c. 2006 Religion News Service

Denmark Newspaper Apologizes for Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad

(RNS) Under intense international pressure, Denmark’s biggest newspaper has apologized to Muslims for the “unintentional humiliation” caused by cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Jyllands-Posten Editor Casten Juste, who had earlier dismissed calls to apologize _ maintaining that the cartoons were never intended to humiliate Muslims _ yielded under pressure late Monday (Jan. 30).

In a statement posted on his paper’s Web site, Juste said the apology was made to Muslims who felt humiliated by the drawings but not for the publication of the 12 cartoons, because “no law was broken.”

The paper had previously said it published the cartoons in September to test whether the fear of Islamic radicals has limited press freedom.

One of the drawings depicted Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. But the reaction was about more than just the message on terrorism. Islam strictly forbids any images of its prophet, arguing they could lead to idolatry.

Leaders in Saudi Arabia called for a boycott of Danish products after they criticized the Danish government’s inaction regarding the drawings.

Grundfos, the world’s biggest manufacturer of pumps, and Arla Foods, a Swedish-Danish dairy concern, were among major businesses that clamored for an apology to end the boycott.

According to the Swedish daily Dagen Nyheter, Arla Foods was losing money after its products were taken off shelves in Saudi Arabia and had to postpone plans to open a new factory in the Islamic country.

“It took us 40 years to build up our operations in the Middle East and this is disappearing in just five days,” the company’s foreign operations chief, Finn Hansen, told Dagen Nyheter.

With the boycott spreading to other Muslim countries, including Iraq, Arla brought ads in Saudi papers on Monday to explain its side of the story.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Ramussen has issued a statement trying to distance himself from the drawings while contending freedom of the press must be upheld. “I cannot make a call and decide what should be published in the Danish media,” he told Jyllands-Posten.

_ Simon Reeves

Lawsuits Filed Against Walgreens on Behalf of Religious Pharmacists

WASHINGTON (RNS) A conservative interest group has filed a series of lawsuits against Walgreens after the drugstore chain fired four pharmacists for refusing to dispense the “morning-after” pill to patients.

The lawsuits, filed in Illinois Friday (Jan. 27) by the Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice, represent the latest skirmish in an escalating legal battle. The issue has surfaced in several states, pitting religious pharmacists who say filling such prescriptions violates their beliefs against drug manufacturers and patients demanding medicine they are legally entitled to.

A statement released by the ACLJ, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, argued that Walgreens violated the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

“In punishing these pharmacists for asserting a right protected by the Conscience Act, Walgreens broke the law,” senior counsel Francis J. Manion said in the statement.

Walgreens argues that it must comply with a new state regulation that requires all pharmacists in Illinois to dispense birth control drugs to patients.

After the regulation went into effect, Walgreens asked pharmacists to pledge in writing that they would fill prescriptions for contraceptives like the morning-after pill. When the plaintiffs refused to sign in November, they were suspended indefinitely without pay.

Walgreens spokesman Michael Polzin said that the company needed to comply with the new regulation. “We are required to follow the law. We don’t have a choice in the matter,” he said.

The most recent lawsuits sue Walgreens and the Illinois governor’s office. In a previously suit, filed in federal court, the ACLJ is representing the same pharmacists.

_ David Barnes

Christians to Celebrate 100th Birthday of German Theologian

(RNS) Christians around the world are marking the 100th anniversary of the Feb. 4 birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor executed in a Nazi prison for his role in an anti-Hitler resistance movement.

Bonhoeffer has been called the most influential Protestant theologian of the 20th century, a man whose legacy has been claimed by both theological conservatives and liberals. He is being remembered in the United States in a host of events.

They range from academic symposiums and commemorations (one is scheduled Saturday at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga.) to the release of books (Fortress Press in Minneapolis has published an expanded edition of a photographic biography of Bonhoeffer) to the showing of films (PBS stations plan to air an award-winning documentary on the German theologian’s life by director Martin Doblmeier).

Similar events, including commemorative services and exhibits, are taking place in Germany and in Great Britain, where Bonhoeffer lived briefly in the 1930s as he began his work in the resistance against Nazism.

Ethicists and theologians still debate the meaning and implications of Bonhoeffer’s life and actions, particularly his participation in a conspiracy that eventually failed to assassinate Hitler.

In a recent opinion piece in the National Catholic Reporter, Raymond A. Schroth, a Jesuit priest and professor of humanities at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J., asked the question “Is Bonhoeffer a pastor for our own time?” He concluded: “In courage, yes. In moral judgment, no.”

“In no way does the Sermon on the Mount make wiggle room for political assassination,” Schroth wrote, noting that the 1944 plot to kill Hitler backfired on the plotters and resulted in the purge and execution of some 5,000 Hitler opponents.

Glen Stassen, a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., takes a different view. Stassen, who teaches a course on Bonhoeffer, said he believes the principal legacy of the young theologian _ Bonhoeffer was merely 39 when he was executed _ was that he saw the inherent dangers of the confluence of religion and nationalism, of the church being manipulated by “powerful political ideologies.”

Bonhoeffer, he said, was “clearly warning against the identification of the Gospel with a nationalist cause.”

_ Chris Herlinger

Survey: High School Seniors Conflicted on Abortion Rights

WASHINGTON (RNS) A nationwide poll of 1,000 high school seniors found nearly half describing themselves as “pro-choice.” But when specific hypothetical scenarios were described, most said they did not support abortion rights under those circumstances.

More than 60 percent of the seniors, many of whom will be old enough to vote in the November elections, wanted to preserve the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that overturned state laws restricting abortion, according to the survey conducted by Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.

However, when asked about a woman’s legal right to abortion in six specific circumstances, a majority of the respondents said they did not believe in the legal right to abortion in four of the scenarios.

The rejected scenarios were a pregnant woman not wanting more children, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy of a teenager, the threat of a serious birth defect in the baby and poverty.

In addition, a majority of the seniors told researchers they believe “abortion is always or usually morally wrong,” the poll report said.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion issue saw something in the poll to be encouraged about.

Dennis Jones, a Washington-based spokesman for National Right to Life, said the study shows young people are “fed up with the doctrine that says unborn children can be got rid of at any moment.”

But Marjorie Signer, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, said, “We call these people with these views pro-choice because they want this option to be there for other people if not for themselves.”

The poll, made public in January, was conducted in November and had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percent.

_ Enette Ngoei

Quote of the Day: Rosanne Cash, daughter of the late Johnny Cash

(RNS) “I had an epiphany that God was in pain as much as God was in joy. And that you could find love in your doubt as much as you could find love in faith. It’s all part of the same thing.”

_ Rosanne Cash, daughter of the late Johnny Cash, speaking of the song “God Is in the Roses” that she wrote shortly after the legendary singer died in 2003. She was quoted by The Republican in Springfield, Mass.

MO/PH END RNS