Posts Tagged ‘ Religion ’

What have we learned about religion post-9/11?

September 12, 2011
By

Elizabeth Tenety, Washington Post, Sep.8, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/under-god/post/what-have-we-learned-about-religion-post-911/2011/09/08/gIQALgZPCK_blog.html

As the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks approached, On Faith reached out to some of the world’s most influential religious leaders and thinkers to ask about faith in a post-attack world.

On Faith asks:

What have we learned about religion in the past 10 years? What was the spiritual impact of 9/11?

Below are excerpts from our expert roundtable. Click through to read the individual essays.  (Other contributions can be accessed via the Washington Post article here)

‘Ground Zero Mosque’ moving forward

September 12, 2011
By

Heather M. Higgins, CNN, Sep.10, religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/10/ground-zero-mosque-moving-forward/

While all eyes are on lower Manhattan, nearly 200 people gathered more than 100 blocks north of Ground Zero on Friday night to honor 9/11 families and to recognize a decade of interfaith work at the Interchurch Center.

“Tonight we want to commemorate the event and we are going to honor 10 families who lost victims on 9/11. Five are Muslim, five are not Muslim, to show that we share the pain, we share the hope, we share the prayer,” said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

He hosted the event, In Good Faith: Stories of Hope and Resilience, along with the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and the Interchurch Center.

September 11 raised the profile of Islam in the U.S. and, according to Rauf, it caused the Western world to pay attention in a way that made Muslims the subject of intense suspicion. His goal is to build an American Muslim identity and enhance multi-faith dialogue.

The event highlighted bridge-building projects and began with a harmonic recitation from the Quran by Ali Karjoovary.

“We need a national healing around 9/11 and our hope is that we can achieve it,” Rauf said. “And no matter how you slice it, I believe this healing will require the help of religious voices and American Muslims.”

Read the complete article here.

Multi-faith 9/11 prayer vigil calls for tolerance

September 12, 2011
By

Mary Grace Lucas, CNN, Sep.11, religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/11/multi-faith-911-prayer-vigil-calls-for-tolerance/

Hundreds gathered in Washington Sunday to share an interfaith moment together in remembrance of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The morning vigil service, planned over months by staff at the Washington National Cathedral, integrated chants, prayers, music and traditions from across the religious spectrum.

The event was one of several organized by the Washington National Cathedral over the weekend.

“We feel like our events say to the world that faith is an element [of commemorating 9/11],” said Steven Schwab, spokesman for Washington National Cathedral.

A reading during the service mentioned the biblical Tower of Babel and subsequent scattering of peoples and languages over the earth.

Other readings, prayers, and reflections contemplated love, conflict, grief, and the idea of finding a single truth in differing viewpoints.

“These attitudes and relationships have a crucial bearing on justice. Justice is not about following the law. It’s about how we treat each other,” said local Hindu leader Dr. D.C. Rao.

“Without understanding and respect, there can be no justice.”

Mercy and tolerance were two other key theme as leaders took the podium to share thoughts on living in a community of vastly different religious and non-religious perspectives.

“Faith is mercy. Mercy is love for humanity. A love for humanity is to believe that human life – all human life – is sacred,” said Imam Mohammed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society.

Read the complete article here.

Ten Years After 9/11: Has Religion Driven Us Apart or Drawn Us Together?

September 12, 2011
By

Paul Brandeis Rauschenbush, Huffington Post, Sep. 6, www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/911-religion_b_949688.html

Two religious responses from the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11 demonstrate how religion has been both a divisive and unifying force in America over the last ten years.

The first was from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who assigned blame for the attacks to God who, they explained, was angry at America because of Gays, Feminists and the ACLU, among others. While fires still smoldered at Ground Zero, Falwell and company were ironically fanning the flames of discord and division by blaming God and liberals instead of religious extremism.

The second response was different. As soon as reports made clear that the terrorists claimed allegiance to the fundamentalist Islam of Osama bin Laden, many feared violence might be directed toward the American Muslim population. Yet in the days after 9/11, reports came from all across the country that Christians, Jews, and other people of faith had called local mosques to offer support and solidarity. Instead of turning against Muslims, the religious community rallied for their fellow Americans of a different faith tradition.

These two examples show the simultaneous yet divergent directions that religious practice and thought has taken in America in the last ten years. 9/11 made it clear that religion, which had been ignored in global political calculations and overlooked by the media for decades, was still a force, and perhaps the force in people’s personal and communal lives.

Read the complete article here.

After 9/11, some run toward faith, some run the other way

September 12, 2011
By

Lauren Markoe, Religious News Service, Sep.9, www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/after_911_some_run_toward_faith_some_run_the_other_way/

Sean Tallon was nearing the end of his probationary training as a New York City firefighter when the two hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Tallon, 26, ran up the North Tower to save others.

His family would never see him again.

“As my mom and dad said, `This isn’t it,’” said his older sister, Rosaleen. “God has promised us an eternal life. That gave us the only comfort that could help us at that time.”

Tallon and her parents, all faithful Catholics before 9/11, began going to Mass every day, sometimes more than once a day. They rebuilt a grotto at St. Barnabas Church in the Bronx to memorialize Sean. They composed a prayer in his honor.

“I don’t know how people could get through this without faith,” Tallon said.

Ruth Green also knows something about faith and 9/11.

Green said it would be easier to cope with faith, but her religious faith disappeared that awful September day along with her son, 29-year-old Josh Aron, a newly married equities trader for Cantor Fitzgerald.

“My faith is shaken? Earthquake is a better word,” said Green, who is Jewish. “In the end, I found myself saying, `What kind of God would allow this?’”

Read the complete article here.

Christian-Jewish relations still a source of debate

September 12, 2011
By

Philip A. Cunningham and Eric J. Greenberg — ENInews/RNS, Sep.1,  www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5122

A fascinating exchange recently took place in the pages of the Vatican’s newspaper between the chief rabbi of Rome and the Vatican’s chief representative to the Jewish people. Their conversation reflected just how far we’ve come in Christian-Jewish relations — but also how far we have yet to go, Religion News Service reports.

It started when L’Osservatore Romano published an article by Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Writing about the upcoming interfaith gathering at Assisi, Italy, on 27 October, Koch noted two key changes since the first Assisi summit 25 years ago: the collapse of communism and the rise in terrorism.

After arguing that “peace is the common effort of all religions,” Koch concluded that from a Christian perspective, “the cross of Jesus erases any desire for vengeance and calls everyone to reconciliation, it rises above us as the permanent and universal Yom Kippur,” referring to the Jewish Day of Atonement.

The cross is “not an obstacle to interreligious dialogue,” he wrote, “but rather, it indicates the decisive way that especially Jews and Christians, but also Muslims and followers of other religions, should welcome with a deep inner reconciliation, becoming the leaven of peace and justice in the world.”

Read the complete article here.

Dalai Lama joins Muslim scholar at 9/11 forum

September 12, 2011
By

Karen Seidman, National Post, Sep.6, www.nationalpost.com/arts/books/Dalai+Lama+joins+Muslim+scholar+forum/5357429/story.html

The Dalai Lama will join controversial Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan in Montreal on Wednesday for a conference on world religions and peace in the aftermath of 9/11.

But rather than promising inspiration in a world plagued by religious tumult, the conference has already stirred up controversy and dissension as critics charge that the Dalai Lama is being duped into promoting Islamic fundamentalism.

The Second Global Conference on World’s Religions After Sept. 11 is being organized by McGill University and the Universite de Montreal; organizer Arvind Sharma, a professor of comparative religion at McGill, says the goal is to debate how religions can contribute to peace in the world.

Read the complete article here.

Don’t blame religion for 9/11

September 12, 2011
By

Sister Anne Flanagan, Chicago Tribune, Sep.11, newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/religion_theseeker/2011/09/dont-blame-religion-for-911.html

Since the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. were made in the name of religion, it has become rather common for critics of organized religion to take that at face value—and to claim that such violence in the name of a supernatural good is the sorry, but inevitable, fruit of religion (a convenient way of assuming for one’s own cause all the positive contributions brought to our society by people of faith).

No, the Sept. 11 attacks were not the beginning or even the expression of a new and terrifying “war of religion.” Even the historic “wars of religion” were not about religion! Instead, an ancient faith, one that has given the world masterful contributions of philosophy, mathematics, and, yes, holiness of life, was hypocritically co-opted for purely political ends. Those who insist that the real motive of the attacks was religious are simply buying in to something Osama bin Laden himself didn’t believe for a minute.

Read the complete article here.

Imam Feisal: The Future of Muslim and Christian Relations in the West

September 12, 2011
By

Vimeo, Sep.7, vimeo.com/28716668

Tensions between Muslims and Christians have skyrocketed in recent months. A Florida pastor is accused of inciting violence after he publicly burned a Quran, and CNN aired a special report on Murfreesboro, Tennessee Muslims who clashed with residents over plans to expand their Islamic Center. In a moment of such tension, misunderstandings between Muslims and Christians run rampant and caricatures abound. How can the world’s two largest religions co-exist and even cooperate in such a contentious time? Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative and Gabe Lyons discuss the future for faith relations in the West.

Watch the video here.

 

Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

August 26, 2011
By

Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang , Scott Keyes & Faiz Shakir, Centre for American Progress, Aug. 26, www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/islamophobia.html

According to extensive analysis, here are the top seven contributors to promoting Islamophobia in the US:

  • Donors Capital Fund
  • Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
  • Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
  • Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
  • Russell Berrie Foundation
  • Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
  • Fairbrook Foundation

Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the scholars and experts that are the subject of our next chapter as well as some of the grassroots groups that are the subject of Chapter 3 of our report.

And what does this money fund? Well, here’s one of many cases in point: Last July, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the Islamic practice of Sharia was “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Gingrich went on to claim that “Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the Western world.”

Sharia, or Muslim religious code, includes practices such as charitable giving, prayer, and honoring one’s parents—precepts virtually identical to those of Christianity and Judaism. But Gingrich and other conservatives promote alarmist notions about a nearly 1,500-year-old religion for a variety of sinister political, financial, and ideological motives. In his remarks that day, Gingrich mimicked the language of conservative analyst Andrew McCarthy, who co-wrote a report calling Sharia “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Such similarities in language are no accident. Look no further than the organization that released McCarthy’s anti-Sharia report: the aforementioned Center for Security Policy, which is a central hub of the anti-Muslim network and an active promoter of anti- Sharia messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Read the complete article here.