A rabbi, an imam and a priest discuss their 'painful verses'

clipped from www.haaretz.com

A rabbi, an imam and a priest discuss their 'painful verses'

By The Associated Press

A rabbi, an imam and a priest on Thursday sat down to discuss the most sensitive parts of their sacred scriptures, the verses that offend or anger other faiths.

But instead of the Catholic criticizing Koran quotes or the Jew complaining about a Gospel, each took objectionable passages from his own holy book and tried to explain them to the others.

"Les Versets douloureux" (The Painful Verses), the result of their work, is an unusual book that aims to move interfaith dialogue beyond polite meetings to discuss issues that create tensions among Christians, Muslims and Jews.

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Rabbi David Meyer, the driving force behind the project, said his frustration with routine interfaith meetings that avoided tough issues prompted him to seek a different kind of dialogue with Sohaib Bencheikh and Rev. Yves Simoens S.J.

Muslim women in Turkey forbidden to wear headscarves!

Conscience. honor, and respect

What to do when your work deserves honor, when you respect the awarding group, but have your own strong views and ideals you cannot compromise, even in the face of prestige and honore.

Here is one sterling example of how to handle such a situation. A story distributed by Common Ground News Service:

US professor shares Israeli prize with Palestinians

WASHINGTON—Here’s a story of a man with guts... and a big heart. The recipient of one of Israel’s most prestigious prizes donated his $33,333 portion of the shared award yesterday to a Palestinian university and an Israeli human rights group that tries to ease Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinian students.

Pope to meet 40 religious leaders

clipped from www.abc.net.au

The Pope will meet with 40 leaders of other faiths and Christian churches during his visit to Sydney for World Youth Day.

Pope Benedict will hold a meeting with the leaders or representatives of the Anglican, Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Eastern Rite churches.

The announcement has been made today in the presence of representatives of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, as well as the Uniting Church.

A series of ecumenical and inter-faith events will also be held during the youth festival from July 15 to 20.

Israel says it is holding peace talks with Syria

Technically, this is not a story on religion. Nevertheless it is a matter of interest for people involved in religion and peace. Hopefully these talks can help create the climate for better relations in the region.

EU Leaders meet with religious leaders

Imam Abduljalil Sajid,

(first on the left)

winner of the Eighth the Muslim News Awards for Excellence last month was on hand, Monday the 5th May 2008, as all three presidents of the EU -- i.e., the presidents of the European Commission, Parliament and the European Council -- participated in the conference with the religious leaders.

We of the IRFWP are most fortunate to have this first hand account from Imam Sajid, a lifelong devotee of the cause of religion and peace.

Jewish-Catholic consultation on morals to continue

The Consultation met in New York, bringing together representatives of the US Catholic Bishops, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis and the Rabbinical Council of America. While remaining true to their distinct interpretations, they sought common patrimony.

The Ten Commandments can provide the basis for secular arguments on contemporary moral issues, members of the Catholic-Jewish Consultation noted at an April 30 meeting in New York City. Bringing together representatives of the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the Union of Orthodox Rabbis (OU) and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), it meets twice a year. The recent meeting focused on religion and public morality in today’s American society.

Speaking from a Jewish perspective, David Berger, Ph.D., head of the Jewish Studies Department at Yeshiva College, New York City, drew a distinction between the religious character of the first four commandments and the “secular” character of the other six. “The Sabbath, for example, is a quintessentially religious commandment, a ritual observance, even though it also has the social values of rest, freedom from work, and bringing people together,” he said.

Dr. Berger spoke also regarding the Sabbath that it has also influenced secular views on human dignity and human rights. However, when it comes to codifying civil law in a country that upholds church-state separation, Berger argued that religious prescriptions carry little weight unless they are also based on secular reason and need.

Read the article here

First Muslim Police Association created in Scotland

Strathclyde Police Friday welcomed the creation of Scotland's first Muslim Police Association, which is aimed to tackle the rise of Islamophobia.

"The formation of the Muslim Police Association is a positive step," said the chief constable of Scotland's biggest police force, Steve House.

"These are officers who are positive about seeing the police force as a career and want to use their association to reach out to Muslims," House said.

World Leaders Seek Help from Interfaith Leaders

It is remarkable to witness the awakening of the political community to the necessity of interfaith cooperation as a vital and necessary cornerstone for peaceful life and political stability.

The president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, and LOK Sabha Opposition leader L K Advani in India are cited here making virtually identical calls to religious leaders to intensify their interfaith and interreligious commitments for the the sake of healthy and stable societies.

clipped from www.speroforum.com

The EU needs religion

Speaking to religious leaders, Hans-Gert Pottering said that religions can make contributions towards tackling major challenges such as the Balkans. The president of the EU parliament credited churches with EU integration.

"The power of religious authorities to make a significant contribution, through wise leadership, to tackling some of today's major challenges should not be underestimated," Pöttering told the Jewish, Islamic and Christian leaders at the Brussels meeting.

clipped from www.newindpress.com

Advani calls for intensified inter-faith dialogue

KOTTAYAM: LOK Sabha Opposition leader L K Advani has called for expanding and intensifying inter-faith dialogue in the country. He said that freedom of faith and cultural unity can co-exist.

However, it is the bounden duty of all diverse sections of the society to continually strengthen India’s unity, he said.

In his presidential address, reigning Metropolitan Rev Dr Joseph Mar Thoma emphasised the relevance of religious pluralism and a harmonious living, based on proper understanding and cooperation.

Reform Jews open Israel's first state-funded non-Orthodox synagogue

A highly important and largely neglected area for "interfaith" and "interreligious" relations is the pursuit of harmonious and cooperative relations WITHIN religions. In fact peace among religions and across the boundaries of entire faith traditions cannot be pursued effectively nor sustained in the presence of the internal strife and divisions that plague every world religion.

This Israeli supreme court decision represents and extremely important development in the world of religion, as well as in the potential for the development of a wider arena of peace in the region.
Frank Kaufmann

Reform Jews open Israel's first state-funded non-Orthodox synagogue

Israel's Reform Jews dedicated the first non-Orthodox synagogue to receive state funding on Monday, after a long court battle that accented the rift among streams of Judaism in Israel...

Leader of the Reform Yozma congregation in Modi'in, Kinneret Shiryon

"This is a substantial step in recognizing different streams of Judaism in the state of Israel," said Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon, who leads the 240-family congregation...

"Religion in Israel has traditionally been an either-or proposition," said Rabbi Uri Regev, president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. "Most Israelis consider themselves religious or secular and don't accept the liberal streams."
Groups like Regev's want to change that. "There's more than one way to be

Reform-minded Turkish scholars prepare to reinterpret Islam

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com

ANKARA, Turkey — In a sterile, boxy stone building in the shadow of Ankara's central mosque, a group of Turkish scholars is spearheading a reinterpretation of the literary foundations of Islam that some have compared to Christianity's Protestant Reformation.

With the backing of Turkey's reform-minded government, the team of 80 Islamic academicians from around the world is preparing to release a revised collection of the Prophet Muhammad's words and deeds, which guide Muslims on everything from brushing their teeth to reaching heaven.

As with most religions, the accuracy of the words that have been handed down through centuries has long been in dispute.

By year's end, the academics hope to answer those questions by preparing a new intellectual road map for Islam.

Muslims outnumber Catholics, says Vatican

VATICAN CITY: The number of Muslims has overtaken the number of Roman Catholics in the world, a Vatican official said on Sunday.

Article here

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono urges no violence

Indonesia has banned a controversial film made by a Dutch MP which accuses Islam of inspiring violence.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch right-wing Freedom Party (PVV), would be barred from the archipelago.

The 17-minute film Fitna, which means strife in Arabic, shows terrorist attacks and links them to the Koran.

Small groups of activists gathered outside the Netherlands embassy in Jakarta to protest against the film.

Mr Yudhoyono said world leaders had a moral responsibility to prevent the making of such films.

But he urged protesters not to use violence to make their point.

Earlier, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen called for calm in the Muslim world, saying that hurt feelings need not lead to violence.

The film shows graphic images of terrorist attacks, including the destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 and the London and Madrid train bombings, interspersed with verses from the Koran.

The film ends with someone turning pages of a Koran, followed by a tearing sound. It concludes: "Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom."

Fitna has been condemned by the Dutch government, and Dutch broadcasters have avoided showing it. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called it "offensively anti-Islamic".

Mr Wilders has received death threats and is under constant police protection.

Article here

Muslim clergymen speak out vs terrorism

Call for calm amid new anti-Islam slur

By Nash Maulana
Mindanao Bureau

Posted date: April 01, 2008

COTABATO CITY, Philippines -- Muslim religious leaders here renewed their call against terrorism on Tuesday and asked Filipino Muslims not to be carried away by emotions even as their religion came under attack from a far-Right member of parliament in The Netherlands.

Saudi King plans first interfaith conference to include Jews

clipped from www.haaretz.com

In a rare departure from government practice, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is planning to convene an interfaith conference for Muslims, Christians and Jews, according to the Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.

The call for religious dialog to include Jews is the first by the monarch, whose country's regulations prohibit the importation of non-Muslim religious objects including crucifixes and stars of David.

The Saudi King said representatives of the three major monotheistic faiths need to work together "to defend humanity" from harm, speaking in an address he delivered in Riyadh on Monday.

China update

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk

Death reports as Chinese police open fire on monks and nuns

Hundreds of monks, nuns and local Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China to demand the return of the Dalai Lama have been turned back by paramilitary police who opened fire to disperse the crowd.

China says it has acted with the utmost restraint in response to the unrest. It said paramilitary had opened fire on protesters in Aba, a nearby district of Sichuan province, last week, wounding four people. Tibetans say several people were killed in the shooting.

Muslims, Vatican to establish permanent dialogue

clipped from www.dawn.com

The Vatican and Muslim leaders agreed on Wednesday to establish a permanent official dialogue to improve often difficult relations and heal wounds still open from a controversial papal speech in 2006.

“We emerged with a permanent structure that will ensure that the Catholic-Muslim engagement and dialogue continues into the future,” said Professor Aref Ali Nayed, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan.

Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Pope Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that was taken by Muslims to imply that Islam was violent and irrational.

“For some Muslims the wounds of the (pope’s) German lecture are not completely healed and there are some Muslims who are boycotting the Vatican ... and still feel offended by that quite deeply,” Nayed said in answer to a question.

France Starts Muslim Imam Training

clipped from www.pluralism.org

Mar 9, 2008

by Lisa Bryant

VOA News

The courses are being held in an unusual location - the Catholic Institute of Paris, an institution better known for training priests and Christian scholars than Muslim clerics. Established in collaboration with the French government and the Paris mosque, the program began in January with a largely male class of 25. It aims to give the students a broad understanding of France's legal, historical and social mores.

What the year-long program does not do, says Interior Ministry spokesman Gerard Gachet is offer theology training.

Gachet says religious training for the future clerics is the role of Muslim institutes. But the government believes the courses on France will help shape a French Islam that is perfectly in touch with society.

The entire article is here (<-- click). It is very interesting.

URGENT - developments in Tibet

Please pray for Monks and all people of Tibet. Please send all information and recommendations for courses of action. These will be published and reported as we receive them

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Deaths reported in Tibet protests

Clashes between protesters and security forces in Tibet's main city of Lhasa have left at least two people dead, according to reports.

An emergency official told AFP news agency that many people had been hurt and an unspecified number had died.

The Dalai Lama, who heads Tibet's government-in-exile in India, released a statement expressing deep concern.

He called on the Chinese leadership to "stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people."

He added: "I also urge my fellow Tibetans not to resort to violence."

China crushes protest by monks in Tibet

China admitted today that it had quashed a protest by Buddhist monks in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, underscoring the opposition Beijing still faces to its rule in the remote Himalayan region.

Asked about the report, Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters: “Yesterday afternoon some monks in Lhasa, abetted by a small handful of people, did some illegal things that challenged social stability.

“As for how to deal with these detained Tibetans, they have been dealt with according to the law."

Chinese troops killed tens of thousands of Tibetans as they quashed the 1959 uprising, according to the Tibetan government-in-exile’s website. Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled his homeland following the uprising.

Religious leaders seek to ease tensions and increase harmony among Muslims and Buddhists in Thailand

Senior Thai Buddhist monks in Egypt for talks with Sunni Muslim leader

TNA, March 9, 2008

CAIRO, Egypt -- Five senior Thai Buddhist monks arrived in the Egyptian capital on Sunday for an official visit in which they will hold talks with the Sunni Muslims’ highest spiritual leader later in the week.

Mr. Noppadol said the visit by the Thai Buddhist monks to Egypt marked the first time for an official meeting between leaders of the Buddhism and Muslim religions in Egypt.

He said the Thai monks would meet and confer with Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, highest spiritual authority for Sunni Muslims in Egypt, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Both sides were expected to exchange religious teachings which could help reduce misunderstanding and mistrust between Thai Buddhists and Thai Muslims in Thailand’s deep south, which has led to renewed violence and the deaths of around 3,000 people over the past four years.

Last year, Sheikh Tantawi visited Thailand and visited the acting Thai Buddhist monks leader.

Pope approves permanent Catholic-Muslim forum

Richard Owen of The Times in Rome writes

In a ground breaking move Pope Benedict XVI has approved the setting up of a permanent Catholic-Muslim Forum - the first of its kind - which is to hold its inaugural summit meeting in the Vatican in November.

The historic move follows three days of talks in Rome between Vatican officials and a Muslim delegation representing 138 Muslim scholars who last year wrote an open letter to the Pope and other Christian leaders calling for dialogue, a move inspired by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammed bin Talal of Jordan.

The Muslim initiative was a reponse to the Pope's controversial speech at Regensburg University in his native Germany in 2006, where he appeared to describe Islam as inherently violent and irrational by quoting a Byzantine Emperor. He later said he had been misunderstood, and prayed alongside an imam at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul during a visit to Turkey.

Vatican in talks with Muslim leaders

Article here

Rome - Vatican officials and a delegation of Muslim leaders were expected later Wednesday to wrap up two days of talks aimed at organizing a summit on interfaith dialogue later this year. The Muslim delegation which includes representatives from Italy, Britain, Jordan and Turkey was scheduled to give a news conference in Rome at 1500 GMT.

Muslim scholars, Vatican officials talk

updated 1:08 p.m. ET, Tues., March. 4, 2008

Muslim scholars, Vatican officials talk

VATICAN CITY - Muslim scholars who have called for greater dialogue with Christians began two days of talks Tuesday with the Vatican to prepare for what church officials say will be a historic audience with Pope Benedict XVI.

The group includes representatives of 138 Muslim scholars and intellectuals who wrote to Benedict and other Christian leaders last year urging Christians and Muslims to develop their common ground of belief in one God.

Chinese Government to use religion to promote social harmony

ANI Tuesday 4th March, 2008

New Delhi, Mar.4 : Jia Qinglin, the Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), has pledged to use religion for promoting social harmony across China.

"We should fully follow the policy on freedom of religious belief, implement the regulations on religious affairs, and conduct thorough research on important and difficult issues related to religion," The China Daily quoted him, as saying.

"We should guide religious leaders and believers to improve their lives, and make full use of their positive role in promoting social harmony," he added in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the first session of the 11th CPPCC National Committee.

Figures from the State Administration for Religious Affairs suggest that there are more than 100 million believers in the country, mostly Buddhists, Taoists, Protestants, Catholics and Muslims.

Among them are 18 million Muslims, 10 million Protestants and four million Catholics.

US Christians urge end to torture by military

Entire article here

Faith leaders across America are urging President George W. Bush to stop United States-sponsored torture by signing the Intelligence Authorization Act, which prohibits the use of torture as an interrogation technique

Letters have been sent to Bush from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and the National Council of Churches USA.

One member of both groups, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, the church's social action agency, launched a campaign on 20 February 2008 called "United Methodists Do Not Torture," and more than 1,000 people have signed its petition calling for Bush to sign the legislation.

Mr Bush's own religious background is Methodist, though he refused to meet his own denomination's bishops in the run up to the Iraq war, which they publicly opposed.

Very important new survey!

IANS Wednesday 27th February, 2008