Religion

Muslim Association Thanks Skaters For Standing Up To Bigotry

October 15, 2014 Ashleigh Gleeson, www.theherald.com.au Create! Australia, ISIS, Religion, Solidarity

THE men who took a stand against an alleged act of bigotry last week in Newcastle have been formally thanked by members of the city’s Muslim association. Patrick Burgess and Justin Lanz visited Newcastle Mosque on Saturday where they were also invited to a community open day that will be held at the mosque, which is located in Wallsend, this upcoming Sunday from 10am to 3pm. The men were skating with four other friends last Monday when they came to the aid of a Muslim mother and daughter who were being attacked in an alleged bigoted tirade on Smith Street, in Newcastle West. The incident occurred at a time of increasing community unrest and concern Australia’s mission against Islamic State in Iraq is fuelling attacks on Muslims in Australia.

Chris Hedges Gets Ordained

October 14, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.commondreams.org Organize! Chris Hedges, Religion

Thirty years ago I stood in a church in Albany, N.Y., with my father, a Presbyterian minister. I had graduated from Harvard Divinity School and had purchased a one-way ticket to El Salvador, where the military government, backed by the United States, was slaughtering between 700 and 1,000 people a month. I had decided, as George Orwell and James Baldwin did earlier, to use my writing as a weapon. I would stand with the oppressed. I would give them a voice. I would describe their suffering and their hopes. And I would name the injustices being done to them. It was a decision that would send me to war for two decades, to experience the worst of human evil, to taste too much of my own fear and to confront the reality of violence and random death.

A Quaker’s Ceaseless Quest For A World Without War

October 8, 2014 Terry Messman, www.thestreetspirit.org Organize! Civil Disobedience, Peace, Religion, Wars and Militarism

During a long lifetime spent working for peace and social justice, David Hartsough has shown an uncanny instinct for being in the right place at the right time. One can almost trace the modern history of nonviolent movements in America by following the trail of his acts of resistance over the past 60 years. His life has been an unbroken series of sit-ins for civil rights, seagoing blockades of munitions ships sailing for Vietnam, land blockades of trains carrying bombs to El Salvador, arrests at the Diablo nuclear reactor and the Livermore nuclear weapons lab, Occupy movement marches, and international acts of peacemaking in Russia, Nicaragua, Kosovo, Iran and Palestine. It all began at the very dawn of the Freedom Movement when the teenaged Hartsough met Martin Luther King and Ralph David Abernathy at a church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956 as the ministers were organizing the bus boycott at the birth of the civil rights struggle.

Religious Leaders Urge Alternatives To Bombing

September 4, 2014 Maryknoll, www.maryknollogc.org Organize! Diplomacy, Iraq, Religion, Wars and Militarism

Dear President Obama: As religious communities, leaders, and academics, we write to express our deep concern over the recent escalation of U.S. military action in Iraq. While the dire plight of Iraqi civilians should compel the international community to respond in some way, U.S. military action is not the answer. Lethal weapons and airstrikes will not remove the threat to a just peace in Iraq. As difficult as it might be, in the face of this great challenge, we believe that the way to address the crisis is through long-term investments in supporting inclusive governance and diplomacy, nonviolent resistance, sustainable development, and community-level peace and reconciliation processes. Pope Francis has affirmed that “peacemaking is more courageous than warfare,” and more recently said that “it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underscore the verb ‘stop;’ I don’t say bomb, make war -- stop him.” But how, we ask?

St. Louis Synagogue Opens Space For Criticism Of Israel

August 26, 2014 Phillip Weiss, www.mondoweiss.net Educate! Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Religion

St. Louis has become a hotbed not just for the racial conversation in the U.S., but the Jewish movement in the wake of Gaza to question Zionism in American life and support equal rights. On August 6, Rabbi Susan Talve of the Central Reform Congregation invited five members of Jewish Voice for Peace to express their opposition to the Gaza massacre in her sanctuary. I have been very critical of Talve for serving as a conduit for AIPAC’s rightwing garbage, but she must be celebrated for inviting these Jews into her shul after she saw the local Jewish Federations giving JVP the bums rush. I’ve watched one speech so far. Jacob Ari Labendz, 37, tells us he wanted to move to Israel when he was a boy. Now the history scholar (who just defended his dissertation at Washington University) worries about his career if he continues to speak out on Israel. But he speaks out. This is a brilliant speech– not just in its ideas but its subtle manner, its means of entering a Jewish space and forever changing it. The speech avoids the rhetoric of anti-Zionism, but when you hear this speech, you realize that it is Over for the Israel lobby inside the Jewish Diaspora. It is just a matter of time. Because the very best and brightest of young American Jews wish to preserve a rich heritage against an alliance to a militant state that commits atrocities in our name.

Iraqis Protest Religious Persecution By Islamic State

August 11, 2014 Mariam Elba, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Christianity, Iraq, Islam, Religion, Wars and Militarism

Iraqis are taking to the streets and to social media to protest the persecution of Christians by the Islamic State — the fringe extremist group formerly known as ISIS. Since the group seized control of about a third of Syria and a significant portion of Iraq, the Islamic State has forced Iraq’s Christian population living within its territory to either convert or leave. Its members have marked Christian houses with the Arabic letter “nun” (ن), in reference to the word “Nazarene,” an old Arabic word for Christian. In response, Iraqis have launched social media campaigns protesting the Islamic State, and the hashtags #WeAreN, and #IamNasrani have been trending on Twitter this week. Another hashtag, #NO2ISIS, has been launched to protest the Islamic State for instigating sectarian violence between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims. These hashtags have been tweeted more than 55,000 times, with the majority of tweets coming from the Middle East. Iraqi Muslims have also used the Arabic hashtags “I am Iraqi; I am Christian,” and many have changed their Facebook and Twitter profile photos to a picture of the letter ن.

More Than 100 Arrested In Deportation Protest Outside White House

August 1, 2014 Hatzel Vela, www.wjla.com Resist! Immigrant Rights, Immigration, Protest, Religion, White House

Police said 112 demonstrators intentionally had themselves arrested outside the White House Thursday in protest against the Obama administration’s response to the sudden surge of illegal immigrants across the border with Mexico. The protest took place as Republican leaders withdrew legislation aimed at the immigration crisis from consideration in the U.S. House. The act of civil disobedience was organized mostly by religious groups, including the Catholic Sisters of Mercy and the United Methodist Church. Several hundred additional supporters looked on as the activists staged a sit-in on the sidewalk outside the White House grounds, prompting National Park Service police to remove and arrest them for obstructing foot traffic in a highly choreographed, but peaceful, demonstration. “We are gathered here to make our voices heard,” the Rev. John McCollough said in a prayer service before the arrests. “We are here to pray for this president, our President Obama, to ask him to lose the bonds of injustice and let the oppressed go free. Si se puede!” The demonstrators demanded the Obama administration cease the deportation of an estimated 1,100 of those illegal immigrants per day — a number expected to rise as the federal government grapples with the hundreds of thousands believed to have slipped through in the last nine months, and a 106 percent increase over the same period last year.

How U.S. Kids Are Welcoming The Central American Child Refugees

July 26, 2014 Christa Hillstrom, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Children, Immigrant Rights, Refugees, Religion

"You matter." "We are working hard to make sure you are able to stay in this country." "Come and live in California!" It's not exactly the incendiary rhetoric we've grown accustomed to in the last few weeks, as American leaders clash over the question of what to do with tens of thousands of child refugees fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The messages above—along with more than 1,800 others—have flooded the website TheyAreChildren.com since it was launched last week by the California Endowment and partner organizations. The aim is to bypass severe political condemnation from those who are calling for the immediate, no-questions-asked deportation of the children (see Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks' proposal of buying them all one-way tickets for a $27 million bargain). Instead, letter-writers are sending kids messages of encouragement, compassion, and solidarity. Hundreds of notes submitted by ordinary people—many of them children and members of faith communities—will be translated and delivered through service providers to children in detention facilities "to make sure these children know that thousands of people are praying for them and extending support and compassion," said Anne Stuhldreher, the project's coordinator.

ISIS Expels Iraqi Christians

July 26, 2014 Roula Ibrahim, www.english.al-akhbar.com Organize! Christian, ISIS, Religion, Syria

The patriarchal residence in the town of Atchanah in Lebanon’s Metn region brought together yesterday representatives of the churches of Mosul five days after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forced Iraqi Christians out of the city. This is the first time that Mosul’s Christian population has been driven out of the city and is the largest forced displacement since the Armenian genocide. Nevertheless, there are people who still believe in returning despite a Western and Arab failure to act. About 10,000 Christians left Mosul. Nothing like this has happened since the Armenian genocide in Turkey about a hundred years ago. Until last week, ISIS was just a “joke” or a “boogieman created by the Syrian regime to scare minorities and keep them by its side.” That is why kidnapping the two bishops, Boulos al-Yazigi and Youhana Ibrahim, near Aleppo a year and a half ago did not serve as an adequate warning of how serious and extremist these fundamentalist movements are. The occupation of Maaloula and the burning of its churches did not change anything in the Syrian scene and the kidnapping of the nuns was not met with a response proportional to the crime. All this passed in absolute lightness as some Lebanese politicians scoffed at the fundamentalist danger: this is the people’s revolution

Earthaleujia, Rev. Billy Given Message For Monsanto

July 16, 2014 Billy Talen, www.youtube.com Resist! Bees, Environment, Fundraising, Monsanto, Religion

Will you make a donation to help Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir go to Monsanto Headquarters in Saint Louis? Our hot show will be so dramatic that people will shout out, "How will the bees get back to their hive?" and "And how will I survive?" http://igg.me/at/revbilly-vs-monsanto... Freakstorm is directed by Laura Newman. http://irREVERENTfilms.com Music by Richard Padron. https://soundcloud.com/richard-padron Reverend Billy Talen is the Earthalujah! preacher, an author, artist and father. He has been jailed more than 50 times for his dramatic advocacy for the Earth, justice and democracy. His work has been featured in the New Yorker, Guardian, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Al Jazeera America, MSNBC, Fox, and many other international media outlets.

Decisions Spell Disaster For Working Women

July 2, 2014 Sarah Jaffe, www.inthesetimes.com Educate! Religion, Supreme Court, Women's Rights, Worker's Rights

Retail sales and home healthcare work are two of the three fastest-growing jobs in this country. That’s an important consideration when looking at the decisions the Supreme Court handed down today in Harris v. Quinn and Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services v. Hobby Lobby Stores: If you are not affected by these rulings yet, you well could be in the future. Both 5 – 4 decisions were written by Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative Catholic from New Jersey appointed by George W. Bush, and both rested on narrowly tailored legal arguments that just happen to cut wide enough to impact groups of workers who are almost exclusively female. Harris creates the special designation of “partial public employees” for publicly-funded home healthcare aides who work both for the client and for the state—who are 90 percent female, most of them poor, immigrants, and of color. Hobby Lobby, meanwhile, in deciding whether an employer with religious beliefs can be required to provide health insurance that covers contraception, singles out women by targeting its arguments towards workers who use birth control—but not any other form of healthcare. As Sheila Bapat, author of Part of the Family? Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers and the Battle for Domestic Workers' Rights, tweeted, “These decisions speak squarely to the value of women's labor.”

Moral Movement Launches ‘Freedom Summer’

June 26, 2014 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Elections, Moral Mondays, North Carolina, Organizing, Protesters, Religion

Protesters who for over a year have railed against the "extremist" policies of the North Carolina legislature are now bringing their fight to the voting booth as the movement known as Moral Mondays launched a bold initiative to get-out-the-vote this week. “We have exposed the hypocrisy,” Rev. William J. Barber II, chief organizer of the protests and head of the state chapter of the NAACP, said during a rally outside the General Assembly in Raleigh on Monday. Now is the time to organize.” Organizers estimate that upwards of 3,500 protesters from across the state attended the mass demonstration before splitting up into smaller factions for "teach-ins" to discuss the group's new voter outreach strategy. In what the group is calling an "aggressive" statewide voting campaign, several dozen youth activists who have undergone extensive training are now being deployed to hundreds of communities in North Carolina to initiate "deep organizing work and voter registration." Dubbed the Moral Freedom Summer, the new campaign is a nod to the 1966 Mississippi voting rights drive when youth activists partnered with local civil rights organizations to educate and register disenfranchised African American voters.

People’s For Mother Earth, Resistance To Tar Sands Walk

June 26, 2014 Jon Milton, www.rabble.ca Resist! Canada, Capitalism, March, Religion, Tar Sands

It's four in the morning in Kanehsata:ke on the 14 of June. The sun is not up yet, but it is coming soon. The Peoples for Mother Earth are waking up early to watch the sun rise with prominent figures from the reserve. It's still dark, but the marchers are ready for what will be a big day. Emotions were turned up that morning. The previous afternoon (June 13), the marchers had completed their 700 km walk across the province from Cacouna to Kanehsata:ke -- a symbolic and strategic form of resistance to the Tar Sands and the prospective pipelines which will carry them through Quebec. The early part of that day had been spent on a prolonged workshop about potential actions which could follow the march. Many ideas were put forward, and some are currently being worked on. The march had seen a group of people, most of whom did not know each other beforehand, form friendships which will last beyond the project's completion. The marchers were at once happy at the march's successes (including anti-pipeline municipal resolutions passed in at least five towns along the route of Energy East), and sad that the month-long journey was coming to an end. As the group departed Saint Scolastique for Kanehsata:ke, its members were treated to a ceremony by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, a renowned Inuit poet and activist.

The Sectarian Myth Of Iraq

June 23, 2014 Sami Ramadani, www.theguardian.com Educate! Iraq, Religion, Wars and Militarism

Tony Blair has been widely derided for his attempted justification of the 2003 Iraq invasion, and his claim last weekend that he's blameless over the current turmoil. Unfortunately, though, many of his critics have also bought into a central plank of his argument: that Iraqi society is no more than a motley collection of religions and ethnicities which have been waiting for decades, if not centuries, to slaughter each other and plunge the place into a bloodbath. The main difference between the two sides seems to be that Blair believes western intervention is the answer; some of his critics say Iraq needed a dictator like Saddam to hold the nation together. Neither side, though, has yet produced historical evidence of significant communal fighting between Iraq's religions, sects, ethnicities or nationalities. Prior to the 2003 US-led occupation, the only incident was the 1941 violent looting of Jewish neighbourhoods – which is still shrouded in mystery as to who planned it. Documents relating to that criminal incident are still kept secret at the Public Records Office by orders of successive British governments. The bombing of synagogues in Baghdad in 1950-51 turned out to be the work of Zionists to frighten Iraq's Jews – one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world – into emigrating to Israel following their refusal to do so.

Presbyterians Vote To Divest Holdings To Pressure Israel

June 23, 2014 Laurie Goodstein, www.nytimes.com Resist! Divestment, Israel, Palestine, Presbyterians, Religion

After passionate debate over how best to help break the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted on Friday at its general convention to divest from three companies that it says supply Israel with equipment used in the occupation of Palestinian territory. The vote, by a count of 310 to 303, was watched closely in Washington and Jerusalem and by Palestinians as a sign of momentum for a movement to pressure Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to end the occupation, with a campaign known as B.D.S., for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of a handful of historic mainline Protestant denominations and the church of many American presidents, is the largest yet to endorse divestment at a churchwide convention, and the vote follows a decade of debate — and a close call at the assembly two years ago, when divestment failed by only two votes.

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