c. 2006 Religion News Service

Oregon Senator Says He’ll Fight to Keep State’s Assisted Suicide Law

WASHINGTON _ Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has said he will try to block a federal bill that would override Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law.

Wyden said Tuesday (Sept. 5) he has placed a hold on the Assisted Suicide Prevention Act, introduced by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. The bill would prohibit doctors from prescribing drugs for assisted suicide. A hold requires 60 votes to break.

In a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Wyden said Oregonians twice voted to allow the option of physician-assisted suicide.

“The government ought not attempt to override or pre-empt the individual and the family values, religious beliefs and wishes,” Wyden said.

Brownback, who held a hearing on the issue in May, has said he does not expect the bill to become law this year.

“When the law permits killing as a medical ‘treatment,’ society’s moral guidelines are blurred, and killing could gain acceptance as a solution for the chronically ill or vulnerable,” Brownback said in a written statement last month when he announced the bill.

Oregon is the only state that has legalized physician-assisted suicide. The state’s Death With Dignity Act allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses to terminally ill patients. The Bush administration has argued that the practice violates federal anti-drug law. But in a 6-3 vote in January, the Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s law.

_ Jeff Kosseff

Turkish Man Kills Imam, Reportedly Is Lynched by Crowd

ISTANBUL (RNS) After mortally wounding an imam in front of a Turkish mosque, an assailant allegedly was lynched by the onlooking crowd.

Mustafa Erdal, 27, stabbed Ali Ozturk, a 54-year-old retired imam, in Istanbul after the morning call to prayer Sunday (Sept. 3). The attack and subsequent death of Erdal took place in Fatih, considered to be Istanbul’s most religiously conservative district, which some call “Little Iran.”

According to the national daily Zaman, Ozturk had made a daily habit of conversing in front of the mosque after the Sunday morning call to prayer. After waiting in line to speak to the former imam, Erdal approached him and, while making a motion as to kiss Ozturk’s hand, pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the heart.

The shocked crowd then lynched Erdal, according to the Turkish press and Abdullah Ustaosmanoglu, an associate of the slain imam. Ozturk was taken to a regional hospital where he later died from the stab wounds.

The Istanbul police contradicted that report, saying that after Erdal stabbed the imam, he hit his head against the prayer niche at the front of the mosque and was later found dead.

Police are still determining the motivation for the imam’s killing and said Erdal had been undergoing psychological treatment.

The incident comes at a time when tensions are rising between Turkey’s secular and religious establishments. In May an Islamic lawyer killed one judge and injured four others in Turkey’s highest administrative court, after the judges upheld a ban against Islamic women’s head scarves. Last February, a Catholic priest was killed by a 16-year-old, apparently in retaliation against Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.

_ Scott Rank

Jewish National Fund to Replant Forests Decimated by War

KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel (RNS) The Jewish National Fund is spearheading a 10-year, $400 million Rosh Hashana fundraising campaign to help replant Israel’s northern forests, which sustained heavy damage during the recent Hezbollah-Israel war.

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, starts at sundown Sept. 22. Traditionally, the Jewish High Holy Days are a time when Jews reflect, pray and contribute to charity.

The JNF, which maintains Israel’s woodlands, estimates that 20 percent of the forests in northern Israel were damaged during the monthlong war, which also resulted in extensive environmental damage in Lebanon.

Between 700,000 to 1 million trees in Israel’s forests were destroyed by rocket-induced wildfires and it is likely that as many as 1 million damaged trees will not survive into the winter, the JNF said.

A large percentage of Israel’s 250 million trees were planted with funds donated by Jews _ and occasionally others _ all over the world. For decades, families, synagogues and individuals have marked special events _ the birth of a child, a bar/bat mitzvah, a marriage, even the death of a loved one _ by planting a tree in Israel.

During a late-August tour of the damaged forests, Paul Ginsberg, head of the JNF’s northern forestry service, noted that each and every one of the scorched Cyprus pines and eucalyptus trees had been planted by hand during the past several decades, usually by new immigrants to the country.

“Everything you see here required a lot of human effort to create it. It took 50 years to create these forests,” Ginsberg said, surveying the lifeless landscape, which until recently had been home to gazelle, wild boar, quail, tortoises, nesting birds and jackals.

_ Michele Chabin

Quote of the Day: The Rev. Joseph Fessio of Ave Maria University

(RNS) “There’s a controversy in the United States because there is a lack of awareness of a thing called philosophy. Evangelicals and creationists generally lack it and Catholics have it. When you look at the world and see what appears to be order and design, the conclusion that there is a designer is not a scientific conclusion. It’s a philosophical one.”

_ The Rev. Joseph Fessio, provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., commenting after an early September meeting on evolution held outside Rome by Pope Benedict XVI and his former doctoral students. He was quoted by Reuters.

DSB/PH END RNS