Muslims.

Bin Laden’s new audiotape message raised concerns al-Qaida was plotting new attacks in Europe. Some experts said bin Laden, believed to be in hiding in the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border area, may be unable to organize an attack himself and instead is trying to fan anger and inspire his supporters to violence.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said bin Laden’s accusation that the pope has played a role in a worldwide campaign against Islam is “baseless.” Lombardi said the pope on several occasions has criticized the cartoons, first published in several European newspapers in 2006 and republished by Danish papers in February.

The pope angered many in the Muslim world in 2006, when he cited a medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith.”

The pope later said he was “deeply sorry” and stressed the remarks did not reflect his own opinions. He has since led a public campaign for dialogue with Muslims.

Bin Laden’s audiotape was posted late Wednesday on a militant Web site that has carried al-Qaida statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group’s media wing Al-Sahab.

“The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God,” said a voice believed to be bin Laden’s, without specifying what action would be taken.

He said the cartoons “came in the framework of a new Crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican has played a large, lengthy role,” according to a transcript released by the SITE Institute, a U.S. group that monitors terror messages.

“You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings,” he said. “This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe.”

The five-minute message, bin Laden’s first this year, came as the Muslim world marks the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday on Thursday. It made no mention of the fifth anniversary Wednesday of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.

A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington said “CIA analysis assesses with a high degree of confidence it is Osama bin Laden’s voice on the tape” and that there was “no reason to doubt bin Laden is alive.”

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the intelligence matters involved.

On Feb. 13, Danish newspapers republished one of the cartoons, which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, to illustrate their commitment to freedom of speech after police said they had uncovered the beginnings of a plot to kill the artist. Critics argue that publishers use freedom of speech as a cover to spread Islamophobia as, for example, antisemitism is entirely illega including in the use of free speech/press.

Muslims widely saw the cartoons as an insult, depicting the prophet as violent. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

The original 12 cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper and then in several papers across Europe, triggered major protests in Muslim countries in 2006.

There have been renewed protests in the last month, though not as large or widespread. A few dozen university students waved banners and chanted slogans against Denmark on Thursday in Islamabad. The students said they had not seen the bin Laden message.

Ben Venzke, the head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors militant messages, called Wednesday’s message a “clear threat against EU member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack.”

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and security analyst, said bin Laden was likely too isolated to organize an attack. But the al-Qaida leader may be hoping to use anger over the cartoons to inspire violence, he said.

“Even if he has not got the capacity (to launch an attack), he will try to infuse hatred,” Masood said.

Denmark’s intelligence agency said Thursday that bin Laden’s warnings “don’t immediately give reason to change” its assessment of the threat level against the country.

Last week, the intelligence agency had warned that reprinting the cartoon had brought “negative attention” to Denmark and may have increased the risk to Danes at home and abroad.

//ap//

Asia Soceity’s comment on unrest in Tibet

The most important thing to keep in mind  is that tension between China and Tibet has been building for decades.  On one side you have the

Comment by Jamie Metzl, Executive Vice President, Asia Society

Chinese increasing their efforts to fully integrate Tibet into China, while on the other side Tibetans are pushing for meaningful cultural and religious autonomy under Chinese rule. The upcoming Beijing Olympics are creating a platform where the Tibetans may feel more emboldened in making their claims, while the Chinese feel that they need to limit dissent and promote peace and stability.

We don’t know how these protest are going to end. Certainly the Dalai Lama has made a strong commitment to non violence and I have every expectation that commitment will be maintained. The Dalai Lama  has also expressed his desire for Tibet to remain part of China, but with greater autonomy. To date the Chinese have been hesitant to yield to the demands of the Tibet exile movement for things such as the Dalai Lama’s return to Lhasa.

//google//

Christians United for Israel (CUFI)

March 7, 2008

On March 7, 2008 John McCain repudiated any views of a prominent televangelist who endorsed him last month “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics.”John McCain has won the GOP nomination. Can he win the hearts and minds of the Christian right? THE JOURNAL reports on popular conservative evangelist John Hagee and his controversial endorsement of McCain. Hagee, leader of the politically powerful group Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has been criticized for controversial remarks about Catholics and about America’s role in the Middle East. Some say his message is dangerous: “It is time for America to … consider a military preemptive strike against Iran to prevent a nuclear holocaust in Israel and a nuclear attack in America.” Find out more about the politics and philosophy of Hagee and CUFI below:

“If a line has to be drawn, draw it around Christians and Jews. We are united.”
-Pastor John Hagee, CUFI Founder

John Hagee, along with other Christian Evangelical leaders, created Christians United for Israel (CUFI) less than two years ago, yet it has already grown into one of the largest and most politically influential Christian grassroots organizations in the country.

“When 50 million evangelical bible-believing Christians unite with five million American Jews standing together on behalf of Israel, it is a match made in heaven.”

>Watch an extended version of Hagee’s keynote address at A Night to Honor Israel, 2007

>Watch Senator John McCain’s address at A Night to Honor Israel, 2007

Dr. Hagee founded and is the Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, a non-denominational evangelical church that has more than 18,000 members. He is also the President and CEO of John Hagee Ministries, which he says boasts a television and radio audience of 99 million homes.

At the recent annual CUFI summit in Washington, D.C., prominent politicians were present to pledge support for this growing movement, including Senators John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, as well as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Lieberman particularly sang Hagee’s praise:

“He is a Ish Elokim, a man of God and those words really fit him…like Moses he’s become a leader of a mighty multitude, even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the promised land.”

CUFI considers its defining issue to be the growing challenge of radical Islam, particularly as relates to the security of Israel and the United States. CUFI is incresingly concerned by Iran and its potential nuclear threats. Hagee often alludes to Nazi Germany in order to underline what he believes to be the gravity of the situation:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are reliving history. It is 1938 all over again,” Hagee explains in a 2007 speech. “Iran is Germany. Ahmadinejad is Hitler. And Ahmadinejad, just like Hitler, is talking about killing the Jews.”

Theology of Christian Zionism

Increasingly, some American evangelical Christians have emerged to form an alliance with Israel. Citing Biblical prophecy, this group of evangelicals call for all ofthe West Bank to remain in Israeli hands, and they oppose any two-state solution. Sometimes called Christian Zionists, they believe that a Christian Messiah will returnto earth in Jerusalem. They have joined with conservative Israeli politicians to oppose any division of the city.Learn about the foundation of this movement through a greater understanding of some of the key components:

Evangelicalism:
Evangelicalism is the movement, especially in English-language theology, which places special emphasis upon the supreme authority of Scripture and the atoning death of Christ. According to Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, the term was originally used to refer to “those faith groups which followed traditional Christian beliefs, in contrast with two other movements: philosophical rationalism and legalistic Christianity.”

Today, evangelicalism generally refers to a broad spectrum of Protestant Christians.

Fundamentalism:
Comprising the most active, exclusive, and conservative wing ofEvangelicalism, fundamentalism draws its support primarily from the Baptist, Pentecostal and Independent Bible churches associated with individuals such as JerryFalwell, Pat Robertson, Hal Lindsey and Mike Evans.

Fundamentalist Christians typically believe that the Bible is the Word of God, internally consistent, andfree of error. Today, fundamentalists are the most vocal group in opposition to abortion access, laws making homosexuals a “protected category,”physician-assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research, comprehensive sex-ed classes in public schools, etc.

Dispensationalism:
Many Christian Zionists subscribe to Dispensational Premillennism, a theological approach that claims that “God relates to human beings via different covenants (“dispensations”); in particular, dispensationalists believe that God’s covenant with Israel, including promises of land, continues in full force distinctive from Christianity.” (Donald Wagner, SOJOURNER, July-August 2003)

Paul Beran, lecturer at Northeastern University, explains that “in dispensationalism, history is an evolving pre-ordained plan that has certain marking points.” Each of these seven dispensations represents one of God’s tests for man on the path toward Christian salvation.

When Israeli statehood was declared in 1948, dispensationalists considered it an important prophetic event, or as Arno C. Gaebelein, editor of OUR HOPE described it, “the sign of all signs.”

Central to dispensationalism is the belief that all Israel will be saved; as theologist Stephen Sizer puts it, it is the belief “that the boundaries of the land promised to Abraham and his descendants will be literally instituted; and that Jesus Christ will return to a literal and theocratic Jewish kingdom centered on Jerusalem.”

Premillennial dispensationalists believe that Christ will return prior to the millennium (or 1,000 year reign) begins. There are also post-millennialists who believe that Christ will come after the 1,000 years and amillennialists who believe that God’s promises are figurative and will not be literally fulfilled.

Rapture:
This concept is from a literal interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 in which Paul says, “For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

Rapture is the notion that in the last days believing Christians will be removed from the earth; it is literally explained as the time when Jesus calls thefaithful to heaven and believers are physically taken up.

To learn more about how Evangelical Christians became so closely aligned with Israeli Zionists, read Timothy Weber’s “How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend.”

//bill moyers journal//

Is Islam Really Stuck in the 12th Century on Women’s Rights?

Apparently, they’re a couple of decades behind the “liberal” West, and not so stuck after all.

By Joshua Holland

Before 9/11/01, the media relegated stories about women in Islamic societies to page B27, below the fold. Ever since 9/12/01, those same stories have screamed from the front pages in 100-point type. The shift in discourse coincided with the launch of Bush’s global “War on Terror,” when various hawks began using the plight of women in Islam to illustrate the supposed perfidy of our “enemies,” and to justify a series of military “interventions” — invasions — by Western powers.

In the United States, there’s now an almost universally held belief that most women in Islamic societies face wretched persecution and that Islam itself is wholly to blame. But there’s scant empirical evidence to support the claim — mostly, we’re treated to detailed reports of horrific abuses in theocratic states like Saudi Arabia and Iran, despite the fact that just six percent of the Muslim world live in those two countries. If you ask average Americans how they came to their beliefs about how badly women suffer in Islamic societies, most will reply that “everyone knows it.”

But I’ve seen no empirical data to suggest that an Islamic majority itself correlates with the subordination of women better than other co-variables like economic development, women’s ability to serve in government, a political culture that values the rule of law or access to higher education. In other words, you can use a comparison of women’s status in Saudi Arabia and Sweden to make an intellectually weak argument for Western superiority, but there’s little support for the notion that women living in “traditional” Islamic cultures enjoy a lower social status than those in orthodox Christian, Jewish or Hindu communities, to name a few examples. Think of the perfectly backwards Eastern Orthodox Church, the largest Christian communion in the world. Or consider the country where women may be brutalized more terribly than in any other, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is 70 percent Christian and 10 percent Muslim. Or go to Utah, where tens of thousands of Mormon fundamentalists believe that women are literally the property of their fathers or husbands. Of course, Mormon fundamentalists are the exception that proves the endless benevolence and equality of the West, while whatever despicable caricature of justice perpetrated on a woman by the House of Saud is breathlessly recounted as emblematic of Islamic culture as a whole.

Comparing the “Muslim world” to the rest of the world poses an intellectual problem — how does one even look at the role of Islam in a society, specifically, rather than dozens of other variables that might influence women’s outcomes?

I’d expect, for example, the structure of a country’s economy to play a far greater role in determining women’s status than the religion of its people. There’s quite a bit of research showing that in service and manufacturing economies — those of wealthier states — women enjoy a great deal of personal freedom and autonomy, civil and political rights and access to higher education. That’s because of the high value of their labor outside the home, in the workforce. Women earning their own bread out in the working world demand, and require, full political rights and legal protections. In poorer economies, most of which have large agricultural sectors and many of which rely on extractive enterprises — oil, mining, etc. — women tend to suffer a much lower social status, because their labor is more valuable coerced and sequestered close to home. That’s a structural, rather than a “Clash of Civilizations” explanation of women’s varying outcomes in different countries. It’s the latter view that I find little evidence to support.

None of this is a defense of Islam, or women’s place within it — I have little love for religion, any religion, and certainly no desire to defend any religious rites or customs. It’s about our loose definitions of the problem and tendency to idealize the “liberal” West.

March 8 is International Women’s Day, and a new global opinion poll was released to mark the occasion. The results will no doubt come as a surprise to many …

According to a new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 16 nations from around the world, there is a widespread consensus that it is important for “women to have full equality of rights,” and most say it is very important. This is true in Muslim countries as well as Western countries.

In nearly all countries, most people perceive that in their lifetime women have gained greater equality. Nonetheless, large majorities would like their government and the United Nations to take an active role in preventing discrimination.

Support for equal rights is robust in all Muslim countries. Large majorities say it is important in Iran (78%), Azerbaijan (85%), Egypt (90%), Indonesia (91%), Turkey (91%) and the Palestinian territories (93%).

That’s no surprise to me, but I wouldn’t have bought into the “Yellow Peril” or “Communist Menace” narratives of earlier generations either. The U.S. political class did not suddenly develop an abiding concern for women’s equality in a vacuum. Like the promotion of human rights during the Cold War, there is a geopolitical goal being served. The United States has been in a state of permanent war since the 1940s — when not in a “hot” (real) war, we are, as a society, still under a constant cloud of threat, and our political leaders are all too happy to advance that narrative as long as it plays well politically. But it’s not enough to simply be under some ill-defined “threat” from ordinary rivals — that would just be basic geopolitics — we’re in a permanent fight for our very existence from forces that are wholly pernicious and bent on nothing less than our total destruction.

That’s become a central aspect of American political culture. We had a seamless transition from World War II to Cold War to Drug War to War on Terror, and in every instance, the unadulterated evil of our opponents has been a consistent theme, as has been our ability to turn a blind eye to the same offenses when perpetrated by the United States or our allies.

And now our existential enemies are the spooky brown people of the Muslim world, with their frightening and alien habits and supposed tendency towards “Islamofascism.” The problem with that storyline is clear: the Western, predominantly Christian world has far more economic and political influence than the “Muslim world” — much of which escaped the yoke of colonialism just in the past 50-75 years — and, more significantly, it has hundreds of thousands of troops on the soil of several predominantly Muslim countries, whereas the reverse does not obtain. In other words, the “threat” of an Islamic takeover of the West is as realistic as the threat of my sweet grandmother beating the Hell out of Mike Tyson.

Enter the endless — and relatively recent — fascination with the plight of women in Islamic societies. The complete perfidy of Islam — its supposed backwardness, slavish fundamentalism, brutality against the weak and, especially, expansionist tendencies — is necessary for (and perfectly suited to) the global war-on-whatever narrative, and therefore, I suggest, worthy of special scrutiny.

Consider for a moment the “Islam is stuck in the 12th century” narrative so popular now in the mainstream discourse — a narrative for which women’s civic participation is deemed a vital benchmark. The problem isn’t that Islam is being described unfairly, the problem lies with the implication that the “West” made so much progress in the 13th century. The truth is that universal suffrage came to Iran in 1979, five years before women in Liechtenstein got the vote. It came to Bahrain in 2002, 12 years after the Swiss Supreme Court ordered the stubborn Canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden to accept women’s suffrage. Portuguese women got the vote in 1976, Swiss women in 1971 — both in my lifetime — and in my baby-boomer mother’s lifetime, women in Italy, Belgium and Japan first got the franchise.

As far as women’s political participation goes, parts of the Muslim world — no, it’s not monolithic — are a few decades, not centuries, behind parts of the West. Is there evidence that the Islamic world is “stuck”? Not at all; in this young century, suffrage has been extended to women in Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. Active women’s rights movements exist in every country on the planet; women were never given rights anywhere without a fight.

And when comparing apples and apples — among economically developed Western democracies — the United States has very little standing to criticize anyone else about the status of women. We rank 71st in the world in terms of the proportion of women serving in our legislature, with just 16 percent. That’s significantly worse not only than the European countries, it’s also a poorer showing than Sudan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

According to the Wall Street Journal, women with similar experience and qualifications earn 16 percent less than their male counterparts worldwide; in the United States, the gender “earnings gap” is 22 percent. A study by researchers at the University of California found that women occupied only 11 percent of the seats on corporate boards in the oh-so-progressive state of California and held about one in 12 executive jobs. And, as I’ve written before, while the American economy has seen enormous benefits from large numbers of women entering the work force, our corporate culture has done far less than just about every other country — including supposedly “backward” states — to adapt to today’s work force:

According to Harvard’s Project on Global Working Families, the United States is one of only five countries out of 168 studied that doesn’t mandate some form of paid maternal leave. The only other advanced economy among those five was Australia’s, where women are guaranteed an entire year of unpaid leave. That puts the United States — the wealthiest nation on the planet — in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

So you may have come a long way, Western Baby, but you’re not there yet, or even close.

The bottom line here is that increasing women’s civic, political and economic participation is a good fight, and an incredibly significant one. Focusing primarily on the status of women in Islamic countries to rid ourselves of the stigma of our own inequalities or to justify Western hegemony over the rest of the world is not.

//alternet//

Former British leader Tony Blair to teach at Yale

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will teach at Yale University in the next academic year starting in September, leading a course on “faith and globalization,” the Ivy League school said on Friday.

Yale, the alma mater of U.S. President George W. Bush, said Blair had been appointed Howland Distinguished Fellow, a post that dates to 1915 and which has been occupied by such notable individuals as former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and journalist Sir Alistair Cooke.

Blair, a part-time international envoy for Palestinian economic development since he stepped down last year, will also participate in other events at the New Haven, Connecticut, campus, where he will teach the half-year course, Yale said.

He also plans to set up the Blair Faith Foundation, based in London, before taking up his teaching post, the university said.

The foundation aims to examine the role of religion in the modern world and to promote understanding among Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

“As the world continues to become increasingly inter-dependent, it is essential that we explore how religious values can be channeled toward reconciliation rather than polarization,” Yale President Richard Levin said.

“Mr. Blair has demonstrated outstanding leadership in these areas and is especially qualified to bring his perspective to bear,” he added in a statement.

-Blair, 54, became leader of Britain’s Labour Party in 1994. Three years later he became prime minister and remained in that role before stepping down last year.

-Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League.

//yahoo-reuters//