Danish police arrest man for promoting mosque arsons on Facebook

Danish police arrested a man for incitement in response to a recent Islamic Centre arson in Copenhagen. Facebook breifly shutdown ‘No to mosques – sincerely’ (Nej til moskéer – oprigtigt) as police investigated a slew of hateful messages. “I’m happy to donate a can of gasoline,” wrote one individual. Another posted “Good. Respect. Burn down that camel shit,” comments that brought about incitement charges. In a local radio interview, the individual expressed a desire to ‘shoot all the Muslims’ with an assault rifle. Police charged the man under article 136, paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code. The page recycles the myth of Islamisation in Denmark. It maintains that Islam is a political ideology, not religion. One post rallied their right of free speech until ‘the last mosque is torn down’ and the last Muslim ‘returned’. Upon returning to Facebook, the admins posted “We welcome you back after a minor bump on the road towards a Fatherland free of mosques and Islam”. Memes compare mosques to the human cost of tsunamis. One post promotes the far-right Danskernes Partie (The Danes’ Party), founded in 2011 by Daniel Carlsen. Carlsen used to be a member of the neo-Nazi Danish National Socialists (DNSB). At [...]

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Al Qaeda’s Al-Zawahiri Pledges Allegiance to New Taliban Chief

Al-Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri has pledged allegiance to the new head of the Afghan Taliban in an audio on-line message. The move is seen politically to enhance the status of the new leader, (Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour), after the death of the Group’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, some two years ago. Al-Zawahiri stated, “We pledge our allegiance … (to the) commander of the faithful, Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour, may God protect him.” The move is seen as a way of shoring up the waning support for Al-Qaeda, a group which has largely lost traction and support to groups such as ISIS and local splinter extremist groups in countries across the Maghreb to the Middle East. The move is also meant to try and hold the group together as it started to splinter after the reported death of Mullah Omar.

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Scholar’s corner: what can René Girard teach us about religion and violence?

It is almost unthinkable to speak of violence without equating it with religion. This is true in many ways as Mark Juergensmeyer notes: “Violence has always been endemic to religion. Images of destruction and death are evoked by some of religion’s most popular symbols, and religious wars have left through history a trail of blood. The savage martyrdom of Husain in Shiite Islam, the crucifixion of Jesus in Christianity, the sacrifice of Guru Tegh Bahadur in Sikhism, the bloody conquests in the Hebrew Bible, the terrible battles in the Hindu epics, and the religious war attested to in the Sinhalese Buddhist chronicles indicate that in virtually every tradition images of violence occupy as central a place as portrayals of non-violence. This raises two haunting questions: why are these images so central, and what is the relationship between symbolic violence and the real acts of religious violence that occur throughout the world today”.[1] Juergensmeyer raises some interesting questions and René Girard believes “that [his] mimetic theory offers an exhaustive explanation of the phenomenon of religious-inspired violence”.[2] In contrast, Michael Kirwan confidentially claims that Girard anticipated ‘religiously-inspired’ violence and atrocities (including 9/11).[3] Therefore, one does not need to look further to understand this [...]

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Islamic State Releases 22 Assyrian Christian Captives

News reports have highlighted the fact that the so-called Islamic State has released 22 elderly Assyrian Christians that it had kidnapped from villages in the North-East of Syria. The captives were taken earlier in 2015 , though according to the UK ba...

Why World Humanitarian Day is so important

As we approach World Humanitarian Day (Aug 19), we should take time to reflect on the global human efforts to create the conditions for peace and prosperity amongst all mankind, and to stand in solidarity with people wanting to bring about progressive social change in their communities. As society comes together with the assistance of new forms of connectivity and transportation, we are transforming into an increasingly inclusive, interdependent and co-operative global community. It is in our nature to feel a sense of community with those we share resources, time and environment with. However, achieving such conditions is not without its challenges – discrimination, inequality, poverty, a worsening in national security conditions and the disregard of human life, all of which are still prevalent. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that we do not turn our backs on progressive causes and that humanitarians take the lead on sharing the global dimension to all these common challenges. It these themes that World Humanitarian Day was made to celebrate. Designated on the anniversary of the bombing of the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq, which killed 22 UN staff members, World Humanitarian Day is an opportunity when all peoples can [...]

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Racist jailed after taunting Jewish woman with Hitler Youth flag

Nicholas Goodwin, 23, sent a Jewish mother a photo of himself with a Hitler Youth flag, after she stopped him from contacting her son. The photo depicts Goodwin and Callum Cochrane smiling as they posed with the flag. Elissa Wilson, their target, received the vile image via Facebook on January 29 – two days after Holocaust Memorial Day. Goodwin, admitted the charge of racially aggravated harassment, and received a six-month prison sentence. Cochrane escaped sentencing because he did not send or create the image. Wilson praised the sentencing and told the Daily Record, “Six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. For anyone to glorify that is just vile. I’m delighted with the sentence. It shows that things like this are taken seriously.” That sentence adds to an increasing list of crimes committed by Goodwin. Last month, he appeared in court after threatening to stab a 16-year-old, Goodwin and another person, hurled racist abuse at the victim. The judge noted that Goodwin was currently serving three concurrent prison terms at Low Moss Prison. But the problem of antisemitism in Scotland is not limited to online racists. A breakdown of religious hate charges (with caveat). Credit: The Scottish Government. In [...]

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Oxford University digitises depictions of Hindu deities

Oxford University digitised more than one hundred 19th Century Kalighat paintings depicting Hindu deities. The digitisation is part of a wider project at the university’s Bodleian library to make thousands of rare manuscripts and images accessible to the public. Religious statesman, Rajan Zed, took to Twitter to heap praise on the university: We commend #OxfordUniversity for digitizing 110 19th-century #KalighatPaintings of #Hindu deities & others & posting on new #OnlinePortal. — Rajan Zed (@rajanzed) August 1, 2015 Sir Monier Monier-Williams acquired the Kalighat paintings for the Indian Institute Library following his third fund-raising trip to India in 1883. You can trace the history of the Kalighat art to a Kali Temple on the bank of the Buri Ganga (a canal diverging from the Ganges River) in southern Kolkata (Calcutta). This form of Bengali folk art, created between 1800 and 1930, was a product sold to tourists and pilgrims as souvenirs. The sprawling metropolitan success of 18th-century Kolkata attracted a wealth of creative talents. Others moved to the city due to the economic grip of The East India Company in the region. Among them were the trained artists of Murshidabad and folk painters (patuas). A patua depicted mythologies, religious figures, popular [...]

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Palestinian toddler killed in ‘price tag’ arson attack

A Palestinian toddler died in an arson attack, suspected to have been carried out by far-right settlers. The deceased, an 18-month-old child, Ali Saad Dawabsha slept alongside his family, oblivious to an impending peril. In the early hours of Friday morning, two masked men entered the village of Duma, in the northern area of the West Bank, outside the city of Nablus. They smashed the windows of two properties (one of which was empty) and threw Molotov cocktails inside. The perpetrators also daubed the buildings with graffiti. The Hebrew text read “revenge” and “long live the Messiah”. As the flames burned, his father, Sa’ad, escorted his wife, Reham, and four-year-old son Ahmed to safety. But according to witnesses, a lack of electricity prevented him from finding Ali. The family visited a hospital in Nablus in the West Bank and then the burn unit at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer. Reports suggest that Ali’s mother sustained between 70 and 90 per cent burns. His father and brother remain in critical conditions. Politicians across the Israeli political spectrum condemned the murder. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as “a clear-cut terrorist attack. Israel takes a strong hand against terror, no matter who [...]

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Meet the last Catholic priest in Antarctica

For more than 50 years, Catholic priests from New Zealand have sailed thousands of miles to the frozen desolation of the Antarctic. The US National Science Foundation invites New Zealand’s Catholic Church for the summer months. A select number of priests work at the whimiscally-titled Chapel of the Snows, at the US McMurdo Station on Ross Island. They provide the spiritual succour to research staff and scientists. But budget cuts and reduced religiosity among staff means the New Zealand diocese ends its tenure in the Antarctic. A military chaplaincy will continue to offer spiritual care and inter-denominational services. Father Dan Doyle, co-ordinator of the Catholic Church in Antarctica, told the Catholic Herald: “Before this digital age people felt very isolated and lonely; they were always under so much pressure, so I did a lot of counselling and peer support”. Email and Skype later replaced a 2-minute call on a ham-radio once a month. At peak summertime, Doyle (and four other priests) assisted up to 2,000 people. That number dropped to 1,200 in a decade. In the harsh winter months, the population drops to just 150 essential personnel. Every few weeks, they travelled 1,360km (845 miles)  to the southernmost inhabited place [...]

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Asia Bibi and the continued problem of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws

The Supreme Court of Pakistan recently suspended the execution of Asia Bibi – the Christian mother-of-five convicted on alleged blasphemy charges that reportedly started over a glass of water. It sounds positive, as historically Pakistani courts seemed to be under enormous pressure whenever it came to blasphemy related cases. One of the judges of the same court, Justice Arif Iqbal Bhatti, was assassinated in 1997 after he acquitted two Christians, Salamat Masih and Rehmat Masih, in a blasphemy case because of insufficient evidence. According to various reports, 1274 people have been charged with blasphemy between 1986 and 2010 – 51 accused have been murdered before finishing their respective trials. With that in mind, it is possible to see how the above potentially influenced the decision to uphold Asia Bibi’s death penalty conviction last year (without any credible evidence). The above numbers signify a horrific picture for the fate of anyone accused of breaching blasphemy laws in Pakistan. Whatever the courts decide about the case, the religious fanatics rarely allow them to survive. Not only are the accused at risk; but their supporters and lawyers are targets and killers are sometimes glorified. Under these circumstances, no one should think that Asia [...]

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