Courtesy of Gail Coleman
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We can understand a great deal more about new Islamic groups if we approach at least some of them as new religious movements. Their beliefs and practices can find appeal among some, predominantly young, people not only because they are Islamic but also because they are new and provide a basis for creating alternative space for social experimentation and efforts at social change.
These groups generate social tensions and even conflicts. But they do not do so on their own. The reaction of a wider society is a large part of the story. And while these tensions and conflicts can lead to violence, they don't necessarily do so.
My research on the New Muslims movement in the northern Caucasus illustrates these points.
Communities of the New Muslims - the jamaats - on the other hand, provided a range of opportunities for these young people: in business (all members were employed), in social status (holding positions of responsibility in the jamaats), and in personal life (jamaats were drug and alcohol free). What was new about the Islam of the New Muslims was its Salafi orientation. It was radical in the sense that it provided authoritative justifications for challenging the existing social order. In an apparent paradox, the New Muslims' "return" to what they saw as a pure, Salafi Islam was in many ways an attempt to modernise social practices and create an alternative social space for what they themselves would call "halal life" and what I would call "social experimentation".
An emergence of any new religious group means a construction of a new "us" versus an existing "them", and tensions are likely to occur. So the New Muslims refused to participate in many traditional activities that their parents and grandparents saw as central to their existence as a community. However, these tensions did not have to spill over into violence. Indeed, after 1998, the New Muslims' leaders became increasingly concerned about the movement's legitimacy and made efforts to oppose militant versions of Islamism, such as Takfiri ideas. Demographic changes were doing their work, too: the New Muslims were growing older; many of them were getting families and accepting all the responsibilities that came with this.
So what leads some from these largely peaceful reformist movements to become violent? We understand this better if we reflect on how actions by both new groups and their opponents, including state agencies, can contribute to either escalating or aborting a spiral of violence. In the case of the New Muslims, there was an increasing polarisation between the movement and its opponents, with each framing the other as "false Muslims".
However, even this framing did not have to spill over into violence had not the labels applied to the New Muslims by the mass media and government agencies (such as Salafi, Wahhabi and Islamist) not become associated with violence in the region where terrorist groups had already been operating and attempting to co-opt New Muslims into their ranks. As a result, indiscriminate violence started to be used by law-enforcement agencies to curb the movement (including torture, imprisonment without trial, desecration and closure of mosques). The local terrorist groups and Chechen rebels used this further to pressure the New Muslims to join a pan-Caucasian jihad against the Russian "infidel" as the common enemy. In turn, the law-enforcement agencies responded with ever escalating violence, driving the movement's leadership ever closer to joining the terrorist jihadists. And so it happened that some New Muslims became both the victims and perpetrators of violence.
While based on research in the more politically restrictive environment of the northern Caucasus, it shows how treating people with radical and even antisocial views who are nevertheless operating within the law as potential terrorists can easily lead to real terrorists increasing their pool of recruits. Liberal democracy should use its rich repertoire of solutions capable of accommodating those who peacefully disagree with its foundations to cope with such young people, and by doing this make itself more appealing to them as they grow and mature.
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Lent is a widely practiced time of reflection, repentance and renewal. Yet some Christians believe its observance is wrong.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320413
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In this New York Times article, Nuns who won't stop nudging we read of a true modern effort to guide corporate behavior by people who live under spiritual vows. The relationships seen here between profit seekers and champions of spiritual life, and social justice provides an encouraging model not just for economic behavior but for other secular enterprise as well.
Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Sisters of St. Francis were quietly staging an occupation of their own. In recent years, this Roman Catholic order of 540 or so nuns has become one of the most surprising groups of corporate activists around.
The nuns have gone toe-to-toe with Kroger, the grocery store chain, over farm worker rights; with McDonald's, over childhood obesity; and with Wells Fargo, over lending practices. They have tried, with mixed success, to exert some moral suasion over Fortune 500 executives, a group not always known for its piety.NOT long ago, an unusual visitor arrived at the sleek headquarters of Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan.
It wasn't some C.E.O., or a pol from Athens or Washington, or even a sign-waving occupier from Zuccotti Park.
It was Sister Nora Nash of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia. And the slight, soft-spoken nun had a few not-so-humble suggestions for the world's most powerful investment bank.
Way up on the 41st floor, in a conference room overlooking the World Trade Center site, Sister Nora and her team from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility laid out their advice for three Goldman executives. The Wall Street bank, they said, should protect consumers, rein in executive pay, increase its transparency and remember the poor.
In short, Goldman should do God's work-- something that its chairman and chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, once remarked that he did. (The joke bombed.)
Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Sisters of St. Francis were quietly staging an occupation of their own. In recent years, this Roman Catholic order of 540 or so nuns has become one of the most surprising groups of corporate activists around.
The nuns have gone toe-to-toe with Kroger, the grocery store chain, over farm worker rights; with McDonald's, over childhood obesity; and with Wells Fargo, over lending practices. They have tried, with mixed success, to exert some moral suasion over Fortune 500 executives, a group not always known for its piety.
"We want social returns, as well as financial ones," Sister Nora said, strolling through the garden behind Our Lady of Angels, the convent here where she has worked for more than half a century. She paused in front of a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. "When you look at the major financial institutions, you have to realize there is greed involved."
The Sisters of St. Francis are an unusual example of the shareholder activism that has ripped through corporate America since the 1980s. Public pension funds led the way, flexing their financial muscles on issues from investment returns to workplace violence. Then, mutual fund managers charged in, followed by rabble-rousing hedge fund managers who tried to shame companies into replacing their C.E.O.'s, shaking up their boards -- anything to bolster the value of their investments.
The nuns have something else in mind: using the investments in their retirement fund to become Wall Street's moral minority.
A PROFESSORIAL woman with a sculpted puff of gray hair, Sister Nora grew up in Limerick County, Ireland. She dreamed of becoming a missionary in Africa, but in 1959, she arrived in Pennsylvania to join the Sisters of St. Francis, an order founded in 1855 by Mother Francis Bachmann, a Bavarian immigrant with a passion for social justice. Sister Nora took her Franciscan vows of chastity, poverty and obedience two years later, in 1961, and has stayed put ever since.
In 1980, Sister Nora and her community formed a corporate responsibility committee to combat what they saw as troubling developments at the businesses in which they invested their retirement fund. A year later, in coordination with groups like the Philadelphia Area Coalition for Responsible Investment, they mounted their offensive. They boycotted Big Oil, took aim at Nestlé over labor policies, and urged Big Tobacco to change its ways.
Eventually, they developed a strategy combining moral philosophy and public shaming. Once they took aim at a company, they bought the minimum number of shares that would allow them to submit resolutions at that company's annual shareholder meeting. (Securities laws require shareholders to own at least $2,000 of stock before submitting resolutions.) That gave them a nuclear option, in the event the company's executives refused to meet with them.
Unsurprisingly, most companies decided they would rather let the nuns in the door than confront religious dissenters in public.
"You're not going to get any sympathy for cutting off a nun at your annual meeting," says Robert McCormick, chief policy officer of Glass, Lewis & Company, a firm that specializes in shareholder proxy votes. With their moral authority, he said, the Sisters of St. Francis "can really bring attention to issues."
Sister Nora and her cohort have gained access to some of the most illustrious boardrooms in America. Robert J. Stevens, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, has lent her an ear, as has Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman of BP. Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric, was so impressed by their campaign against G.E.'s involvement in nuclear weapons development that he took a helicopter to their convent to meet with the nuns. He landed the helicopter in a field across the street.
The Sisters of St. Francis are hardly the only religious voices challenging big business. They have teamed up on shareholder resolutions with other orders, including the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth and the Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell, both in New Jersey. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, the umbrella group under which much of Sister Nora's activism takes place, includes Jews, Quakers, Presbyterians and nearly 300 faith-based investing groups. The Vatican, too, has weighed in with a recent encyclical, condemning "the idolatry of the market" and calling for the establishment of a central authority that could stave off future financial crises.
"Companies have learned over time that the issues we're bringing are not frivolous," said the Rev. Seamus P. Finn, 61, a Washington-based priest with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and a board member of the Interfaith Center. "At the end of every transaction, there are people that are either positively or negatively impacted, and we try to explain that to them."
On a recent Saturday morning, 12 members of the Sisters of St. Francis shareholder advocacy committee gathered in Our Lady of Angels, a cavernous, hushed building housing 80 nuns that if not for the eerie quiet would resemble an Ivy League dorm. As three nuns talked in the foyer, their tales of nieces and nephews echoing through the halls, the advocacy group, which includes several lay people, gathered in the Assisi Room for its quarterly meeting.
After a prayer, a group recitation from Psalm 68 ("The protector of orphans and the defender of widows is God in God's holy dwelling") and a round of applause for a nun celebrating her 50th anniversary, or golden jubilee, as a member of the order, they settled down to business.
Sister Nora, in a gray-checked jacket and a pink blouse overlaid with a necklace bearing the Franciscan cross known as a Tau, began by updating the group on its finances. In addition to its shareholder advocacy program, the committee has a social justice fund from which it allocates low-interest loans, in amounts up to $60,000, to organizations that fit with its mission. This quarter, it lent money to the Disability Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit that helps the disabled; and the Lakota Funds, a group trying to finance a credit union on a Native American reservation in South Dakota.
LATER, over lunch in the cafeteria downstairs, the Sisters of St. Francis discussed the delicate dance they face in their shareholder advocacy program -- pushing corporations to change their actions, while not needling them so much on sensitive issues like executive pay that bigwigs like Mr. Blankfein, at Goldman Sachs, are not willing to meet with them.
"We're not here to put corporations down," Sister Nora said, between bites of broccoli salad. "We're here to improve their sense of responsibility."
"People who have done well have a right to their earnings," added Sister Marijane Hresko, when the topic of executive compensation comes up. "What we're talking about here is excess, and how much money is enough for any human being."
Sister Nora nodded. "I can't exclude people like Lloyd Blankfein from my prayers, because he's just as much human as I am," she said. "But we like to move them along the spectrum."
Goldman tries to maintain a polite relationship. "We have found our conversations with Sister Nora Nash and other I.C.C.R. members to be very insightful and instructive," a spokesman said.
But change has not been speedy. Despite some successes -- such as a campaign directed at Wal-Mart that the nuns say led the company to stop selling adult video games -- the insider-heavy nature of corporate share structures means that the Sisters of St. Francis rarely succeed in real-world terms, even when their ideas prove popular. Most of their submissions receive less than 20 percent of the shareholder vote, and many get stuck in single digits.
"I honestly don't know if it's been effective or not, but they do highlight issues other shareholders don't," Mr. McCormick of Glass, Lewis says.
Still, Sister Nora, who would give her age only as "late 60s," said she would keep pushing companies to do the right thing. Lately, she has been particularly interested in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the natural gas collection technique that has been the subject of controversy over its environmental and chemical impact. She has been attending rallies for the antifracking cause, and has submitted resolutions to oil corporations including Chevron and Exxon, encouraging them to put firmer controls in place.
"My work will never be done," she says. "God has his ways."
Soon, Sister Nora will go on retreat, an annual Franciscan rite in which nuns retire to solitude for a week of contemplation and prayer. There, she will gather her strength, rebuild her fighting spirit and emerge ready for the next round of resolutions and closed-door meetings.
She has even identified her next target: Family Dollar, one of the many deep-discount chains that sell cheap imported goods to Americans who generally do not know, or necessarily care, where those products come from. Sister Nora wants to make sure Family Dollar's suppliers have fair labor policies, and she is concerned about whether its products are free of toxins.
"They just got a new president," Sister Nora says. "I have a letter ready to go Monday."
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"Love is the core energy that rules everything ...
love is the one ingredient that holds us all together."
-- JOHN E. FETZER, FOUNDER
The Fetzer Institute advances love and forgiveness as powerful forces that can transform the human condition.
In collaboration with our Fetzer Advisory Councils, we seek to understand the motivations and preconditions of exemplary cases of love and forgiveness in the world. From these examples, we develop projects to grow an even greater awareness of love and forgiveness in action in individual and community life.
Armed conflict between Christians and Muslims is on the rise. Most
recently, we have seen attacks in Egypt take on a disturbingly sectarian
dimension, but this trend has been spreading through the Middle East
and Northern and sub-Saharan Africa for some time. One need only look at
the ongoing attacks on Christian churches in Iraq. Or, the decades of
conflict in the Sudan, where Arab Muslims in the North slaughtered 1
million black Christians in the South. In recent years, there was a huge
public outcry against the genocide-in-progress in Darfur, and we can
now hope that the new country of South Sudan will provide some stability
to its beleaguered citizens. But in spite of these small signs of
improvement, the conflict between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria
persists and is escalating again. The organization I founded, the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, works with a network of religiously motivated peacemaker practitioners who operate on the ground in conflict zones around the world. Among these are two Peacemakers in Nigeria -- Imam Mohammed Ashafa and Reverend James Wuye. They've given us real insight into the endemic clashes between Muslims and Christians in sub-Saharan Africa.
The conflict has roots in intergenerational hatreds that started in the Colonial era. British Colonial rulers put Muslims in charge in Nigeria's North, which proved disastrous for religious minorities, including Christians, who were not exempt from Islamic laws. The colonists ruled the South, encouraging missionaries and the growing Christian population. For Muslims, Christianity became associated with the white Colonial rulers, thus branding Christians as enemies. On the other side, many Christians saw their faith as the only true one, which led to hostility toward Muslims. After Nigeria's independence, decades of tumultuous politics deepened the divide between the predominantly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south, leading to cycles of violence and conflict.
Kurt Cardinal Koch, recently appointed President of the Vatican Pontificate on Christian Unity, is deeply concerned about the violence and resulting danger to Christians in the Middle East and Africa. He has called for Jews and Christians to stand together to oppose the persecution of Christians. Although Jews have no direct involvement in the historical conflict between Christians and Muslims in this part of the world, they have been impacted by it.
One need only reflect on the development of Nostra Aetate, the breakthrough document that emerged from Vatican Council II in 1965. Nostra Aetate is best known as a document that sought to reverse centuries of Catholic teaching of contempt against the Jews, though it also acknowledged Muslims. What is not so well known is the horse trading that went on as the Catholic Church tried to balance its fears for Christians living in Arab countries against its moral obligation to make right the persistent persecution of Jews that was inspired by its liturgy. Bishops from the Middle East warned against any inclusion of "the Jewish question." And if Jews were to be mentioned, then some word would also have to be said about Islam. In the end, a watered-down, but still revolutionary, document was produced that made clear statements absolving Jews of collective guilt for the death of Jesus and acknowledging the ongoing covenant of God with the Jews.
Nostra Aetate also referenced Islam for its recognition of Abraham and Mary and Jesus. The synod urged Christians and Muslims to forget the hostilities of the past and work together for mutual understanding and benefit. (This may have involved some misunderstanding of the impact of the Crusades on the collective memory of Muslims. Indeed, the very word "crusade," however it is used, is toxic to many Muslims.) Hearteningly, that call is now bearing fruit in the form of A Common Word, in which Muslim and Christian clergy from around the world have engaged with each other. Ironically, this constructive process emerged in response to statements made by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, which were perceived as anti-Muslim.
For Christians, how does a gospel of love turn into a gospel of hate toward fellow countrymen in Africa? For Muslims, how does a religion of peace get turned into a mandate for murder in Iraq, the Sudan, Nigeria and elsewhere? The answer: religion, misused for political purposes, makes a combustible mixture that distorts religion's core values and leads to mass destruction.
In reflecting on religious difference, it's fitting to return to Ashafa and Wuye, two former enemies, sworn to each other's destruction, who now work together to resolve conflict in their own country as well as others. Imam Ashafa recalls: "A mutual friend ... took both of us by the hand and said: 'The two of you can pull this nation together, or you can destroy it. Do something.'" Over the next few years, through ongoing meetings and separate religious epiphanies, the two men slowly built mutual respect, and decided to bridge the divide between their communities. Together, they personify the vision of A Common Word.
In 1995, Ashafa and Wuye formed the Interfaith Mediation Centre in Kaduna, a religious grass-roots organization that has successfully mediated between Christians and Muslims throughout their country. Their organization, now with more than 10,000 members, reaches into the militias and trains the country's youth -- as well as women, religious figures and tribal leaders -- to become civic peace activists. Under their leadership, Muslim and Christian youth jointly rebuild the mosques and churches they once destroyed through war and violence.
Ashafa and Wuye are the living proof that religion can be part of the solution to conflict rather than the cause of conflict. They stand in the vanguard of exemplary reconciliation efforts that may, one day, de-escalate the conflict between Christians and Muslims in Africa.
There is no more eloquent expression of the importance of Christian-Muslim reconciliation opening paragraphs of A Common Word Between Us:
]]>Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world's population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.
The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.
In the Name of God The Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Dear Fellow Brothers and Sisters in Islam, it is with great sadness that we have heard the devastating news of the deplorable acts of violence committed against our brothers and sisters of the Christian faith in Nigeria. Our prayers go out to the family, friends and community of all those who have lost loved ones and those who were injured.
| It
is those who truly know the religion of Islam who, despite our
differences, engage in peaceful dialogue and wholeheartedly forsake acts
of violence like this. As dedicate worshippers we recognize that an
injustice in one part of the world is never validated by another
injustice. Human life is sacred and it is never acceptable to take a
person's life to promote a political agenda. |
to the evolution of this relationship must come from a sacred space. I learned of this organization from a friend this morning: 
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (NIV 2011).
CBE affirms and promotes the biblical truth that all believers--without regard to gender, ethnicity or class--must exercise their God-given gifts with equal authority and equal responsibility in church, home and world.
We believe the Bible teaches...
CBE recognizes that injustice is an abuse of power, taking from others what God has given them: their dignity, their freedom, their resources, and even their very lives. CBE also recognizes that prohibiting individuals from exercising their God-given gifts to further his kingdom constitutes injustice in a form that impoverishes the body of Christ and its ministry in the world at large. CBE accepts the call to be part of God's mission in opposing injustice as required in Scriptures such as Micah 6:8.
Christians for Biblical Equality envisions a future where all believers are freed to exercise their gifts for God's glory and purposes, with the full support of their Christian communities.
Disturbed by the shallow biblical premise used by churches, organizations, and mission groups to exclude the gifts of women, evangelical leaders assembled in 1987 to publish their biblical perspective in a new scholarly journal, Priscilla Papers. Included in the group were Gilbert Bilezikian, W. Ward Gasque, Stanley Gundry, Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, Catherine Clark Kroeger, Jo Anne Lyon, and Roger Nicole. The group determined that a national organization was needed to provide education, support, and leadership about biblical equality.
With the help and vision of these individuals, Christians for Biblical Equality was established on January 2, 1988. Catherine Clark Kroeger served as the first president of the organization, and Alvera Mickelsen served as the first chair of the board of directors. Since 2001, Mimi Haddad has served as CBE's second president.
CBE's first major project was the creation of a statement, "Men, Women, and Biblical Equality," which laid out the biblical rationale for equality as well as its application in the community of believers and the family. CBE hosted its first international conference in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in July of 1989.
CBE has grown to include members from over 100 denominations and 65 countries. It conducts annual, international conferences; publishes two award-winning publications, a blog, and a weekly e-newsletter; and hosts an online bookstore devoted to reviewing and promoting resources on gender and the Bible from an egalitarian perspective.
]]>]]> Iran's judiciary wants to use that time to "use whatever means necessary to cause him to convert to Islam", explained Jason DeMars, director of advocacy group Present Truth Ministries (PTM).
"The order was to not issue a verdict and hold Youcef in prison," DeMars quoted an attorney of the pastor as saying. The court was told "to use whatever means necessary to cause him to recant and return to Islam," DeMars added.
The 34-year-old Nadarkhani, who has a wife and two children, was detained in his home city of Rasht in October 2009 while trying to register his house church.
Nadarkhani was eventually found guilty of "apostasy", or abandoning Islam, in September 2010 and sentenced to death by the Rasht court.
In June this year Iran's Supreme Court did not overturn the ruling but instead asked the Rasht court to "re-examine" whether the pastor was a practicing Muslim before he became a Christian at age 19.
Nadarkhani told the court however that he would remain faithful to Christ, said an official of the Church of Iran house church movement.
"Pastor Youcef was [therefore] four times invited [by the court in the northwestern city of Rasht] to recant [his faith] in Christ in order to avoid the execution," explained Firouz Khandjani, a council member of the pastor's Church of Iran movement to BosNewsLife earlier.
Read more at www.religionnewsblog.com]]>
"He answered that he will not,"Khandjani said.
Europe's great churches were built centuries ago and the great monuments of Judaism are almost invariably antique, but massive, eye-catching Mosques have bloomed all over the world during the last several decades thanks to funding provided by the oil rich and royal. These magnificent structures praise God with their architectural elation, soaring towers, onion domes and brilliant coloring. They aslo draw inspiration from the architectural traditions of the places they've been constructed, from Brunei to Arabia.
Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com
To see the beautiful slide slide show, go to:
