In the News, December 4, 2014

December 4, 2014

Today's religion and world affairs news from the United States and around the globe: Bangladesh, Bach, Israel, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Kurds, religious opposition to slavery, and diplomacy and religion.
BERKLEY CENTER IN THE NEWS
BRAC and Georgetown University Create Platform to Discuss Faith-Inspired Social Issues
Daily Star
http://www.thedailystar.net/bulletin-board-53179
BRAC University's Department of Economics and Social Sciences, in collaboration with Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and World Faiths Development Dialogue organised a daylong workshop on “Secularism and Faith-Inspired Development: Understanding Contestation and Collaboration”  on November 22.

Bach in New York
by Paul Elie
New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/bach-new-york?int-cid=mod-latest
Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and John D. Rockefeller had pipe organs in their New York houses. If the rest of us want to hear organ music played live, we have to go to an organ. The Saturday before last, a few thousand of us went to St. Peter’s Church in Citicorp Center, at Lexington Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, to hear J. S. Bach’s solo organ works, about two hundred of them, played in a single performance. To the knowledge of everyone involved this feat, rare anywhere, had never been undertaken in New York.

AROUND THE WORLD
Sri Lankan Catholics Urge Pope Francis to Put Off Visit
by Dharisha Bastians
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/asia/sri-lanka-pope-francis-president-mahinda-rajapaksa-election.html?ref=todayspaper
A number of prominent Roman Catholic priests and laypeople in Sri Lanka are appealing to Pope Francis to put off a scheduled visit, saying the government is using the occasion as propaganda to imply the pope’s support for President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is seeking an unprecedented third term in office.

Another Mass Death Sentence in ‘New’ Egypt
by Carol Giacomo
New York Times op-ed
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/another-mass-death-sentence-in-the-new-egypt/?ref=opinion
In the new Egypt, there may be even less respect for justice, the rule of law and human rights as in the old Egypt. On Tuesday, an Egyptian court issued a mass death sentence against 188 people accused of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, on charges that grew out of the killing of a handful of police officers during a riot last year.

The Pakistani Origins of the Israeli State
by Ishaan Tharoor
Washington Post World Views
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/03/the-pakistani-origins-of-the-israeli-state/
"Pakistan is like Israel, an ideological state," said then Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq in 1981. "Take out the Judaism from Israel and it will fall like a house of cards. Take Islam out of Pakistan and make it a secular state; it would collapse." It's a strange thing to think about now. Pakistan and Israel are, on the face of it, not kindred spirits. But Zia, an instrumental figure in the Islamization of Pakistani society, was saying something quite obvious: Pakistan and Israel are historical twins.

Jewish-Arab School Attack Scars Jerusalem’s Troubled Existence
Reuters
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2014/12/04/jewish-arab-school-attack-scars-jerusalems-troubled-co-existence/
The Hand in Hand school in Jerusalem presents an almost too-perfect scene in a tense and divided city, where Jews and Arabs do daily business but rarely befriend one other. But last Saturday, the hatred that has surged in Jerusalem in recent months intruded on Hand in Hand, which has tried to foster unity since its founding in 1998. One of its classrooms was set ablaze, books were burnt and graffiti reading “Death to Arabs” was sprayed on a wall.

A New Deal for the Kurds
by Dexter Filkins
New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/new-deal-kurds
For months, it seemed, the next new country to rise from the rubble of the Middle East was not the thing called the Islamic State, which wouldn’t be likely to get a seat in the United Nations any time soon, but the region in northeastern Iraq called Kurdistan. Iraq, like Syria, was disintegrating, and the Kurds were only too happy to gather its pieces for themselves.

India’s Modi Under Pressure Over Minister’s Tirade Against Non-Hindus
Reuters
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2014/12/04/indias-modi-under-pressure-over-ministers-tirade-against-non-hindus/
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under growing pressure to sack a minister over a tirade she made against religious minorities, as his outraged opponents disrupted parliament for a second day on Wednesday.

Top Egyptian Muslim Leader Urges Broader Action Against Islamic Militants
Reuters
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2014/12/04/top-egyptian-muslim-leader-urges-broader-action-against-islamist-militants/
A prominent Muslim cleric said on Wednesday the U.S.-led coalition carrying out air strikes on Islamic State insurgents should widen its scope to include all other militant groups that were tarnishing Islam.

Pope Francis and Other Religious Leaders Sign Declaration Against Modern Slavery
by Guillia Belardelli
Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/pope-francis-and-other-re_n_6256640.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
Empathy, love, respect, equality: these are the common denominators which caused the leaders of the world’s major religions to sign a declaration committed to the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by the year 2020 today at the Vatican.

Diplomacy and Religion: When Diplomacy Was Closer to Heaven, and Hell
Economist
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/12/diplomacy-and-religion
If you only skim-read the headlines of last weekend’s newspapers, you might have got the impression that Pope Francis made a remarkable breakthrough in inter-religious relations in Turkey last week, by praying with his Muslim hosts in a mosque and jointly celebrating communion service with the bishop of the Orthodox Christian church. In fact, it was nothing like that simple.

Not Alright With Syria’s Alawites
by Oula Abdulhamid Alrifai
Foreign Affairs
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142410/oula-abdulhamid-alrifai/not-alright-with-syrias-alawites
For now, Assad still has the support he needs from Alawite families—and perhaps the fear for their fates under a rebel-controlled Syria is the main reason he does. But it is crucial to highlight that the Alawite community is not monolithic and that discontent has become manifest in recent months, which could serve as a vital opportunity to reconcile the various religious groups.

Saudi Arabia Has Shiite Problem
by Frederic Wehrey
Foreign Policy
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/12/03/saudi_arabia_has_a_shiite_problem_royal_family_saud
Since 2011 (and even before), al-Awamiya has been ground zero in a largely forgotten corner of the Arab Spring: the struggle of Saudi Arabia’s Shiites -- who comprise about 15 percent of the country's population -- for greater political and economic rights, and especially equal treatment by the country’s dominant Salafi establishment, which regards them as deviants from Sunni orthodoxy.
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