The harvest festival of Onam is a moveable feast: it colours the landscape of Kerala in South West India in a rhythm of elaborate dances, music, sports and banquets. A festival of secular tradition, where different faiths and castes celebrate. It falls on the Malayee month of Chingnam, which coincides with Shavan Masa of the Indian calender. This ten day celebration falls between August and September 15. It honours the homecoming of the beloved King Mahabali, who makes a yearly return to Kerala. Legend dictates that the jealous king of the gods, Indra, hatched a plan to oust Mahabali. Indra begged Lord Vishnu for protection who then transformed into a Brahmin boy, or dwarf, named Vamana. The people of Kerala adorded the wisdom and generosity of King Mahabali; Vamana sought to exploit the latter. He approached King Mahabali and asked for as much land as his feet could cover in three steps. Upon granting what appeared a simple and humble request; Vamana grew at an exponential rate; one footstep covered the sky and the stars. The second step covered the netherworld. Vamana then turned to King Mahabli, who came to realise that a third step would destroy the Earth. To [...]
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Dr. Imam Mamadou Bocoum is a holder of two Masters and a PhD from The Muslim College, and Heythrop College, University of London. He is a lecturer in Islamic Studies; a Board member of the Muslim Law Council UK and an interfaith consultant. He is currently a consultant at Faith Matters and Tell Mama. Mamadou has authored a number of written works which have included: The Position of Jews and Christians in the Qur’an; Faith and Citizenship in Islam; The status of Women in Islam; Islamic Fundamentalism and the Qur’an. He can be reached at mbocoum@yahoo.com; Mamadou@tellmamauk.org. While delivering a talk on ‘extremism in the religion of Islam’, an audience member shouted: “Bush, Blair and Bin Laden are all f——s”. I pretended that I had not heard but this was to no avail as the same individual shouted again – but this time in a louder tone – “All of them are f——s”. The heckler’s pronunciation was rather difficult to interpret (like mine!) and I thought that he meant the offensive six-letter designation. It proved a great relief when someone clarified that the ‘f word’ was fundamentalist. I then responded that besides sharing initial ‘B’ in their respective family names, [...]
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Posting their pictures on Just Paste it, the Kalashnikov wielding young men of ISIS, look down on the bones of saints that were laid to rest many centuries ago in this monastery in Syria. Pictures from the ‘picture dump’ show bulldozers that were used to break the walls of the monastery and with pictures of unearthed […]
Continue ReadingA dozen skeletons found in a rubbish dump were Jewish victims of Portugal’s Inquisition, according to researchers. The excavation team uncovered the remains in Evora, east of Lisbon, at the former Jail Cleaning Yard of the Inquisition Court. The dump functioned between 1568 and 1634. Inquisition manuscripts confirmed that 87 prisoners died when the jail was in use. The three male and nine female victims died with no funeral rights or burial goods. Researchers noted that “the sediment surrounding the skeletons is indistinguishable from the household waste layer where they were placed, suggesting that the bodies were deposited directly in the dump”. In death, the humiliation compounded those accused of being Jewish or heretics. Pope Gregory IX created the Inquisition in 1233, after a period of consolidation in Europe, to ensure heretics did not undermine papal authority. For example, they branded the Cathers and Waldensians heretics for their metaphysical Christian beliefs. Suspicion followed Jewish converts; some believed they continued to practice Judaism in secret. A converso faced fines, imprisonment or burning at the stake if found guilty of practising their old faith. Under the Inquisition, the accused had no right to face or question their accuser; it validated the testimonies [...]
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Continue ReadingDanish 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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Continue ReadingAl-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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Continue ReadingIt 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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Continue ReadingNews 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...
Continue ReadingAs 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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Continue ReadingNicholas 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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