Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Pluralism: Tolerance and Accommodation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pluralism: Tolerance and Accommodation. Show all posts

Friday, January 31, 2020

Pluralism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow - Why Its Important to Know and Accept




Imagining a Brotherhood of Man

by R.E. Slater
January 31, 2020

Contemporary societies either move forward accepting multiethnic, multicultural compositions or endlessly fight for pure blood societies of their imaginations which can never return to the "good old days" of "one race, one religion, one meaning." Not now, not then, not in "biblical times." The race of men will always hold wide and varied beliefs. It will never be otherwise. The plea for accepting pluralism requires seeing another as equal and important. The latter observation of one religion, or one race above all others, diminishes both being and outcome.

As a Christian, God loves all without preference. The church must then obey and do the same. The days of assimilating western practises and beliefs into the Christian faith are gone. Post-colonialism says those days are done and over and must never be returned to. Pluralistic cultures do not colonize. They find ways to elevate common ground in appreciative respect.

Populism, or nationalized Christian faith, refuses these acts in power moves to restrict, curtail, deny, and barricade the rights of minorities and diversely different religions. Yet statistically those same minorities and religions will continue to grow and expand thus creating greater conflict with old guard traditionalists refusing foreign thoughts and beliefs beyond their own rationalized structures. Missions accept the difference and work within cultures of difference.

Societies which successfully navigate these waters must therefore deconstruct their beliefs before they can positively reconstruct their faith on a pluralistic basis. One could say this is occurring now in America but one could also say it is failing as ideological Christian borders rise higher and broader across the hearts of white Christians wishing to force their sectarian ideas of westernism above all other beliefs thereby refusing pluralistic attitudes and behavior in the Christan faith which might otherwise thrive openly with embraced welcome by churches, schools, and religious bodies of convention.




One last... if God is God then we shouldn't worry if pluralism will drown out God's voice. He is, and because He is - in a different non-colonizing way - it is the old attitudes, beliefs and theologies of Christianity which must change. Which must release God from bondage by freeing Him to be who He is apart from our restricting cultural ideas of who God should be.

Christianity has always acted and taught that God is trans-national, trans-geographical, and trans-temporal. This means that God is the God of all nations, across all places on the earth, and across all eras. So let us now double down on practicing these ancient acknowledgements even as the Hebrew Christians had relaxed their Jewish rituals; as Paul did when preaching to Greek and Roman alike; as Philip and Mark had when bearing Christ's message to Egypt and Africa; and, as the Apostle Thomas did bearing the gospel into India.

There should never be any fear in discovering God in new ways through the lenses of other cultures. It is enough to appreciate how God can be seen through the eyes of fellow Christians across the world beginning first with our Catholic Hispanic neighbors and all Muslim Christians who have come to America for sanctuary. I find it even more interesting that some immigrants have come to "Christian" America to missionize us as lost ones to the gospel of Christ. It seems both ironic and paradoxical but I am so very grateful to our foreign brother's hearts in passionate witness for Jesus. Even as many of God's remnant residing in here in America are similarly burdened, working out of positions of pluralism and welcome to all segments of society, including the gay and trans populations of America.

by R.E. Slater
January 31, 2020


Amazon Link

An Introduction to Christian Worldview:
Pursuing God's Perspective in a Pluralistic World

Publ October 10, 2017
Description

Everyone has a worldview. A worldview is the lens through which we interpret the cosmos and our lives in it. A worldview answers the big questions of life: What is our nature? What is our world? What is our problem? What is our end? As Anderson, Clark, and Naugle point out, our worldview cannot simply be reduced to a series of rational beliefs. We are creatures of story, and the kinds of stories we tell reveal important things about our worldview. Part of being a thoughtful Christian means being able to understand and express the Christian worldview as well as developing an awareness of the variety of worldviews. An Introduction to Christian Worldview takes you further into answering questions such as the following:

  • Why do worldviews matter?
  • What characterizes a Christian worldview?
  • How can we analyze and describe a worldview?
  • What are the most common secular and religious worldviews?

Well organized, clearly written, and featuring aids for learning, An Introduction to Christian Worldview is the essential text for either the classroom or for self-study.


Website Link

A Focused Session from our
2010 Ecclesia National Gathering


There is no question that we are living in the midst of a pluralistic society. For much of the western world, this is new territory that is becoming increasingly complex to grabble with and help those in our congregations understand. Inadequately dealing with the issues that a pluralistic society creates also hampers the confidence of those in our congregations towards mission and evangelism. In this session, Willard will address the issue of how the Christian gospel interacts with the pluralism of western society and offer a reason approached to re-establish confidence in the uniqueness of the gospel of Jesus.



Amazon Link


Authenticity and Religion in the Pluralistic Age:
A Simmelian Study of Christian Evangelicals
and New Monastics

by Francesca E.S. Montemaggi
Publ March 19, 2019
Description

This book provides an original concept of authenticity to illuminate the transformation of Christian consciousness in the increasingly more secular and pluralistic culture of Western societies. The present work is unique in offering an in-depth study of Simmel’s sociology and philosophy in dialogue with an ethnographic account of contemporary Christians. It develops original concepts drawing on Simmel’s writings on individuality and religion and connecting them with classical and contemporary scholarship in sociology and philosophy. The theoretical framework is illustrated through an analysis of the narratives and practices of Christians in an evangelical church in the UK and several New Monastic communities in the UK, US, and Canada. The book proposes an understanding of belief as relational and experiential and a concept of authenticity, as self-transcendence articulated in dialogue with religious tradition and the Other. Religious tradition is developed through an on-going process of interpretation and sacralization of what is considered within and without the tradition’s boundaries. The book also proposes an innovative approach to the study of morality by distinguishing between a people-centered ethic (ethic of compassion) and a norm-centered ethic (ethic of purity) to account for the the different ways in which Christians engage with the Other. This allows an exploration of the relationship between ethics and the making and breaking of boundaries in a given community. The case studies in this book show that committed Christians attempt to reconcile commitment to their tradition with the value of inclusiveness and to affirm their moral and religious identity as a distinctive moral lifestyle, not superior, but of equal worth to those of non-Christians.



Saturday, January 17, 2015

Terrorism Is Wrong; So Is Ridiculing People’s Faiths


Roger Olson
January 17, 2015

I agree with Pope Francis. Terrorism is bad, wrong, evil, condemnable. But viciously ridiculing people’s sincerely held religious beliefs and convictions and life forms is also bad and, while violence is not a justified response to it, some kind of reaction is predictable.

Satire is one thing; ridicule is something else. But the line between them is thin. But here’s one line between that people might consider respecting: It’s okay to satirize beliefs and practices that are abhorrent to common humanity (such as terrorism, abuse, “holy war,” etc.) and not okay to ridicule innocent people who do not engage in such–even if their beliefs are odd in comparison to “mainstream” beliefs. It’s also not okay to hold up for ridicule people’s holy relics, shrines, symbols, etc.

Years ago I read this maxim: “Do not blaspheme the sacrament you do not understand.” Amen.

Having said that, I will add that I think it demonstrates a certain amount of insecurity about one’s own religion to get very worked up about unbelievers’ ridiculing of it. If the ridicule could lead to persecution and oppression, that’s one thing. That needs to be pointed out and strongly opposed. However, if the ridicule (which I never endorse or defend) is aimed at a powerful, strong religion that tends to enforce its particular beliefs and practices on others, well, the adherents of that religion ought to consider whether they brought the ridicule on themselves.

I grew up in a religious form of life that was widely ridiculed by others–so much so that anyone who would publicly identify with it could count on being considered a “holy roller,” religious fanatic, probably ignorant, stupid and maybe crazy. I suffered much religious ridicule and even persecution for reading my Bible during “study hall” and for handing out “The Four Spiritual Laws” (a tract) to classmates. It made me very sensitive to ridicule and persecution of others. Today, when Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door I always speak kindly to them, congratulate them for taking time to share their faith with others and say to them “We ought to be doing more of that.” And I apologize for any of my neighbors who might slam the door in their faces.

None of that means I don’t criticize Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs; I do. But it means no matter how much I may disagree, I must treat them respectfully as persons.

Ridicule has no place in religious discourse except in the rare instances where a religion is simply invented for profit and/or engages in abuse (sexual, physical or spiritual). But in those cases it is the leaders, not the poor, benighted followers, who ought to be ridiculed. But, in my opinion, it is never appropriate to ridicule an entire religious tradition and when it happens a strong reaction is predictable even if violence is never justified.


Thursday, January 8, 2015

The Peril of Living in the Past in the 21st Century's Age of Global Pluralism, Inclusion, and Ethics


Today's series of articles could well be entitled:

"The Occident and the Orient:
Europe's Sociological Identity Meets the Fears of its Past"

or

"Identifying Our Perceptual Reality to the Historical Actuality
of What Constitutes Societal Freedom."

or

"Let Common Sense Apply"

Behind each idea lie the supposition of what a nation, a country, or a people will consider the kind of identity that determines who they are. And to this identity is eschewed any attempts to remove its caricatures of itself from its formed necessity of what we deem as us.

The terrorism that inhabits our world are the result of our formed societal identities clashing against an "opposing invading culture with its own ethos and needs." To the Muslim, the need for a rigorous society built upon presupposed religious values drives all other efforts towards nation building. But so too can this be said of the Christian civilizations attempting the same under its own set of rules and laws.

Each has its own ideas of God, of reality, of community. To the West the need for individualized human freedoms outweigh many other factors. To the East freedom is subservient to the greater need of the Oriental society to be in submission to perceived individual roles and values. One gives greater credence to individual freedoms. The other to individual submission to societal forms and factors.

As a consequence, the clash or divide has lasted as long as the Roman Empire had met the Persian Empires. Or, the Ottoman Empire the Christian Church. In its long eras of schism a sharp division has been created between what a Greek or Roman law of civilization might look like as compared with one that has become known as Shariah law. One is a pagan code of conduct that later was Christianized whereas the other is moral law that has become based upon the Muslim religion:

Wikipedia - Sharia Law is a significant source of legislation in various Muslim countries, namely Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Brunei, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In those countries, harsh physical punishments such as flogging and stoning are said to be legally-acceptable according to Sharia. There are two primary sources of sharia law: the precepts set forth in theQuranic verses (ayahs), and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Where it has official status, sharia is interpreted by Islamic judges (qadis) with varying responsibilities for the religious leaders (imams). For questions not directly addressed in the primary sources, the application of sharia is extended through consensus of the religious scholars (ulama) thought to embody the consensus of the Muslim Community (ijma). Islamic jurisprudence will also sometimes incorporate analogies from the Quran and Sunnah through qiyas, though many scholars also prefer reasoning ('aql) to analogy.

Each perceives the rules of conduct between people and society from its own philosophical and religious base of morals and ethics wrapped around its own idea of regional identity. Each is as respectively harsh as the other - or was, with Western law lately ceding to less stringent public punishments and judgments (much belated in this author's opinion):

Wikipedia - The introduction of Sharia is a longstanding goal for Islamist movements globally, including in Western countries, but attempts to impose sharia have been accompanied by controversy, violence, and even warfare. Most countries do not recognize sharia; however, some countries in Asia, Africa and Europe recognize sharia and use it as the basis for divorce, inheritance and other personal affairs of their Islamic population. In Britain, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal makes use of sharia family law to settle disputes, and this limited adoption of sharia is controversial.

The concept of crime, judicial process, justice and punishment embodied in sharia is different from that of secular law. The differences between sharia and secular laws have led to an ongoing controversy as to whether sharia is compatible with secular forms of government, the human right "freedom of thought," and in general "women's rights."

In secular jurisprudence, sharia is classified as religious law, which is one of the three major categories that individual legal systems generally fall under, alongside civil law andcommon law.

Consequently, today's articles reflect upon this cultural clash between the East and the West and how each wishes to conduct its own laws in the lands of the other. In many ways, it is not unlike what had formed the necessity of the English Magna Carta as it finally ceded warfare between European states and said, "When in Rome do as the Romans." Or, when in another country respect the laws of that country without attempt to reform or incursion. Perhaps its time that the Magna Carta is resurrected in the 500th year of its enactment and we take it to heart again.

R.E. Slater
January 13, 2015

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What Is Behind Europe's Rising Islamophobia?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexander-gorlach/europe-rising-islamophobia_b_6414264.html?ir=Religion&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051

by Alexander Görlach, Found and publisher of The European
January 5, 2015

BERLIN -- Recent arson attacks on mosques in Germany and Sweden, along with the emergence of a movement called the "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident," prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel to deliver a "never again" New Year's message to her compatriots in anticipation of Monday's demonstrations in Dresden. Warning against supporting PEGIDA, she said "their hearts are cold, often full of prejudice and even hate."

What is behind this most recent aggressive burst of anti-Islamic sentiment? How should we view it?

The landmass of the Occident spans the territory of many countries; its meaning becomes apparent only in juxtaposition to its counterpart, the Orient. It has more frequently perished in countless texts, speeches and films than all actually existing empires throughout human history combined. In short: The Occident is a fiction -- and that quality has always made it a powerful canvas for the projection of human fears and desires.

The Occident lies towards the Western sunset. Its lands are those of nightfall: heavy, full of melancholy, straining for the final rays of daylight, and hesitantly expecting the pale light of the rising moon. During the Middle Ages, stone-carved creatures of the imagination flanked the walls of Europe's cathedrals and conjured up images of nightly evils: When night falls, darkness envelops the souls of men and threatens them with extinction. The hour of sunset signals the advent of corporeal and spiritual danger. It takes tremendous power to hold demons at bay and to weather the temptations of the night. Two paradigms thus help to map the terrain of the Occident: the fear of darkness, and the belief in the divine light.

Christian churches are built with East-facing chancel windows; on Easter Sunday, the first daylight enters through the colored glass and bathes the barren nave in celebratory light. The organ intones, and the church bells ring out: He Has Risen. Indeed, the liturgy of Easter Sunday presents us with the most condensed enactment of the Occidental yearning for light, for another day, and for triumph over the demons of darkness. Ex oriente lux -- the sun rises in the East. That's why Europeans have always looked longingly beyond their horizon: Towards the East, towards Jerusalem.

The Occident became conscious of itself as a unified entity when Jerusalem fell to Islamic conquest. The longing for Jerusalem was thus also a longing for order and unity at home: One emperor, one pope, one center and one horizon that provided order to the world. At that time, the Occident was still being formed from the rubble of the Roman Empire, and forged during the tumultuous centuries of the migration of the peoples. "Alemannic" -- which is the etymological ancestor of the term "German" in romance languages -- simply means "all men." The longing for Jerusalem unified the Occident's diverse cultures for the first time.

Once again, we can look towards medieval cathedrals for architectural indicators of shared cultural sentiments: The domes of Europe's great cathedrals were shaped to resemble the imagined cityscape of worldly Jerusalem; their spires pointed towards heavenly Jerusalem. Christianity became the unifying identity of the Occident.

THE OCCIDENT NEEDS THE ORIENT

But unity remained fragile. New dangers lurked nearby, especially at the borders. From the South, Muslim armies threatened the continent. From the North, Normans invaded. Later came the Huns, then the Turks (whose conquest was only stopped at the gates of Vienna). Southern Spain remained in Muslim hands for centuries. Rome, the caput mundi [= the capital of the world], continued to be an attractive target for invaders from the Orient. The Occidental fears became manifest -- sometimes obsessively so -- in fears of Islam. For centuries, the religious competitor to the East robbed European emperors and popes of their sleep. Over time, Islamophobia became part of the collective consciousness of the Occident.

What is feared today is not the loss of any particular country to foreign conquest, but the loss of an imagined entity that binds us together. The Occident is a central piece of our mental maps and our cultural inventory. That's one reason why seemingly everyone from "the Old World" has at least an instinctual opinion about it. People harbor within themselves a sense of shared meaning -- the semantic sediments of the Occident.

When those opinions are voiced, they often fall short by the standards of reason and academic science. They are instead informed, in a very visceral sense, by fears of decline and by memories of cultural blossoming. Those fears culminate in the belief that our cathedrals will eventually turn into mosques, that their bells will fall silent and will be replaced by the cries of the muezzin. But fears lead to hyperbole. Let us remember that foreign conquests have failed for many centuries (and not for lack of trying!), and thus proclaim with conviction that danger can be averted again.

Fear of decline, and the celebration of an imagined unity: Those are the parameters that govern contemporary discourses about the Occident -- not as arguments but as discursive foundations. Indeed, the Occident is as much a fiction as the Orient. Both terms reflect the wishes, dreams and aspirations of our forefathers. They were shaped in earlier epochs over the course of generations and centuries.

The history of the Occident is not unlike the history of a cathedral: Every generation has tinkered with the structure and amended it. The foundations were set down during the time of Charlemagne, the aisles were added during Romanticism, a new spire was built during the Gothic period, ornate chapels appeared during the Baroque era. When fire struck, it was rebuilt. It had to be: How could a city exist without its central reference point?

The time of dusk: Fever, madness, gloriole [ = a halo, nimbus, or aureole ], hyperbole. Death appears imminent until the rise of dawn. In old hymns, sleep is recast as the antechamber of death. No wonder, then, that religious pathologies and political and religious ideologies have repeatedly swept across the continent. Their danger remains acute. But to the arsonists I say: The Occident has never been able to sustain itself. It always required the light of the Orient as inspiration and external reference point.

"The Occident has never been able to sustain itself.
It always required the light of the Orient as
inspiration and external reference point."

During the Middle Ages, a veritable cult developed around the "three wise men" who came from the Orient and whose earthly remains are said to be contained in relics at the cathedral in Cologne. Ex oriente lux [ = light from the east ]-- or, as the gospel of Matthew puts it: "We have His star when it rose, and have come to worship Him." In old paintings, the three wise men resemble representatives from late antiquity's three known continents: One European, one African, one Asian.

Thinkers like Erasmus of Rotterdam turned Christian traditions into undogmatic humanism, bent on eradicating the denominational borders within Christianity. Their effort proved to be a quick flicker: The fanaticism of the Reformation and fights over the correct interpretation of Christian dogma put an end to it. The Occident descended into centuries of spiritual and intellectual darkness. At the end of the 20th century, and after two World Wars, it is in the process of reinventing itself.

As Christianity teaches us, the dead have a way of rising again. Today's discussions remind us that the Occident is not finished yet. But we must not fool ourselves: The legacy of the term is a double-edged sword that can mean nothing and everything at the same time. It was born of emotion and shaped by the highs and lows of history. It is useless as an analytical reference point and cannot supply answers to concrete political questions.

Both the community of Christendom and the unity of the Occident were political ideas. The cost of their realization was paid in blood. But what is the Occident today? It is the community of peoples who have sustained the term in their collective consciousness and have continually amended its meaning.

The Occident extends beyond Christendom and beyond Europe. The term only works if it avoids self-enclosure and remains perpetually open towards the outside -- towards the Orient, Africa and Asia -- as indeed it used to be. Its contemporary potential lies in continuing the work of Erasmus of Rotterdam: The formulation of global, humanistic and inclusive ethics.



Charlie Hebdo | Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Image


* * * * * * * * * * * *




Police hunt three Frenchmen after
12 killed in Paris attack
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/07/us-france-shooting-idUSKBN0KG0Y120150107

January 7, 2015

(Reuters) - Police are hunting three French nationals, including two brothers from the Paris region, after suspected Islamist gunmen killed 12 people at a satirical magazine on Wednesday, a police official and government source said.

The hooded attackers stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly known for lampooning Islam and other religions, in the most deadly militant attack on French soil in decades.

French police staged a huge manhunt for the attackers who escaped by car after shooting dead some of France's top cartoonists as well as two police officers. About 800 soldiers were brought in to shore up security across the capital.

Police issued a document to forces across the region saying the three men were being sought for murder in relation to the Charlie Hebdo attack. The document, reviewed by a Reuters correspondent, named them as Said Kouachi, born in 1980, Cherif Kouachi, born in 1982, and Hamyd Mourad, born in 1996.

The police source said one of them had been identified by his identity card which had been left in the getaway car.

The Kouachi brothers were from the Paris region while Mourad was from the area of the northeastern city of Reims, the government source told Reuters.

Anti-terrorism police were preparing an operation in Reims, the police source said, declining to give more details.

The police source said one of the brothers had previously been tried on terrorism charges.

Cherif Kouachi was charged with criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005 after he had been arrested before leaving for Iraq to join Islamist militants. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008, according to French media.

During the attack, one of the assailants was captured on video outside the building shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) as shots rang out. Another walked over to a police officer lying wounded on the street and shot him point-blank with an assault rifle, before the two calmly climbed into a black car and drove off.

A police union official said there were fears of further attacks, and described the scene in the offices as carnage, with a further four wounded fighting for their lives.

Tens of thousands joined impromptu rallies across France in memory of the victims and support for freedom of expression. The government declared the highest state of alert, tightening security at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores as the search for the assailants got under way.

Some Parisians expressed fears about the effect of the attack on community relations in France, which has Europe's biggest Muslim population.

"This is bad for everyone - particularly for Muslims despite the fact that Islam is a fine religion. It risks making a bad situation worse," Cecile Electon, an arts worker who described herself as an atheist, told Reuters at a vigil on Paris's Place de la Republique attended by 35,000 people.

Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is well known for courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders of all faiths and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad. Jihadists online repeatedly warned that the magazine would pay for its ridicule.

The last tweet on its account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria and called for "lone wolf" attacks on French soil.

There was no claim of responsibility. However, a witness quoted by 20 Minutes daily newspaper said one of the assailants cried out before getting into his car: "Tell the media that it is al Qaeda in Yemen!"

Supporters of Islamic State and other jihadist groups hailed the attack on Internet sites. Governments throughout Europe have expressed fear that fighters returning from Iraq or Syria could launch attacks in their home countries and may now review their own security.

"Today the French Republic as a whole was the target," President Francois Hollande said in a prime-time evening TV address, declaring a national day of mourning on Thursday.

An amateur video broadcast by French television stations shows two hooded men all in black outside the building. One of them spots a wounded policeman lying on the ground, hurries over to him and shoots him dead at point-blank range with a rifle.

In another clip on Television station iTELE, the men are heard shouting in French: "We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad."

EXECUTIONS

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the assailants killed a man at the entrance of the building to force entry. They then headed to the second floor and opened fire on an editorial meeting attended by eight journalists, a policeman tasked with protecting the magazine's editorial director and a guest.

"What we saw was a massacre. Many of the victims had been executed, most of them with wounds to the head and chest," Patrick Hertgen, an emergencies services medic called out to treat the injured, told Reuters.

A Reuters reporter saw groups of armed policeman patrolling around department stores in the shopping district and there was an armed gendarme presence outside the Arc de Triomphe.

"There is a possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured," police union official Rocco Contento said.

U.S. President Barack Obama described the attack as cowardly and evil, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel was among European leaders condemning the shooting.

The dead included co-founder Jean "Cabu" Cabut and editor-in-chief Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier. A firebomb attack had already gutted the old headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in November 2011 after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover in what it described as a Shariah edition.

France last year reinforced its anti-terrorism laws and was on alert after calls from Islamist militants to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa.

Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Council of the Muslim faith (CFCM), condemned an "immensely barbaric act also against democracy and freedom of the press" and said its perpetrators could not claim to be true Muslims.

Rico, a friend of Cabut, who joined the Paris vigil, said his friend had paid for people misunderstanding his humour.

"These attacks are only going to get worse. It's like a tsunami, it won't stop and what's happening today will probably feed the National Front," he told Reuters.

The far-right National Front has won support on discontent over immigration to France. Some fear Wednesday's attack could be used to feed anti-Islamic agitation.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen said it was too early to draw political conclusions but added: "The increased terror threat linked to Islamic fundamentalism is a simple fact."

Germany's new anti-immigration movement said the attack highlighted the threat of Islamist violence. Merkel has condemned the PEGIDA movement, which drew a record crowd of 18,000 to its latest rally on Monday in Dresden.

The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150. A series of bombings of Parisian shops by Lebanese extremists in 1986 claimed 12 lives.

France's deadliest attack was in 1961 after a French dissident paramilitary organization opposed to France's withdrawal from Algeria blew up a train killing 28 people.

(Additional reporting By Brian Love, Sophie Louet, Ingrid Melander, Gerard Bon, Dominique Rodriguez and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by John Irish and Mark John; Editing by Ralph Boulton and David Stamp)


RELATED NEWS



* * * * * * * * * * * *


French citizens gather in Paris to denounce the terrorist attack against magazine
Charlie Hebdo and to rally in defense of free speech. (AP)

Muslim Cleric Defends Paris Terrorist Attack
http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/curtis-kalin/muslim-cleric-defends-paris-terrorist-attack

January 8, 2015

In the wake of the terrorist attack on the offices of French satirist paper Charlie Hebdo, one Muslim cleric justified the murders under Islamic law.

USA today published a column by avowed “radical Muslim cleric” Anjem Choudary. The piece titled “People know the consequences” asks why France would allow the paper to mock Islam, and further excused the systematic murders as justified under Islamic law:

“Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them
than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be
an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime
under sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic
State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, "Whoever insults a
Prophet kill him.

However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims
want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.”

The contention that mass murder is in any way an appropriate response to being personally offended is a dangerous slope on which to tread. There is no doubt that some of these cartoons can be seen as offensive to certain people, but that same sentiment can be asserted on nearly any form of speech, especially in politics. Hence, the reasoning behind and the sanctity of the Constitution’s first amendment.

Choudary then reversed the blame for the attack away from the three terrorists themselves and onto the French government:

“So why in this case did the French government allow the magazine Charlie Hebdo
to continue to provoke Muslims, thereby placing the sanctity of its citizens at risk?”

This kind of blame shifting is also intellectually perilous. Placing the onus of speech on the any secular government is asking for abuse. But, if Choudary had his way, the government of the Islamic State would tightly control speech and punish transgressions with death.

Choudary’s entire argument excusing the Paris attack reveals the fundamental disconnect between views of civilizations. Radical Islamists have no intention of assimilating into their respective cultures or contributing to any kind of meaningful dialogue about religion and free speech. They are intent on terrorizing western citizens out of exerting their rights. Their plan of terrorism and intimidation, with the ultimate goal of imposing their religion on others is fundamentally anti-American, [anti-Constitution, and anti-basic human freedoms and liberties]. It is not meant for the 21st century.


Monday, April 30, 2012

Recasting Hinduism for the 21st Century: SC / Dalit Stories of Oppression, Success & Racial Equality



Kalpana Saroj. She acquired Kamani Tubes after clearing a debt of Rs 140 crore and turned it
around into a profit-making venture. One should not be cowed down by one’s station in life, she says.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?271501

http://www.outlookindia.com/

Indian woman defies caste, becomes a real-life 'slumdog millionaire'

The Los Angeles Times
Published: 21 April 2012 07:34 PM

Dahlit women
NEW DELHI — She was called dirty, ugly, a “little packet of poison,” the offspring of donkeys. These days, Kalpana Saroj is called something else: a millionaire.

Saroj, a dalit, or “untouchable,” epitomizes what was once unthinkable in India: upward mobility for someone whose caste long meant she would die as she was born: uneducated, dirt-poor, doomed to a life of dangerous and filthy work.

The manufacturing tycoon — one admirer called her “a real slumdog millionaire” — is among a legion of dalits embracing new opportunities in business, politics, the arts and academia as prejudices ease and economic reforms open new doors in a culture that traditionally emphasized fate and reincarnation.

“Before, Indians thought the only way up was life after death, assuming they avoided hell,” said Chandra Bhan Prasad, a dalit researcher and activist. “Now, not having a mobile phone is hell. Dalits can't become Brahmins, but they can become capitalists. Once you become rich, you become free.”

Others counter that a few Horatio Alger bootstrap stories can't sugarcoat the continued suffering of the 17 percent of India's 1.2 billion people facing discrimination under an ancient, complex system that traditionally determined one's occupation and social status at birth, with Brahmins at the top and “unclean” dalits at the bottom shoveling human waste.
Dalit children looking for opportunity
Saroj, 51, once hissed at by Brahmins, has built a business empire that employs thousands of upper-caste workers, she said. As she sipped tea in a luxury New Delhi mall, she was wearing gold bracelets, diamond earrings and a traditional salwar kameez worth thousands of dollars. (After her daughter settled on studying hotel management a few years ago, Saroj bought her a hotel. With her son now in possession of a pilot's license, she's shopping for a plane.)

Emerging from extreme poverty and pariah status to a position of strength and wealth has certainly been satisfying, she said. That fact that she is a woman — in a country ranked by the United Nations as among the world's most dangerous places to be born a girl, given high female infanticide, inferior health care and nutrition — made her rise more extraordinary.

And although her ascent hasn't been without its share of speed bumps or caste-related jibes, she said, she has tried to channel anger and frustration into getting things done.

“I'm aware people may still look down on me because I'm a dalit,” she said. “But even when I was very agitated, I never lost my cool, always trying instead to find my way out of difficult situations.”

Saroj was born in Repatkhedha, a tiny village in the western state of Maharashtra, the eldest daughter of a homemaker and a policeman. Dalits were barred from drinking from Brahmin wells, and school for Saroj was an eight-mile walk on dirt paths, interrupted by occasional beatings by upper-caste children.


Dalit's celebrating a national hero. Thousands of Dalits or low-caste Hindus have gathered in the western
Indian city of Mumbai to pay homage to their leader, Babasaheb Ambedkar. (Photos: Monica Chadha).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6213558.stm

When she was 8, she asked her mother why, and was told to accept her fate.

“This was my world,” she said. “I didn't really think about it.”

She was married off at 12 to a laborer from Mumbai at the insistence of an uncle who considered girls “little packets of poison.”

“Your daughter's an ugly, dark-skinned kid,” he told her father. “If someone from Mumbai is willing, you'd darned well better marry her off.”

Her husband, his alcoholic brother and wife all beat her. Sometimes her brother-in-law would yell: Whom did her mom sleep with to produce this donkey?

“All my dreams were shattered,” she said. “It was hell.”

After six months, her father rescued her. But the village ostracized her and she ended up drinking rat poison and fell into a coma, barely surviving. Afterward, villagers concluded that she must have a guilty conscience.

“I realized, whether I live or die, I'll get blamed,” she said. “So I might as well go for it.”

Dalits at the National Conference of Dalits in New Delhi. Photograph: Manish Swarup/AP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/21/india-hindu-dalit

Saroj lobbied to return to Mumbai, threatening to try suicide again when her family balked. Once there, she got a job removing lint from finished garments at a hosiery company for 15 cents a day. During lunch breaks she practiced on the sewing machines and became a tailor for $5 a day.

“It was the first happiness in 15 years,” she said. “I've earned millions. But that initial $5 was the most satisfying.”

When Saroj was in her early 20s, her sister became ill and died because they couldn't afford a hospital. “I realized, if it's all about money, I need to control it,” she said.

She borrowed $1,000 under a lower-caste government program, opening a furniture and blouse-making business that prospered. She learned about some property ensnared in liens and acquired it for $5,000 in savings and an IOU for a fraction of its worth. Eventually she secured the necessary clearances and found a partner to build a shopping complex.

“She is a struggler,” said Madhusudan Anand Batkar, 38, a social worker from Keriveri, a village near Saroj's hometown, “a real slumdog millionaire.”

Her reputation as a fixer led to another disputed property. When goons threatened her, she stared them down. “I wasn't afraid,” she said. “I'd already faced death.”

That too did well, leading to a stake in a sugar company and then to industrial equipment maker Kamani Tubes. The troubled firm was saddled with a $24 million debt and 140 court cases after its workers took over the factory for unpaid wages. The union asked her to run it and within a few years, she'd also turned that around.

These days, Saroj acknowledges being a bit of a workaholic. She starts her day with yoga, often works 12-to-14-hour days and spends several more hours commuting. In her meager free time, she likes listening to music and cooking. Her other passion is gardening at her rambling terrace apartment, which she designed to her taste because she owns the building.

Periodically, Saroj returns to her village to distribute food and clothing, set up schools, offer jobs to abused women. “She's very confident,” said Chaggan Khandare, 36, a dalit social worker in the district. “She tells us to fight for what you want, never give up.”

Although clearly extraordinary, she's not alone in her success. The Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry now has several dozen millionaires among its 1,000 members.

“There are two kinds of poverty,” says the CEO of Das Offshore Engineering, Mumbai. “One that brutalises man, and the other which is humane and can be overcome through sheer hard work.” The second is what Khade prevailed over, to preside over a company with a Rs 550-crore turnover.  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?271501

“We want dalit capitalism,” said millionaire contractor Milind Kamble, the chamber's founder and chairman. “We've been very inspired by black capitalism in the U.S.”

But even as millions of lower-caste Indians climb into the middle class with the help of affirmative action policies, progress for the vast majority of dalits is incremental, at best.

“There are success stories,” said Damodar Manohar, a 68-year-old villager in Repatkhedha. “But the overall situation hasn't changed much.”

There are still thousands of attacks on dalits annually and hundreds die. A dalit was stabbed to death recently for hitting a bull, considered holy by Hindus; a dalit was beaten to death for filing a lawsuit against an upper-caste member; and a dalit widow was beaten and reportedly paraded naked after her son eloped with his upper-caste girlfriend.

Dalits, caste activist Kancha Ilaiah says, should take a cue from the social upheaval that helped African-Americans battle racism.

“A sprinkling of millionaires, some top politicians won't change people's thinking,” he said. “We need a civil war.”

But for Saroj, owner of “five or six” cars, including a $200,000 Mercedes S-Class, it's been quite a ride.

“I was treated as something lower than a person,” she said. “But I'll die a human being.”

http://atrocitynews.com/
Every hour two Dalits are assaulted,
 Every day three Dalit women are raped,Every day two Dalits are murdered
& two Dalit houses are burnt in India….”

 

Recasting Hinduism for the 21st century


"It is important that Hindus take the lead in acknowledging the
damage that caste discrimination does and resolving to tackle it."



guardian.co.uk,


In a newly published report, the Hindu American Foundation tackles the issue of caste discrimination, and of the immediate and urgent need for Hindus to acknowledge that caste is not an intrinsic part of Hinduism; that continuing caste-based discrimination is a major human rights problem; and only Hindus, through reform movements, through an activist agenda, and through education can rid Hindu society of the scourge of caste-based discrimination.

While there will be naysayers in the Hindu community, who wish to get into their bunkers and fight a rearguard battle to "defend" Hinduism from what they see as a concerted campaign of vilification by Christian missionaries, Muslim fundamentalists, Marxist Hindu haters, and a global-capitalist-western hegemony, it is important that Hindus bell the casteist cat themselves. In this regard, the HAF report points out that caste-based discrimination is a serious human rights issue in the Indian subcontinent, and that over 160 million people, whom the Indian government categorises as "scheduled castes" (SCs), suffer from discrimination by not only a variety of Hindu caste groups but even by "upper caste" Christians and Muslims after they have converted to Christianity or Islam.

The Indian constitution, whose chief architect, BR Ambedkar, was himself a member of the scheduled castes, outlaws "untouchability" – the act of segregating and ostracising a social group by literally prohibiting physical contact with members of the SCs. Alas, India is hobbled by a weak and sometimes dysfunctional judicial system, and therefore acts of discrimination against the SCs (or Dalits, as many of them prefer to call themselves) either go unpunished or ignored.

Other lawlessness in India goes unpunished but the challenge of dealing with caste-based discrimination has been the most disheartening. This is especially so in rural areas where caste dynamics continues to play havoc. In 2008, for example, according to the Indian government, there were 33,615 human rights violations of various types – from the denial of entry into temples to denial of service in wayside restaurants, and from bonded labour to the exploitation of women.

HAF's report therefore begins with an important point: that Hindus must acknowledge that caste arose in Hindu society, that some Hindu texts and traditions justify a birth-based hierarchy and caste bias, and that it has survived despite considerable attempts by Hindus to curtail it. It notes that caste-based discrimination represents a failure of Hindu society "to live up to its essential spiritual teachings," that divinity is inherent in all beings, and that caste is not an intrinsic part of Hinduism.

Sure, untouchability is practiced not just by Hindus in India and Nepal but by non-Hindus in Yemen, Japan, Korea, France, Somalia, and Tibet. But the sheer number of people who are discriminated against in India makes this a uniquely Indian and Hindu problem. Fishing in India's troubled waters are therefore missionaries who for long have sought to make India Christian, and the left/Marxist forces in India who see only Hinduism as a problem but not religion per se. In recent decades, and especially after George W Bush became president, there was a surge in monies funneled into India for planting churches and converting Hindus. Organisations like the Dalit Freedom Network, led by and catering to mostly Christians, have gone on overdrive and sought to categorise SCs as non-Hindus and therefore arguing that they are not converting Hindus to Christianity.

HAF's report, a first of its kind by a modern Hindu advocacy group, provides readers a handy but grand sweep of the problem of caste – from its origins to its role in the past and at present, its use and abuse, and reform movements from the earliest by the likes of Basaveshwara to the great 19th- and 20th-century reform movements like the Arya Samaj movement, and reformers like Jyotiba Phule, Narayana Guru, Mahatma Gandhi, and others.

Noting that there are defenders of the caste system, not just the curmudgeon and cruel among Hindus, but the likes of Voltaire and Diderot who fought against the monotheistic intolerance of Christians and Muslims, to sociologists like Louis Dumont who argued that the "distribution of functions leads to exchanges", to the great Indophile, Alain Daniélou who argued that caste does not equate to "racist inequality but … a natural ordering of diversity," the HAF report argues that a birth-based hierarchy is unacceptable, that inequities against and the abuse of the Dalits/SCs is a human rights issue, and that the solution to this social ill is available within Hindu sacred texts themselves, and that Hindus should be at the forefront of putting an end to the system of birth-based hierarchy as well as taking the lead in energising the Dalit community to fight discrimination.

As the British seek to draft a new bill of rights, and from what one hears, equate caste with racism, similar to what was sought at the United Nations Durban conference on racism and racial discrimination, as western Europe and US-based missionary groups ratchet up the calls for actions and sanctions against India, and as we move into a new era of global interaction, it is time for Hindus to act.