The Muslim Council of Britain has denounced the Woolwich murder and has been joined by hundreds of Muslims who have taken to Twitter to voice disgust over the idea that Islam could have been be invoked in such a barbaric act.

Follow this link to a few of the tweets.

The Muslim Council of Britain’s statement condemning the attack:

‘This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family. We understand the victim is a serving member of the Armed Forces. Muslims have long served in this country’s Armed Forces, proudly and with honour. This attack on a member of the Armed Forces is dishonourable, and no cause justifies this murder.’

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Iran must free the Bahá’í leaders who have been jailed for five years too many

Omid Djalili, The Guardian, May 16

Today is the fifth anniversary of the unjust imprisonment of seven Bahá’í leaders in Iran. They were jailed for 20 years for no reason other than their beliefs – the longest jail terms handed down against any prisoners of conscience in the country – and today I’m sending a message to Iran: even five years are too many.

A global campaign is under way to remind Iran that it has legal and moral obligations to treat its religious minorities with justice – the Five Years Too Many campaign. But for decades Iran has walked all over the human rights of its citizens. The persecution of religious minorities is at the heart of this violence.

Iran’s religious minorities are arrested on fatuous charges, endure trials that violate the state’s own due process, are jailed on unproven convictions and tortured in prison. Converts from Islam are branded apostates. Homes, businesses and places of worship are raided and torn apart. Students are kicked out of university because of their beliefs. And cemeteries are desecrated so not even the dead can escape.

And yet Iran is signed up to international treaties and covenants on human rights; the government has broken its bond. The abuse hits other religious minorities, too – the Yarsan Kurds; Gonabadi Dervishes, who are Shia Muslims; and Christians.

The seven Bahá’í leaders – Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli and Vahid Tizfahm – were held for months without charge after their 2008 arrest and were finally subjected to a series of trials that made a mockery of justice.

Read the complete article here

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May issue of The Interfaith Observer

The Interfaith Observer, May 15

Editorial
From Darwin to Zygon – Signs of Reconciliation

Interfaith News
Obama Addresses Interfaith Service in Boston – Kidnapped Syrian Bishops Still Missing – Religious Leaders in Syria Commit to Peace – Threats to Religious Freedom Escalating – Christians and Muslims Get Acquainted in Kansas – Muslim Leaders Decry Violence and Terrorism – Muslim Roots in Iowa Town Celebrated – Ukrainian Interfaith Conference Draws Protests – American Indians Discerned in 1494 Vatican Painting

The International Association for Religious Freedom – a Profile
The Genesis of International Interfaith Organizing by Marcus Braybrooke

Growing Non-Affiliated Community Deserves Respect & a Welcome
The Nones Are Off the Bus, and Many of Them Are Alls by Anne Benvenuti

Marianne Williamson – A Profile
A Mystic Vision with a Social Conscience by Ruth Broyde Sharone

TIO In Canada
Canadian News & Resources
Canadian Events & Opportunities

Science and Religion in the 21st Century

We Need to Pick the Right Battle
Celebrating Darwin: Religion and Science Are Closer Than You Think by Max Tegmark

Undercutting Sloppy Thinking about Evolution
Why Americans Love Creationism by Karl Giberson

Undermining Dogmatic Conflict-think
The Evolution ‘Battle’ Isn’t What You Think It Is by Michael Zimmerman

Religion and Science from Muslim Perspectives
Muslims and Evolution in the 21st Century: A Galileo Moment? by Usaama al-Azami

Buddhism and Scientific Study
Where Science and Religion Coexist by Saskia De Rothschild

Reconciling Science and Faith
Michael Dowd and “Evolutionary Christianity” by Paul Chaffee

A Renewed Narrative for All Traditions
New Theists: Knowers, Not Believers by Michael Dowd

The Need for a Profound Humility
Science, Religion and Religious Minimalism by Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp

Scientists from Many Faiths
Giants Engaged in both Science and Religion by Sana Saeed

Compassion – a Many Splendored Jewel
The Science of Compassion by James R. Doty

Nonduality – The Story of SAND
Scientists and Mystics Taking Hands by Maurizio Benazzo

Joyful Living with a New Narrative
A Review of The New Universe and the Human Future by Matthew Fox

Reclaiming Our Spirituality
Interspiritual Revolution: How the Occupy Generation Is Re-Envisioning Spirituality and (New) Monasticism
by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko

Religious Calendar

Update – Ruth Broyde Sharone honored, TIO Joins Religion News Service

Opportunities
Early-bird NAIN Connect Registration Deadline Is: June 15
June Symposium on the Role of the Sacred Texts in Uniting and Dividing Humanity
July Program on Sustainability and the Sacred

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Christian Conversion Of Woman In Saudi Arabia Results In Lashing And Prison Sentence For Lebanese And Saudi Men

Angus McDowall, Worldwide Religious News, May 14

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced two men to lashes and prison terms for converting a woman to Christianity and helping her flee the conservative Islamic kingdom, the Saudi Gazette reported on Monday.

A Lebanese man was sentenced to six years in prison and 300 lashes for converting the woman, while a Saudi man was sentenced to two years and 200 lashes for aiding her escape abroad, the English-language daily said. It added that the pair had challenged the verdict and would appeal.

Read the complete article here

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Christian churches back Jews facing anti-Semitism in Hungary

Tom Heneghan, Reuters, May 14

When Hungarian radical right-wingers rallied against a Jewish conference in Budapest in early May, a well-known Protestant pastor hid behind the stage while his wife stepped up to the podium to denounce Jews and Israel.

Lorant Hegedus could have preached the same anti-Semitism as his wife, a deputy for the populist Jobbik party in parliament. But his part in launching the rally may cost him his role as the far-right’s favorite clergyman.

With anti-Semitism on the rise here, Christian churches are working with the Jewish community to counter the provocations against Jews and the Roma minority that have won Jobbik support among voters fed up with the country’s economic crisis.

The Hungarian Reformed Church has begun proceedings that might end up defrocking Hegedus and depriving him of his high-profile base at the Homeland Church on the upscale Freedom Square, near the central bank and the United States embassy.

Read the complete article here

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Conference to explore situation of Christians living in the Middle East

Ekklesia, May 16

Power, social injustice, the threat of extremism and Christian-Muslim relations will be among the main themes of a conference on the situation of Christians in the Middle East. The conference is set to take place next week in Lebanon.

The international conference will bring together some 150 participants from the Middle East and beyond, representing churches as well as regional and international ecumenical organisations. The event will be held at the Notre-Dame du Mont monastery in Beirut, 21 to 25 May.

Organised by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) the conference was initiated on a proposal from the MECC’s last general assembly in 2011 and asked to explore issues related to the “Christian presence and witness in the Middle East”.

Read the complete article here.

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What is Interfaith Cooperation for?

Eboo Patel, Religion Dispatches, May 05

Some years back I met the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Nechervan Barzani. One of the first things he did was thank me for the American military intervention that he described as freeing his people from oppression. I informed him that many of my friends viewed the Iraq War as profoundly unjust and protested vociferously against it.

Barzani was rendered speechless for a moment. When he finally spoke it was to say, through clenched teeth, that the only thing unjust about the war that removed Saddam Hussein was that it didn’t happen sooner.

The central problem interfaith work seeks to solve is this: how are all of us, with our deep differences, to share a nation and a world together? I believe that is primarily a question of civic space, not political ideology. Shouldn’t Muslim and Jewish doctors who have different views on the Middle East continue operating on patients together in American hospitals? Shouldn’t conservative Catholic and progressive Protestant preschool teachers who disagree on abortion continue educating their students together? Shouldn’t anti-Iraq War Sunnis and pro-Iraq War Kurds send their kids to the same Little League baseball camps? Participating in civic activities with people you disagree with on political or theological issues is not, as Hulsether states, “excus(ing) an exceptionalist ideology that deepens ruts in a two-tiered legal system and sanctions US military presence abroad.” It’s being a good citizen of a diverse democracy.

I do not think the primary task of interfaith work is to circle religiously diverse wagons more tightly around particular political positions, however strongly I might hold some of those positions. There are already well-established groups who mobilize diverse religious communities for various causes. There is a religiously diverse movement for gay marriage, and one against it; a religiously diverse movement for abortion, and one against it; a religiously diverse movement that supports the Palestinian cause, and a religiously diverse movement that supports Israel.

I do not believe that interfaith cooperation should contribute to widening these divisions. Instead, I think interfaith work is about building positive relationships between people whose diverse religious convictions shape their dramatically different politics. I believe that is both an end in itself, and a means to another useful end—expanding civic space, strengthening social cohesion and increasing social capital. How else do you have a thriving diverse democracy unless people who have deep disagreements on some issues are able to work together on other issues?

Read the complete article here.

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Multifaith has a place for everyone

T K Barger, Toledo Blade, May 03

Before moving to Toledo, I worked in Philadelphia as a chaplain in a hospital. When patients and their families asked about my religion, I usually said that I was there as an interfaith chaplain. My role was to provide comfort and help in a time of crisis, to minister to people of many faiths and no faith.

I gave spiritual and emotional support to Muslims, Hindus, Pentecostal Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Wiccans, and people of many other faiths different from mine, and to people with no religion. Our shared concern was health, and sometimes death. I helped to make a faith connection occasionally, and at other times the person-to-person tie was all that was needed. Faith labels were minor.

Last Sunday, as Blade religion editor, I took part in the annual banquet of the MultiFaith Council of Northwest Ohio. Having become accustomed to the term “interfaith,” I was interested to learn more about “multifaith.”

Judy Lee Trautman, who is co-chair of the MultiFaith Council board along with her husband, Woody Trautman, said, “We chose the name MultiFaith when we started this [in 2003] because at the time, locally, most of the interfaith groups were mostly Christian, occasionally with a Jewish representative as well, and we wanted to reach more broadly than that. So we used the term multifaith. We include here locally at least a dozen different faith traditions, and we wanted that.”

One other aspect of multifaith that I recognize is that the term includes the individual faith journey, recognizing that we can be multifaith in our lives. There are people born to Baptist parents who take their parents’ faith and live that way all their lives. Others, and I’m one, have their parents’ church as children, take another when older, maybe have a period of not being “churched,” and continue as faith seekers rather than finders throughout life.

Some find that more than one faith at the same time is what works for them. I provided pastoral care to more than one person who identified as both Buddhist and Roman Catholic.

Read the complete article here.

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Dalai Lama decries Buddhist attacks on Muslims in Myanmar

Ian Simpson, Reuters, May 07

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday decried Buddhist monks’ attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable.”

The Dalai Lama, a foremost Buddhist leader, told an audience at the University of Maryland at the start of a U.S. tour that the root of seemingly sectarian conflict was political, not spiritual.

“Really, killing people in the name of religion is unthinkable, very sad. Nowadays even Buddhists are involved in Burma,” another name for Myanmar, with monks attacking Muslim mosques, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said after delivering the Anwar Sadat Lecture for Peace at the university.

“I think it is very sad,” he said, adding, “I pray for them (the monks) to think of the face of Buddha,” who had been a protector of Muslims.

Read the complete article here.

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Anti-Blasphemy Protests in Bangladesh Turn Violent

Jim Yardley and Julfikar Ali Manik, New York Times, May 06

Violence erupted across Bangladesh on Monday as Islamist fundamentalists demanding passage of an anti-blasphemy law clashed with security forces, leaving a trail of property damage and at least 22 people dead after a second day of unrest.

For nearly two weeks, Bangladesh’s feuding political parties and Islamic movements have essentially called a truce as the country reeled from the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, which has left 661 people dead, a figure expected to rise as work crews continue clearing the wreckage. Five clothing factories operated inside the building, and the disaster has focused global attention on unsafe conditions in the garment industry.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had called on Islamic hard-liners to postpone their planned march — described as Siege Dhaka by supporters on social media — but they refused. The march was organized by Hefajat-e-Islam, a group of Islamic hard-liners who have called for Bangladesh’s Constitution to be drastically amended with a 13-point program that would ban intermingling between men and women and punish by execution Bangladeshi bloggers accused of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad.

Read the complete article here.

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