Disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan prompt questions of faith
By Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times
March 19, 2011
What hath God wrought?
In the Bible, that's an exclamation, not a question (Numbers 23:23). Still, it's a common response to any natural disaster, especially one on the scale of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, now compounded by the unnatural disaster of a nuclear crisis.
If there is a God, and if He (for the sake of convention) is all-powerful, what in God's name was He thinking?
This is perhaps the oldest of theological questions — the one that may, in fact, explain the nearly universal human yearning for faith, what evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering calls "the belief instinct." How can we explain the inexplicable? How can we make sense of suffering?
Atheists say we can explain life's complexities through science, and that there is no meaning in suffering. It just is, and we should do our best to alleviate it.
Monotheists see it somewhat differently. Faith offers answers, if only the unsatisfying: "It's a mystery." But there is little consensus among the faithful.
In the days following the 9.0 earthquake in Japan, some saw the punishing hand of God. Others saw a sign of the end of times, the coming of the apocalypse. Still others saw, well, an earthquake.
On Fox News, host Glenn Beck said he was "not saying that God is, you know, causing earthquakes," but that he was "not not" saying that.
"Whether you call it Gaia or whether you call it Jesus, there's a message being sent," said Beck, who is Mormon. "And that is, 'Hey, you know that stuff we're doing? Not really working out real well.'"
The governor of Tokyo prefecture, Shintaro Ishihara, was compelled to apologize when he was quoted after the quake as saying that Japanese politics was "tainted with egoism and populism," causing "tembatsu," or divine punishment.
Those remarks, theologians say, reflect a natural human desire to make sense of a disaster whose force and scale are difficult to comprehend. But many Christians, Jews and others profoundly disagree with the idea that the quake can be explained by the "doctrine of retribution," the idea that God punishes evil in the world.
"I think that's a common, almost instinctive, knee-jerk reaction," said Warren McWilliams, an ordained Baptist minister who is a professor of Bible studies at Oklahoma Baptist University. "The danger, I think, is in moving backwards — moving from effect to cause. It's what I call the thinking process of Job's friends." The reference was to the biblical figure whose trials helped create the archetype of a good person forced to endure inexplicable suffering.
"So long as he prospered, they thought he was good," McWilliams said of Job. "The moment he suffered, they thought there must be some sin." When Hurricane Katrina struck, he added, "a lot of conservative Christians said, you know, New Orleans is a sin city, and so God judged them. I don't think it's my place to make that judgment. I think it's a dangerously simple way to think of a complex situation."
Certainly, the Bible is full of examples of divine retribution: Noah's flood or the plagues that afflicted the Egyptians. And Jesus warned of earthquakes (Matthew 24:7-8) as "birth pains" before the end of the world.
Erik Thoennes, a professor of theology at Biola University and a pastor at Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada, said he believes that human iniquity does, in fact, play a role in natural disasters. But he does not want to cast blame on the Japanese.
"Is God judging Japan?" he asked. "Well, no more than He's judging me."
Thoennes added that events like the Japanese earthquake can bring people closer to God. It "calls us back to rethink the biggest questions of life," he said.
Siroj Sorajjakool, a professor of religious psychology and counseling at Loma Linda University, has written about the religious response to the 2004 tsunami that struck his native Thailand and other parts of south and southeast Asia, and said different faiths have divergent ways of dealing with disaster.
The Buddhist explanation, he said, boils down to: "People die; life is impermanent. You can't control it so you have to let go." Christianity, he said, "has greater challenges dealing with this kind of question." As a Seventh-day Adventist, he prefers not to dwell on that which is unanswerable.
"The challenge," he said, "is not how does God make all these things happen. The challenge is, in a world where bad things happen, can Christians hold onto hope and continue to practice compassion?"
That isn't far from the theology expressed by Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, an organization of Conservative Jewish rabbis.
God created the world but isn't micromanaging it, Schonfeld believes. "I live in a real world of science and technology," she said. "We know that these things happen, and we are humbled by them."
"As Jewish theology has evolved, it has focused more on what people can do to help each other," she added. And with that in mind, she said the earthquake image that made the deepest impression on her is not one of endless devastation.
Instead, Schonfeld keeps thinking of "these workers who have stayed with the reactor. What heroes! That's the immense, for me, faith-provoking image." What that tells us, she said, is "that people have a concept that there's something greater than their own life that they're willing to work for and sacrifice for."
mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Monday, August 9, 2010
Q: Why religion?
Q: Why religion?
A: Because as we learned vividly at Auschwitz, our lives must have meaning.
By Oliver Thomas
Why religion? In the face of pogroms and pedophiles, crusades and coverups, why indeed?
Religious Americans have answered the question variously. Worship is one answer. Millions gather each week to acknowledge their higher power. The chance to experience community is another. Healthy congregations are more than civic clubs. They are surrogate families. The opportunity to serve others also comes to mind. Americans feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless largely through religious organizations. Yet as important as community, worship and service are, I am convinced that religion's greatest contribution to society is even greater.
Religion makes us want to live.
Viktor Frankl's revealing research in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz led him to a startling conclusion. It was not the youngest, strongest or even smartest inmates who tended to survive. It was those who had found meaning in their lives. People, it turns out, need a reason to live.
For Frankl, that meaning wasn't necessarily religious — although one could argue that anything that deals with a person's deepest concerns is in a sense "spiritual." What Frankl was talking about could be found in deeds — in the handful of individuals who shared their meager rations with others and went about encouraging their fellow prisoners. But meaning could also be found in attitudes — particularly in the ability to face suffering with dignity and grace. As Frankl expressed it: "Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."
Man's search for meaning — whether in a Broadway penthouse or the darkest corner of hell — is the most basic building block of a successful life. Without a sense of purpose, many people will simply shrivel up and die, whether figuratively or, in some cases, literally.
I suspect that in postmodern America, the need for meaning is as great as ever. While our ancestors were too busy fighting off starvation to worry about such things as self-actualization, today's Americans live lives of relative ease. Higher education, a shorter work week and regular vacations have enriched our lives but have also provided abundant opportunity to consider whether our lives have meaning and purpose. The result isn't all that encouraging. Millions suffer from depression. Millions more escape their lives through drugs and alcohol. Far too many give up the struggle altogether and commit suicide.
Alas, many of us have discovered purpose for our lives through religion. Inside America's churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and ashrams, we wrestle with the great questions of life. And with due respect to my atheist and left-leaning friends, most of those questions are not amenable to the scientific method.
Why are we here?
What does it all mean?
How should we then live?
These are the things that matter most. Not whether Pluto is a real planet or the atomic weight of carbon is 12 or 13. Even Nietzsche recognized that if one can answer the why of life, he can cope with most any how.
Frankl came away from Auschwitz convinced that there are two basic types of people: decent ones and indecent ones. Some are stronger in their disposition than others, of course, but basically we are decent or indecent. Here's the interesting thing. Decency and indecency do not fall along national or political lines. There were decent Nazi guards just as there were indecent inmates.
The same is true of our congregations. While we teach justice, forgiveness and love of neighbor, no doubt, there are indecent souls among us. Even indecent congregations. Not all religion is good, and no person is sicker than a person who is sick on religion. Don't just think of Osama bin Laden here. I'm also talking about the fearful, guilt-racked, shell of a human being that can result from a fundamentalist Christian upbringing. Good religion, as the great humanitarian and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer put it, is always "life-affirming."
Here's the point: I think religion makes it easier to be decent. The positive core values, mutual accountability and constant striving for self-improvement help one to be a better person. And I want to be a better person. Not because I'm afraid of God. Because I'm grateful for another trip around the sun and, like a good house guest, want to leave this place in better shape than I found it.
There is a lesson here for America's clergy: Keep your eye on the ball. It's not so much about this doctrine or that, Mass or the Lord's Supper or even Ramadan or Yom Kippur. It's about purpose, meaning and whether I ought to get out of bed in the morning.
Oliver Thomas is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and author of 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job).
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20100809/column09_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip
A: Because as we learned vividly at Auschwitz, our lives must have meaning.
By Oliver Thomas
Why religion? In the face of pogroms and pedophiles, crusades and coverups, why indeed?
Religious Americans have answered the question variously. Worship is one answer. Millions gather each week to acknowledge their higher power. The chance to experience community is another. Healthy congregations are more than civic clubs. They are surrogate families. The opportunity to serve others also comes to mind. Americans feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless largely through religious organizations. Yet as important as community, worship and service are, I am convinced that religion's greatest contribution to society is even greater.
Religion makes us want to live.
Viktor Frankl's revealing research in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz led him to a startling conclusion. It was not the youngest, strongest or even smartest inmates who tended to survive. It was those who had found meaning in their lives. People, it turns out, need a reason to live.
For Frankl, that meaning wasn't necessarily religious — although one could argue that anything that deals with a person's deepest concerns is in a sense "spiritual." What Frankl was talking about could be found in deeds — in the handful of individuals who shared their meager rations with others and went about encouraging their fellow prisoners. But meaning could also be found in attitudes — particularly in the ability to face suffering with dignity and grace. As Frankl expressed it: "Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."
Man's search for meaning — whether in a Broadway penthouse or the darkest corner of hell — is the most basic building block of a successful life. Without a sense of purpose, many people will simply shrivel up and die, whether figuratively or, in some cases, literally.
I suspect that in postmodern America, the need for meaning is as great as ever. While our ancestors were too busy fighting off starvation to worry about such things as self-actualization, today's Americans live lives of relative ease. Higher education, a shorter work week and regular vacations have enriched our lives but have also provided abundant opportunity to consider whether our lives have meaning and purpose. The result isn't all that encouraging. Millions suffer from depression. Millions more escape their lives through drugs and alcohol. Far too many give up the struggle altogether and commit suicide.
Alas, many of us have discovered purpose for our lives through religion. Inside America's churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and ashrams, we wrestle with the great questions of life. And with due respect to my atheist and left-leaning friends, most of those questions are not amenable to the scientific method.
Why are we here?
What does it all mean?
How should we then live?
These are the things that matter most. Not whether Pluto is a real planet or the atomic weight of carbon is 12 or 13. Even Nietzsche recognized that if one can answer the why of life, he can cope with most any how.
Frankl came away from Auschwitz convinced that there are two basic types of people: decent ones and indecent ones. Some are stronger in their disposition than others, of course, but basically we are decent or indecent. Here's the interesting thing. Decency and indecency do not fall along national or political lines. There were decent Nazi guards just as there were indecent inmates.
The same is true of our congregations. While we teach justice, forgiveness and love of neighbor, no doubt, there are indecent souls among us. Even indecent congregations. Not all religion is good, and no person is sicker than a person who is sick on religion. Don't just think of Osama bin Laden here. I'm also talking about the fearful, guilt-racked, shell of a human being that can result from a fundamentalist Christian upbringing. Good religion, as the great humanitarian and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer put it, is always "life-affirming."
Here's the point: I think religion makes it easier to be decent. The positive core values, mutual accountability and constant striving for self-improvement help one to be a better person. And I want to be a better person. Not because I'm afraid of God. Because I'm grateful for another trip around the sun and, like a good house guest, want to leave this place in better shape than I found it.
There is a lesson here for America's clergy: Keep your eye on the ball. It's not so much about this doctrine or that, Mass or the Lord's Supper or even Ramadan or Yom Kippur. It's about purpose, meaning and whether I ought to get out of bed in the morning.
Oliver Thomas is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and author of 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job).
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20100809/column09_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip
Monday, July 19, 2010
The science-religion divide
The science-religion divide
Survey reveals surprising truths
By Elaine Howard Ecklund
Is a dialogue between science and religion possible ?or even necessary?
The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently welcomed NASA astrophysicist Jennifer Wiseman as the new director of its Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion. The task ahead: encourage communication between scientific and religious communities. What could be wrong with that?
On the face of it, such an effort seems sensible and admirable. Who doesn't want civil dialogue rather than hot-headed diatribe?
Yet some critics argue that these kinds of efforts run the risk of co-mingling science and religion which, in the most benign sense, are two very different ways of looking at the world. In the most dangerous sense, scientists getting involved in "dialogue" with religious people, they say, could bias and taint scientific work.
If you are concerned about the advancement of science, you must ask yourself whether a dialogue between science and religion is worthy of promotion and engagement or staunch opposition. Here are some things to consider in making your decision.
While conducting studies of religion in America, I spent intensive time among conservative evangelicals, liberal Protestants and moderate Muslims. Most recently, I completed a survey of nearly 1,700 natural and social scientists at the nation's top universities and spoke with 275 of them in depth in their offices and laboratories. I found that the conversation between science and religion is besieged by misunderstanding and myths on both sides.
Some of the assumptions of the present science-religion debates simply do not hold up under the weight of research data. Dispelling myths about religious and scientific communities could lay the groundwork for a new kind of dialogue ?one based more on serious thinking and scholarship than caricature.
For example, many in the religious community hold scientists at arm's length, believing that they are all atheists who are interested in attacking religion and the religious community.
While 30% of the scientists I studied consider themselves atheists, a much larger percentage than in the general population, fewer than 6% of atheist scientists are working against religion.
In fact, nearly half of scientists said they consider themselves religious; one in five was involved in a house of worship. Top scientists are sitting in our country's churches, temples and mosques.
We also need to dispel the myths scientists hold about religious people. Indeed, there are 14 times more self-identified evangelicals in the general population than among the scientists at our nation's top universities. And it is true that some within Christian communities have posed a threat to the teaching of evolution and embryonic stem-cell research.
Yet scholars are also finding that evangelical Christianity is not as detrimental to acquiring scientific knowledge as they once thought.
In fact, evangelical Christians are quickly catching up and surpassing other religious groups in terms of education levels. And some scientists, including Francis Collins, a Christian who heads the National Institutes of Health, have engaged in massive public efforts to help Christians understand that they don't have to choose between their faith commitments and science.
Even so, based on international comparisons, U.S. schoolchildren receive poorer science education than do students in many other industrialized nations, and many young Americans may not be learning what they should about science because their religious upbringing poses a barrier.
Those in the scientific and religious communities who care about our nation's progress need to do a better job of communicating the importance of science to religious people. Studies show that what kids learn about science in elementary and secondary school, and how well their science abilities are encouraged, help predict their overall success down the road. Those who have a better understanding of science and stronger science skills also tend to have greater socioeconomic stability.
How can we persuade Americans to provide better long-term funding for science?
Start early.
After all, future politicians, business leaders and opinion-makers are currently sitting in the classrooms on America's top campuses. These are the people who will make decisions about future science policy.
Education and funding are two good reasons we should care about the conversation between scientific and religious communities if the advancement of science is an aim.
More and more, it seems, scientists are beginning to recognize that they need to engage with people of faith if they want to garner broad civic and financial support for their scientific endeavors.
It doesn't help to have science and religion as warring factions. If greater public support of scientific research is a goal, we should encourage some scientists to become "boundary pioneers" who civilly reach out to religious communities in search of common ground and potential allies.
Besides, this enduring battle doesn't advance the cause of science ?or religion.
Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University and a Baker Institute Rice Scholar, focuses on the study of public science. She is the author of a new book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think.
Survey reveals surprising truths
By Elaine Howard Ecklund
Is a dialogue between science and religion possible ?or even necessary?
The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently welcomed NASA astrophysicist Jennifer Wiseman as the new director of its Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion. The task ahead: encourage communication between scientific and religious communities. What could be wrong with that?
On the face of it, such an effort seems sensible and admirable. Who doesn't want civil dialogue rather than hot-headed diatribe?
Yet some critics argue that these kinds of efforts run the risk of co-mingling science and religion which, in the most benign sense, are two very different ways of looking at the world. In the most dangerous sense, scientists getting involved in "dialogue" with religious people, they say, could bias and taint scientific work.
If you are concerned about the advancement of science, you must ask yourself whether a dialogue between science and religion is worthy of promotion and engagement or staunch opposition. Here are some things to consider in making your decision.
While conducting studies of religion in America, I spent intensive time among conservative evangelicals, liberal Protestants and moderate Muslims. Most recently, I completed a survey of nearly 1,700 natural and social scientists at the nation's top universities and spoke with 275 of them in depth in their offices and laboratories. I found that the conversation between science and religion is besieged by misunderstanding and myths on both sides.
Some of the assumptions of the present science-religion debates simply do not hold up under the weight of research data. Dispelling myths about religious and scientific communities could lay the groundwork for a new kind of dialogue ?one based more on serious thinking and scholarship than caricature.
For example, many in the religious community hold scientists at arm's length, believing that they are all atheists who are interested in attacking religion and the religious community.
While 30% of the scientists I studied consider themselves atheists, a much larger percentage than in the general population, fewer than 6% of atheist scientists are working against religion.
In fact, nearly half of scientists said they consider themselves religious; one in five was involved in a house of worship. Top scientists are sitting in our country's churches, temples and mosques.
We also need to dispel the myths scientists hold about religious people. Indeed, there are 14 times more self-identified evangelicals in the general population than among the scientists at our nation's top universities. And it is true that some within Christian communities have posed a threat to the teaching of evolution and embryonic stem-cell research.
Yet scholars are also finding that evangelical Christianity is not as detrimental to acquiring scientific knowledge as they once thought.
In fact, evangelical Christians are quickly catching up and surpassing other religious groups in terms of education levels. And some scientists, including Francis Collins, a Christian who heads the National Institutes of Health, have engaged in massive public efforts to help Christians understand that they don't have to choose between their faith commitments and science.
Even so, based on international comparisons, U.S. schoolchildren receive poorer science education than do students in many other industrialized nations, and many young Americans may not be learning what they should about science because their religious upbringing poses a barrier.
Those in the scientific and religious communities who care about our nation's progress need to do a better job of communicating the importance of science to religious people. Studies show that what kids learn about science in elementary and secondary school, and how well their science abilities are encouraged, help predict their overall success down the road. Those who have a better understanding of science and stronger science skills also tend to have greater socioeconomic stability.
How can we persuade Americans to provide better long-term funding for science?
Start early.
After all, future politicians, business leaders and opinion-makers are currently sitting in the classrooms on America's top campuses. These are the people who will make decisions about future science policy.
Education and funding are two good reasons we should care about the conversation between scientific and religious communities if the advancement of science is an aim.
More and more, it seems, scientists are beginning to recognize that they need to engage with people of faith if they want to garner broad civic and financial support for their scientific endeavors.
It doesn't help to have science and religion as warring factions. If greater public support of scientific research is a goal, we should encourage some scientists to become "boundary pioneers" who civilly reach out to religious communities in search of common ground and potential allies.
Besides, this enduring battle doesn't advance the cause of science ?or religion.
Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University and a Baker Institute Rice Scholar, focuses on the study of public science. She is the author of a new book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Atheists, play well with others
Atheists, play well with others
Many New Atheists seem to think that scientists who happen to believe in God can't be true to science. This assertion is as acrimonious as it is ludicrous.
By Karl W. Giberson, USA Today May 24 2010
America has a complex and enduring commitment to pluralism. We want people to be free to act — and believe — as they please. But we must all play in the same sandbox, so we are attentive to the idiosyncrasies of our playmates, especially when they don't make sense to us.
Few idiosyncrasies are more perplexing than the ways people connect science and religion. Widespread rejection of evolution, to take a familiar example, has created a crisis in education, and it now appears that biology texts might be altered to satisfy anti-evolutionary activists in Texas. Many on the textbook commission believe their religion is incompatible with scientific explanations of origins — evolution and the Big Bang — so they want textbooks with more accommodating theories and different facts.
Understandably, many thoughtful and well-educated people, believers and non-believers alike, find this unacceptable. Most of these critics emphasize that informed religious belief — even conservative evangelicalism with its insistence on an inerrant Bible — can accommodate modern science, including evolution. Leading Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke made this argument recently and was driven by theological gatekeepers to resign from his seminary. But Waltke was immediately snapped up by a similar seminary, indicating that partial thawing has begun even on the frozen waters of fundamentalism.
This is incredibly encouraging. A conservative evangelical seminary has just hired someone who has warned that Christians who deny scientific facts are in danger of becoming a "cult." This might suggest that Ken Ham and his Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., are becoming less relevant, as they speak for — and to — an increasingly smaller band of hyperconservative biblical literalists. Ham's followers, ironically, are exactly what Waltke warned us about — a cult, with their own separate science.
What is not so encouraging in America's conversation about origins is the opposition of "New Atheists" to any thawing of the chilly relations between science and religion. They reject the tolerant spirit that motivated conservative Knox Seminary in Fort Lauderdale to hire an Old Testament scholar who accepts evolution. Tufts University philosopher and leading atheist Daniel Dennet no doubt finds all this mystifying, since he thinks seminary education should ultimately terminate one's faith: "Anybody who goes through seminary and comes out believing in God hasn't been paying attention," he told The Boston Globe.
Dennet's brother-in-arms, atheist Jerry Coyne, raked Brown University cell biologist Ken Miller and me over the coals in The New Republic for our claims that Christians can unapologetically embrace science. The only faiths compatible with science, wrote Coyne, are "Pantheism and some forms of Buddhism" — hardly encouraging since few Americans embrace either of these. Coyne wrote that "90% of Americans" hold religious beliefs that "fall into the 'incompatible' category."
The 90% of Americans holding beliefs incompatible with science include Charles Townes and William Phillips, who won Nobel Prizes in physics in 1964 and 1997, respectively. It includes many in between. It includes Francis Collins, who received venomous attacks from atheists when he was nominated to head the National Institutes of Health. Sam Harris described Collins' personal religious journey, unfolded in his best-seller The Language of God, as an account of "nothing less than an intellectual suicide." Harris, who finally completed his Ph.D. in neuroscience at UCLA, apparently believes that neurons used for religious belief simply won't work if applied to science. And no amount of scientific achievement by believers will convince him otherwise.
For the sake of argument, let us set aside questions about the truth of religion vs. the truth of science. Suppose there is no such thing as religious truth, as Richard Dawkins argued in The God Delusion. Allow that the "New Atheist Noise Machine," as American University communications professor Matt Nisbet calls it, has a privileged grasp of the truth. Even with these concessions, it still appears that the New Atheists are behaving like a boorish bunch of intellectual bullies.
There is something profoundly un-American about demanding that people give up cherished, or even uncherished, beliefs just because they don't comport with science. And the demand seems even more peculiar when it is applied so indiscriminately as to include religious believers with Nobel Prizes. What sort of atheist complains that a fellow citizen doing world-class science must abandon his or her religion to be a good scientist?
Our commitment to pluralism and individual freedom should motivate generosity in such matters and allow people "the right to be wrong," especially when the beliefs in question do not interfere with us. Nothing is gained by loud, self-promoting and mean-spirited assaults on the beliefs of fellow citizens.
The New Atheists need to learn how to play in the sandbox.
Karl Giberson is a professor at Eastern Nazarene College, co-president of the BioLogos Foundation and author of Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.
Many New Atheists seem to think that scientists who happen to believe in God can't be true to science. This assertion is as acrimonious as it is ludicrous.
By Karl W. Giberson, USA Today May 24 2010
America has a complex and enduring commitment to pluralism. We want people to be free to act — and believe — as they please. But we must all play in the same sandbox, so we are attentive to the idiosyncrasies of our playmates, especially when they don't make sense to us.
Few idiosyncrasies are more perplexing than the ways people connect science and religion. Widespread rejection of evolution, to take a familiar example, has created a crisis in education, and it now appears that biology texts might be altered to satisfy anti-evolutionary activists in Texas. Many on the textbook commission believe their religion is incompatible with scientific explanations of origins — evolution and the Big Bang — so they want textbooks with more accommodating theories and different facts.
Understandably, many thoughtful and well-educated people, believers and non-believers alike, find this unacceptable. Most of these critics emphasize that informed religious belief — even conservative evangelicalism with its insistence on an inerrant Bible — can accommodate modern science, including evolution. Leading Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke made this argument recently and was driven by theological gatekeepers to resign from his seminary. But Waltke was immediately snapped up by a similar seminary, indicating that partial thawing has begun even on the frozen waters of fundamentalism.
This is incredibly encouraging. A conservative evangelical seminary has just hired someone who has warned that Christians who deny scientific facts are in danger of becoming a "cult." This might suggest that Ken Ham and his Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., are becoming less relevant, as they speak for — and to — an increasingly smaller band of hyperconservative biblical literalists. Ham's followers, ironically, are exactly what Waltke warned us about — a cult, with their own separate science.
What is not so encouraging in America's conversation about origins is the opposition of "New Atheists" to any thawing of the chilly relations between science and religion. They reject the tolerant spirit that motivated conservative Knox Seminary in Fort Lauderdale to hire an Old Testament scholar who accepts evolution. Tufts University philosopher and leading atheist Daniel Dennet no doubt finds all this mystifying, since he thinks seminary education should ultimately terminate one's faith: "Anybody who goes through seminary and comes out believing in God hasn't been paying attention," he told The Boston Globe.
Dennet's brother-in-arms, atheist Jerry Coyne, raked Brown University cell biologist Ken Miller and me over the coals in The New Republic for our claims that Christians can unapologetically embrace science. The only faiths compatible with science, wrote Coyne, are "Pantheism and some forms of Buddhism" — hardly encouraging since few Americans embrace either of these. Coyne wrote that "90% of Americans" hold religious beliefs that "fall into the 'incompatible' category."
The 90% of Americans holding beliefs incompatible with science include Charles Townes and William Phillips, who won Nobel Prizes in physics in 1964 and 1997, respectively. It includes many in between. It includes Francis Collins, who received venomous attacks from atheists when he was nominated to head the National Institutes of Health. Sam Harris described Collins' personal religious journey, unfolded in his best-seller The Language of God, as an account of "nothing less than an intellectual suicide." Harris, who finally completed his Ph.D. in neuroscience at UCLA, apparently believes that neurons used for religious belief simply won't work if applied to science. And no amount of scientific achievement by believers will convince him otherwise.
For the sake of argument, let us set aside questions about the truth of religion vs. the truth of science. Suppose there is no such thing as religious truth, as Richard Dawkins argued in The God Delusion. Allow that the "New Atheist Noise Machine," as American University communications professor Matt Nisbet calls it, has a privileged grasp of the truth. Even with these concessions, it still appears that the New Atheists are behaving like a boorish bunch of intellectual bullies.
There is something profoundly un-American about demanding that people give up cherished, or even uncherished, beliefs just because they don't comport with science. And the demand seems even more peculiar when it is applied so indiscriminately as to include religious believers with Nobel Prizes. What sort of atheist complains that a fellow citizen doing world-class science must abandon his or her religion to be a good scientist?
Our commitment to pluralism and individual freedom should motivate generosity in such matters and allow people "the right to be wrong," especially when the beliefs in question do not interfere with us. Nothing is gained by loud, self-promoting and mean-spirited assaults on the beliefs of fellow citizens.
The New Atheists need to learn how to play in the sandbox.
Karl Giberson is a professor at Eastern Nazarene College, co-president of the BioLogos Foundation and author of Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
A Supreme Court without Protestants?
A Supreme Court without Protestants?
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN
May 3, 2010 -- Updated 0920 GMT (1720 HKT)
(CNN) -- For most of American history, a Supreme Court with no Protestant Christian judges would have been unthinkable. Nearly three quarters of all justices who've ever served on the nation's high court have been Protestant. And roughly half of all Americans identify themselves as Protestant today.
But since John Paul Stevens announced his retirement last month, legal and religious scholars have begun entertaining the unprecedented prospect of a Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice.
Besides Stevens, who is Protestant, the current Supreme Court counts six Catholics and two Jews.
"It's an amazing irony given how central Protestantism has been to American culture," said Stephen Prothero, a religion scholar at Boston University. "For most of the 19th century, Protestants were trying to turn America into their own heaven on Earth, which included keeping Jews and Catholics from virtually all positions of power."
Many religion scholars attribute the decline of Protestants on the high court to the breakdown of a mainline Protestant identity and to the absence of a strong tradition of lawyering among evangelical Protestants.
"Mainline Protestantism isn't a pressure group," said Prothero, "It's not like the National Council of Churches is lobbying Obama to get a Lutheran appointed to the Supreme Court."
And while Judaism and Catholicism have their own sets of religious laws that date back millennia, many branches of Protestant Christianity do not. For much of the last 150 years, evangelical Christianity has stressed an emotional theology of "heart" over "head" -- not a recipe for producing legal scholars with eyes fixed on the Supreme Court.
"Evangelicals have put more effort into getting elected than in getting onto the bench," said Michael Lindsay, a Rice University professor who has studied evangelical elites. "Electoral politics is more similar to the style of rallying of around revival campaign than it is to the arduous journey of producing intellectual giants that could be eligible for the Supreme Court."
Evangelicals have put more effort into getting elected than in getting onto the bench.
President Obama is expected to nominate Stevens' replacement early this month. Of the three candidates who are reported to lead Obama's short list, two -- Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal appeals judge Merrick Garland -- are Jewish, while one, federal appeals judge Diane Wood, is a Protestant.
Obama's first Supreme Court appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, is Catholic.
One explanation of Catholics' and Jews' high court hegemony is that members of both traditions have long pursued legal degrees as a way to assimilate into a majority Protestant country.
"Most American Catholic law schools were not formed to be elite institutions of lofty legal scholarship, but as way to respond to the fact that other law schools were excluding Catholics," said Richard Garnett, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. "It was a vehicle to get Catholics into the middle class."
"Early on, those schools admitted a lot of Jewish students who were being discriminated against," Garnett said.
Today, Catholic law schools at Georgetown University, Fordham University, and Notre Dame are considered among the best in the country.
Evangelical Protestant colleges, meanwhile -- including Regent University and Liberty University, founded by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, respectively -- have opened law schools only since the 1980s.
And law schools with Protestant roots -- like Harvard and Yale -- shed their religious identities a long time ago, part of the broader fading of a distinct mainline Protestant identity in the U.S..
Some legal and religious scholars say the dearth of qualified evangelical candidates for the Supreme Court came into sharp relief in 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the high court.
An evangelical Christian who the White House promoted strenuously among evangelicals, Miers' nomination was brought down largely by conservatives -- nonevangelicals, mostly -- who said she was not qualified for the position.
In the last couple of decades, however, more evangelicals have begun pursuing legal degrees, including at elite colleges. "There are now vibrant Christian fellowships at Harvard and Yale," said Lindsay. "Ten years from now, it will be entirely possible to see an evangelical Protestant on the Supreme Court."
Rachel Heflin, a senior at Patrick Henry College -- a Virginia school whose students are mostly evangelicals from homeschooling backgrounds -- said many of her friends are heading to law school next year.
"When your circle of friends is comprised of aspiring lawyers, the joke is about who's going to make it to the high court first," said Heflin, an evangelical Christian who will be attending George Washington University Law School on scholarship.
Which means that a Protestant Supreme Court resurgence may not be too far off.
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN
May 3, 2010 -- Updated 0920 GMT (1720 HKT)
(CNN) -- For most of American history, a Supreme Court with no Protestant Christian judges would have been unthinkable. Nearly three quarters of all justices who've ever served on the nation's high court have been Protestant. And roughly half of all Americans identify themselves as Protestant today.
But since John Paul Stevens announced his retirement last month, legal and religious scholars have begun entertaining the unprecedented prospect of a Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice.
Besides Stevens, who is Protestant, the current Supreme Court counts six Catholics and two Jews.
"It's an amazing irony given how central Protestantism has been to American culture," said Stephen Prothero, a religion scholar at Boston University. "For most of the 19th century, Protestants were trying to turn America into their own heaven on Earth, which included keeping Jews and Catholics from virtually all positions of power."
Many religion scholars attribute the decline of Protestants on the high court to the breakdown of a mainline Protestant identity and to the absence of a strong tradition of lawyering among evangelical Protestants.
"Mainline Protestantism isn't a pressure group," said Prothero, "It's not like the National Council of Churches is lobbying Obama to get a Lutheran appointed to the Supreme Court."
And while Judaism and Catholicism have their own sets of religious laws that date back millennia, many branches of Protestant Christianity do not. For much of the last 150 years, evangelical Christianity has stressed an emotional theology of "heart" over "head" -- not a recipe for producing legal scholars with eyes fixed on the Supreme Court.
"Evangelicals have put more effort into getting elected than in getting onto the bench," said Michael Lindsay, a Rice University professor who has studied evangelical elites. "Electoral politics is more similar to the style of rallying of around revival campaign than it is to the arduous journey of producing intellectual giants that could be eligible for the Supreme Court."
Evangelicals have put more effort into getting elected than in getting onto the bench.
President Obama is expected to nominate Stevens' replacement early this month. Of the three candidates who are reported to lead Obama's short list, two -- Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal appeals judge Merrick Garland -- are Jewish, while one, federal appeals judge Diane Wood, is a Protestant.
Obama's first Supreme Court appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, is Catholic.
One explanation of Catholics' and Jews' high court hegemony is that members of both traditions have long pursued legal degrees as a way to assimilate into a majority Protestant country.
"Most American Catholic law schools were not formed to be elite institutions of lofty legal scholarship, but as way to respond to the fact that other law schools were excluding Catholics," said Richard Garnett, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. "It was a vehicle to get Catholics into the middle class."
"Early on, those schools admitted a lot of Jewish students who were being discriminated against," Garnett said.
Today, Catholic law schools at Georgetown University, Fordham University, and Notre Dame are considered among the best in the country.
Evangelical Protestant colleges, meanwhile -- including Regent University and Liberty University, founded by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, respectively -- have opened law schools only since the 1980s.
And law schools with Protestant roots -- like Harvard and Yale -- shed their religious identities a long time ago, part of the broader fading of a distinct mainline Protestant identity in the U.S..
Some legal and religious scholars say the dearth of qualified evangelical candidates for the Supreme Court came into sharp relief in 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the high court.
An evangelical Christian who the White House promoted strenuously among evangelicals, Miers' nomination was brought down largely by conservatives -- nonevangelicals, mostly -- who said she was not qualified for the position.
In the last couple of decades, however, more evangelicals have begun pursuing legal degrees, including at elite colleges. "There are now vibrant Christian fellowships at Harvard and Yale," said Lindsay. "Ten years from now, it will be entirely possible to see an evangelical Protestant on the Supreme Court."
Rachel Heflin, a senior at Patrick Henry College -- a Virginia school whose students are mostly evangelicals from homeschooling backgrounds -- said many of her friends are heading to law school next year.
"When your circle of friends is comprised of aspiring lawyers, the joke is about who's going to make it to the high court first," said Heflin, an evangelical Christian who will be attending George Washington University Law School on scholarship.
Which means that a Protestant Supreme Court resurgence may not be too far off.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Religious persecution is widespread, report warns
Religious persecution is widespread, report warns
By Richard Allen Greene, CNN April 29, 2010
(CNN) -- The numbers are shocking: 12,000 people killed in a cycle of violence between Christians and Muslims stretching back more than a decade.
The location: Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, lying on the continent's fault line between the largely Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.
The number of people convicted and sentenced for the killings: Zero.
That's just one of many stark assessments about the level of religious persecution around the world today in a huge new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The report names more than two dozen countries as offenders. Some engage in what's classically thought of as religious persecution.
Egypt, for example, not only imprisons members of the Baha'i faith and members of minority Muslim sects, but also has some fired from their jobs, kicked out of universities and barred from having bank accounts, driver's licenses, even birth certificates, according to the report.
Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, export "extremist ideology," the commission charges. But the kind of religious persecution seen in Nigeria and some other countries is "equally egregious," the report says. "Many governments fail to punish religiously motivated violence perpetrated by private actors," it says, warning that "impunity... often leads to endless cycles of sectarian violence."
It calls Nigeria "a tragic case in point," saying that in the most recent outbreak of killing in Nigeria's Jos State several months ago, 500 "men, women and children were hacked to death with machetes and then dumped into wells.
"Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence," the report claims.
The commission did have limited praise for Nigeria's government, saying that when an USCRIF team went to the African nation in March, it found officials "attentive and even grateful for its concerns."
The Ministry of Justice filed 41 prosecutions while the American team was in Nigeria, the report said. Even so, the commission recommended that the United States include Nigeria on a list of 13 nations called "countries of particular concern" which engage in "severe violations of religious freedom."
CNN has reached out to the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria for comment, but has so far not received a response to the report.
The other countries were North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Iraq. (Commissioners were not unanimous in including Iraq on the list.)
That's five more countries than are on the State Department's "countries of particular concern" list from its 2009 report on religious freedom. That list doesn't include Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Vietnam.
Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence.
The list is similar to one compiled recently by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, but not identical. The Washington-based think tank put out a global survey of restrictions on religion in December. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Myanmar/Burma, the Maldives, Eritrea, Malaysia and Brunei topped that list of countries with the most government restrictions on religion.
More than two out of three people around the world live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion, the Pew Forum concluded.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom studied only 28 countries, but since it is a congressionally mandated body, its recommendations can have significantly more impact than those of the Pew Forum.
Designation as a "country of particular concern" can prompt concrete action from the United States, such as restrictions on arms exports or other trade.
But in reality, the government often waives or circumvents sanctions on countries of strategic importance, such as Saudi Arabia and China, a chart in the USCRIF report shows.
The commission report also has a watch list of countries which "require very close attention." That list includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.
It recommends that three other countries -- Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka -- be "closely monitored."
Many of the incidents which worry the commission made international headlines in the past year, including China's crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country, and Iran's labeling its domestic political opponents "enemies of God" -- a capital offense.
But others are ongoing problems that often attract little attention, such as Eritrea's harrassment of Orthodox Church members and Jehovah's Witnesses, or the imprisonment of Buddhists and Protestants in Vietnam.
The report also criticizes the United States government itself for not doing enough to fight the problem.
"Neither prior Democratic nor Republican administrations, nor the current administration, have been sufficiently engaged in promoting the freedom of religion or belief abroad," the commissioners charge.
The commission based its report on visits to some of the countries at issue, meetings with bodies such as the European Union and the Vatican, news reports and the findings of government agencies and international organizations ranging from the American Islamic Conference to the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society.
The paper published Thursday is the 11th annual report since the commission was established by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.
By Richard Allen Greene, CNN April 29, 2010
(CNN) -- The numbers are shocking: 12,000 people killed in a cycle of violence between Christians and Muslims stretching back more than a decade.
The location: Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, lying on the continent's fault line between the largely Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.
The number of people convicted and sentenced for the killings: Zero.
That's just one of many stark assessments about the level of religious persecution around the world today in a huge new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The report names more than two dozen countries as offenders. Some engage in what's classically thought of as religious persecution.
Egypt, for example, not only imprisons members of the Baha'i faith and members of minority Muslim sects, but also has some fired from their jobs, kicked out of universities and barred from having bank accounts, driver's licenses, even birth certificates, according to the report.
Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, export "extremist ideology," the commission charges. But the kind of religious persecution seen in Nigeria and some other countries is "equally egregious," the report says. "Many governments fail to punish religiously motivated violence perpetrated by private actors," it says, warning that "impunity... often leads to endless cycles of sectarian violence."
It calls Nigeria "a tragic case in point," saying that in the most recent outbreak of killing in Nigeria's Jos State several months ago, 500 "men, women and children were hacked to death with machetes and then dumped into wells.
"Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence," the report claims.
The commission did have limited praise for Nigeria's government, saying that when an USCRIF team went to the African nation in March, it found officials "attentive and even grateful for its concerns."
The Ministry of Justice filed 41 prosecutions while the American team was in Nigeria, the report said. Even so, the commission recommended that the United States include Nigeria on a list of 13 nations called "countries of particular concern" which engage in "severe violations of religious freedom."
CNN has reached out to the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria for comment, but has so far not received a response to the report.
The other countries were North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Iraq. (Commissioners were not unanimous in including Iraq on the list.)
That's five more countries than are on the State Department's "countries of particular concern" list from its 2009 report on religious freedom. That list doesn't include Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Vietnam.
Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence.
The list is similar to one compiled recently by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, but not identical. The Washington-based think tank put out a global survey of restrictions on religion in December. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Myanmar/Burma, the Maldives, Eritrea, Malaysia and Brunei topped that list of countries with the most government restrictions on religion.
More than two out of three people around the world live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion, the Pew Forum concluded.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom studied only 28 countries, but since it is a congressionally mandated body, its recommendations can have significantly more impact than those of the Pew Forum.
Designation as a "country of particular concern" can prompt concrete action from the United States, such as restrictions on arms exports or other trade.
But in reality, the government often waives or circumvents sanctions on countries of strategic importance, such as Saudi Arabia and China, a chart in the USCRIF report shows.
The commission report also has a watch list of countries which "require very close attention." That list includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.
It recommends that three other countries -- Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka -- be "closely monitored."
Many of the incidents which worry the commission made international headlines in the past year, including China's crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country, and Iran's labeling its domestic political opponents "enemies of God" -- a capital offense.
But others are ongoing problems that often attract little attention, such as Eritrea's harrassment of Orthodox Church members and Jehovah's Witnesses, or the imprisonment of Buddhists and Protestants in Vietnam.
The report also criticizes the United States government itself for not doing enough to fight the problem.
"Neither prior Democratic nor Republican administrations, nor the current administration, have been sufficiently engaged in promoting the freedom of religion or belief abroad," the commissioners charge.
The commission based its report on visits to some of the countries at issue, meetings with bodies such as the European Union and the Vatican, news reports and the findings of government agencies and international organizations ranging from the American Islamic Conference to the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society.
The paper published Thursday is the 11th annual report since the commission was established by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Malaysian Custody Dispute Lost Between Courts
Malaysian Custody Dispute Lost Between Courts
By LIZ GOOCH Published: April 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02malay.html?ref=todayspaper
KUALA LUMPUR — Through most of their 17-year marriage, M. Indira Gandhi says she and her husband observed rituals that she considered integral to their Hindu faith. Each morning they would pray before a shrine and on Fridays they would fast. During festivals they donned brightly colored, traditional outfits to attend their local temple.
Those were traditions Ms. Gandhi assumed they would be passing on to their three young children.
But nearly a year ago Ms. Gandhi was stunned to discover that her husband had converted to Islam. Her surprise turned to anger when she discovered that, without consulting her, he had also converted their children.
“If he wants to convert, O.K. But these are children that were born from both of us,” said Ms. Gandhi, a kindergarten teacher in Ipoh, a town about a two-hour drive from Kuala Lumpur.
Her husband’s action has left Ms. Gandhi navigating the conflicting jurisdictions of Malaysia’s religious and civil courts in a case that has challenged the authority of Shariah courts in this predominantly Muslim country.
Under Malaysia’s two-tier judicial system, Islamic Shariah courts handle family law cases involving Muslims, while secular courts handle those involving non-Muslims. But the lines have become blurred in cases involving interfaith disputes. Religious minorities have complained that they are at a disadvantage when their case falls to an Islamic court.
Last year, a Shariah court granted Ms. Gandhi’s husband, Muhammad Ridzuan Abdullah, custody over their children. But last month, in what some called a landmark ruling, a civil court overturned the Shariah court’s decision and transferred custody back to Ms. Gandhi. On Thursday, Mr. Ridzuan failed in his bid to obtain a stay order on that ruling.
On Friday, Ms. Gandhi plans to ask the court for permission to contest the children’s conversion. One of her lawyers, K. Shanmuga, said he could not recall an instance when a civil court had overturned a child’s conversion to Islam.
Lawyers say they have seen an increasing number of cases in recent years where one parent, typically the father, has converted to Islam and converted the children without the other parent’s knowledge.
Once they are converted and their identity card is stamped “Islam,” the children face far-reaching consequences.
Mr. Shanmuga said children who are converted must study Islam at school and are subject to Shariah laws that state that Muslims cannot marry outside the faith, must raise their children as Muslims and cannot participate in non-Muslim religious ceremonies.
Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a human rights lawyer and president of the National Human Rights Society of Malaysia, said he believed that some parents had converted their children to Islam to gain a “tactical advantage” in custody disputes.
In recent years, he said, civil courts have ruled that a convert to Islam is entitled to take a custody dispute to a Shariah court, even if the other partner is a non-Muslim.
Non-Muslims cannot appear in Shariah court and lawyers say such a court is more likely to award custody to the Muslim parent when the children have been converted.
Malaysia’s Constitution says that the religion of a child under 18 should be decided by the parent or guardian. Some lawyers have argued that this should be interpreted to mean both parents, but the courts have not agreed, ruling that the consent of one parent is sufficient to convert a child to Islam.
Once a person has become a Muslim, it is difficult to change. It requires permission from the Shariah court, but Mr. Shanmuga said there were no established criteria for renouncing Islam.
“Anybody who steps out of Islam, the Shariah court and the general Muslim population frown on,” said Mohammad Hashim Kamali, an Islamic law expert and chief executive officer of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies. “The procedures are not made easy for them.”
Last year, the Malaysian cabinet announced that it wanted to bar the conversion of children without both parents’ consent.
But so far no legislation has been passed to turn the cabinet’s decision into law, said M. Kulasegaran, the Democratic Action Party parliamentary member for Ipoh West and another of Ms. Gandhi’s lawyers.
A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Chambers declined to comment on the issue.
Mr. Hashim, the Islamic law expert, has recommended establishing a special court of mixed jurisdiction where both Shariah and civil judges would adjudicate disputes involving Muslims and non-Muslims on issues such as child conversion and custody.
Mr. Malik said that when parents have sought redress in the civil courts over their children’s conversion, the courts have generally ruled that such issues must be handled by the Shariah court.
He said recent rulings have followed the precedent set by the case of Lina Joy in 2007. Ms. Joy, who converted from Islam to Christianity, applied to Malaysia’s highest civil court to have her conversion recognized. But the court ruled that conversion falls under Shariah jurisdiction. Ms. Joy has since left the country, Mr. Malik said.
While Ms. Gandhi’s lawyers debate jurisdiction, Ms. Gandhi is focused not only on contesting her children’s conversion but on being reunited with her youngest daughter.
Her eldest children, aged 12 and 13, have lived with her since she separated from her husband, but it has been nine months since she last saw her youngest daughter, who will soon celebrate her second birthday.
Despite the court decision awarding her custody, her husband had refused to return the girl as of Thursday night.
“I missed a lot of her childhood,” said Ms. Gandhi. “It’s not about religion. It’s about humankind. What does she know that she’s been converted?”
By LIZ GOOCH Published: April 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02malay.html?ref=todayspaper
KUALA LUMPUR — Through most of their 17-year marriage, M. Indira Gandhi says she and her husband observed rituals that she considered integral to their Hindu faith. Each morning they would pray before a shrine and on Fridays they would fast. During festivals they donned brightly colored, traditional outfits to attend their local temple.
Those were traditions Ms. Gandhi assumed they would be passing on to their three young children.
But nearly a year ago Ms. Gandhi was stunned to discover that her husband had converted to Islam. Her surprise turned to anger when she discovered that, without consulting her, he had also converted their children.
“If he wants to convert, O.K. But these are children that were born from both of us,” said Ms. Gandhi, a kindergarten teacher in Ipoh, a town about a two-hour drive from Kuala Lumpur.
Her husband’s action has left Ms. Gandhi navigating the conflicting jurisdictions of Malaysia’s religious and civil courts in a case that has challenged the authority of Shariah courts in this predominantly Muslim country.
Under Malaysia’s two-tier judicial system, Islamic Shariah courts handle family law cases involving Muslims, while secular courts handle those involving non-Muslims. But the lines have become blurred in cases involving interfaith disputes. Religious minorities have complained that they are at a disadvantage when their case falls to an Islamic court.
Last year, a Shariah court granted Ms. Gandhi’s husband, Muhammad Ridzuan Abdullah, custody over their children. But last month, in what some called a landmark ruling, a civil court overturned the Shariah court’s decision and transferred custody back to Ms. Gandhi. On Thursday, Mr. Ridzuan failed in his bid to obtain a stay order on that ruling.
On Friday, Ms. Gandhi plans to ask the court for permission to contest the children’s conversion. One of her lawyers, K. Shanmuga, said he could not recall an instance when a civil court had overturned a child’s conversion to Islam.
Lawyers say they have seen an increasing number of cases in recent years where one parent, typically the father, has converted to Islam and converted the children without the other parent’s knowledge.
Once they are converted and their identity card is stamped “Islam,” the children face far-reaching consequences.
Mr. Shanmuga said children who are converted must study Islam at school and are subject to Shariah laws that state that Muslims cannot marry outside the faith, must raise their children as Muslims and cannot participate in non-Muslim religious ceremonies.
Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a human rights lawyer and president of the National Human Rights Society of Malaysia, said he believed that some parents had converted their children to Islam to gain a “tactical advantage” in custody disputes.
In recent years, he said, civil courts have ruled that a convert to Islam is entitled to take a custody dispute to a Shariah court, even if the other partner is a non-Muslim.
Non-Muslims cannot appear in Shariah court and lawyers say such a court is more likely to award custody to the Muslim parent when the children have been converted.
Malaysia’s Constitution says that the religion of a child under 18 should be decided by the parent or guardian. Some lawyers have argued that this should be interpreted to mean both parents, but the courts have not agreed, ruling that the consent of one parent is sufficient to convert a child to Islam.
Once a person has become a Muslim, it is difficult to change. It requires permission from the Shariah court, but Mr. Shanmuga said there were no established criteria for renouncing Islam.
“Anybody who steps out of Islam, the Shariah court and the general Muslim population frown on,” said Mohammad Hashim Kamali, an Islamic law expert and chief executive officer of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies. “The procedures are not made easy for them.”
Last year, the Malaysian cabinet announced that it wanted to bar the conversion of children without both parents’ consent.
But so far no legislation has been passed to turn the cabinet’s decision into law, said M. Kulasegaran, the Democratic Action Party parliamentary member for Ipoh West and another of Ms. Gandhi’s lawyers.
A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Chambers declined to comment on the issue.
Mr. Hashim, the Islamic law expert, has recommended establishing a special court of mixed jurisdiction where both Shariah and civil judges would adjudicate disputes involving Muslims and non-Muslims on issues such as child conversion and custody.
Mr. Malik said that when parents have sought redress in the civil courts over their children’s conversion, the courts have generally ruled that such issues must be handled by the Shariah court.
He said recent rulings have followed the precedent set by the case of Lina Joy in 2007. Ms. Joy, who converted from Islam to Christianity, applied to Malaysia’s highest civil court to have her conversion recognized. But the court ruled that conversion falls under Shariah jurisdiction. Ms. Joy has since left the country, Mr. Malik said.
While Ms. Gandhi’s lawyers debate jurisdiction, Ms. Gandhi is focused not only on contesting her children’s conversion but on being reunited with her youngest daughter.
Her eldest children, aged 12 and 13, have lived with her since she separated from her husband, but it has been nine months since she last saw her youngest daughter, who will soon celebrate her second birthday.
Despite the court decision awarding her custody, her husband had refused to return the girl as of Thursday night.
“I missed a lot of her childhood,” said Ms. Gandhi. “It’s not about religion. It’s about humankind. What does she know that she’s been converted?”
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)