latimes--2019-08-28--Muslim men sue LA Sheriffs Department alleging religious discrimination in jail

Muslim men sue L.A. Sheriff's Department, alleging religious discrimination in jail

Three Muslim men are suing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, alleging they were denied access to an observant diet and proper religious garments and texts, while the same accommodations were made for inmates of other faiths.  The lawsuit, filed Monday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, argues that the Sheriff’s Department has engaged in a “systematic effort to disfavor Muslim inmates and their spiritual needs over those of inmates of other faiths.”  The three men claim staff inside the Men’s Central Jail either delayed, or in some cases outright denied, their access to foods consistent with a halal diet, copies of the Quran or time for weekly prayer, according to the lawsuit. The men also contend deputies heavily scrutinized their knowledge of the Islamic faith before deciding whether or not they should have access to a halal diet.  A spokesman for the county referred questions to the Sheriff’s Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.  “The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department treatment of religious requests from inmates is egregious,” CAIR’s National Litigation Director, Lena Masri, said in a statement. “Our clients have had to resort to hunger strikes to get basic religious accommodations to practice their faith after their written requests and grievances were repeatedly ignored and denied.”  Joe Alfred Taylor III first requested that he be provided halal foods in February 2017, but a deputy told Taylor he was “not a Muslim,” according to the lawsuit. Taylor was quizzed about his knowledge of Islam several times, engaged in a days-long hunger strike and had access to halal foods approved and then revoked with little explanation between February 2017 and late 2018, the lawsuit contends.  Two other inmates, Miguel Arciniega and Hugo Cortez, claim they endured similar treatment. In the lawsuit, Cortez said that when he answered questions about his faith with the “proper Arabic terminology,” a Sheriff’s Department sergeant told him “we’re in America and we don’t speak Arabic here.”  The lawsuit also contends that while Muslims inside Men’s Central Jail are denied appropriate prayer times, access to religious attire and celebrations of certain religious feasts or days of observance, similar accommodations are made for inmates of Christian, Jewish or Buddhist faith. The men claimed Passover and Christmas celebrations were permitted inside the jail last year, but no such allowances were made for Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, according to the lawsuit.  All three men remain in custody, said Carolyn Homer, a trial attorney for CAIR. Court records show Arciniega was charged with murder in connection with a 2015 homicide and is awaiting trial. He was also charged with attempted murder in connection with jailhouse assaults allegedly carried out at the direction of the Mexican Mafia, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.  Cortez is awaiting trial on murder charges related to a 2011 slaying, jail and court records show. Taylor III was convicted at a recent trial, but Homer did not know what charges he had faced.  The federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act protects the rights of prisoners to observe their chosen faith and grants them access to certain types of garments or diets, unless the need would compromise security. But police agencies in Southern California have repeatedly run afoul of the law.  Last year, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department had to pay out $75,000 to settle a lawsuit after a Muslim woman claimed deputies forced her to remove her headscarf while in custody. In 2017, the city of Long Beach had to pay $85,000 to a Muslim woman who was forced to remove her headscarf by officers arresting her on a shoplifting warrant.  Some of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies say they take steps to prevent fraudulent claims of religious affiliation made for the sake of receiving certain benefits, such as access to different food. Last year, the Los Angeles Police Department told The Times they have chaplains on call to address such situations.  But Homer said questioning an inmate’s faith is a clear constitutional violation, and contended the Sheriff’s Department’s alleged tactic of grilling her clients about “minutiae” of the Islamic faith was a naked attempt to bar them from access to halal meals.


nationalreview--2019-07-23--Theres a Legal Cure for Woke Corporations Religious Discrimination

There’s a Legal Cure for Woke Corporations’ Religious Discrimination

Federal law prohibits employers from simply presuming that Christians are bigots.  If you stay in the legal trenches long enough, you learn a central fact of our cultural conflict: Intolerant overreach often breaks the law. An effective legal response to such intolerance often takes time to generate, but when it comes, it can break waves of discrimination and lawlessness.  The most recent example of legal triumph over illiberalism is the shattered ruins of the campus-speech-code regime. The most recent example of an important counterattack is the defamation verdict against Oberlin College administrators who joined a woke student mob. And the time is growing ripe for opening yet another legal front in the war against intolerance: a defense of woke institutions’ religious employees.  The weapon of choice here is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Under the statute, “religion” is defined to include “all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief.”  I thought of Title VII today while reading a post from Rod Dreher that describes the increasing prevalence of corporate “equality pledges,” some of which ask employees to affirm that “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities are within the spectrum of normal human experience and are not . . . sinful.” He attached this example:  While an employer can certainly ask a doctor to treat all patients on an equal basis, it may not require an employee to sign an affirmation that explicitly seeks to contradict basic Christian theology, and it may not punish an employee who refuses to sign.  Dreher’s example was “voluntary,” though it will be interesting to see what “voluntary” truly means. At the heart of religious discrimination in the modern workplace is the pernicious idea that religious disagreement creates a risk of workplace misconduct. In other words, the very existence of orthodox religious views is presumed to create an unacceptable workplace environment for LGBT employees.  In the first case, the city of Atlanta fired fire chief Kelvin Cochran after he wrote a self-published book that articulated a thoroughly orthodox Christian view of sex and marriage. The book wasn’t even focused on sex or sexuality; only six out of 162 pages dealt with the topic at all. Cochran’s on-the-job performance was exemplary; he’d never faced a discrimination complaint. But that didn’t stop Atlanta’s mayor from condemning him at length or the city from firing him without due process.  In the second case, the Georgia Department of Public Health fired Dr. Eric Walsh a devout Seventh-day Adventist after it became aware of his religious beliefs. To investigate Walsh, the Department’s director of human resources actually had Walsh’s co-workers listen to the sermons he’d delivered at church to help it evaluate his beliefs, in a clear violation of his rights.  Both Walsh and Cochran sued and won. Walsh received a $225,000 settlement, and Cochran received $1.2 million.  It’s worth noting the sheer bigotry behind these workplace reprisals. They simply presume that because a person holds traditional religious beliefs that they can’t treat LGBT employees with dignity or respect, in spite of the existence of a host of other traditional religious beliefs that mandate kindness and love.  I recall a job interview many years ago at Cornell Law School. The interviewer correctly intuited from my CV that I was a religious conservative. How, she asked, could I teach gay and lesbian students?  The question was unlawful: Inquiring about religious beliefs at a job interview is a textbook Title VII violation. But rather than assert my legal rights, I sensed that the question was asked in good faith, so I answered, “My Christianity teaches me that every person is created in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect. I’ll treat all my students well, but I can’t guarantee that they’ll treat me well when they find out about my faith.”  She accepted my answer, I got the job, and we later became friends, but I couldn’t help but wonder: How many CVs are tossed aside because an obviously Christian candidate is presumed to be a bigot? Every year I talk to anxious young Christian lawyers and professionals who seek guidance on which items to include on their resumés and which to omit.  Yes, there are some Christians who behave in bigoted ways, but an employer cannot simply presume that a Christian will engage in workplace discrimination based on the existence of Christian beliefs.  Moreover, if employees are so triggered by Christianity that they cannot abide a Christian colleague, then they are bigots, not the Christian. Their actions are akin to those who can’t abide working alongside a woman or person of a different race.  It is a simple fact that progressive Americans and traditional religious Americans can live and work side by side. They can treat each other as friends and colleagues in spite of deep ideological and religious differences. It happens every day in workplaces across the United States. Woke capitalism and woke academia doubt this reality. And when their doubt turns to discrimination, they violate the law.


newyorker--2019-08-23--How the Religious Right Transformed Israeli Education

Rafi Peretz, Israel’s new Education Minister, recently gave his first major television interview. Peretz, a former chief military rabbi and the founder of a military-preparatory academy in the Gaza Strip, belongs to a far-right alliance of parties and is a newcomer to politics. In the interview, Peretz was flushed and visibly nervous. He couldn’t stop smiling.  “Let’s talk about the L.G.B.T. community,” his interviewer, Dana Weiss, said at one point. Peretz was clearly caught off guard. He replied that he respected all people, but that “our Torah teaches us differently.” Weiss asked, “Do you support conversion therapy? Do you believe it’s possible to convert people’s sexual orientation?” By now Peretz’s smile had completely vanished. “I think it’s possible,” he said. “I can tell you I have a deep familiarity with this type of education, and I’ve also done it.” He went on to describe how he had counselled a student. “The objective is that, first of all, he should know himself well,” he said. “And then he will decide.”  Later in the interview, Peretz said that he wanted to “extend Israeli sovereignty to the entirety of Judea and Samaria”—to fully occupy the West Bank—without giving Palestinians any voting rights. It is saying something about how far to the right Israeli society has moved that this comment earned little notice. But Peretz’s embrace of conversion therapy proved too much for mainstream Israelis to stomach. After the interview aired, hundreds protested in front of the government’s Tel Aviv offices, holding signs with Biblical quotes about love and acceptance. Three thousand teachers threatened to strike. Thousands of parents around the country signed a petition stating that Peretz “shouldn’t be a minister of anything.” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, moved quickly to disavow Peretz’s comments on conversion therapy, calling them “unacceptable.” But he didn’t fire the man he had entrusted with the education of Israel’s children.  Unlike the United States, which enshrined separation of church and state in its Constitution, Israel is defined, in its basic law, as a “Jewish and democratic state”—a muddled term that breeds near-constant battle over its meaning. Since its founding, Israel has had to rely on a series of fragile compromises between its secular leadership and its religious community. A letter known as the status-quo agreement, signed, in 1947, by David Ben-Gurion, who went on to become Israel’s first Prime Minister, guaranteed basic religious tenets, such as observance of Shabbat, while insuring that Israel would not become a Jewish theocracy. Marriage, divorce, and burial have, since the country’s founding, been under the auspices of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. But on matters relating to the work force, military, universities, or public schools, there has been a clear separation between religion and state.  In the past decade, since Netanyahu came into power, Israeli society has undergone a process so transformative that a new Hebrew word had to be brought into use for it: “hadata,” or “religionization.” Manifestations of hadata appear throughout civic life. On some public buses that pass through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, women have been forced to sit in the back, for reasons of “modesty.” In the military, female soldiers are officially given the same opportunities as males, but the presence of just one religious male soldier in a unit can prevent female soldiers from serving there. Such discrimination is often done in the name of supposed inclusiveness: in order to accommodate the strictures of observant Jews, certain adjustments have to be made. Yet those called on to “adjust” are almost always women or members of the L.G.B.T. community. Just this week, Israel's attorney general said that cities could enforce gender segregation at public events, adding that “the justification for the separation is greater if the events are attended by a public that desires to be separated.”  Nowhere have those changes been more pronounced or more influential than in the public-school system, where the values of the Jewish Home Party and its far-right allies have taken hold. The Education Minister controls funding to Israel’s two systems of public schools, a religious system and a non-religious one, as well as its ultra-Orthodox schools, Arab and Druze schools, universities, and colleges. According to a 2017 investigation by the liberal think tank Molad, classes in Jewish education received a hundred and nineteen times more funding than those having to do with democracy or coexistence. Whereas schools used to promote a pluralistic approach to Judaism, with weight given to the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox movements, much of the curriculum these days is being taught through the narrow prism of religious orthodoxy. And the emphasis on Jewish studies insures that other content is pushed out. Naftali Bennett, the former leader of the Jewish Home Party and the Education Minister before Peretz, said as much, in 2016: “Learning Judaism and excelling in it is more important, in my opinion, than learning math or science.”  Religious organizations have likewise mushroomed in the country in recent years, a result of generous state budgets that increased with time—more than doubling between 2007 and 2017. Representatives of these organizations have taken to teaching classes—often for free—in the school system, an offer that is too tempting for many administrators to pass up. “It started with, ‘Let us teach them the Jewish holidays, because you don’t know anything about it,’ ” Ram Vromen, a Tel Aviv businessman and the founder of a nonprofit group called Secular Forum, which tracks religious content in public schools, told me. “It quickly escalated to them teaching bar-mitzvah-preparation classes, classes in family values, and even leading discussions about the assassination of [the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin.”  Vromen started the secular forum in 2011, and focussed on the school system after he saw a handout that was given to his daughter in her third-grade reading-comprehension class. “It described a guy called Suleiman who is Jewish and living in some Arab city,” Vromen told me. A pogrom is about to take place just before Shabbat and everyone decides to flee. Nobody stops for Shabbat except for Suleiman and his family, “who are very observant and decide that honoring the Shabbat is more important.” Those who continue to flee are later massacred, and only Suleiman and his family are spared, because of their religious fervor. “Then there were questions like, ‘How do you observe the Shabbat in your own home?’ ” Vromen recalled. Among the accounts collected by Vromen’s group is a science textbook that includes a prayer for rain.  “You can’t examine these cases individually,” Vromen said. “You have to look at them as a whole. And when you do you see that there’s a clear attempt to change the face and character of Israeli society.” There was a father who reported that his six-year-old daughter’s preschool had taken a trip to a synagogue and received fliers that read, “the people of Israel must study the Torah or else they don’t feel truly alive.” There was a mother whose eighth-grade daughter’s homework included the imperative to “Spell out nineteen times ‘Baruch Ata Adonai’ ”—the beginning of a Jewish blessing. Religious content, it turned out, ran deeper than that. “Learning history now matters only inasmuch as it relates to Jewish history,” Vromen said. “So that, if the First World War has no real connection to the Jewish people, they barely teach it.”  In 2017, a video of a ninth-grade student named Hilli from Tel Aviv made headlines. In it, Hilli addresses the “Dear Education Minister,” Bennett, with a confidence that belies her age. She recounts sitting in a class on Israeli culture when the teacher began describing the life paths of Israeli men and women. “A man’s path begins with a bris, through school, bar mitzvah, Army, university, marriage, and children,” Hilli quotes her teacher as saying. And a woman’s? “School, Army, marriage and children,” she says. Women, Hilli is left to conclude, “apparently skip university, because it’s more important to change diapers and make lunch.” She says, “As a secular girl, the education system simply erases me.”  When I was a student in Jerusalem, in the late nineteen-eighties and nineties, we celebrated the Jewish holidays in school, but no teacher asked us how, or if, we observed them at home. We welcomed the Shabbat with song but not with prayer, and certainly not with the full ritual of candle-lighting, Kiddush, and head cover that has become the norm across (nonreligious) kindergartens all over the country. There was a sense that Jewish culture contained a multitude of interpretations, with no one inherently better than the other, and that schools were there to provide anchor, not judgment.  Yael (Yuli) Tamir, a former Labor Party lawmaker, was the last liberal Education Minister, serving between 2006 and 2009. She told me that during her term there had already been pressure from the religious right to have a greater say in the way that the nonreligious public-school system was run. “There isn’t a country in the world that doesn’t want to teach some kind of cultural heritage,” she said. “But the question is when that turns into indoctrination.”  Tamir said that she fought to preserve the nonreligious system as distinct from the religious one. It was important to her that students learn about the Palestinian nakba (“catastrophe”), for example, when reading about Israel’s War of Independence, and that they be able to grapple intellectually with different, and at times contradictory, narratives. “The nonreligious system takes as a paradigm Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic country, with all of the complexities involved,” she said. “The religious system, on the other hand, is faith-based, and argues that we’re in this country because of God. It’s seemingly semantic—they’re not throwing anyone in jail; they’re not enforcing burkas on anyone—but the distance between that and theocracy is small, and getting smaller.”


theepochtimes--2019-08-27--Judge Upholds Law Blocking Religious Exemptions to Vaccines Just Before School Starts

Judge Upholds Law Blocking Religious Exemptions to Vaccines Just Before School Starts  A New York Supreme Court judge upheld the state’s recently passed law that eliminates religious exemptions for student vaccination, just days before school starts.  Acting Supreme Court Justice Denise Hartman ruled against the dozens of parents who filed a lawsuit against the state, denying their request for a preliminary injunction that would have let parents continue to claim the religious exemption until the case was settled.  The lawsuit (pdf) was brought by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and attorney Michael Sussman on behalf of the parents and will still be heard as the school year starts. It argues the law discriminates against religious people and violates the First Amendment rights of parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children.  Parents wrote that “[r]ather than being motivated by any serious concern for public health and despite the rhetoric of the Governor, in the public debate and discourse which proceeded passage of this repeal legislation, numerous leading proponents of the legislation expressed active hostility toward the religious exemption and ridiculed and scorned those who held such exemptions.”  That included Democratic Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins saying “we’ve chosen science over rhetoric” and state Senator James Skoufis, a Democratic sponsor, who said: “There is not one religious institution, not one single one that denounces vaccines. So, here is a religious exemption pretending as if there is a religion out there that has a problem with the vaccines. Whether you are Christian, Jewish or Scientologist, none of these religions have texts or dogma that denounce vaccines. Let’s stop pretending like they do.”  Plaintiffs also said that neither the state House or Senate held public hearings before enacting the legislation.  But Hartman said that a number of court rulings over the past 100 years give the state power to mandate vaccinations for students, including Jacobson v Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Matter of Viemeister.  The Supreme Court ruled in Prince v Massachusetts that a parent “cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds,” Hartman wrote in the 32-page ruling.  “Because plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, the Supreme Court denies the request for a preliminary injunction; the legislative repeal of the religious exemption remains in effect,” she concluded.  Sussman told The Journal News that he plans to appeal the ruling.  Some 26,000 parents claimed the religious exemption in New York in the 2018-19 school year.  Hartman’s ruling came about six weeks after Supreme Court Justice J. Mackey denied the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order in the case. Another lawsuit brought by parents was dropped last week.  Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed the law on Aug. 13. “The science is crystal clear: Vaccines are safe and effective. While I respect freedom of religion, our first job is to protect public health,” he said after signing the bill.  Lawmakers said that the United States “is currently experiencing the worst outbreak of measles since 1994, a disease that, in a major health victory, officials declared eliminated from the United States in 2000.”  Some 880 cases were said to have cropped up before the bill was passed across the nation and there were at least 810 confirmed cases of measles in New York state between Oct. 2018 and the bill’s passage.  The memorandum introduced in support of the bill said that “freedom of religion is a founding tenet of this nation” but added: “longstanding precedent establishing that one’s right to free religious expression does not include the right to endanger the health of the community, one’s children, or the children of others.”  New York, with the repeal of the religious exemption, joined California, Maine, West Virginia, and Mississippi as states providing for no religious or other non-medical exemptions from compulsory vaccination laws. Hartman said she’s not aware of any cases striking down the laws in the four other states.


thehill--2019-01-04--Kyrsten Sinema swears in to Congress using copy of Constitution instead of religious book

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) took her ceremonial oath of office holding her hand on a copy of the Constitution rather than a religious text such as the Bible.  Vice President Pence can be seen in video of the moment ending Sinema's oath by saying the standard words, "so help you God?," to which Sinema responded, "I do." He then says that he looks forward to working with her in Congress.  A spokesperson for the senator confirmed to The Arizona Republic that the book was from the Library of Congress and contained texts of the U.S. and Arizona constitutions.  "Kyrsten always gets sworn in on a Constitution simply because of her love for the Constitution," Sinema’s spokesman, John LaBombard, told the local publication. However, LaBombard did not reportedly address Sinema’s religious views.  Sinema is the only member of Congress who openly identifies as religiously unaffiliated, according to the Pew Research Center for Religion and Public Life.  But The Arizona Republic points out that Sinema’s move to forgo using a religious book to take her ceremonial oath, as most members of Congress typically do, may only fuel ongoing speculation that she is an atheist.  The Arizona Democrat emerged on the national stage in November when she became the state's first female senator and the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Arizona since 1988.  Sinema is also the second openly LGBTQ person to be elected to Senate, joining Sen. Tammy Baldwin Tammy Suzanne BaldwinKyrsten Sinema swears in to Congress using copy of Constitution instead of religious book Dems say Trump is defying court order by pushing abstinence programs Dem senator accuses Wisconsin Republicans of 'power grab' MORE (D-Wis.), who is a lesbian.


theindependent--2019-09-22--The way we eat is changing Now is the time for religious doctrine to catch up

The way we eat is changing. Now is the time for religious doctrine to catch up

Leviticus 11 contains a zoo’s worth of animals. The hyrax and monitor lizard. The katydid is there, as is the gecko. And it ends: “You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.”  Dietary restrictions are woven into religious texts, the Old Testament and the New, the Koran, the Vedas and the Upanishads. Some are mercifully practical, as in the law of necessity in Islamic jurisprudence: “That which is necessary makes the forbidden permissible.”  This month, food multinational Tyson announced that it is investing in New Wave Foods, a San Francisco-based start-up that will launch plant-based shrimp early next year, raising a curious question. Will it be kosher? The short answer is its ingredients – which mimic the verboten crustacean with a proprietary algae blend – could well be both kosher and halal. Once the product launches, the company will seek certification so Orthodox Jews and certain Muslim groups that avoid shellfish can enjoy a shrimp cocktail, scampi, a po’ boy or ceviche.  And yet. In this era of plenitude and choice and disruptive technology, what is permissible, what is forbidden and what is flouting the letter of religious law? The food system is in flux, the rise of plant-based meats and the promise of cell-cultured meats bending categories such that legislation, ideology and theology are scrambling to keep up.  If God says no pork, how does He feel about a very persuasive forgery? And if only beef from the forequarter is permitted, how will observant Jews parse meat grown in a lab, no bones and no quarters at all? How do you bleed an animal with no blood or slaughter an animal humanely if there’s no slaughter? And if you give up meat for Lent, what constitutes a cheat?  About 10 per cent of the United States’ 5.5 million Jews consider themselves Orthodox – that number is higher for younger Jews, so the percentage is growing. With a global population of 1.8 billion, the Muslim community has now reached 3.45 million in America and is likely to become the second-largest religious group in the country by 2040. Hinduism, with more than a billion adherents globally, is practiced by 1 per cent of the US population. These are large demographics to be courted, potentially the difference between solvency and failure in the ever more crowded alt-meat arena.  There are already 100 plant-based meat products in the United States certified kosher, according to the Jewish Initiative for Animals, a project of Farm Forward, a farm animal advocacy nonprofit that works with all Jewish denominations.  In May 2018, Impossible Foods received its official kosher certification from the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the largest organisation of Orthodox synagogues in the United States, responsible for certifying more than 400,000 industrial and consumer products. A rabbinic field representative had toured the 67,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Oakland, California, confirming that all ingredients, processes and equipment used to make the Impossible Burger were compliant with kosher law. And after a halal auditor visited the plant to determine ingredients and practices were halal-compliant and adherent to Islamic dietary laws, Impossible Foods received its halal certification from the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America in December 2018.  Packages, which first appeared in grocery stores on Wednesday (Impossible has been a restaurant product to date), carry an “OU” symbol that means the product is “pareve”. The designation signals it is made from inherently kosher or kosher-certified ingredients that are neither meat nor dairy. It also boasts a symbol with an M to indicate it is halal.  Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the chief operating officer of Orthodox Union Kosher, says an observant Jew is not popping into Burger King to eat an Impossible Whopper anytime soon.  “Let’s for the sake of argument say everything they use is kosher; still their equipment isn’t kosher. An observant Jew will never even walk in.”  Non-kosher restaurants for the Orthodox may still be a no-go, but, Elefant argues, the majority of kosher foods are purchased in supermarkets that carry non-kosher items, packages of certified kosher Beyond Meat plant-based pork sausage shouldered right up against forbidden pork sausage made from animals.  “Is it a violation of the spirit of the law? That becomes a realm that you can never end,” Elefant says. “The best example that I always give is there are companies that are certified to make pizza for Passover. There’s not one issue about the kosher status of those products, but you may feel that it’s inappropriate to eat pizza for Passover.”  He adds that it’s a constant challenge to interpret dietary law in light of modern technology, and that while “there clearly is a biblical statement that the purpose of the dietary laws is to separate us, it’s not up to us to draw the line”.  Rabbi Eli Lando is the chief customer relations officer with OK Kosher, one of the country’s oldest and largest certifiers, which certified Beyond Meat (Beyond says it intends to apply for halal certification). Lando is more bullish about the growing array of plant-based meats, predicting that products like these will make it easier to keep kosher and thus grow the ranks of the observant.  “You may speak with three different rabbis and get 25 different opinions, but we know according to Jewish law that you are not supposed to be prohibiting yourself from what is allowed according to God’s commandments,” he says.  The prohibitions, he says, are about the actual creatures (pigs, shellfish, rabbits and reptiles), not a plant-based facsimile, however uncanny the likeness. Orthodox Jews, he notes, are frequently big fans of fake crab made of finely pulverised white fish. Lando sees plant-based meat as a revolution of sorts.  “A person today knows that being kosher does not mean you have to go to the back of the store and look for something like a second-class citizen. Having those products commonly available is achieving a great milestone,” he says.  Kosher certification is exhaustive and costly work – every ingredient must be inspected, the facility may have to be washed down at high temperature, and then there’s a waiting period. Surprise inspections occur frequently. Lando estimates that certification in North America costs between $4,000 and 8,000 per manufacturing facility.  The inspection and certification process is similar for halal foods. For plant-based products designed to imitate haram products (pork and other foods forbidden by Islamic law), Roger Othman, director of consumer relations for Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America, says words matter.  “Plant-based bacon bits, for example. The product would qualify to be halal but may be repugnant to halal consumers if the word bacon appeared in the name,” Othman says. “Halal consumers would not know what pork chews like, maybe not even what it smells or looks like. If plant-based, it could qualify to be halal, but the naming should not contain any pork-related words.”  For Mat McDermott, director of communications at the Hindu American Foundation, the introduction of Impossible Burgers and other plant-based meat 2.0 may not be particularly problematic. Plant-based meat companies are proliferating in India. Still, there may be a “yuck” factor for the ones that bleed like the real deal, and because cows are sacred animals for many Hindus, plant-based beef or cell-cultured beef prompt additional queasiness and questions.  “Mimicking is fine; it poses no theological problems,” he says. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it still may just be textured vegetable protein. That said, most Hindu vegetarians eschew meat for ethical reasons. McDermott believes we’re at an inflection point where consumers of all faiths are making choices that consider environmental problems with ethical implications.  “Cultured meat presents thornier questions Hindus have never had to answer.” he said. “If there’s no perceptible harm, no animal killed in the process? That’s the central knotted question of diet and animal welfare. Where do you draw the line?”  Aaron Gross, an associate professor of Jewish studies at the University of San Diego, also perceives a cultural shift in religious attitudes towards animal cruelty. For 15 years, there has been a tiny “animals and religion” panel at the annual American Academy of Religion conference, with maybe 10 or 15 attendees. In the past couple of years, that has ballooned to several events with as many as 150 attendees each. He says that as animal agriculture became more industrialised and fewer Americans had direct connections to farm animals, there had been a shift away from addressing issues like animal suffering.  “But it’s returning to its historic place as something theologians grapple with,” Gross says. He cites climate change, a growing interest in food’s provenance and “deeper currents of how we make meaning in the world” as reasons for the pivot.  “God’s thinking about meat. He’s concerned about meat enough that it is a major theme,” says Gross, adding that there’s an energetic dispute within Judaism about whether to raise these broad ethical questions about meat at all.  Cultured or cell-based meat, grown from a tissue sample of an animal in a lab, is poised to launch next year and may solve some of these ethical questions, says Bruce Friedrich, founder of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes plant-based meat. But it raises others.  “We’re talking about a whole new way of making meat that has everything to do with food safety and humane treatment,” he says. Three of the first eight cultivated meat companies are in Israel, he says, although none is certified kosher because there is not yet an established certification framework.  Jewish and Muslim scholars are still evaluating what this new Wild West of meat might mean. Companies like Memphis Meat and JUST that aim to debut cultured products next year have a vested interest in having their products certified halal or kosher, but whether rabbis will certify it as “meat” or pareve is up in the air.  Gross and Friedrich predict yes. Rabbi Lando suggests that the Orthodox community will have more flexibility if it is certified pareve, but he’s not sure.  “Great minds are working on cell-based meat. Research is still being done on this topic,” Lando says. “We prefer to measure twice and cut once.”


themanchestereveningnews--2019-01-09--Desperate heroin addicts stole religious texts from Salford synagogue - and then chucked them away

Two drug addicts who 'desecrated' a synagogue by burgling it and stealing holy documents before chucking them, have avoided jail.  Wayne Beddow, 47, and Tracy Kelly, 46, are both 'desperate' addicts who have long records of stealing to feed their habits a court was told.  And a judge decided to try and tackle their long standing problems rather than sending them to prison, despite acknowledging the impact the shocking crime had on the victim.  The man, a member of the congregation at the Viznitz Orthodox synagogue on Leicester Road in Salford, had been using his Phylacteries during worship on September 20 last year the court was told.  Known as Teffilin in Hebrew, they are small leather cube boxes containing Torah texts written on parchment worn by male Jews aged 13 or over as a reminder to uphold the law of God.  The victim had finished using them and put them away in their velvet bag and protective case, and stored them away after praying at around 10:30am in the morning.  However, he was informed early the following day that there had been a burglary at the building and they had been stolen, Hasseb Yousaf, prosecuting, said.  No other details about the break-in were given at the short sentencing hearing at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown on Wednesday.  A judge said he accepted the pair didn't know what they had taken and quickly discarded them once they realised they wouldn't be able to sell them for drugs.  The, items, worth around £800 but of huge 'sacred' value were eventually recovered and handed back to their owner without damage.  Hunter Gray, defending Beddow, said he had been making very good progress on a previous probation service programme and described the incident as a 'lapse.'  "For a man with such a chronic drug addiction he was never going to be a complete success story" he said.  "But he assures your honour through me next time he appears here he will be backed by negative drug tests" he added.  Beddow and Kelly, both of Moston Street, Higher Broughton, Salford, pleaded guilty to burglary at an earlier hearing at the magistrates court.  A judge allowed Beddow, who has spent 10 weeks on remand, to continue tackling his problems outside prison sentencing him to a 12 month community order. He must also undergo a drug rehabilitation programme, which will be monitored monthly by the judge.  He will also be subject to a curfew between the hours of 8pm and 6am for six months.  Tracy Kelly was also given a 12 month community order with a nine month drug rehabilitation programme.  Judge Lawton told them: "You are both desperate drug addicts and you have stolen and burgled repeatedly to fund your addictions.  "You Wayne Beddow have made a career out of commercial burglary.  "On September 21 you went into a place of sacred worship and took items that were of sacred value to one member of the congregation at that synagogue.  "I am satisfied you didn't know what they were and that is why you quickly discarded them, as you realised no one was going to give you a few wraps of heroin for those.  "However to the person they belonged to that was an unbelievable desecration, and you must understand that."


veteranstoday--2019-03-16--New Zealand Mosques Attacks Who are Dividing the World on Religious Lines

New Zealand Mosques’ Attacks, Who are Dividing the World on Religious Lines?

At least 49 people have been killed and more than 40 others wounded in the terror attacks at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday (March 15, 2019) after a gunman opened indiscriminate fire at Muslim worshippers.  A 28-year-old Australian man, namely Brenton Tarrant was arrested by the police, who was charged with mass murder, using an automatic weapon and began firing. On Saturday (March 16, 2019), he appeared in court. Police also arrested two other men and one woman in connection with the attack—two of whom remain in custody.  Police said that two IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were found in a car and neutralised by the military.  New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said: “The assault on the mosques appeared to be a well-planned terrorist attack…This is, and will be, one of New Zealand’s darkest days”.  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also confirmed that the suspect charged with murder was an Australian citizen and described him as “an extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist”.  Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Saturday (March 16, 2019) that attempts had been made repeatedly to tighten New Zealand’s gun laws, but all had failed. She elaborated that the suspect had “travelled around the world with sporadic periods of time spent in New Zealand—New Zealand intelligence services had been stepping up investigations into far-right extremists—The individual charged with murder had not come to the attention of the intelligence community nor the police for extremism.”  According to reports of the Western media, “Attack apparently broadcast live on social media while, New Zealand’s authorities declined to discuss the potential motives behind the attack, but, the social media accounts in the name of Brenton Tarrant were used to post a lengthy racist document in which the author identified the mosques which were later attacked—an account linked to the gunman posted a link to an 87-page racist manifesto which was filled with anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim ideas and explanations for an attack. The text is called “The Great Replacement”, a phrase that originated in France and has become a rallying cry for European anti-immigration extremists. The suspect said he had begun planning an attack after visiting Europe in 2017 and being angered by events there.”  In this regard, Al Jazeera pointed out:  “In the manifesto, the shooter praised the US President Donald Trump and Anders Brevik -the Norwegian white supremacist who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011. The 74-page dossier, hailed Trump as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose…also claimed that he had brief contact with Breivik and had received a blessing for his actions from the mass murderer’s acquaintances…Trump, whose rhetoric is sometimes aligned with the far-right in the US, condemned the horrible massacre in a post on Twitter…A spokesperson for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) told Al Jazeera the sources of politically motivated violence in Australia are diverse-encompassing anyone who believes that violence is a justified means to further their political interests, which can include extreme right-wing ideologies”.  However, the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch cannot be seen in isolation. These terror attacks are part of a deliberate conspiracy to divide the world on religious lines. So, it needs in-depth analysis to know the real motives of the entities which are in collusion to complete their hidden agenda at the cost of the international community.  It is notable that since September 2015, when Russian-led coalition of Iran, Iraq, the Syrian army-the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Lebanon-based Hezbollah in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been achieving successes in Syria and Iraq by retaking several regions from the occupation of the CIA-Mossad led rebel groups and ISIS militants after their failure to topple the Assad government—proving links of Al-Qaeda’s Al-Nusra Front and ISIS with America and Israel, Israeli Mossad with the cooperation of some CIA agents started terrorism-related attacks in the US and Europe.  There is also an interrelationship of the terror attacks in the US, Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Philippines, Iran etc., and elsewhere in the world, which were false flag terror attacks, conducted by Mossad in connivance with the agents of Indian secret agency RAW and those of the vulnerable CIA operatives.  Through all these false flag terror operations, the US, Israel and India wanted to obtain their covert aims against Russia, China, Pakistan and the Muslims. Mossad had also provided the US President Donald Trump with an opportunity to manipulate various terror assaults of Europe and America to win the US presidential election and to reunite America and Europe, as a rift was created between America and its Western allies, especially Europe on a number of issues, including NATO and trade. The fanatic President Trump had left no stone unturned in implementing anti-Muslim policies, while speaking openly against the Muslims and Syrian immigrants.  In this connection, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s successful diplomacy surprised the Israel-led America and some European countries who wanted to oust the Assad regime to obtain the greater interests of Israel.  In response, taking note of various developments and some other ones such as reluctance of NATO countries to support America’s fake global war on terror,  acceptance of Syrian refuges by the European countries, especially Germany, criticism of the controversial Turkish-EU refugee deal by a number of human rights groups, the EU rule to boycott goods produced in Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU), after the referendum (Brexit) on June 24, 2016, prospects of Scotland and some other countries for separation from the EU, and the divide between the elite class which run multinational companies with the direct or indirect control of the Jews and the general masses who are suffering from multiple problems in wake of differences on the refugee crisis, Syrian war, Greece’s weak economy, violent protests against the labour laws in France etc.—the chances of European Union’s disintegration and a rift among the NATO countries, as noted in the recent past by the “Stop NATO protests in Europe were quite opposite to the Israeli secret interests.  Hence, Israeli Mossad which was in collaboration with the vulnerable CIA operatives organized terror assaults in the US and Europe. As part of the double game, these terror attacks were conducted by these secret agencies, particularly Mossad with the assistance of the ISIS terrorists who used the home-grown terrorists of these countries.  Owing to the irresponsible approach of the Western leaders and their media, far right-wing parties and “Stop Islam” movement in the West, especially in Europe has been becoming popular by largely attracting their people.Right-wing parties in a growing number of European countries have made electoral gains. The right-wing parties range across a wide policy spectrum, from populist and nationalist to far-right neofascist.  Other aims of Tel Aviv ware to muster the support of America’s Western allies against Russia in relation to the Syrian war, as US-led countries like France, UK also started airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, under the cover of targeting ISIL.  To what extent President Trump wants to obtain Israeli illegitimate goals at the cost of Muslims and the patriot Americans could be judged from the terrorism-related assaults which occurred in the Spanish city of Barcelona on August 17, 2017 and in her town of Cambrils on August 18, 2017. After condemning the terror attacks and offering US assistance to Spain, the US President Trump suggested “fighting terrorism by executing Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs blood.”  When American President Trump’s extremist policies were strongly criticized inside America and around the world, including America’s Western allies, his advisers, neoconservatives and Israeli-backed officials directed him to implement dual strategy of the former President George W. Bush and Barrack Obama, with the aim to keep the US and Western allies, particularly Europe united against Syria, Russia, China, Pakistan etc., while covertly continuing anti-Muslim rhetoric so as to safeguard the interests of Tel Aviv.  Nevertheless, Israel succeeded in its sinister designs. Notably, backing out from his earlier statements, American President Trump has changed his policy regarding trade war in connection with China and Europe  Here, it is mentionable that Machiavelli advises the rulers to have a lion-like image outwardly, and act upon the traits of goat inwardly. He also suggests them foreign adventures and the use of terror to obtain their goals. In his sense, a good ruler should be a good opportunist and hypocrite. While echoing Machiavelli, Morgenthau points out that sometimes, rulers act upon immoral activities like deceit, fraud, falsehood and even murder to fulfill their selfish aims.  President Trump has begun acting upon the discarded theory of the past in the modern era. It could be judged from his trip of Trump to the Middle East. Backing out from his earlier statements—banning the Muslims from entering the United States, vetting of the Muslims—blocking visas being issued to anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen—strict conditions for the citizens from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon, in Saudi Arabia, in his address at a regional summit in Riyadh, on May 22, 2017, President Donald Trump called for “Muslim unity in the fight against terrorism…a battle between good and evil…U.S. wants a coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism…This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it,” as he explained.  Like Bush and Obama, Trump described Islam as “a religion of peace” and did not use the contentious phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” as he frequently had in his speeches. Instead, he called on the Muslim leaders to honestly confront “the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups.”  Setting aside the Israeli-led US state terrorism and CIA-backed terror attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and other vulnerable Islamic countries, Trump singled out Iran, accusing Tehran of contributing to instability in the region. He supposedly said, “From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists, militias and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region.” Keeping Israeli covert agenda in his mind, Trump also stated that all the Muslim nations should boycott Iran, and also pledged to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for peace of the region.  Trump’s address was a mixture of calls for Israeli-Arab peace and a defense of Israel from threats in the region,including from the groups allied with the Palestinian cause.  President Trump also encouraged NATO-like alliance of Saudi Arabia, which includes the Sunni countries against Shia states, especially Iran and Yemen. It was formed on the instructions of Washington. As after the US-led invasion of the Afghanistan, Iraq, airstrikes on Libya and promotion of war in Syria had been clearly exposed, therefore, America revived the old phony global war on terror to secure the illegitimate interests of Tel Aviv, whose major aim was to deceive the Muslims.  Otherwise, it well-known that without bothering about criticism of the US-led Western countries and the Islamic World, including some law-makers and politicians at home, Trump Administration announced the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, last year.President Trump implemented his decision of December 6, 2018 by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and reversed nearly seven decades of American foreign policy and set in motion a plan to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to the fiercely contested Holy City.  It is of particular attention that it is owing to the encouragement of the President Trump that the Israeli regime officially declared their status as “the Jewish State” where only Jewish people have rights to self-determination.  Despite the revival of the fake global war on terror, some developments disappointed the Israelis. In this regard, Russia-Turkey alliance to fight the ISIS, victory of the Russian-led alliance over the CIA-Mossad-led rebel groups and ISIS terrorists, including Trump’s announcement to withdraw forces from Syria, Senate’s resolution against Trump regarding withdrawal from Saudi war in Yemen, Qatar-based direct talks between America and the Afghan Taliban with a view to withdrawing the US-led NATO forces from Afghanistan which has, rapidly, increased the cost of war, bringing about multiple internal crises, affecting the ordinary Americans and Western citizens, particularly those of Europe might be cited as example.  Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies, especially FBI has continued the so-called investigation that Russia and President Putin authorized the hacking of the November 8, 2016 US presidential election aimed to help Donald Trump to win it. Both Putin and Trump have denied the charges. In this respect, differences between CIA and FBI also frustrated Tel Aviv.  Besides, Tel Aviv wants to intensify the new Cold War between the US-led West and Russia so as to avoid the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, as some European countries have also been emphasizing on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the expansion of West Bank settlements and restart a negotiation process for the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue in wake of the debate between the Zionists and non-Zionist Jews in relation to the two-state solution of the issue.  Earlier, on January 15, 2016, France who is staunch supporter of the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue conducted a summit in Paris which was attended by 70 nations. In a statement, delegates at the summit also restated their commitment to the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and emphasized on them to restart negotiations. Palestinians welcomed the conference, but Israel called it “rigged”.  It is also of particular attention that by pursuing the double standards of America in its worst form, President Trump also intends to favour India, while opposing the nuclear weapons of Pakistan. However, like Obama, Trump has brushed aside the ground realities that Indian extremist Prime Minister Narendra Modi led by the ruling fundamentalist party BJP has been implementing anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan agenda, while encouraging Hindutva (Hindu nationalism). Encouraged by the BJP, assaults on Muslims, Christians and other minorities by the Hindu extremist parties might be cited as instance. India which has strategic partnership with Israel has perennially been manipulating the double game of the US-led West regarding world phenomena of terrorism in connection with Pakistan and Afghanistan.  As part of the double game, based in Afghanistan, operatives of CIA, RAW and  Mossad which have well-established their collective secret network there and are well-penetrated in the terrorist outfits like ISIS, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their affiliated Taliban groups are using their terrorists to destabilize Tibetan regions of China, Iranian Sistan-Baluchistan and Pakistan by arranging the subversive activities. In this context, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is their special target. Recent acts of terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Balochistan province are part of the same plan.  It is noteworthy that, taking cognizance of the growing threat of global terrorism which has been dividing the Western and Islamic nations on cultural and religious lines since 9/11, American and European governments had already started inter-faith dialogue especially between the Christian and Muslim nations. The main aim of such a dialogue was to create interfaith harmony among various religious communities. In the recent years, many conferences were held in various countries in which scholars from Islamic states also participated with a view to creating cultural understanding and interfaith cooperation among major religious communities. But, all these measures proved fruitless due to a deliberate anti-Muslim campaign, launched by the Indo-Israeli lobbies, resulting in obstacles in global interfaith harmony. America and its allies continued to kill many innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Palestine through heavy aerial bombardment and ground shelling in the name of war on terror. The occupying forces have been using every possible technique of state terrorism in these territories which have become the breeding grounds of a prolonged interaction between freedom fighters and state terrorists, thwarting global interfaith harmony.  It is because of these developments that a greater resentment is being found among the Muslims who think that America in connivance with the Indo-Israeli lobbies is sponsoring state terrorism, directly or indirectly from Kashmir to Palestine.  In this context, on October 19, 2007, the special issue of South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, under the caption-‘Working for India or against Islam? Islamophobia in Indian American Lobbies’ had written, “In the past few years, Indian American community has gained an unprecedented visibility in the international arena and now constitutes influential ethnic lobbies in Washington. Among other factors, Hindu aligned with Jewish pressure groups in relation to the war against terrorism and to further the India-Israel-US strategic partnership play a major role in exaggerating Islamophobic overtones in the Indian American lobbies”.  Another regrettable point is that irresponsible attitude of Indian, Israeli and some Western  politicians has introduced dangerous socio-religious dimension in their societies by equating the “war on terror” with “war on Islam” and acts of Al Qaeda with all the Muslims. Their media have also been contributing to heighten the currents of world politics on cultural and religious lines with the negative projection of Islam.  In order to obtain their sinister designs, Mossad, RAW and CIA operatives have also been assisting ISIS, Al Qaeda and similar terror outfits which have accepted responsibility in relation to various terrorism-related attacks on Christians in Egypt and some African countries, including some Western countries.  While, like other European countries, especially France, Mossad wanted to accelerate persecution of Muslims, hate-crime against them and also to compel the Britain to make discriminatory laws against them. So, besides other similar terror attacks which targeted places of worship of the Muslims in various countries, the terror assaults at two mosques of Christchurch are part of the same policy of Israel, which has been implemented by Mossad.  As regard the recent war-like situation between India and Pakistan, which started in the aftermath of the false flag Pulwama terror attack in the Indian Occupied Kashmir(IOK), tension which involves the risk of nuclear war still exists, as the extremist government of the BJP led by the Indian fundamentalist Prime Minister Modi has refused the mediatory role of any country, while continuing war hysteria against Pakistan in wake of acceleration of shelling across the Line of Control (LoC), which has resulted into many casualties in the Pakistani side of Kashmir. On the other side, Pakistan’s armed forces are on high alert to give a matching response to any Indian prospective aggression or war. Earlier, Indian Air Force conducted pre-emptive air strike near the town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s sector of Kashmir on February 27, 2018, claiming that Indianfighter jets targeted the camp of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and killed 350 militants—the group whom New Delhi blamed for the Pulwama attack. Next day, in response, Pakistan Air Force launched aerial strikes at six targets in the IOK and shot down two Indian fighter jets and captured Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman who was released as a gesture of peace and handed over to the Indian authorities. It resulted into diplomatic victory of Islamabad over India. Prime Minister Modi who has directed the Indian security forces to accelerate atrocities in the IOK, wants to obtain various nefarious designs, especially to suppress the Kashmiris’ war of liberation and to win the general elections 2019 at the cost of Pakistan. On the other side, Western media and their high officials are insisting upon the settlement of the Kashmir issue.  Nonetheless, like the fanatic President Trump, Israeli extremist Prime Minister Netanyahu who also intends to win the forthcoming elections at the cost of Palestinians, continues state terrorism on the occupied territories of the Palestinians. Both Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Netanyahu have been confused due to the above mentioned developments which do not favour Tel Aviv and New Delhi like the past, while, still some CIA agents, Indian RAW and particularly Mossad want to divide the world on religious lines. Like Israel, India also wants to keep its control on the Occupied Kashmir through state terrorism and to avoid its solution.  Although overtly President Trump has softened his external policy regarding Muslims and Islamic countries, yet covertly, he is acting upon the conspiracy of Mossad and RAW, which is also, intentionally or intentionally, being followed by America’s Western partners against the Muslims. If not checked in time by the peace-loving Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists, these policies of the President Donald Trump who is particularly completing the extremist agenda of Israel are likely to result into more recruitment in the militant outfits, especially in the ISIS group. Israel, who will never accept the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, will prefer to seek the final revenge by bringing about a major war between the Muslim and the Christian worlds or to cause a major war between Russia and the US-led some Western countries, which will convert the entire world into holocaust.  We may conclude that although agents of CIA, RAW and Mossad are in collaboration which managed various terrorism-related assaults in the US and Europe and elsewhere in the world, yet Mossad is, particularly, behind the terror attacks at the two mosques of Christchurch. In these terms, they have been radicalizing the Western nationals and the people of the Islamic World by dividing them on religious lines. When at present fanatic leaders are ruling over the US, Israeli and India, their connivance may culminate into ‘clash of civilizations’, especially between the Western Christians and the Muslim World.  Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations


westernjournal--2019-10-12--Cory Booker Twists Old Testament Bible Verse To Further LGBT Agenda

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey on Thursday used an Old Testament Bible verse to buttress his support for LGBT Americans.  The comment came during a CNN town hall event devoted to LGBT issues in which the Democratic presidential candidates attending vied with each other to show their willingness to support LGBT voters.  Booker was responding to a UCLA student who attended an all-girls Catholic high school in New Jersey. She complained that her high school would not allow an “LGBTQ-plus club.”  “It said in Micah, ‘Oh what do you want from your Lord? Oh what is it you want from your people?'” Booker said.  TRENDING: CNN Panelist on Dems' Fake Impeachment: 'This Is Not a Benghazi-Type Hearing, This Is Really Serious'  “Which is to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly — walk humbly — and, so for me, I cannot allow, as a leader, that people are going to use religion as a justification for discrimination.”  Booker claimed his position did not trample on anyone’s religious convictions.  “I can respect your religious freedoms but also protect people from discrimination,” he said. “My faith, as well as my American values, will make me fight on every front to make sure that people are not discriminating against someone because of who they are.”  Booker’s version of theology was called into question on Twitter.  RELATED: Cory Booker Takes Aim: 'There Are Definitely Moments Where You Listen to Joe Biden and Just Wonder'  During the event, Booker called violence against LGBT individuals a “national emergency” and noted his proposal to create an Office on Hate Crimes and White Supremacy, CNN reported.  “Thirty percent of LGBTQ youth, 30 percent, have reported missing school in the last month because of fears for their physical safety,” he said. “We live in a country where we still see regular, everyday violence and intimidation and bullying against Americans, because of who they are.”  “So, number one, I am going to appoint a secretary of education, first of all, that sees the dignity and the worth and the value of every one of our children, and I will have a department of education that takes the steps necessary to protect all children in America.”  Part of that, he said, was to re-impose an Obama-era edict that ordered all schools to let transgender individuals decide which bathroom they want to use.  President Donald Trump threw out that policy, saying the issue was for states and communities to decide.  “So first of all, point-blank, this is a real problem in America and I will, number one, change the Trump administration’s guidance back to what the Obama administration’s guidance was that schools should allow people to use the bathrooms that conforms with their gender identity, but we cannot stop there,” Booker said.  “We must use our Department of Justice and the Department of Education’s civil rights division to go after schools that are denying people equal rights and equal protections and that’s the last point I want to make,” he said.  We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.


aljazeera--2019-12-27--Montenegro adopts law on religion amid protests by pro-Serbs

The Parliament of Montenegro adopted a contested law on religious rights after chaotic scenes in the assembly that resulted in the detention of all pro-Serb opposition legislators.  The vote on Friday followed a day of nationwide protests by supporters of the Serbian Orthodox Church who say the law will strip the church of its property, including medieval monasteries and churches. The government has denied that.  Trying to prevent the vote, the pro-Serb legislators hurled what appeared to be a tear gas canister or a firecracker, and tried to destroy microphones in the parliament hall.  "We are ready to die for our church and that's what we are demonstrating tonight," opposition leader Andrija Mandic said shortly after midnight during the tumultuous session.  The law, approved by 45 ruling coalition legislators, says religious communities would need to produce evidence of ownership of their property from before 1918 when Montenegro joined a Balkan kingdom and lost its independence.  The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro described the law as "discriminatory and unconstitutional."  The church on Friday accused the Montenegrin authorities of "inciting divisions and hatred," and leading Montenegro "into a situation that cannot bring any good to anyone".  "Thanks to this, the Orthodox Christian faithful in Montenegro are facing one of the saddest Christmases in recent history," a church statement said. Serbian Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7.  Montenegro's population of about 620,000 is predominantly Orthodox Christian and the main church is the Serbian Orthodox Church. A separate Montenegrin Orthodox Church is not recognized by other Orthodox Christian churches.  Montenegro's pro-Western president has accused the Serbian Orthodox Church of promoting pro-Serb policies and seeking to undermine the country's statehood since it split from much larger Serbia in 2006.   Montenegrins remain divided over whether the small Adriatic state should foster close ties with Serbia.  About 30 percent of Montenegro's population identify as Serbs and were mostly against the split from Serbia.  Hundreds of pro-Serb opposition supporters on Thursday staged an all-day protest against the law, blocking roads and entrances to the capital. Dozens of riot officers used metal barriers to prevent crowds, including Orthodox priests, from reaching the parliament building where legislators debated the bill.  The Montenegrin prime minister said the country has the power to prevent more rioting.  "I believe in peace in Montenegro," Dusko Markovic said.


bigleaguepolitics--2019-12-26--Pope Francis Unveils Globalist New World Religion at Summit with United Nations Leader

Pope Francis’ war on traditional Catholicism has been ramping up recently, and he castigated Catholics who believe in tradition and refuse to warp Biblical scripture to appease a godless world for creating a “minefield of misunderstanding and hatred.”  “Rigidity and imbalance fuel one another in a vicious circle,” he said. “And these days, the temptation to rigidity has become so apparent.”  Latest: WTH: South Dakota is the Next Red State to Take in Refugees  Francis revealed the dogma that he intends to replace belief in Christ as savior with last week. He is advocating for Catholics to unite behind a one world government, and surrender their freedom and sovereignty to international interests.  take our poll - story continues below  “Trust and dialogue between people and between nations, in multilateralism, in the role of international organizations, and in diplomacy as an instrument for appreciation and understanding, is indispensable for building a peaceful world,” Francis claimed.  “Your clear moral voice shines through – whether you are speaking out on the plight of the most vulnerable, including refugees and migrants … confronting poverty and inequalities … appealing for disarmament… building bridges between communities … and, of course, highlighting the climate emergency through your historic encyclical, ‘Laudato Si’, and so many other vital efforts,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said during his meeting with the pontiff.  The “Laudato Si” was a blasphemous encyclical letter issued by Francis in 2015 calling for world government to solve the supposed global warming crisis.  “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day,” Francis wrote in his second encyclical.  Francis added: “Enforceable international agreements are urgently needed, since local authorities are not always capable of effective intervention… International and regional conventions do exist, but fragmentation and the lack of strict mechanisms of regulation, control and penalization end up undermining these efforts… What is needed, in effect, is an agreement on systems of governance for the whole range of so-called ‘global commons.’”  Francis made fighting global warming a focal point of his speech while standing next to Guterres in the Vatican last week.  “It is necessary to recognize oneself as members of a single humanity and to take care of our land which, generation after generation, has been entrusted to us by God in custody so that we may cultivate it and leave it in inheritance to our children. Commitment to reducing polluting emissions and comprehensive ecology is urgent and necessary: let’s do something before it’s too late,” Francis said.  “We cannot – we must not – look the other way at the injustices, the inequalities, the scandal of hunger in the world, of poverty, of children who die because they have no water, food, the necessary care. We can’t look the other way at any kind of abuse against the little ones. We must fight this plague together,” he said.  Francis – the protector of pedophile predator priests – is an agent of the new world order, working to subvert authentic Christianity at a time when it is under unprecedented attack.


cnsnews--2019-02-12--Cory Booker Before You Speak of Your Religion You Should Show It by How You Treat Other People

Cory Booker: ‘Before You Speak of Your Religion You Should Show It by How You Treat Other People’

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Cory Booker (D.-N.J.) said in a Tweet on Sunday that people need to show their religion in how they treat other people before they start speaking about it.  “I always say before you speak about your religion you should show it by how you treat other people,” Booker said in his Tweet. “Had the privilege of worshipping this morning at Right Direction Ministries, a congregation that is dedicated to serving the Columbia, S.C., community.


cnsnews--2019-02-13--Sen Lee Democrats Questioning Nominees on Religion Flatly Inconsistent with Constitution

Sen. Lee: Democrats Questioning Nominees on Religion ‘Flatly Inconsistent’ with Constitution

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) rebuked Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) for Senate Democrats’ recent questioning of several judicial nominees, which focused on the nominees’ religious beliefs. Lee said that questioning a nominee about his or her religious beliefs was “flatly inconsistent” with the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits religious tests of those seeking federal office.  “The problem with asking a nominee about the particulars of his or her religious beliefs is that those questions inevitably expose those beliefs as somehow a qualifier or disqualifier for public office,” Sen. Lee said during the February 7, 2019 hearing. “That is flatly inconsistent with at least the letter – at least the spirit, if not also the letter of at least two provisions of the Constitution. I cannot fathom why this would ever make sense to do.”  Lee’s remarks came just two days after Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) asked judicial nominee Neomi Rao, who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, whether she believed gay relationships “are a sin.”  Sen. Booker’s remarks were only the most recent in a series of incidents in which Democrat senators have questioned nominees on their personal religious beliefs. In December 2018, Hirono and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) pointedly asked judicial nominee Brian Buescher about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization. And, in September 2017, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said to then-nominee Amy Coney Barrett, “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern,” in an apparent reference to Barrett’s Catholic faith.  In an attempt to stop these kinds of religious attacks, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution on Jan. 16 condemning religious tests for those seeking federal office. The resolution cited Article VI of the Constitution, which states in part that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”  Lee admonished his Senate colleagues, arguing that “there is never a good reason” to ask a nominee about his or her religious beliefs.  “There was a time in this country when people might have been asked, in a job interview context or in the context of a hearing like those we hold here, whether someone believed in God, whether they were Christian,” Lee said. “When they might have been asked those, it was not for – for a good reason, because there is never a good reason, in a public setting, to ask that question, save, perhaps, if you just want to make sure that that person’s religious beliefs do not require that person to betray the judicial oath. Beyond that, I can’t fathom a circumstance in which that would be appropriate.”  Lee then asked Hirono to explain how Booker’s questioning of Rao was “appropriate.”  “I would ask Senator Hirono, in what circumstance, in what way, shape or form, is asking Neomi Rao whether she believes particular conduct to be sinful an appropriate question to be asked in this committee, ever,” Lee said.  Hirono responded, arguing that questions on religious views were a “legitimate area of inquiry.”  “These probing questions – I, I – if you were to list all of the questions that we ask, they have to do with whether or not these nominees’ very strongly-held religious views, as well as any other views that may not enable them to be objective as judges in lifetime positions,” Hirono said. “I think that’s a legitimate area of inquiry. And it is not that we all ask, ‘Do you think such-and-such is a sin, et cetera, et cetera,’ although—”  “Well, that was asked this week – this week!” Lee pointed out. “This week, it was asked. I’m not making this up!”


drudgereport--2019-04-06--America Godless Number of people with no religion soars

America Godless? Number of people with no religion soars...

The number of Americans who identify as having no religion has risen 266 percent since 1991, to now tie statistically with the number of Catholics and Evangelicals, according to a new survey.  People with no religion – known as 'nones' among statisticians – account for 23.1 percent of the U.S. population, while Catholics make up 23 percent and Evangelicals account for 22.5 percent, according to the General Social Survey.  Those three groups now represent the largest the religious groups in America.  The survey has tracked a broad swath of American trends since 1972, offering comprehensive insight into the evolving face of religion over more than four decades.  Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University who analyzed the data, said that experts have several theories about why the number of 'nones' has risen so dramatically in recent decades.  'One of them is that many people used to lie about what they were,' he told DailyMail.com. 'Many people were (always) atheist or non-religious, but it was previously culturally unacceptable to not have a religion in America.'  Shifting political ideologies about social issues has also played a role, with fewer Americans comfortable with the rhetoric of their religious leaders.  'Another (theory) is that the religious right kind of cleaved moderate Christianity and a lot of moderate Christians who were moderately attached said they didn't want to defend Jerry Falwell … and all the anti-gay and anti- abortion religious rights leaders,' Burge said. 'So they said, 'You know what? I'm out.'  As the 'nones' have ascended, the number of mainline Protestant Christians has fallen 62.5 percent since 1982, to now account for just 10.8 percent of the U.S. population, according to the survey.  The number of Catholics has gone up and down over the decades, cumulatively decreasing more than 4 percentage points from 27.3 percent in 1972.  However, that indicates an overall stability for that religion, despite the decades of sexual abuse scandals that have plagued the Church, Burge said.  'Catholicism is more cultural than religious in a lot of ways,' he said. 'People are less and less likely to disaffiliate from Catholicism than Protestantism, which is less cultural in that people are willing to walk away from it.'  Burge said that America is on a trajectory to become increasingly less religious going forward – following a pattern that has already emerged in Europe's most developed countries, including those in Scandinavia.  'The big questions is what next in terms of what religion is going to look like in America,' he said. 'Secularization theory argues that as countries become more industrialized and prosperous then the throwing off of religion becomes more normalized.'  Burge has seen the overall shifts first hand in his role as a pastor at an American Baptist church.  'My church is on the decline,' he said. 'We had 50 (congregants) in 2005 and now we have 15. We're probably going to have to close (in a few years).'  'Mainline Christianity is dying,' he added. 'It's at least going away. It makes me feel more comfortable that it's not my fault or my church's fault. It's part of a bigger trend that's happening.'


fivethirtyeight--2019-07-26--What Americans Know About Religion And What They Dont

What Americans Know About Religion — And What They Don’t  Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.  The Pew Research Center asked Americans 32 multiple-choice questions about religion and spirituality earlier this year. The quiz — which you can still take — included questions such as, “What is commemorated on Easter Sunday?” (The choices for responses were ascension, crucifixion, Last Supper and, the correct response, resurrection.) Nearly 11,000 people answered the questions, and Pew released the results this week.  According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 42.7 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 53.2 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -10.5 points). At this time last week, 42.5 percent approved and 52.6 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -10.1 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 42.2 percent and a disapproval rating of 51.7 percent, for a net approval rating of -9.5 points.  In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot, Democrats currently lead by 6.4 percentage points (46.2 percent to 39.8 percent). A week ago, Democrats led Republicans by 6.4 points (46.2 percent to 39.8 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats by 5.8 points (46.1 percent to 40.3 percent).

Perry Bacon Jr. (perry.bacon@fivethirtyeight.com)


fivethirtyeight--2019-12-12--Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

Millennials have earned a reputation for reshaping industries and institutions — shaking up the workplace, transforming dating culture, and rethinking parenthood. They’ve also had a dramatic impact on American religious life. Four in ten millennials now say they are religiously unaffiliated, according to the Pew Research Center. In fact, millennials (those between the ages of 23 and 38) are now almost as likely to say they have no religion as they are to identify as Christian. .  For a long time, though, it wasn’t clear whether this youthful defection from religion would be temporary or permanent. It seemed possible that as millennials grew older, at least some would return to a more traditional religious life. But there’s mounting evidence that today’s younger generations may be leaving religion for good.  Social science research has long suggested that Americans’ relationship with religion has a tidal quality — people who were raised religious find themselves drifting away as young adults, only to be drawn back in when they find spouses and begin to raise their own families. Some argued that young adults just hadn’t yet been pulled back into the fold of organized religion, especially since they were hitting major milestones like marriage and parenthood later on.  But now many millennials have spouses, children and mortgages — and there’s little evidence of a corresponding surge in religious interest. A new national survey from the American Enterprise Institute of more than 2,500 Americans found a few reasons why millennials may not return to the religious fold. (One of the authors of this article helped conduct the survey.) • For one thing, many millennials never had strong ties to religion to begin with, which means they were less likely to develop habits or associations that make it easier to return to a religious community. • Young adults are also increasingly likely to have a spouse who is nonreligious, which may help reinforce their secular worldview. • Changing views about the relationship between morality and religion also appear to have convinced many young parents that religious institutions are simply irrelevant or unnecessary for their children.  Millennials may be the symbols of a broader societal shift away from religion, but they didn’t start it on their own. Their parents are at least partly responsible for a widening generational gap in religious identity and beliefs; they were more likely than previous generations to raise their children without any connection to organized religion. According to the AEI survey, 17 percent of millennials said that they were not raised in any particular religion compared with only five percent of Baby Boomers. And fewer than one in three (32 percent) millennials say they attended weekly religious services with their family when they were young, compared with about half (49 percent) of Baby Boomers.  A parent’s religious identity (or lack thereof) can do a lot to shape a child’s religious habits and beliefs later in life. A 2016 Pew Research Center study found that regardless of the religion, those raised in households in which both parents shared the same religion still identified with that faith in adulthood. For instance, 84 percent of people raised by Protestant parents are still Protestant as adults. Similarly, people raised without religion are less apt to look for it as they grow older — that same Pew study found that 63 percent of people who grew up with two religiously unaffiliated parents were still nonreligious as adults.  But one finding in the survey signals that even millennials who grew up religious may be increasingly unlikely to return to religion. In the 1970s, most nonreligious Americans had a religious spouse and often, that partner would draw them back into regular religious practice. But now, a growing number of unaffiliated Americans are settling down with someone who isn’t religious — a process that may have been accelerated by the sheer number of secular romantic partners available, and the rise of online dating. Today, 74 percent of unaffiliated millennials have a nonreligious partner or spouse, while only 26 percent have a partner who is religious.  Luke Olliff, a 30-year-old man living in Atlanta, says that he and his wife gradually shed their religious affiliations together. “My family thinks she convinced me to stop going to church and her family thinks I was the one who convinced her,” he said. “But really it was mutual. We moved to a city and talked a lot about how we came to see all of this negativity from people who were highly religious and increasingly didn’t want a part in it.” This view is common among young people. A majority (57 percent) of millennials agree that religious people are generally less tolerant of others, compared to only 37 percent of Baby Boomers.  Young adults like Olliff are also less likely to be drawn back to religion by another important life event — having children. For much of the country’s history, religion was seen as an obvious resource for children’s moral and ethical development. But many young adults no longer see religion as a necessary or even desirable component of parenting. Less than half (46 percent) of millennials believe it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. They’re also much less likely than Baby Boomers to say that it’s important for children to be brought up in a religion so they can learn good values (57 percent vs. 75 percent).  These attitudes are reflected in decisions about how young adults are raising their children. 45 percent of millennial parents say they take them to religious services and 39 percent say they send them to Sunday school or a religious education program. Baby Boomers, by contrast, were significantly more likely to send their children to Sunday school (61 percent) and to take them to church regularly (58 percent).  Mandie, a 32-year-old woman living in southern California and who asked that her last name not be used, grew up going to church regularly but is no longer religious. She told us she’s not convinced a religious upbringing is what she’ll choose for her one-year-old child. “My own upbringing was religious, but I’ve come to believe you can get important moral teachings outside religion,” she said. “And in some ways I think many religious organizations are not good models for those teachings.”  Why does it matter if millennials’ rupture with religion turns out to be permanent? For one thing, religious involvement is associated with a wide variety of positive social outcomes like increased interpersonal trust and civic engagement that are hard to reproduce in other ways. And this trend has obvious political implications. As we wrote a few months ago, whether people are religious is increasingly tied to — and even driven by — their political identities. For years, the Christian conservative movement has warned about a tide of rising secularism, but research has suggested that the strong association between religion and the Republican Party may actually be fueling this divide. And if even more Democrats lose their faith, that will only exacerbate the acrimonious rift between secular liberals and religious conservatives.  “At that critical moment when people are getting married and having kids and their religious identity is becoming more stable, Republicans mostly do still return to religion — it’s Democrats that aren’t coming back,” said Michele Margolis, author of “From the Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.” in an interview for our September story.  Of course, millennials’ religious trajectory isn’t set in stone — they may yet become more religious as they age. But it’s easier to return to something familiar later in life than to try something completely new. And if millennials don’t return to religion and instead begin raising a new generation with no religious background, the gulf between religious and secular America may grow even deeper.


globalresearch--2019-02-07--Why Is Islam the Fastest Growing Religion of the Modern Era

Why Is Islam the Fastest Growing Religion of the Modern Era?

What bothers me is not that we are unable to find solutions to our problems, what bothers me more is the fact that neoliberals are so utterly unaware of real structural issues that their attempts to sort out tangential problems will further exacerbate the main issues. Religious extremism, militancy and terrorism are not the cause but the effect of poverty, backwardness and disenfranchisement.  Empirically speaking, if we take all other aggravating factors out, such as poverty, illiteracy, disenfranchisement, deliberate training and arming of certain militant groups by regional and global players and, more importantly, grievances against the duplicitous Western foreign policy, I don’t think that the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the likes would find abundant supply of foot soldiers that they are getting now in insurgency-wracked regions of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.  Although I do concede that the rallying call of “jihad in the way of God” might be one reason for abundant supply of foot soldiers to jihadists’ cause, on an emotional level, it is the self-serving and hypocritical Western interventionist policy in the energy-rich Middle East region that adds fuel to the fire. When Muslims all over the Islamic countries see that their brothers-in-faith are getting massacred in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, on an emotional level, they feel outraged and seek justice.  This emotional outrage, in my opinion, is a far more potent factor that makes Muslims vulnerable to radical ideologies and violence than the sterile theological argument of God’s supposed command to fight holy wars against infidels. If we take all other contributing factors out of the equation, I don’t think the Muslims are an “exceptional” breed of human beings who are hell-bent on killing heretics all over the world.  Peaceful, or not, Islam is only a religion just like any other cosmopolitan religion whether it’s Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism. Instead of taking an essentialist approach, that lays emphasis on essences, we need to look at the evolution of social phenomena in its proper historical context.  For instance: to assert that human beings are evil by nature is an essentialist approach; it overlooks the role played by nurture in grooming human beings. Human beings are only intelligent by nature; they are neither good nor evil by nature; whatever they are, whether good or evil, is the outcome of their nurture or upbringing.  Similarly, to pronounce that Islam is a retrogressive or violent religion is an essentialist approach; it overlooks how Islam and its scriptures are interpreted by its followers depending on the subject’s socio-cultural context. For example: the Western expat Muslims who are brought up in the West and have imbibed Western values would interpret a Quranic verse in a liberal fashion; an urban middle class Muslim of the Muslim-majority countries would interpret the same verse rather conservatively; and a rural-tribal Muslim who has been indoctrinated by the radical clerics would find meanings in it which could be extreme. It is all about culture rather than religion or scriptures per se.  Regarding Islamic radicalism, if we look at the evolution of Islamic religion and culture throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, it hasn’t been natural. Some deleterious mutations have occurred somewhere which have negatively impacted the Islamic societies all over the world.  Social conditioning plays the same role in social sciences that natural selection plays in biological sciences. It selects the traits, norms and values which are most beneficial to the host culture. Seen from this angle, social diversity is a desirable quality for social progress, because when diverse customs and value systems compete with each other, the culture retains the beneficial customs and values and discards the harmful traditions and habits.  A decentralized and less organized religion, like Sufi (mystical) Islam, engenders diverse strains of beliefs and opinions which compete with one another in gaining social acceptance and currency. A heavily centralized and tightly organized religion, on the other hand, depends more on authority and dogma than on value and utility. In addition, a centralized religion is also more ossified and less adaptive to change compared to a decentralized faith.  Islam is regarded as the fastest growing religion of the 20th and 21st centuries. According to World Religion Database, the share of world population by religion during the last century was:  Thus, while the number of adherents of all other religions has remained static or dwindled, the proselytization of Islam has nearly doubled during the last century.  The only feature that sets Islam apart from the rest of major cosmopolitan religions, like Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, and which is also primarily responsible for this atavistic phenomena of Islamic resurgence in the modern era is that Islam as a religion and political ideology has the world’s richest financiers.  After the 1973 collective Arab oil embargo against the West in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war, the price of oil quadrupled; and the contribution of the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs toward the ‘spiritual well-being’ of Muslims all over the world magnified proportionally. This is the reason why we are witnessing an exponential growth of Islamic charities and madrassas (religious seminaries) all over the world and particularly in the Islamic world.  The phenomena of Islamic radicalism all over the world is directly linked to Islamic madrassas that are generously funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars. These madrassas attract children from the most impoverished backgrounds in the Third World Islamic countries, because they offer the kind of incentives and facilities which even the government-funded public schools cannot provide: such as free boarding and lodging, free meals for destitute students, no tuition fee at all and free of cost books and stationery; some generously funded madrassas even pay monthly stipends to their students.  Moreover, it’s a misconception that the Arab sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and some conservative emirates of UAE generally sponsor the Wahhabi-Salafi sect of Islam. The difference between numerous sects of Sunni Islam is more nominal than substantive. Islamic charities and madrassas belonging to all the Sunni denominations get generous funding from the Gulf Arab states as well as from wealthy private donors.  Besides madrassas, another factor that promotes the Gulf’s Wahhabi-Salafi ideology in the Islamic world is the ritual of Hajj and Umrah. Every year, millions of Muslim men and women from all over the Islamic world travel to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to perform the pilgrimage.  When the pilgrims return home to their native countries, after spending a month or two in Saudi Arabia, along with cleansed hearts and purified souls, they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their supposedly ‘true and authentic’ version of Islam, which some Muslims, especially the backward rural folks, find attractive and worth-emulating.  Yet another factor which contributes to the rise of Wahhabi-Salafi ideology throughout the Islamic world is the migrant workers. Millions of Muslim men, women and families from all over the developing Islamic countries live and work in energy-rich Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Some of them permanently reside there but mostly they work on temporary work permits.  Just like the pilgrims, when the migrant workers return home to their native villages and towns, they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their version of supposedly ‘authentic Islam.’ Spending time in the Gulf Arab states entitles one to pass authoritative judgments on religious matters, and having a cursory understanding of Arabic, the language of Quran, makes one equivalent of a Qazi (a learned jurist) amongst illiterate, rural Muslims; and such charlatans simply reproduce the customs and traditions of the Arabs as the authentic version of Islam to their backward rural communities.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.