Irshad Manji, the internationally best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in her Faith, and Dalia Mogahed, Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, discuss the system of leadership in Islam with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. This clip is from earlier this month at The Aspen Institute in Colorado.
Film-makers with Al-Jazeera follow an evangelical charismatic Christian preacher as he tours China and meet Guo Fenglian nicknamed the 'Iron lady'.
The National Labor Committee (NLB) reports that US-based Christian retailers are selling crosses made in Chinese sweat shops. Charles Kernaghan, director of the NLB, said "the factory's mostly young, female employees work from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., seven days a week and are paid 26 cents an hour with no sick days or vacation. Workers live in filthy dormitories and are fed a watery 'slop.'"
The Association of Christian Retail denied the claims in the AP story. Association president Bill Anderson's statement downplayed the sweat-shop issue entirely:
While we occasionally hear this issue raised, and believe there are factories in China where human rights are violated, we believe claims that products sold through CBA member stores are made in these shops are irresponsible and unfounded.
These workers, and millions like them, are left exhausted and dehumanized at the end of their work day. With one poor soul at the end of a 19 hour shift, crying out, “Jesus, take pity on me! I’m going to die of exhaustion.” Shouldn't the primary consideration be finding the truth and remedying such horrible abuses? It's irresponsible to dismiss these charges, not to make them.
These sweatshop crosses, most likely, were to be purchased as gifts. As we purchase gifts for our loved ones this holiday season, let's support products from businesses that offer fair wages and livable, humane, working conditions.
Hate crimes were up 8% in 2006. Religious bias was blamed for 18.9 percent of the incidents; sexual orientation bias for 15.5 percent, and ethnic or national origin for 12.7 percent. Explicit religious bias is shown at close to 20%. Certainly there is a link between the homophobic stances of many religious groups and the atmosphere of intolerance that gives space for violent actions taken towards the GLBTQ community.
It is heartening, then, to hear of Faith In America’s newly launched “Call to Courage” campaign, which is being run in early Presidential primary and caucus states to engage and educate citizens about religious teachings and practices that foster discrimination and oppression against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. In an interview with Bob Abernathy of Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, Rev. Jimmy Creech, Faith in America's Director said, “We really do believe that conversation, that dialogue, that being together in a civil, neutral setting will make it possible for us, first of all, to understand one another better, and then secondly to begin to recognize the need for change.”
The debate over homosexuality centers on scriptural interpretation, but disagreements over theology and doctrine need not lead to discrimination and disrespect. That is something that all people of faith should be able to agree on.
UPDATE: A Washington Post Article Today focused on the geographical disparities in hate crime reporting. Alabama, for example, does not consider crimes connected to sexual orientation to be hate crimes.
Michael Mukasey stands to become the chief law enforcement officer of United States, so his opinion on the legality of various interrogation techniques is more than an abstract or academic concern. Mukasey can say with great certainty that torture is unconstitutional, but that's not so meaningful if you don't quite know what torture is. He's not so sure about waterboarding (which was used in the Spanish Inquisition):
Sen. Whitehouse called Mukasey's answer "purely semantic" and "a massive hedge." I'd also add "absurd." If it's hard for him to make up his mind about whether waterboarding is torture, it should be easy for us to make up our minds about him.
CNN is reporting that Myanmar's military junta is cutting off its people's communication with the outside world in order to suppress reports of government brutality:
The Internet connection in Myanmar was cut Friday, limiting the free flow of information the nation's citizens were sharing with the world depicting the violent crackdown on monks and other peaceful demonstrators.You can do several things to stand with the Burmese people who are currently under attack by the government that has oppressed them for decades.Myanmar-based blogs went dark suddenly. But London-based blogger Ko Htike -- who has been one of the most prominent bloggers posting information about the violence -- has vowed to keep up the fight, saying where "there is a will, there is a way."
"I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the Internet connection throughout the country," he said on his blog Friday. "I, therefore, would not be able to feed in pictures of the brutality by the brutal Burmese military junta."
Sign the petition holding the UN Security Council and the government of China accountable for the bloodshed.
Email their American embassy at info@mewashingtondc.com and webmaster@mewashingtondc.com.
Tell your friends, family, networks and constituencies to get involved.
Earlier today the Senate voted down an amendment to a defense authorization bill which would have restored habeas corpus -- the right to contest one's arrest in a court of law -- to foreign "enemy combatants" detained by U.S. authorities. The AP reported that Sen. Lindsey Graham claimed that giving suspected terrorists a right to challenge their detention would allow them to go "judge shopping" for a sympathetic court. This indicates a striking lack of faith in America's judicial system and a belief in the unimpeachable integrity of the military and the executive branch.
By contrast, Sen. Patrick Leahy said the failure to restore habeas corpus "calls into question the United States' historic role of defender of human rights in the world. It accomplishes what opponents could never accomplish on the battlefield, whittling away our own liberties."
As Leahy suggests, this is not just a political issue, it is a moral one. Faith groups such as the National Religious Campaign Against Torture have spoken out on habeas corpus and torture repeatedly. The two issues are intertwined because the suspension of habeas corpus is one of the key enablers of torture.
As it stands right now, the United States government can hold prisoners at Guantanamo and other military prisons indefinitely, without any access to any defense in court. That is not detention, it is "disappearing," a practice associated with dictatorships that we used to denounce.
