c. 2006 Religion News Service
Religious Leaders Join Bush, Ambassador in Condemning Mosque Attack
(RNS) U.S. religious leaders joined President Bush and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq in condemning the bombing Wednesday (Feb. 22) of Iraq’s Golden Mosque and supported calls for calm in the country.
The destruction of the golden dome of the renowned Shiite shrine in Samarra prompted reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and other violence that has left about 130 people dead, wire services reported.
“The atrocious attack on the Askariya shrine is an obvious attempt to incite sectarian violence,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“The Iraqi people, and Muslims worldwide, must not fall into the trap set by those who seek division and mutual hatred.”
A representative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said his organization condemned “this heinous terrorist attack” just as it has criticized destruction of Christian religious communities.
“Deliberately targeting religious sites and communities is reprehensible and dangerous,” said Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on International Policy. “We pray that calm and peace will take hold within Iraq and that all will be able to live their lives and practice their faith with mutual respect and security.”
Bush has made several statements about the attack, saying Thursday that “whoever did this is not a religious person, but an evil person.”
On Friday, he criticized the resulting violence as well.
“The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act of terror, and the subsequent attacks on other mosques and holy sites in Iraq,” Bush said during a speech at a Washington hotel on fighting terrorism.
“We’ll do everything in our power to help the Iraqi government identify and bring to justice those responsible for the terrorist acts.”
U.S. diplomatic and military leaders have pledged to help rebuild the mosque.
“Given the historic, cultural and religious importance of this shrine, this attack is a crime against humanity,” said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George Casey, commander of the coalition troops in Iraq, in a joint statement. “The shrine should be rebuilt and the United States will contribute to its reconstruction.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Crowd Packs Synagogue for Service After Apparently Anti-Semitic Murder
PARIS (RNS) A dense crowd packed a synagogue and the streets outside Thursday (Feb. 23) as President Jacques Chirac and other top French officials attended a memorial service for Ilan Halimi, a young man who was brutally killed, perhaps because he was Jewish.
The torture and death of the 23-year-old telephone salesman, blamed on a suburban gang, has shocked the nation. A massive demonstration against anti-Semitism is scheduled Sunday in Paris.
“My husband experienced the Holocaust and we can’t accept things like this again,” said one elderly Jewish woman standing outside the synagogue.
Halimi had been held and tortured for three weeks in a Paris suburb while his assailants sent his family ransom demands. He was found naked and covered with burns and stab marks near a railway line. He died on the way to a hospital.
French authorities, initially leery of describing his death as an anti-Semitic attack, later acknowledged Halimi was killed partly because he was Jewish. “Jews have money,” said Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, explaining the thinking behind the gang’s acts.
More than a dozen people have been indicted in connection with Halimi’s death. The presumed leader of the gang, Youssef Fofana, remains in Ivory Coast as France seeks his extradition.
“I think the police should have reacted before this young guy died,” said 51-year-old merchant Alain Cohen, standing outside the synagogue in northern Paris where the memorial was held.
Cohen said he hadn’t personally been harassed, “but you can see things get worse day to day. You can see people attacked for wearing a skullcap on the streets.”
Attacks against France’s estimated 600,000 Jews _ Western Europe’s largest Jewish community _ spiked a few years ago, coinciding with rising violence in the Middle East.
But France’s center-right government announced a zero-tolerance policy against anti-Jewish acts. French authorities say the number of anti-Semitic incidents has been dropping steadily since a high of 970 in 2004. Still, a number of Jews say many incidents go unreported and that the number of violent acts _ as opposed to minor harassment _ remains as high as ever.
Whether true or not, the sense of insecurity lingers.
“I have no doubt that the Jewish community today is experiencing a time of fear,” said Michel Sefarti, a rabbi in the suburban French town of Ris Orangis.
_ Elizabeth Bryant
Officials Clear 400 of 700 Church Arson Leads in Alabama
(RNS) Investigators have cleared about 400 of 700 leads received in 10 Alabama church arsons, and the man leading the probe says the team of 60 investigators is in a position to catch the culprits.
“We’re not at the break or we’d have these guys in custody, but we’re set up to exploit the break,” said Jim Cavanaugh, regional director for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We’ve collected the dots and now we’re ready to connect them if we get the right thing.”
Speaking Thursday (Feb. 23), he said finding that “right thing” is tedious work.
People have been put under surveillance, sometimes for days, and others have been surprised to find federal agents at their front doors.
The spree started Feb. 3 when five Baptist churches were found burned or burning in Bibb County; three of them were destroyed. The second group of fires came Feb. 7, when four more churches were set ablaze in Pickens, Sumter and Greene counties. The 10th was Feb. 11 in Lamar County.
Investigators have been sidetracked by unrelated fires at churches, one at a campus ministry building and another at a warehouse of Christian-themed apparel.
The federal bureau’s Critical Incident Management Response team, a group of computer and technology gurus, was dispatched to join a task force within days, and a command center was established in a Tuscaloosa airport hangar. About 60 law officers gather each morning. Leads compiled by intelligence officers overnight are assigned to teams of investigators, who fan out across west and central Alabama, knocking on doors.
There have been endless tips, but none has yet panned out.
“That’s the normal static and chaff of a major case that is in the public eye,” Cavanaugh said. Even a psychic from New York called, claiming to have the names of the arsonists and details of conversations.
_ Carol Robinson
Vatican Official Says West `Closing Its Eyes’ to Islamic Fundamentalism
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Using forceful language, a high-ranking Vatican official says the Catholic Church needs to defend itself against the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.
The comments have been seen as a change in tone from previous Vatican emphasis on interreligious dialogue between Muslims and Christians in the wake of global uproar over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad.
In an interview published in the Italian newspaper La Stampa on Wednesday (Feb. 22), Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican’s Supreme Court, said, “Faced with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, the West is closing its eyes as it did with Hitler.”
Although the Vatican has called for interreligious dialogue in the face of escalating violence targeted at Christians, De Paolis expressed doubt that the dialogue can take place on reciprocal terms.
“Islam is closed to the point of not admitting reciprocity,” he said. “Last Easter, visiting `moderate’ Turkey, I had to say Mass at home without displaying Christian symbols. In Islamic countries, as soon as the church shows its true colors, it is immediately accused of proselytizing.
“Until now, only points of commonality (between Muslims and Christians) have been discussed. But saying nothing about differences will have a ruinous effect,” he said.
Pope Benedict XVI has stressed respect for all religions and their followers. In a meeting Monday (Feb. 20) with Morocco’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Ali Achour, the pope said believers should not be the “object of provocations” that offend religious sensibilities.
Benedict also said that “intolerance and violence are not responses that are compatible with the sacred principles of religion.”
A Catholic priest was killed in Turkey earlier this month. In one week alone, an estimated 146 Christians and Muslims were killed in Nigeria, due to Muslim protests over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad originally published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September.
An Italian minister resigned after being blamed for violent outbursts in Libya on Feb. 17 that left 11 dead. He had worn a T-shirt bearing the cartoons.
The Vatican expressed support for those offended by the cartoons, while condemning the violence.
Only in the past few days have Vatican leaders voiced a need for self-defense.
Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano on Monday (Feb. 20) told Italian government authorities, “If we tell our own that they do not have the freedom to offend, then we also have to tell the others that they do not have the freedom to destroy us.”
_ Kristine M. Crane
Quote of the Day: Southern Baptist Missions Executive Jerry Rankin
(RNS) “No one’s ever heard me pray in anything other than English so I think it is still very private and it will remain so, but it’s nothing to deny.”
_ Jerry Rankin, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, speaking with Baptist state paper editors on Feb. 17 in Banff, Alberta. Rankin admitted, as he has in the past, to speaking in a private prayer language, despite a new policy by his board preventing future missionary candidates from speaking in tongues. He was quoted in a transcript provided by Baptist Press.
MO/PH END RNS
