As a Muslim I am not offended

Priest Forced to Give Up 40 days of Muslim Lent

Thursday March 17, 2011

Categories: RNS, faith, news

FERGUSON, Mo. (RNS) The Rev. Steve Lawler should have just given up chocolate or television for Lent.
Instead, Lawler, the part-time rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, decided to adopt the rituals of Islam for 40 days to gain a deeper understanding of the faith.
Two days after it began, he faced being defrocked if he continued in those endeavors.
"He can't be both a Christian and a Muslim," said Bishop George Wayne Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. "If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church."
Lawler didn't foresee such problems when he came up with the idea. He merely wanted to learn more about Islam, he said, especially in light of the ongoing congressional hearings on the radicalization of the faith.
On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, he began performing "salah" five times a day, by facing east, toward Mecca, and praying to Allah. He also started studying the Quran and following Islamic dietary restrictions by abstaining from alcohol and pork.
During Holy Week, he planned to fast from dawn to sunset as Muslims do during Ramadan.
But in Smith's eyes, the exercise amounts to "playing" at someone else's religion and could be viewed as disrespectful.
Plus, he said, "One of the ways (Lawler) remains responsible as a Christian leader is to exercise Christianity and to do it with clarity and not with ways that are confusing."
It's not the first time the Episcopal Church has confronted a priest over dabbling in Islam; in 2009, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding was defrocked two years after she embraced Islam because, her bishop said, "a priest of the church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim."
Smith said Lawler would face punitive actions if he continued with the rituals.
Lawler said he only planned to take his idea so far -- he did not intend to embrace one of the Five Pillars of Islam that requires Muslims to declare a belief in the oneness of God and to accept Muhammad as God's prophet.
On his second day of seeing Lent through Muslim eyes, Lawler issued a press release promoting his unique way of spending Lent. Speaking to a reporter that afternoon, he had no problem reconciling his Episcopal views with those of Islam.
"I could have sat down and read scholarly literature on Islam, but that's still stepping back from it rather than encountering it," he said, over a cup of tea in the office of St. Stephen's Church. "You can think about doing something, but once you do it, you really reflect on it."
Lawler, who has been at St. Stephen's for eight years, was born and raised in the Roman Catholic Church but left during his early 20s because he didn't care for its conservative viewpoints.
"The Episcopal church is a fairly open church," he said. "If I was the pastor at a very conservative church, I could come in one day and have the locks changed (for doing the Islamic rituals)."
Lawler learned the Episcopal church is more rigid than he had thought. After hearing the objections of the bishop, Lawler reversed course, giving up the Islamic rituals.
"I believe what he's trying to accomplish or says he's trying to accomplish, which is to deepen his understanding of Islam, is admirable," the bishop said. "But you dishonor another faith by pretending to take it on. You build bridges by building relationships with neighbors who are Muslim."
- CYNTHIA BILLHARTZ GREGORIAN, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

125 persons convert to Islam in Dubai

2010-08-28 21:23:58
WAM DUBAI, Aug. 28th, 2010: 122 ladies and 3 men, all expatriates from the Philippines, converted to Islam in Dubai in a lecture by popular Muslim Filipino orator and preacher Omar Penalbar.
Penalbar was lecturing on tolerance in Islam and the message of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) who is a mercy to all mankind when he was asked by the ladies to elaborate on Islam and its teachings.
The lecture was organized in a Ramadan tent in Al Twar area in Dubai by the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).
The preacher said the previous largest number of people to convert to Islam in the Philippines in one night with his help was 99. A new record has been set today when the 125 individuals declared their conversion to Islam, he added.
Emarati families played a role in this when they accompanied the Filipino individuals to the Ramadan forum, according to Mohammed Al-Hashimi, who oversees the forum.
WAM/MMYS

One Church’s Reasons to Hate Islam, Challenged by an Expert

In the centuries-old conflict between Christianity and Islam, tolerance has generally outpaced antagonism. But with a proposed Islamic center two blocks from ground zero reigniting an international debate about the compatibility of Islam with Western democracy and Christian teachings, some of the old battle lines are being redrawn.
Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., is clearly at the extreme end of the Christian perspective. His plan to burn hundreds of copies of the Koran on Sept. 11 has been condemned not only by Muslim leaders in Egypt and Indonesia, but also by the National Association of Evangelicals here in the United States, which urged Mr. Jones to “call it off in the name and love of Jesus Christ.”
And yet, Mr. Jones’ core argument — that Islam is an enemy — has found its way into the mainstream. Politicians, pastors and activists are all now arguing against the ancient faith of Muhammad even as they knowingly or unknowingly combine theology with their own particular view of its politics and current events. Is it just election year posturing?
Maybe, but experts like John Esposito, a professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University who has consulted for the State Department, worry that  a sense of collective blame is being developed — something similar to what appeared during World War II, when Japanese-Americans were interned because they were believed to be sympathizers with Japan.
The proposed Islamic center in New York, he said, “has revealed a deep-seated Islamophobia across the country, in fact given it permission to go viral.”
In the United States and Europe, he added, “the danger, and I am not exaggerating, is that this social cancer spreads and impacts a community, as happened to the Japanese and historically to Jews due to a Christian theology of collective guilt, which then infected politics and society.”
Ignorance, of course, is often a foundation of such misunderstandings — and Mr. Jones’s church is a clear example. Even though Mr. Jones told me he had “no experience whatsoever with the Koran,” he and his congregation have put together a list called “10 Reasons to Burn a Koran” that offers a window into the views of not just Mr. Jones, but also of many others (as seen in hundreds of supportive e-mails sent to the church and thousands of fans on Facebook).
To understand some of this reasoning and what it might be leaving out, I asked Professor Esposito — a scholar who has studied both Christianity and Islam; a former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America — to read through the list and comment.
Below are some of the arguments and Professor Esposito’s responses (edited slightly for clarity and style), which focus on the issue that seems to have gripped the nation: where Islam intersects with politics.
REASON 6: Islamic law is totalitarian in nature. There is no separation of church and state. It is irrational. It is supposedly immutable and cannot be changed. It must be accepted without criticism. It has many similarities to Nazism, Communism and Fascism. It is not compatible with Western civilization.

JOHN ESPOSITO: Not true. Even the best of non-Muslim scholars who would not subscribe to Islamic law or see problems would not deny the level of scholarship and reasoning, which is often comparable in its intellectual sophistication (however much one might not agree or follow it) with canon law and many other systems of law. I am not speaking here of its abuses and its distortions, but the law over all. Historically, Islamic law did change, and certainly today there are many scholars — Muslim and non-Muslim — addressing these issues.

REASON 8: A Muslim does not have the right to change his religion. Apostasy is punishable by death.
JOHN ESPOSITO: There are certainly such abuses. This position developed at a time when apostasy was seen as treason and punished as such. It continues to be operative in some though not all Muslim countries, and we have seen the effects of these abuses in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. At the same time, today, reform-minded Muslim scholars and senior Muslim religious authorities, like the Grand Mufti of Egypt and others, have spoken out against such practices.
REASON 9: Deep in the Islamic teaching and culture is the irrational fear and loathing of the West.

JOHN ESPOSITO: Where? Despite their grievances regarding the denigration of Islam and Muslims (something this minister seems to excel at) and some American foreign policies, majorities of Muslims in some 35 countries admire the democratic principles and values of the West, its freedoms, rule of law, etc., as well as our technological, educational and economic accomplishments. They want greater democratization and better relations with the West, although many think we have a double standard regarding the promotion of democracy and human rights — given many of the authoritarian governments we have and continue to support. During George W. Bush’s second term, his administration — in moving to a policy to promote democracy and legitimate the invasion of Iraq — acknowledged that historically, U.S. presidents, Democrat and Republican, have practiced what the State Department called “democratic exceptionalism.” This is documented fact, not assertion.
REASON 10: Islam is a weapon of Arab imperialism and Islamic colonialism. Wherever Islam has or gains political power, Christians, Jews and all non-Muslims receive persecution, discrimination, are forced to convert. There are massacres, and churches, synagogues, temples and other places of worship are destroyed.
JOHN ESPOSITO: Only 23 percent of the world’s Muslims are Arab. No doubt some Muslim rulers used religion to justify their wars of imperial expansion. But where today? Regarding the history of religious colonialism, who has been more successful — from 312 under Constantine, when Christianity became associated with empire, to the conquistadors, European colonialism and the use and misuse of religion by politicians and hard-line Christian ministers of the Christian right — especially in the first term of President Bush?
Problems of religious pluralism and tolerance have plagued both Islam and Christianity, past and present. But what, historically, was the policy and track record of official Christianity regarding other Christians (denounced as schismatics and heretics)? What about Christianity’s intolerant policy and treatment of Jews and Muslims (convert, flee or be killed)?
In contrast, though not always followed, the position of Islamic law, based on the Koran, and under many though certainly not all Muslim rulers, was that Jews and Christians were people of the book and protected people (dhimmi). In exchange for a poll tax, they could practice their religions, etc. By today’s standards this would be second-class citizenship and unacceptable; relative to its times, Islam was more tolerant than Christianity towards religious minorities.

Pope Became Infalible (God-like) in 1870

Jonathan Sale 

Sunday 5 September 2010 20.00 BST

Is the pope a Catholic? A real Catholic? There are those who have their doubts about the man arriving on our shores next week. To so-called "Old Catholics", the pope in Rome has been under suspicion since their big split with His (then) Holiness in 1870, after he was declared "Infallible".
The announcement launched what could be called a campaign for real Catholicism. "Rome has gone on a side road, which is now a motorway," declares the Right Reverend Richard Palmer, who in 1999 became the Bishop of what is known as the Reformed Liberal Catholic Church (Old Catholics). "We would maintain that we are the continuation of Roman Catholicism as it was prior to Papal Infallibility," agrees Father Jerome Lloyd, whose "mission", based in Brighton, is part of the Old Roman Catholic Church in Europe headed by the Metropolitan Bishop of the United Kingdom, Bishop Denis Beveers of Barnsley.
Since the schism from Rome, Old Catholics have been splitting from each other and now worship in a loose communion of separate "jurisdictions": "I would say in the UK there are about 50," says Palmer. He puts the total number of Old Catholics at around 5,000.
However, Lloyd disagrees with this – suggesting that some who claim to be Old Catholics don't count, on the grounds that they accept homosexuality and women priests, and estimates the membership to be in the low hundreds. Old Catholics, he says, agree with Rome in their condemnation of contraception, abortion and homosexuality but are "less obsessed" over sexual matters.
As for divorces, "If people repent, that's it: they are re-admitted to the Sacrament." Another big difference is over celibacy: their clergy can marry. Many have day jobs, full-time or part-time. One bishop is believed to support himself as an author and exorcist.
Like Palmer, Father Jerome would be happy for the pope to make it possible for them to return to the bosom of the Catholic church: "We are very pro the papacy per se. If the pope said, 'I Infallibly declare myself Fallible – will you come home?' we would say, 'Yes, Holy Father'."
As for the pope's visit, "We would love to have tickets," he laughs.

Every Congregation? No Way

The Catholic clergy are meant to be the best of the best of in Catholicism. Yet when it becomes hard to find one congregation that has not been plagued by child sexual abuse I think one needs to start questioning absolutely everything about the catholic church.

Maybe it is also time to search else where for God because clearly he will not be found within the Catholic church.

'No congregation' escaped Belgian sex abuse

Posted Sat Sep 11, 2010 6:25am AEST

 

A Belgian Catholic Church-backed commission has released harrowing testimony from around 500 cases of alleged sex abuse involving more than 100 victims, 13 of whom were driven to suicide.

The testimony from victims of clergy and church workers reveals 13 suicides and six attempted suicides "in relation to sexual abuse by a cleric", said the report published by the Commission on Church-related Sexual Abuse Complaints, set up by the Catholic Church.
The commission, headed by independent child psychiatrist Peter Adriaenssens, said it had looked into 475 complaints between January and June this year.
"Almost every institution, every school, particularly boarding schools, at one time harboured abuse," Mr Adriaenssens said.
"It's the Church's Dutroux," he said, referring to the mid-1990s trauma caused in Belgium by the arrest of serial rapist and killer Marc Dutroux - serving life for six rapes and four murders.
The scale of the abuse has stunned the church.
"We realise that we were totally misinformed and that we weren't aware of the gravity of the situation and that these victims were hurt for life," the Bishop of Tournai, Guy Harpigny, said.
"Some committed suicide. This is extremely serious. Mindsets are changing and I think the church authorities are also ready to act towards change," added the bishop, who has been tasked with looking at paedophilia in the church.
Most of the complaints received by the commission were related to charges of sexual abuse committed between the 1950s and the late 1980s by Catholic clergy, but also by teachers of religion and adults working with youth movements.
The victims are today aged between 50 and 60.
The 200-page report which contains testimonies from some 124 anonymous "survivors" - as they are called - reveal that the sexual abuse for most victims began at age 12, although one was two years old, five were aged four, eight aged five and 10 aged seven.
While the description of the alleged sex abuser is often imprecise, where verification had been made 102 were found to have been members of some 29 religious orders, the report said.
"We can say that no congregation escapes sexual abuse of minors by one or several of its members," the report's authors wrote.
Two-thirds of the alleged victims were male.
The commission said it received most of its testimony after the forced resignation in April of the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, who admitted having sexually abused his nephew between 1973 and 1986.
A woman in the report testified that she was abused at age 17 by a priest and tried to seek help from a bishop in 1983.
"I told him 'I have a problem with one of your priests'. He told me: 'Ignore him and he will leave you alone'," she said.
- AFP