Osama Bin Laden’s Bible

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It is interesting to reflect on the two hidden copies of the Bible which have just been unearthed at the house in Abbottabad,Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden was killed.by US Navy Seals last May.

It has been suggested that they contain coded clues to future terror attacks.

The concealed Bibles were unearthed by demolition crews sent in to raze the white-walled mansion to the ground.

Sources revealed that several pages of the English-print editions had been folded over and particular texts marked.

And last night members of Pakistan’s ISI security service were examining the volumes in a bid to find out more.

Bin Laden, 58, was obsessed with killing his Christian “crusader” enemies.

Now Pakistani intelligence officials suspect a coded pattern for past and future al-Qaeda attacks may be hidden within the Bibles’ pages.

Another theory is that the terror chief may have been seeking out Christian texts to justify his actions.

Two cunningly-concealed working radio sets were also uncovered at the building, yards from a Pakistani army barracks.

An ISI commanding officer among those who oversaw the demolition said: “We had already cleared the compound before demolition but found two copies of the Bible and two radio sets.

“The Bibles were in English and we cannot be sure why they were there. These copies were found as we checked the rooms for the final time before demolishing the building.

“The radios are in working condition and will be given with the Bibles to the investigators. Some pages were folded and we will see later what was of most interest to Bin Laden.

“Maybe he was looking for teachings of jihad (holy war).”

The Bibles were discovered by breakers in an elaborately prepared hiding place.

American CIA agents will be desperate to lay their hands on the books. But their requests for access are likely to be denied by Pakistan after a collapse in relations between the countries.

A political battle is now being waged to stop the site, 30 miles from Pakistani capitalIslamabad, being turned into a shrine.

Local authorities favour building a hospital there, but religious fanatics want a mosque or an Islamic madrassa school, which could become a rallying point for Bin Laden followers.

Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik said yesterday: “We are considering what to do.

“While we are open to talks with the militants, we believe the madrassa option will not be the best one. But we might have to accept the demands of the people in Abbottabad.”

Asked about the Bibles, Mr Malik said: “The belongings of Osama Bin Laden will not be handed to anyone. We will keep them and maybe burn them later when they are of no use.

“If there is a Bible there, it will be sent to a library or a church.”

So what’s the reason, do you think?

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How does the BBC treat Christianity?

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Christianity is treated differently, according to BBC boss

The Director-General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, has claimed that Christianity is ‘pretty broad shouldered’ which leads to it being treated differently than other religions. He said that because other faiths have a ‘very close identity with ethnic minorities’, they tend to be covered more carefully by broadcasters. Mr Thompson also said: ‘Without question, “I complain in the strongest possible terms”, is different from, “I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write”. This definitely raises the stakes.’ (Read more, Daily Mail, 27/2)

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What are you giving up for Lent? IrishTwitter survey

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SMALL PRINT: WE CONDUCTED a Twitter vox pop (filtering out the many responses of people completely apathetic to the idea of giving something up for Lent) to discover what the Twitter masses will be forgoing from this Wednesday until Easter.

Rioghnach Ní Ghriogh : Fretting. It’s going to be forty days of Zen. I hope. *chews nails*

Vickey Curtis : Swearing

Lorna Bourke: Gave up Lent many Lents ago

Danielle Barron: Not religious but always give up straightening my hair. Crispy locks be damned.

Amanda Coleen: TG caption sites – bet you don’t see that answer too often. And, yeah, necromancy. Also the ‘trash’ in my diet.

Tony McGuinness: Daily mass.

Ryan John Nelson: Carrier bags. Every year I try not to use new ones in Lent and end up carrying old ones around with me like some mad bag lady.

Doug Whelan : Having or spending any legal tender.

kDamo : Ireland.

Ailbhe Malone: Fizzy drinks and crisps.

Concubhar Ó Liathain: anger, ranting etc. It’s going to be difficult!

Paul Coughlan : Just the usual, sweets and fizzy drinks.

Milene Fegan : I am giving up social media, twitter and f-in Facebook, a trusted friend is changing my password and settings, so no cheating.

Dan Leydon : Existential dread.

Aine O’Connel l: I say carbs every year. I usually last about three days.

Sarah: Organised religion.

Will St Leger : I gave up The Smiths for a month last year. Worst timing ever, never again.

Mark Dunne: giving up anything sugary more or less.

Conor Fuller: Family Guy. Only messing I’m far too agnostic for that!

Tim Forde : Giving up Secular Militancy for 40 days.

Gary Wynne: if Roisin Shortall has her way we will all be giving up alcohol.

B: Bread I haven’t made myself, biscuits and cakes in work.

Billie Sparks : Cursing. Really f**king hard though!

Mic Wright : Anxiety. I’m giving up anxiety for lent.

Caoimhe Ni Dhonaill: takeaway food.

Ronan Fitzgerald : celibacy.

Emily O’Callaghan: Men.

Reblogged from Irish Times Online

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China: Christianity & the Communist Party

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THERE was a time when Devon Chang had difficulty reconciling his two chosen faiths: Christianity, which he embraced in 2005 at the age of 19, and the Communist Party of China, which had embraced him a year earlier. Did his submission to an almighty God not mean he must renounce the godless club of Marx and Mao?

Not necessarily. A fellow convert’s university lecturer suggested that if all Communist Party members found Jesus, then Christianity could rule China. “So it’s a good thing for me to become a Christian,” Mr Chang reasoned.

The party does not quite see it that way. Although people join the party more for career reasons these days than for ideological ones, it still officially forbids religious belief among its members. In practice, this has for some years been a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But signs are now growing that the party is about to become tougher on believers within its ranks. And behind it might be Mr Chang’s notion of Christianity as a Trojan horse.

If you can’t beat ’em…

Experts say that, of China’s 1.3 billion people, 200m to 300m now practise religion (though the government admits to only 100m), and far more engage in the veneration of ancestors. The vast majority of the religious are Buddhists or Daoists. Estimates for the number of Christians vary wildly from 50m to 100m (they are hard to count because so many believers go to underground “house churches”). Across the country, local governments have rebuilt temples and constructed new ones to capitalise on religious tourism. In rural areas, temples and churches have helped provide education and health care, with the unofficial blessing of local party chiefs. Some of those leaders also act as temple chiefs.

In the absence of official figures on religious believers within the party, Western and Chinese scholars often quote a 2007 survey, carried out by Horizon, a Beijing polling firm, in co-operation with American academics. The poll found that one in six party members had a religious belief. This would equate to more than 13m members today. The vast majority of those are Buddhists. Close to 2m are Christians.

The signals of a harsher approach are coming from Zhu Weiqun, a deputy minister of the party’s United Front Work Department and an influential ideologue, who warned in a December essay in a party journal, Qiushi (Seeking Truth), against the rise of religious believers in the ranks. If party members are allowed to believe in religion, Mr Zhu wrote, it will result in “shaking and losing the guiding position of Marxism, and in dividing the party ideologically and theoretically”. Mr Zhu cautioned that religious figures in the party might gain control over policy on religion. That would undermine the party’s fight against religious “extremism” in China’s west, especially against followers of the Dalai Lama. Mr Zhu is known as a loud public voice of the party’s opposition to the exiled Tibetan leader, whom he has denounced as a “splittist”, who is “evil” and “deceitful”.

The party’s relationship with religious believers who are not party members is complicated enough. They are allowed to believe in one of the state-approved religions (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, as well as Protestant and Catholic Christianity) and to attend registered places of worship. In the countryside the party tolerates folk religion despite an official ban on superstitions. But recently the party has pursued a hard line against some old spiritual foes. The biggest concern is separatism, which the party fears is fuelled by Buddhism in Tibet, and Islam in the north-west. But underground Catholic churches that are loyal to the pope and some of the more confrontational Protestant house churches are also controlled tightly.

Perceived threats to social stability are provoking the party’s soul-searching more than any need for thought control. The past four years have seen a succession of crises that have rejuvenated hardliners on the conservative wing of the party, where Mr Zhu resides, and where venom against religion is most in evidence. In the run-up to this autumn’s transition of the party’s top leaders, some officials are taking an even more conservative line as the safer path to power in nervous times.

During last year’s Arab spring, online calls for a Chinese “jasmine revolution” triggered a tightening of control. Beijing’s highest-profile house church, known as Shouwang, took what even many of its supporters felt was too confrontational a stand in a dispute about its venue and its leaders were detained. Other house churches that stay out of politics are still mostly left alone. But anything that smacks of civil society organising itself is considered suspect. The fact that few in China appeared to heed the call for an Egyptian-style revolt may have been taken as proof that harsh tactics work, not that they are unnecessary.

Even as greater prosperity and integration with the world transform Chinese society, the political climate is as icy as it has been since the early 1990s, when ageing hardliners criticised the role of religion in society. There was almost an opening a decade ago, when Pan Yue, a government official then handling economic reforms, published an article calling for a reassessment of the relationship between religion and the party. He argued that Marx was not as opposed to the “opium of the people” as is assumed, and that religion could help the party maintain stability. President Hu Jintao’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, appeared to accept that religion was a force that had a lasting place in Chinese society, and even dedicated a number of Buddhist temples with his calligraphy. But Mr Jiang kept party membership closed to believers, while admitting some of Marx’s less spiritual enemies: the capitalists.

Other party leaders have also made public allowances for religion, as long as it stays within the broad tent of party control. Some even privately suggest that religious faith may bring ethical benefits in the widely lamented moral vacuum of rampant materialism. But that need for a new moral code is tempered by a continued suspicion, especially of a faith such as Christianity, which is still tainted by its historical links to foreign imperialism.

So for believers such as young Mr Chang, the convert in Beijing, some tensions remain. He says he joined the party at the behest of his parents (his father is a member), because it would help him find a job. But his lack of party connections hindered his job search. God, he says, answered his prayers instead. Now he works for a government ministry, but he cannot tell his co-workers about his faith or he will be fired. He says he wants to leave his job, despite objections from his parents, who argue that success within the party can help the family more than God can.

Mr Chang and two other party members who attend the same church in Beijing insist the two faiths can co-exist. The country needs the party, they say, whereas individuals need faith. Christian party members note what Jesus taught his followers: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”. Mr Chang’s party dues are $1.60 a month. He plans to keep paying them.

 

Reprinted from The Economist 11.2.12

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The politicians who do God -and why

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There’s been a lot of talk about the importance of faith from coalition politicians recently. Where Labour famously refused to ‘do God’, at least in speaking about it, the prime minister has been happy to extol the virtues of the King James Bible, and Michael Gove proposing that a copy should be sent to every school.

David Cameron went so far as to explicitly contrast himself with the previous government:

“People often say politicians shouldn’t ‘do God’, in fact, politicians should recognise both what our faith communities bring to our country… And also how incredibly important faith is to many people in Britain.”

Is this a new dawn then, a movement from the darkness of a out-of touch government who refused to recognise the important of religion, to the light of a faith-friendly leadership?

Yes and no. New research, being presented at the first of a series of debates organised by the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme, former MP Charles Clarke and Theos, suggests the picture is more complex.

The research, carried out by Dr Therese O’Toole, firstly reassessed the record of New Labour in dealing with religion. Although the party was rather reticent in speaking about religion, it seems that there was significant progress made behind the scenes.

Although the 2001 Cantle Report on the ‘northern town riots’ treated religion as a problem for social cohesion, leading to communities leading ‘parallel lives’ by a few years later the Labour government was highlighting the role of faith leaders in fostering good community relations.

They saw faith groups, and interfaith groups especially, as possessing the ability to generate ‘bridging social capital’. In other words, religion might have been part of the problem, but it was also seen as being part of the solution.

O’Toole went on to look at the key project from the coalition in this area: Near Neighbours. The project reveals a subtle change in approach to faith groups: it releases £5 million of funding to four areas in England , with the aim of promoting interactions across faith and non-faith groups. Launched last year, it offers small grants of between £250 and £5,000 to local groups for projects that bring people of different faiths together.

It’s a ‘Big Society’ initiative, which hopes to enable local communities and faith groups in particular, to create their own local solutions to social problems. But what is particularly novel is that the programme is administered by the Church of England, and applicants require the counter-signature of vicars from the parishes in which the projects would take place.

This coalition initiative places the Church of England in a new role, as broker and arbiter of local interfaith activity – which raises a series of questions. Does the Church of England have the capacity for the job? Does Anglicanism still have the central place in the religious landscape of the UK as it once did? And perhaps most pressingly, will religious minorities be able to access the funding if they don’t understand or connect with the parish structure of the Church of England? Early signs are that almost all East London funding so far has been channelled to Christian organisations.

Those positive about Near Neighbours argue that the richness of the Church of England’s infrastructure, as well as its history of interfaith work, are valuable resources which will make this programme work. Some non-Christians share this positive view. As one Muslim told the researchers, Near Neighbours might “achieve the results that the Prevent agenda wanted to achieve”, at the same time as providing minorities protection under the wing of the Church of England. Others point out that Near Neighbours’ emphasis on funding interfaith activities is a necessary corrective to the mono-faith, Muslim-focused basis of Prevent funding.

Different members of the coalition government – Eric Pickles and Baroness Warsi alongside Cameron and Gove – feel free to speak confidently about the positive role of religion in society, with a particular emphasis on the UK’s historical Christianity. But it remains to be seen whether the Church of England really provides a core, but not co-opted, public role, whilst not excluding those from minority faiths. Near Neighbours provides one test of how the coalition will navigate our diverse, multi-faith landscape. It’s too soon to say if the new approach will prove more successful than the old.

The clearest trend from the research is that all parties are getting better at dealing with faith, acknowledging it’s growing centrality to a range of policy areas. Perhaps, then, in the next 10 years, the question will be not if a government ‘does’ God, but how?

This is reblogged from Elizabeth Hunter THEOS

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Beneath the Syrian shift

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If the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime falls then thousands of Christians in the country may be killed.

Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, said that under the “nasty” regime Christian refugees from Iraq had found “an oasis of relative calm”. But following the Arab Spring uprising, he said, suspected rebels had killed a young Christian man.

In an article in this week’s Catholic Herald, he writes: “A great many have taken refuge in neighbouring Syria in which, despite the heavy-handed nature of its dictatorial regime, Christians (and indeed Jews) have found an oasis of relative calm until hit by the recent stirrings of the Arab Spring.

“Last month, the 29-year-old Greek Orthodox Hieromonk Basilios Nassar was shot dead while giving medical aid to a man who himself had been wounded by a bullet from suspected rebels in Hama, Syria. Should the Assad regime, nasty as it is, fall we should then expect hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of such killings to take place – as indeed they have taken place in Iraq.

“Christians are currently engaged in almost every aspect of public life in Syria. Can we realistically expect this to continue under an Islamist government with democratic legitimacy? As we are now witnessing beatings, abductions, and xenophobic killings in free Libya, the West must be forced to acknowledge the pernicious edge of our liberal internationalist foreign policy.

“While revelling in Schillerian bliss over exuberant moments of popular liberation like those in Tahrir Square last year, we must remind ourselves that dangers lurk deep within the enshrinement of the rule of the majority without sufficient safeguards reinforcing the rights of minorities.”

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Imagining a united Ireland – new novel

Turas is Colin Neill’s first novel and he will be “in conversation with Contemporary Christianity” on February 21.

It is 2020 and Ireland has been united. During this year of striking change, a group of men meet together in a church cell group to wrestle with uncertainty through the filters of their faith and God’s word. Mingled with profound transition all around them are tales of friendship, tales of love, and tales of coming to terms with what the past has meant.

This is a story of seven Christians and their spiritual journey together into the unknown. It is also a response to living in an often religious but always divided society, which asks a series of challenging questions, and offers direction as to where answers may be found.

 

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Holocaust Memorial Day – Irish minister’s speech

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Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, writes on the anniversary of Ireland’s 10th Holocaust Day.

Allied soldiers arrived at the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 67 years ago today, 27 January 1945.  It had become the largest graveyard of the Jewish people in history.

An estimated 1.1 to 1.3 million people were exterminated there, 90 per cent of them Jewish men, women and children. Others exterminated included Roma families, people with disabilities, homosexuals, prisoners of conscience and religious faith.

Nothing could prepare the camps liberators for what they witnessed in Auschwitz.

The remnants of the gas chambers and the crematoria; the mounds of bodies; the stench of death; the piles of clothes; of teeth; of childrens’ shoes
and barely living skeletal survivors; the speaking bones who greeted their arrival.  By the war’s end, it was estimated that 6 million Jews had been
exterminated by the Nazi killing machine in pursuit of the objective of a Judenfrei world.  If Hitler had achieved his objectives no Jewish community in Europe would have been exempt from the Nazi slaughter, not even those resident in neutral Ireland.

In Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, a map of Europe prepared by Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the extermination policy, includes the estimated 4,000 members of the then Irish Jewish community targeted for extermination.  Clearly, had Germany succeeded in invading Britain, our proclaimed war time neutrality would have provided no protection for the small Irish Jewish community nor presented any real barrier to a German invasion.

It is of vital importance that we and future generations remember and learn from the horrors of the past to ensure they are not repeated in the future. In his book The Drowned and the Saved Primo Levi writes that “human memory is a  marvellous  but fallacious instrument. This is a threadbare truth, known not only to psychologists but also to anyone who has paid attention to the behaviour of those who surround him or even to his own behaviour. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone;  not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change or even increase by incorporating extraneous features”.

Despite everything witnessed, the accounts of survivors and the voluminous records maintained by Germany itself of the Nazi killing machine and the many Holocaust memorials and museums worldwide, there are now too many in Europe who know very little of the horrors perpetrated in the second quarter of the last century and far too many in the State of Israel’s neighbours  in the volatile Middle East engaged in Holocaust denial. Again in the words of Primo Levi, “the further events fade into the past, the more the construction of convenient truth grows and is perfected.”

These acts of evil emerged in one of the more modern and sophisticated societies of the era

As the years pass by and the remaining survivors of the Nazi horror who can tell the story first-hand reduce in number, it becomes more important than ever that we keep alive the shocking memory of the Holocaust. It is crucial that we never forget what happened or diminish the scale of the horror that was perpetrated by the Nazi regime.

It is difficult to comprehend how a society could have allowed such unimaginable atrocities to occur. We must remember that the Holocaust did not occur in a vacuum. These acts of evil emerged in one of the more modern and sophisticated societies of the era.

Tools and advances made toward human progress were used for human destruction.  Scientific and medical advances designed to heal and save lives were used to kill.  Education which should enlighten was used to justify grotesquely immoral actions.  People made choices. Some chose to be involved in some way in the destruction, others chose to do and say nothing,  while some chose to resist the evil and do the right thing to support, protect and save the persecuted.

An  inconvenient truth is that those who chose to do and say nothing during this unprecedented period in European history include this State.  In the period following Hitler coming to power and preceding the Second World War, the  doors of this State were kept firmly closed to German Jewish families trying  to flee from persecution and death. The advice of the anti-Semitic then-Irish Ambassador in Berlin, Charles Bewley, that Ireland should be protected from the contamination that would result from granting residential visas to Jewish refugees resulted in practically all visa requests  being  refused.

In the context of the Holocaust, Irish neutrality was a principle of moral bankruptcy

This position was maintained from 1939 to 1945 and we should no longer be in denial that, in the context of the Holocaust, Irish neutrality was a principle of  moral bankruptcy. This  moral bankruptcy was compounded by the then Irish Government who, after the war, only allowed an indefensibly small number who survived the concentration camps to settle permanently in Ireland whilst refusing entry and permanent residence to many more and also by the visit of President De Valera to then German Ambassador Edouard Hemple in 1945 to express his condolences on the death  of  Hitler. At a time when neutrality should have ceased to be an issue, the Government of this State utterly lost its moral compass.

So,  in understanding the Holocaust and maintaining its memory, in ensuring that the conditions which allow such evil to flourish to such devastating consequences can never again prevail, we should not forget or ignore the failures of this State and this State’s responsibility for such failures.

John Bruton, as Taoiseach, in the Spring of 1995, acknowledged our State’s failures and honoured the memory of those millions of European Jews who died in the Holocaust. When doing so, he acknowledged that the Holocaust “was not the product of an alien culture. It happened in Europe in living memory. It was a product of intolerance, bigotry and a distorted concept of nationalism.”

In  the midst of the ongoing fiscal and banking crisis that currently  impacts on the nations of Europe, including our State, we should never lose sight of the extraordinary contribution of the European Union in providing the political architecture for peace and stability in Europe.  As

Europeans we must all ensure that in addressing vital issues of immediate concern that affect the lives of tens of millions, it is the European ideals of peace, cooperation and solidarity and not extreme nationalism nor narrow domestic political concerns which motivate our actions.

It is appropriate that we revisit the morality of the conduct of our State during the 1930s and ’40s, whilst of course being conscious of the fact that
only a short time earlier, we had regained our independence from Britain and there was an understandable concern by Government to ensure, insofar as possible,  political stability on this island at a time of global conflict.

No-one should assume that what happened in the past cannot be repeated in the future

However, there were questionable things both done and not done and we should not be in denial nor should we ignore that the conduct of our State, at that time, in the eyes of some, delimits Ireland’s moral authority and credibility when today we seek to lecture later generations of those whose families  survived the Holocaust on the conduct of their affairs in Israel, without regard to the extent to which they believe themselves under existential threat.

No-one should assume that what happened in the past cannot be repeated in the future. The truth is we should pay greater attention to the dead.

We must never forget the lessons of the past when we make, or urge others to make, decisions which impact on the future. We should never ignore the extent to which their past impacts on their perception of the present and fuels their fears of the future or causes them to question the judgement of others.

I am pleased that Ireland became a full member of the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research in December 2011. This Task Force is a voice of moral authority on the international stage in raising awareness about the Holocaust and can help address the dynamics that we know precede mass killings and genocide.

Ireland’s 10th National Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, organised by the  Holocaust Education Trust Ireland, will take place this coming Sunday, January 29. This commemoration event, which is now firmly established in the Irish national calendar, has been supported by my Department since 2003 and I am very pleased to be in a position to continue that support.

For well over a decade, we have commemorated and paid tribute to the estimated 10,000 Irish people who died in British uniforms during the Second World War. Many who fought  in British uniforms during that War returned to Ireland. For too many years, their contribution in preserving European and Irish democracy was ignored. Some of those include members of our Defence  Forces who left this island during that time to fight for freedom and who were subsequently dishonourably discharged from the Defence Forces.

I believe it is also appropriate that we revisit the manner in which they were treated whilst also remembering that those who served in our  Defence Forces throughout that time performed a crucial national duty. It is untenable that we commemorate those who died whilst continuing to ignore the manner in which our State treated the living, in the period immediately after World War II, who returned to our State having fought for freedom  and  democracy. This is an issue to which I hope to return in my role as Minister for Defence later this year

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The Hudson Taylor Tourist Trail?

 

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Missionary trail may bring Chinese tourism boom to Barnsley

Barnsley is hoping that a heritage trail for James Hudson Taylor will bring in huge numbers of Chinese tourists.  The Mirror reports that the 19th century missionary, who was born in Barnsley, is ‘hailed as spiritual leader by more than 70 million Christians in the Far East‘.

Read more: The Mirror, 14/1

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Jefferson’s “Abridged” version

Cover of The Jefferson Bible

Thomas Jefferson’s ‘cut-down’ Bible reissued

The third US president compiled his own version of the Gospels by literally cutting out the parts with which he did not agree.  Jefferson used a razor to remove passages describing, among other things, the virgin birth, resurrection and ascension of Jesus – preferring to emphasise his moral teachings.  A new edition of ‘The Jefferson Bible‘ has been published this month.

Read more: The Guardian, 17/1

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