Netanyahu seeking Christian Zionist support

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is once again courting the Christian Zionists, that is, Evangelicals who believe that Israeli control over all of Biblical Palestine is necessary for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) to occur.

As M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum notes, Barack Obama is far more popular among Jewish Americans than Bibi Netanyahu is. Most American Jews are liberals who support the Democratic Party; Bibi is much more at ease with the Republicans, many of whom share his disdain for the two-state solution. Hence his appearance at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference, recently held in Washington.

The conference was organised by Netanyahu's friend of convenience Pastor John Hagee, who had infamously declared that God had sent the Holocaust to force the Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

As an aside, the official CUFI website, as seen today, states that "There is a new Hitler in the Middle East--President Ahmadinejad of Iran". This, of course, nicely matches Bibi's own stance on Ahmadinejad. The CUFI seems unashamed to say this, despite the obvious and sickening monstrosity of such a statement, given that the lives of Iranian Jews are in no danger, and that Iran, despite the faults of its government, bears no similarity to Nazi Germany.

In a fine example of his usual truthiness, Netanyahu said, addressing the CUFI, that "millions of Christians stand for Israel because they want to see genuine peace in the Holy Land." See, that may be true for some Christians, but Bibi knows better than anyone that the particular Christians he was addressing support Israel for one main reason: they want to hasten the End Days. Besides, by "genuine peace", Bibi obviously understands something akin to the Pirate Code: "Take everything. Give nothing back."

In any case, according to Rosenberg, all this posturing by Netanyahu will amount to nothing, since the Christian Zionists he is aligning himself with are already committed Republicans; they are likely to oppose Obama no matter what he does. Rosenberg believes that, to make a difference in US public opinion towards Obama's policy on Israel and Palestine, Bibi needs to win over Jewish Americans. And that just isn't likely to happen.

Meanwhile, ignoring this sideshow, Obama is in pursuit of some real Middle Eastern diplomacy. You go, Barack.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

My article on Belarus in Eurozine

My article on what I see as a national inferiority complex in Belarus, based on a speech I gave in Mahiloŭ (Mahilyow) on 11 June, has been picked up by Eurozine.

Among other things, it contains a reflection on the public role of religion in the country.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

Khatami calls for referendum on election result

Seyed Mohammad Khatami, a former Iranian president, has called for a referendum on whether the result of the June election should be allowed to stand. The election, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won according to the official results, is seen by a large proportion of Iranians as having been rigged.

Khatami's statement is a direct challenge to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has declared the election result valid.

Khatami is the second ex-president of Iran to speak out vocally on the issue in the last few days. On 17 July, in a Friday prayer sermon, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called on the authorities to release eveyrone arrested in connection to the massive demonstrations that Iran has been witnessing since June.

It looks like Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are alone on this. They may still be in control, but there is certainly a realignment of forces on. If Ahmadinejad yields, this may well be remembered as the second Islamic revolution, on the thirtieth anniversary of the first one.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

Shi'ites remember Musa al-Kazim

Shi'ite pilgrims in their millions have flocked to Baghdad from within and outside Iraq to commemorate Musa al-Kazim (745-799), seventh of the 12 Imams revered by the Twelver Shi'ites. According to the Iraqi government, the pilgrims number as many as five million.

Specifically, the event marks the anniversary of the death of Musa, allegedly at the hands of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid.

The BBC has put together a photo essay on the festival; you have to see the pictures to appreciate the scale of this thing.

Only three people of the up to five million pilgrims were killed in communal violence, which is being hailed as a victory for the Iraqi army, which was providing security at the gathering.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

Pope breaks wrist

Pope Benedict XVI, who is holidaying in the Aosta Valley, has broken his right wrist after a fall in his chalet.

After managing to eat breakfast and celebrate Mass without medical intervention, the Pope, 82, went to the hospital in Aosta, where a surgery was performed on his wrist. The operation was reportedly successful.

[This post was written in Istanbul].

Belarus sets up morals council

Here's something that's interesting and has the potential to be very scary: a Public Council on Morals was established in Minsk on 8 July. Its members include official representatives of the Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, as well as Jewish and Islamic organisations, along with writers, artists and academics. According to Metropolitan Filaret, the chief cleric of the Belarusian Exarchate, President Alaksandar Łukašenka (Aliaksandr Lukashenka) "has expressed his understanding of the church's concern about the moral state of society". Once again, we have the Orthodox Church happily playing second fiddle to Łukašenka in exchange for government favours.

Mikałaj Čarhiniec (Mikalay Charhinets), the head of the government-sponsored Union of Writers of Belarus, is to serve as the first head of the Council.

Hieorhij Marčuk (Heorhiy Marchuk), a member of the Union of Writers and the new Council on Morals, said that the Council would gauge public opinion on "controversial" books and art, and would advise the government on how to deal with books and art that "contradict society's traditional values". He denied that the Council would be in the business of censorship, however.

According to Marčuk, the Council is planning to combat the "profanation of the biblical commandments, history and patriotic feelings." So patriotism, then, is equivalent to the commandments of the Bible? Plus, I do wonder what Marčuk understands by the profanation of history. More than likely, he's referring to the Soviet view of WWII, which has acquired the status of gospel under Łukašenka. I guess if you write a novel questioning the official view as presented in what seems to be a new Belarusian WWII movie every year, I guess you'd better watch out.

Marčuk also added that the Council was planning to organise discussions on things like "the role of Christianity in the artist's work" and "relations between religion and secular morals", which certainly sound like reasonable and interesting topics to discuss. Another one of the Council's planned discussion topics, though, is "certain subjects connected with the place of the good character in modern Belarusian literature". Huh? OK, so there we have it: if you write about "good characters" defending the native land with Orthodox-Christian-patriotic zeal, you're fine. Other types of literature and art, it seems, are going to be made unwelcome in Łukašenka's Belarus.

Here's the thing: a council of this sort, were it a true civil society initiative, would have been a welcome development. If it were actually a forum where writers, artists and religious figures could freely discuss art, religion, the public role of the artist, the role of morality in life, and so on, that would be fine; it would even have the potential to produce some sort of synthesis that would contribute to our everlasting quest for meaning. This Public Council on Morals, though, is a creature of the government, and it shows every sign of being one of two undesirable things. Either it is an effort to scare independent Belarusian writers and artists into towing the government line, or it is simply a bone thrown by Łukašenka to the religious bodies, especially the Orthodox Church, in a further attempt to legitimise his regime through religion. I think the latter is actually more likely to be true. Either way, this just goes to show how much needs to change in Belarus.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

Visitor profiles, 15 June to 14 July 2009

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of Notes on Religion visitor profiles!

The most recent month (15 June to 14 July 2009):

This month, Notes on Religion received 466 visits.

Visitors came to Notes on Religion from every inhabited continent, alhamdu lillah. The largest number of visitors (29%) came from the United States. Italy was next with 12% (benvenuti!), while Canada came third with 8%. In sha' Allah, I'll quote all monetary amounts (if any are discussed) in US dollars along with Canadian dollars or Turkish lira over the coming month.

In the US, the largest number of visitors (18%) came from California.

The majority of visitors this past month (58%) were referred to Notes on Religion by Google. The most common Google search term that brought visitors to the blog was 'russian neo nazi beheading'.

The most popular browser this month was Internet Explorer (49%). 91% of the visitors were Windows users.

Since the founding of the blog (15 March 2007 to 14 July 2009):

The total number of visitors during these two years was 9,456. The average number of visitors was eleven per day.

The largest number of visitors (46%) came from the United States. The second-highest number (15%) came from Canada. The United Kingdom came third with 7%.

In the US, the largest number of visitors (14%) came from California.

The majority of visitors (56%) was referred to the blog by Google. The most common search term entered by visitors who were referred to Notes on Religion by Google was 'russian neo nazi beheading'.

The most popular browser was Internet Explorer (48%). 91% of the visitors were Windows users.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

In with the new

Notes on Religion now comes to you dressed in the Stretch Denim template by Darren Delaye. New look, but hopefully the same great fit. ;)

Now playing: "Uzaklardan bir kız" by Can Atilla.

Murder in Dresden

Egypt has recently witnessed a wave of demonstrations over the Islamophobic murder in Dresden of Marwa el-Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian pharmacist who had been living there with her graduate student husband and her son.

Last year, in a dispute over a swing in a public park, of all things, the murderer, a Russian immigrant from Perm named Alex W., yelled out "terrorist" and "Islamist whore" at Marwa, the reason being that she was wearing a headscarf. She took him to court for the insults, and, in November 2008, Alex was fined €780 (TL 1,687 / US$ 1,087) for his actions. There are different versions of what happened next. According to the Guardian, Alex appealed the verdict; according to Wikipedia, it was the public prosecutor who lodged the appeal, since he considered the penalty meted out to Alex to have been too light.

Then, on 1 July, the appeal was heard. Marwa was called to the witness stand to testify, following which the 28-year-old Alex grabbed a knife, approached her, and stabbed her 18 (!) times, killing her on the spot in front of her three-year-old son. When her husband, Elvi Ali Okaz, ran over to help his stricken wife, a policeman shot at him, critically wounding him. Apparently, the policeman couldn't tell which one was the husband, and which the attacker. Marwa was three months pregnant when she was killed.

The most mind-bogglingly unbelievable fact in this tragedy is that Alex was not prevented from bringing his knife into the courtroom, even though he was the defendant! You'd think that, at an appeal, a defendant could possibly have a grudge against the plaintiff, wouldn't you? You'd think that the state would want to ensure the plaintiff's safety, wouldn't you? Well, in this case, no such thing was done. The result is a family destroyed.

The second thing is this. Even after such a clearly horrific case of murderous hatred against an innocent Muslim, the only motivation being that she was a Muslim, the German government is reluctant to treat it as such. According to the Guardian, Thomas Steg, the vice-spokesman of the German government (apparently, the spokesman is too important to be making a comment on this matter) said that "In this case... the circumstances are not sufficiently clear enough to allow a broad political response. Should it be the case that this was anti-foreigner [and] racially motivated, [the government] would condemn it in the strongest possible terms."

So there you have it. IF it were to be proved that Alex hated Marwa for being different, ONLY THEN would the government condemn her murder "in the strongest possible terms". And do notice how Steg mentioned the hatred of foreigners and people of other races as potential (though apparently unproven) motivating factors, but did not say a word about the actual cause, proven by Alex's words: the hatred of Islam and Muslims, that is, Islamophobia. Alex had been taken to court not for calling Marwa a "dirty foreigner" or a "dirty black" or anything of the sort. No, he called Marwa (who was actually quite fair-skinned) an "Islamist whore" a few months before killing her. The fact that the Merkel government refuses to admit this simple fact is unconscionable.

The lack of clear, unequivocal condemnation of the murder not only by the German government, but also by other German politicians, as well as the German media, has led Aiman Mazyek, the secretary general of the Central Council of Muslims (of Germany) and Stephen Kramer, the secretary general of the Central Council of Jews, to issue a joint statement calling for more attention to be given to the murder.

Marwa has been dubbed Shahidat al-Hijab (the Headscarf Martyr) in Egypt. Some people have scoffed at the title, saying it's divisive and not reflective of reality, since Marwa's life should not be reduced to her clothes. Personally, I think "Headscarf Martyr" is, in fact, a very appropriate title for her. She was a woman with a diverse range of interests, but she was killed for one thing: for being a Muslim who was not afraid to stand up for herself. She was killed for wearing a headscarf and refusing to bow to fear. And that makes me proud to be her brother in faith.

That is not to say, though, that anger should be allowed to carry the day. At Marwa's funeral in Alexandria on 6 July, mourners chanted things like "Germans are the enemies of God." That is going way too far. I can understand the distress that something like this brings, but we should always distinguish between people with blood on their hands and the society those people come from or live in. Just as the existence of Muslim murderers does not make everyone in Muslim countries the "enemies of God", so equally the existence of a German or, in fact, a Russian murderer does not make Germans or Russians into God's enemies. This much should be obvious.

However, just as many in the West call for introspection in Muslim societies (and sometimes rightly so) when a terrorist calling himself a Muslim kills innocent people, so should Germany and Russia, Dresden and Perm, take a deep breath and think for a minute about where things have gone wrong, and what could be done to improve them, starting, perhaps, from trying a bit harder to see your neighbour for the human being she is.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

The mess in Xinjiang

It's profoundly saddening to see what's going on on the streets of Ürümqi these days. The more violent representatives of both communities, the Uyghurs and the Han, are following their baser instincts: blood for blood, suffering for suffering. It's pointless to engage in a game of "Who started it?" While it's true that the riots in Ürümqi appear to have been started by Uyghurs, it's also true that they are responding, however inapporpirately, to decades of subjugation, cultural denigration and religious oppression, including having the state dictate who can enter mosques and who cannot.

As Orhan Pamuk notes in his 2001 article entitled "The Anger of the Damned", an ordinary Muslim in a third-world country who may "momentarily" support acts of violence against innocent Others is driven not by "Islam or this idiocy people call the war between East and West, nor... by poverty". Rather, he is driven by "the impotence born of a constant humiliation, of a failure to make oneself understood, to have one's voice heard".

That, I have no doubt, is what drove the young Muslim Uyghur rioters in Xinjiang. The Han counter-riots, while understable, are all the more deplorable: after all, it is the Han who rule the Chinese state, and it is they who have colonised Xinjiang and continue to do so, not the other way around. It was quite revealing to see a Chinese journalist on BBC World saying that "some of them [the Uyghurs] cannot even speak proper Mandarin Chinese", and that the government sent in Han settlers to "counterbalance" the Uyghurs in their own homeland.

Every empire crumbles sooner or later. The Chinese one has held on thus far, but is it not in China's interest to transform itself into a voluntary community of ethnicities, rather than continuing to be (to use Lenin's term for the Russian Empire) a prison of nations?

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

Visitor profiles, 15 May to 14 June 2009

Welcome to the seventeenth installment of Notes on Religion visitor profiles!

The most recent month (15 May to 14 June 2009):

This month, Notes on Religion received 586 visits.

Visitors came to Notes on Religion from every inhabited continent, alhamdu lillah. The largest number of visitors (41%) came from the United States. Italy (!) was next with 9%, while Canada came third with 8%. In sha' Allah, I'll quote all monetary amounts (if any are discussed) in US dollars along with Canadian dollars or Turkish lira over the coming month.

In the US, the largest number of visitors (13%) came from California.

The majority of visitors this past month (70%) were referred to Notes on Religion by Google. The most common Google search term that brought visitors to the blog was 'russian neo-nazi beheading video'.

The most popular browser this month was Internet Explorer (52%). 92% of the visitors were Windows users.

Since the founding of the blog (15 March 2007 to 14 June 2009):

The total number of visitors during these two years was 8,990. The average number of visitors was eleven per day.

The largest number of visitors (47%) came from the United States. The second-highest number (15%) came from Canada. The United Kingdom came third with 7%.

In the US, the largest number of visitors (14%) came from California.

The majority of visitors (56%) was referred to the blog by Google. The most common search term entered by visitors who were referred to Notes on Religion by Google was 'russian neo nazi beheading'.

The most popular browser was Internet Explorer (48%). 91% of the visitors were Windows users.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]