Thursday, August 7, 2008

Bin Laden driver given 66 months

Osama Bin Laden's former driver has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison at the first US military trial in Guantanamo Bay.

Salim Hamdan was convicted on Wednesday of supporting terrorism, but acquitted of conspiracy to murder.

Prosecutors had demanded a sentence of not less than 30 years.

On time served Hamdan could be released in five months but the Pentagon has said he will still be retained as an "enemy combatant".

The US has always argued it can detain such people indefinitely, as long as its so-called war on terror continues.

The Pentagon said Hamdan would serve his sentence and then be eligible for review.

Regret

The BBC's Kim Ghattas at the trial says the sentence is a dramatic snub to the Bush administration and came after just one-and-a-half hours of deliberation.

The jury of six US military officers, not the judge, imposed the sentence under the tribunal rules.

"It is my duty as president [of the jury] to inform you that this military commission sentences you to be confined for 66 months," a juror told Hamdan.

HAMDAN CHARGES
Conspiracy: Not guilty of two counts of conspiring with al-Qaeda to attack civilians, destroy property and commit murder
Providing support for terrorism: Guilty on five counts, including being the driver and bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden, a man he knew to be the leader of a terrorist group. Not guilty on three other counts

Our correspondent says Hamdan looked nervous as he walked in for sentencing but after hearing it, he told jurors: "I would like to apologise one more time to all the members and I would like to thank you for what you have done for me."

The judge, Navy Capt Keith Allred, told Hamdan: "I hope the day comes when you return to your wife and your daughters and your country."

Hamdan, who is aged about 40, smiled as he left court and said thank you to those in the room.

After the sentencing, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: "He will serve out the rest of his sentence. At that time he will still be considered an enemy combatant.

"But he will be eligible for review by an Administrative Review Board."

The boards decide annually on the threat posed by detainees and the possibility of their transfer or release.

The White House had earlier said the trial was "fair".

The defence is still likely to go ahead with the appeal it announced on Wednesday.

Rights groups have condemned the tribunal system. Amnesty International said it was "fundamentally flawed" and should be abandoned.

'Worked for wages'

In his earlier plea for leniency to the jury, Hamdan said in a prepared statement: "It's true there are work opportunities in Yemen, but not at the level I needed after I got married and not to the level of ambitions that I had in my future."

He said he regretted the loss of "innocent lives".

Hamdan had admitted working for Bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001 for $200 (£99) a month, but said he worked for wages, not to wage war on the US.

About 270 suspects remain in detention in Guantanamo Bay.

Among the dozens of other inmates due to be tried there in the coming months are men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.

Thursday August 7th, BBC news

Is the driver really responsible for the actions of the person they are working for? Did the driver commit any criminal acts? Did the driver help Osama bin Laden kill people? The last question is debatable, as to weather the driver enabled Bin Laden to carry out his plans more easily or something like that. But still. Does driving a murderer around make you an accessory to murder? Perhaps. But I don't think it deserves 5 years in prison. Especially not in Guantanamo. I learned that a jury of military officers can impose a sentance under tribunal rules, as opposed to a judge. I wonder why that is. Perhaps a more lenient sentence is in order, due to the fact that the driver was working for Bin Laden in order to earn money to support his family, as opposed to his desire to support terrorism. The thing that is truly unjust about this situation, however, is that after Hamdan's sentence is served he will not neccesarily go free. He will still be held as an enemy combatant, although his case will be eligible for review by an Administrative Review board. After his sentence is served, he should go free, no questions asked.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Tibet protesters to be deported from China

Two British graduates were at the heart of a pro-Tibetan protest yesterday that caused China deep embarrassment as it prepared for the opening of the Olympic Games.
Iain Thom, 24, from Edinburgh, and Lucy Fairbrother, 23, a graduate of Bristol University and the daughter of a former senior bursar at Trinity College, Cambridge, were arrested along with Phill Bartell, 34, from New Jersey, and Tirian Mink, 32, from Portland, Oregon. The Xinhua news agency said that the visas of all four had been revoked and that they would be deported.
Mr Thom and Mr Bartell climbed halfway up two 120ft pylons as dawn broke over the Bird’s Nest stadium that will host the opening ceremony tomorrow.
They unfurled Tibetan flags and two 140 sq ft banners, one of which read, “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet” — mimicking the “One World, One Dream” official Games slogan. Another called for a “Free Tibet” in English and Chinese.
The two lighting poles are just outside the high-security zone around the stadium. Although the protesters did not have to climb a fence or negotiate the airport-style security gates while carrying ropes and banners, the entire zone is patrolled by police and military personnel through the night.
The role of Ms Fairbrother and Mr Mink was to ensure that the climbers’ equipment was working safely and to protect them from members of the public who might try to intervene.
Footage of the protest appeared to have been taken at some distance from the climbers and their supporters, but there were no reports of any further arrests yesterday.
The Chinese Government has deployed 110,000 security personnel across the capital, including 34,000 People’s Liberation Army troops. It has also installed tens of thousands of surveillance cameras in what has been described as the most sophisticated security system for the Olympics.
Organisers of the Students for a Free Tibet group said that the climbers had remained in position for at least an hour after beginning their ascent at about 5.45am. Lhadon Tethong, executive director of the group, told The Times: “It took \ at least half an hour to figure out what was going on. Then they used fire trucks and ladders. The climbers came down peacefully and agreeably and met the security.”
Four hours after the protest, the organisation sent out an e-mail to journalists in Beijing trumpeting their actions, as well as a press release containing biographical details of the demonstrators. It also sent out an audio file of Mr Thom speaking from his mobile phone while still up the pole. He said that he was standing “in solidarity” with Tibetans who took to the streets of Lhasa in a violent protest against Chinese rule in March. The demonstrators set fire to hundreds of shops and offices in riots that killed at least 22 people, mainly ethnic Han Chinese. China has mounted a huge security operation across Tibetan areas to try to prevent further demonstrations.
Speaking from his phone about 60ft up the pylon before his arrest, Mr Thom said: “We did this action today to highlight the Chinese Government’s use of the Beijing Olympics as a propaganda tool for whitewashing their human rights record on Tibet.” Clinging to the pylon, between the stadium and the new National Swimming Centre, Mr Thom watched the security forces, including the People’s Armed Police, move into position.
“There is quite a lot of police about and a fire truck has just arrived. I’m a long-term Tibet supporter and I feel that now is a critical time for Tibet.”
The parents of the two Britons voiced pride at the protesters’ actions. Speaking from his home in Muir of Ord, near Inverness, Brian Thom, 53, said: “This was a peaceful exercise. There was no malice in any way.”
Iain Thom, who grew up in Muir of Ord and attended Dingwall Academy, graduated from Edinburgh University with a first-class degree in environmental geoscience two years ago. He has been a campaigner for Friends of the Earth. His father added: “He was very passionate about this and we are right behind him.”
Ms Fairbrother first became involved in the Free Tibet movement while a student at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, her family said yesterday. Her best friend there was Peter Speller, an ardent pro-Tibet activist who would himself eventually end up in trouble with the Chinese authorities a few years later.
Peter’s father, Kim Speller, said it was his family’s fault that she became a passionate champion of the Free Tibet cause. “Lucy got interested when she was at sixth-form college with Pete and it’s down to us,” Mr Speller said. ”We’re longstanding Tibetophiles. Peter was brought up with Tibet as wallpaper on the walls."
Mr Speller was arrested in China a year ago after he unfurled a banner on the Great Wall and was deported a few days later.
It was not until she paid a visit to Tibet while teaching on her gap year in Nepal four years ago that Ms Fairbrother’s interest developed into a deep-seated desire to take a stand herself. At Bristol University she took the first oppostunity to join a Tibet support group. “She's no champagne socialist — she’s been there and seen things with her own eyes,” said her mother, Linda, 58.
Speaking from her home in Cambridge, she said: “I am very proud that Lucy is getting involved with something like this. It’s a good cause for human rights and for democracy. It’s also a totally non-violent movement. The protesters are not saying they hate the Chinese or the Government, but are just trying to bring some very dire human rights abuses to the world’s attention. If my daughter’s going to be put in prison for anything I’m glad it’s for a human rights protest.”
Ms Fairbrother has an older sister Laura, 24, a primary school teacher, and a brother, Edmund, 19, a student. Her father is Jeremy Fairbrother, the former senior bursar of Trinity College and a director of the multimillion-pound Cambridge Science Park. Her mother is a reporter and presenter for Anglia TV news.
All four protesters were travelling on valid tourist visas, but it was not clear where the visas had been issued and members of the group were tightlipped about their methods.
The display of defiance within yards of the main Olympic venue is a blow to China’s security operation, which has included limiting visas for tourists and businessmen. Those restrictions have been imposed despite the impact on hotel reservations and factory orders because the authorities have been determined to prevent the entry of activists bent on using the Games to publicise the situation in Tibet.
Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organising committee, said: “As far as we know, four foreigners gathered illegally and we express our strong opposition to that. We firmly oppose any attempt to politicise the Olympic Games. We have related laws in China. We expect foreigners to respect those laws.”
A spokesman from the British Embassy said that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was aware of the arrest of the Britons and that they were being held by the Beijing city police. “We are in touch with the Chinese authorities and requesting immediate consular access.”
Tension over the security situation has increased after the terrorist attack in the restive Xinjiang region of western China on Monday, when 16 police were killed and 16 wounded. The Chinese have blamed Muslim separatist groups. China has stepped up its monitoring of members of the Uighur ethnic minority in Xinjiang, requiring many to leave Beijing for the duration of the Games amid fears of attacks in the capital. Tibetans, too, have come under intense scrutiny.
Dechen Pemba, a British woman of Tibetan ethnicity, was deported last month without reason, while an Indian Buddhist monk has been refused entry to Hong Kong.
Many Beijing roads were closed yesterday while the torch relay, dogged by protests overseas, snaked its way through Tiananmen Square. The protest banners were unfurled in early morning smog above the “dragon’s vein”, the ancient north-south axis that bisects Beijing and which will be lit up by fireworks on Friday evening.
Ms Tethong said: “At this very moment, Tibetans are facing the most severe and violent repression they have seen in decades at the hands of the Chinese government, and we have taken non-violent action at this critical time to draw the world’s attention to the crisis gripping Tibet.
“Days before the Olympic Games begin, and as all eyes turn to China, we appeal to the world to remember that millions of Tibetans are crying out for human rights and freedom.”
Ropes, banners - and visas
— The protest action was a “banner drop”, a long-time favourite in the protest movement
— Mark Wright, training committee chairman of the Industrial Rope Access Trade Association, who also trains Greenpeace activists, said that the protesters had used an advanced technique using two slings tied with a prussik knot
— “The climber will be attached with a harness to both of them. He will have a foot loop of some sort attached to both slings, he will put his weight on one loop while he inches the other upwards. That equipment is easily available in China and you could quite plausibly claim you needed it for a climbing trip,” Mr Wright said
— Each year Students for a Free Tibet holds conferences to train its members in “protest skills”. These include climbing, and the technological knowhow to capture and download video clips and photographs of their actions Activists are also schooled in making sure their demonstrations attract sufficient media attention.
— Teams are assembled with climbing specialists and those able to record and transmit images of their protest
— Tenzin Dorjee, 28, the deputy director of the movement, was part of a similar protest staged at Everest Base Camp in the Tibetan region in April last year, to coincide with a rehearsal of the Everest leg of China’s Olympic torch relay. He described how the demonstration was painstakingly executed by a five-person team. He said: “We had three unfurling the banner, one taking the picture. A fifth person was sending the images from a computer”
— Almost as great a challenge for the activists was the process of obtaining a tourist visa to enter China. Since April, applicants have been vetted via computer search engines for links to protest groups.
The London Times, August 7th, 2008
This article caught my attention because the media attention has been on china's crackdown on any and all protests that could tarnish their reputation before or during the Olympics, yet this article shows that demonstrations are occurring regardless. However, I do wonder about the intelligence of staging a protest at 6 in the morning. What's the point of a demonstration if there's no one around to see you demonstrate? I rather thought the intent would be to attract attention and be as visible as possible. The situation in Tibet is pretty bad and I support protests against China's human rights crimes, but seriously, be more intelligent about your demonstrations. All the protesters got was a bit of media coverage back home and their visas revoked. Great job. While, yes, China does have some things seriously wrong with its style of government, the Olympics should be about promoting international relationships and a friendly spirit of competition. The Games are about the athletes, not the country that's hosting it. During the ancient games in Greece, all wars would be stopped so that all athletes could participate. We should honor that intent by focusing our attention on the games themselves, not on China's human rights record.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Brothers in Christ

By the skin of their teeth, prelates of the Christian East avoid a rupture


WHENEVER two or more Orthodox Christian clerics join in celebrating the Eucharist—consecrating bread and wine in a manner that is far more elaborate, solemn and formal than is usual in today’s Christian West—it creates a special bond between them. And if one Orthodox cleric refuses to “concelebrate” with another, that is a sign of a deep, painful rift.

That helps to explain why Orthodox Christians all over the world (who may number more than 200m, if one makes generous assumptions about the religiosity of ordinary Russians and Ukrainians) looked on with fascination as two important gentlemen, one from Moscow and the other from Istanbul, came together in Kiev on July 27th to conduct their church’s most important rite. This was a powerful, if provisional, moment of reconciliation between the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow, whose relations have been scratchy for most of the past decade.

It was a close-run thing: the 1,020th anniversary of the advent of Christianity among the Slavs, celebrated with enormous fanfare by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko, might just as easily have led to a dramatic bust-up between the two institutions whose multiple disagreements have cast a shadow over Orthodox Christian affairs in places ranging from New York to Paris to Beijing.

In the end, however, rupture was avoided. A basis was also laid for better relations in future, thanks to careful diplomacy by Bartholomew I, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is by tradition the “first among equals” in the Orthodox hierarchy.

Why were the Ukraine festivities such a pivotal moment? Mr Yushchenko, a devout believer himself, longs to see a united Ukrainian Orthodox church; some say he is envious of the role played by his counterpart in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, in ending an 80-year-old division in the Russian church. But Ukraine’s religious scene is messy. There are Greek Catholics who worship in an Orthodox way but acknowledge the pope; there are two church organisations (one founded in 1921, the other in 1992) which identify strongly with Ukrainian nationhood but remain unrecognised by other Orthodox Christians. The largest group, as measured by the number of parishes, consists of Orthodox Christians aligned with Moscow.

Mr Yushchenko gave Patriarch Bartholomew a red-carpet reception in the hope that the visitor would help bring closer his dream of a single national church, no longer tied to Russia. In the Muscovite camp, rumours were rife that Patriarch Bartholomew was about to recognise unilaterally an independent Ukrainian church, causing an almost irreparable breach between Moscow and Constantinople. In the end, Patriarch Bartholomew steered a middle course—assuring Mr Yushchenko that he too yearned for unity among believers in Ukraine, while also accepting that (at least until some other arrangement is agreed upon) Patriarch Alexy remains the legitimate Orthodox authority in that part of the world. As a Turkish citizen who heads that country’s small Christian minority, Patriarch Bartholomew is used to tightropes; and this time his footwork was exceptionally delicate.


The Economist

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I always thought religious arguments were a little silly, especially among the different branches of christianity. You all worship the same god; you all read the same bible; you all believe that christ was the son of god; all that's different are some small things about ceremony and the title of the head of your church. Why not acknowledge what you have in common instead of fighting with each other? Maybe my perspective is different because I don't believe in god at all, but there are some parallels. I acknowledge what I have in common with fellow atheists even if they believe there is a higher power that is not god, while I do not, or they believe in fate but not god, while I simply believe there is no higher power or fate whatsoever. We still don't believe in god. We still don't attend religious services. We still hold some doubts about the nature of organized religion. What matters are the similarities, not the differences. Surely the believers could agree on something similar?

Things to look forward to

Live longer, die slower


AS any amateur futurologist can tell you, the rich world is rapidly getting older. By 2050 more than a quarter of the developed world’s population will be over 65. At the moment, that group makes up about a sixth of the rich-world population, and only about 25% of them are over 80. In 2050 the octogenarians and their elders will comprise 40% of the 65-plus cohort in wealthy countries.

This greying of the prosperous parts of the world has long been foreseen, if not very well prepared for. Much less well known is the fact that well-off countries are far from alone in facing the prospect of an ageing population. Babies born today in poorish countries such as Thailand or Jamaica can reasonably expect to live into their 70s. And as more and more Indians and Chinese escape from poverty, they too will have much longer spans (see chart).

By 2050 the percentage of the Indian population over 80 will have risen fivefold, and the same segment in China will have gone up six times. Such changes happen for two reasons: people’s general health is better, meaning they wear out later, and preventable deaths of the relatively young are, in fact, prevented. As anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS becomes more common, childbirth safer and malaria more treatable, people will die at a more advanced age. By 2050 close to 80% of all deaths in the world are expected to occur in people who are older than 60.

While people of 59 or under die in any number of dramatic ways, people on the other side of 60 face three possibilities which between them carry off most of the elderly, whatever their economic circumstances. Each peaks in a different decade, and each produces a different sort of end of life.

The first is cancer: most victims function reasonably well before entering a steep decline. Cancer deaths peak at 65-plus, and more and more sufferers recover. If they do, two other clouds appear on the horizon. One of these is chronic organ failure and the other is frailty, dementia and decline. Chronic problems with an organ—usually heart disease or emphysema—bring a gradual decline punctuated by severe episodes, such as a heart attack or lung failure.

Dementia or frailty can mean a long, poor-quality end of life. As more cures are found for cancer, and sensible types give up smoking and bacon, more people will find that a slow decline is the meagre reward for their virtuous behaviour. That applies to developing countries as well as rich ones. There has never been a bigger need for cheap, effective treatment for diseases of the old, such as Alzheimer’s (see article) or for easier access to pain relief and reliable care.

The Economist
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This article has made me afraid of getting old, but dieing young doesn't sound all that appealing either. Dieing doesn't sound that appealing in general, probably because I'm young and healthy. Still, everyone deserves a dignified death, and slowly losing all control over your actions and bodily functions is not altogether very dignified. To remedy this, very old or very ill people who choose to do so should have the right to a relatively painless suicide. Everyone has the right to die as well as the right to live, and this should be a right under the law as well.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Cybernationalism

Social networks and video-sharing sites don’t always bring people closer together

“NATION shall speak peace unto nation.” Eighty years ago, Britain’s state broadcasters adopted that motto to signal their hope that modern communications would establish new bonds of friendship between people divided by culture, political boundaries and distance.

For those who still cling to that ideal, the latest trends on the internet are depressing. Of course, as anyone would expect, governments use their official websites to boast about their achievements and to argue their corner—usually rather clunkily—in disputes about territory, symbols or historical rights and wrongs.

What is much more disturbing is the way in which skilled young surfers—the very people whom the internet might have liberated from the shackles of state-sponsored ideologies—are using the wonders of electronics to stoke hatred between countries, races or religions. Sometimes these cyber-zealots seem to be acting at their governments’ behest—but often they are working on their own, determined to outdo their political masters in propagating dislike of some unspeakable foe.

Consider the response in Russia to “The Soviet Story”, a Latvian documentary that compares communism with fascism. If this film had come out five years ago, the Kremlin would have issued an angry press release and encouraged some young hoodlums to make another assault on Latvia’s embassy. Some Slavophile politicians would have made wild threats.

These days, the reaction from hardline Russian nationalists is a bit more subtle. They are using blogs to raise funds for an alternative documentary to present the Soviet communist record in a good light. Well-wishers with little cash can help in other ways, for example by helping with translation into and from Baltic languages.

Meanwhile, America’s rednecks can find lots of material on the web with which to fuel and indulge their prejudices. For example, there are “suicide-bomber” games which pit the contestant against a generic bearded Muslim; such entertainment has drawn protests both in Israel—where people say it trivialises terrorism—and from Muslim groups who say it equates their faith with violence. Border Patrol, another charming online game, invites you to shoot illegal Mexican immigrants crossing the border.

From the earliest days of the internet the new medium became a forum for nationalist spats that were sometimes relatively innocent by today’s standards. People sparred over whether Freddie Mercury, a rock singer, was Iranian, Parsi or Azeri; whether the Sea of Japan should be called the East Sea or the East Sea of Korea; and whether Israel could call hummus part of its cuisine. Sometimes such arguments moved to Wikipedia, a user-generated reference service, whose elaborate moderation rules put a limit to acrimony.

But e-arguments also led to hacking wars. Nobody is surprised to hear of Chinese assaults on American sites that promote the Tibetan cause; or of hacking contests between Serbs and Albanians, or Turks and Armenians. A darker development is the abuse of blogs, social networks, maps and video-sharing sites that make it easy to publish incendiary material and form hate groups. A study published in May by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human-rights group, found a 30% increase last year in the number of sites that foment hatred and violence; the total was around 8,000.

Social networks are particularly useful for self-organised nationalist communities that are decentralised and lack a clear structure. On Facebook alone one can join groups like “Belgium Doesn’t Exist”, “Abkhazia is not Georgia”, “Kosovo is Serbia” or “I Hate Pakistan”. Not all the news is bad; there are also groups for friendship between Greeks and Turks, or Israelis and Palestinians. But at the other extreme are niche networks, less well-known than Facebook, that unite the sort of extremists whose activities are restricted by many governments but hard to regulate when they go global. Podblanc, a sort of alternative YouTube for “white interests, white culture and white politics” offers plenty of material to keep a racist amused.
Tiny but deadly

The small size of these online communities does not mean they are unimportant. The power of a nationalist message can be amplified with blogs, online maps and text messaging; and as a campaign migrates from medium to medium, fresh layers of falsehood can be created. During the crisis that engulfed Kenya earlier this year, for example, it was often blog posts and mobile-phone messages that gave the signal for fresh attacks. Participants in recent anti-American marches in South Korea were mobilised by online petitions, forums and blogs, some of which promoted a crazy theory about Koreans having a genetic vulnerability to mad-cow disease.

In Russia, a nationalist blogger published names and contact details of students from the Caucasus attending Russia’s top universities, attaching a video-clip of dark-skinned teenagers beating up ethnic Russians. Russian nationalist blogs reposted the story—creating a nightmare for the students who were targeted.

Spreading hatred on the web has become far easier since the sharp drop in the cost of producing, storing and distributing digital content. High-quality propaganda used to require good cartoonists; now anyone can make and disseminate slick images. Whether it’s a Hungarian group organising an anti-Roma poster competition, a Russian anti-immigrant lobby publishing the location of minority neighbourhoods, or Slovak nationalists displaying a map of Europe without Hungary, the web makes it simple to spread fear and loathing.

The sheer ease of aggregation (assembling links to existing sources, videos and articles) is a boon. Take anti-cnn.com, a website built by a Chinese entrepreneur in his 20s, which aggregates cases of the Western media’s allegedly pro-Tibetan bias. As soon as it appealed for material, more than 1,000 people supplied examples. Quickly the site became a leading motor of Chinese cyber-nationalism, fuelling boycotts of brands and street protests.

And then there is history. A decade ago, a zealot seeking to prove some absurd proposition—such as the denial of the Nazi Holocaust, or the Ukrainian famine—might spend days of research in the library looking for obscure works of propaganda. Today, digital versions of these books, even those out of press for decades, are accessible in dedicated online libraries. In short, it has never been easier to propagate hatred and lies. People with better intentions might think harder about how they too can make use of the net.
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How is using the internet to spread hate different from spreading hate via pamphlets or newspapers or bullitan boards? The only real difference is it's faster and more effective. Hate is hate no matter where you find it. It's a shame, though, that people have such strong prejudices that they feel they must create entire blogs or online groups about it. In the end, though, e-hatred is just another example of how much malice people are capable of. Human nature never changes, but the technology used to connect humans does.

The Moment of Truth

In many parts of the world, the right to change one's beliefs is under threat

Illustration by Garry Neill

AS AN intellectually gifted Jewish New Yorker who had reached manhood in the mid-1950s, Marc Schleifer was relentless in his pursuit of new cultural and spiritual experiences. He dallied with Anglo-Catholicism, intrigued by the ritual but not quite able to believe the doctrine, and went through a phase of admiration for Latin American socialism. Experimenting with lifestyles as well as creeds, he tried respectability as an advertising executive, and a more bohemian life in the raffish expatriate scene of North Africa.

Returning from Morocco to his home city, he was shocked by the harsh anonymity of life in the urban West. And one day, riding the New York subway, he opened the Koran at a passage which spoke of the mystery of God: beyond human understanding, but as close as a jugular vein. Suddenly, everything fell into place. It was only a matter of time before he embraced Islam by pronouncing before witnesses that “there is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.”

Some 40 years on from that life-changing moment—not untypical of the turning points that many individuals experience—Abdallah Schleifer has won distinction as a Muslim intellectual. Last year he was one of 138 Muslim thinkers who signed an open letter to Christian leaders calling for a deeper theological dialogue. The list of signatories included (along with the muftis from Cairo, Damascus and Jakarta) several other people who had made surprising journeys. One grew up as an English nonconformist; another as a Catholic farm boy from Oregon; another in the more refined Catholic world of bourgeois Italy.

Sometimes conversion is gradual, but quite commonly things come to a head in a single instant, which can be triggered by a text, an image, a ceremony or some private realisation. A religious person would call such a moment a summons from God; a psychologist might speak of an instant when the walls between the conscious and unconscious break down, perhaps because an external stimulus—words, a picture, a rite—connects with something very deep inside. For people of an artistic bent, the catalyst is often a religious image which serves as a window into a new reality. One recurring theme in conversion stories is that cultural forms which are, on the face of it, foreign to the convert somehow feel familiar, like a homecoming. That, the convert feels, “is what I have always believed without being fully aware of it.”

Take Jennie Baker, an ethnic Chinese nurse who moved from Malaysia to England. She was an evangelical, practising but not quite satisfied with a Christianity that eschews aids to worship such as pictures, incense or elaborate rites. When she first walked into an Orthodox church, and took in the icons that occupied every inch of wall-space, everything in this “new” world made sense to her, and some teachings, like the idea that every home should have a corner for icons and prayer, resonated with her Asian heritage. Soon she and her English husband helped establish a Greek Orthodox parish in Lancashire.

Following the heart

In the West it is generally taken for granted that people have a perfect, indeed sacred, right to follow their own religious path, and indeed to invite—though never compel—other people to join them. The liberal understanding of religion lays great emphasis on the right to change belief. Earlier this year, a poll found that one in four Americans moves on from the faith of their upbringing.

America’s foundation as a refuge for Europe’s Christian dissidents has endowed it with a deep sense of the right to follow and propagate any form of religion, with no impediment, or help, from the state. In the 1980s America saw some lively debates over whether new-fangled “cults” should be distinguished from conventional forms of religion, and curbed; but in the end a purely libertarian view prevailed. The promotion of religious liberty is an axiom of American foreign policy, not just in places where freedom is obviously under threat, but even in Germany, which gets gentle scoldings for its treatment of Scientology.

But America’s religious free-for-all is very much the exception, not the rule, in human history—and increasingly rare, some would say, in the world today. In most human societies, conversion has been seen as an act whose consequences are as much social and political as spiritual; and it has been assumed that the wider community, in the form of the family, the village or the state, has every right to take an interest in the matter. The biggest reason why conversion is becoming a hot international topic is the Muslim belief that leaving Islam is at best a grave sin, at worst a crime that merits execution (see article). Another factor in a growing global controversy is the belief in some Christian circles that Christianity must retain the right to seek and receive converts, even in parts of the world where this may be viewed as a form of cultural or spiritual aggression.

A fighting matter

The idea that religion constitutes a community (where the loss or gain of even one member is a matter of deep, legitimate concern to all other members) is as old as religion itself. Christianity teaches that the recovery of a “lost sheep” causes rejoicing in heaven; for a Muslim, there is no human category more important than the umma, the worldwide community of believers.

But in most human societies the reasons why conversion causes controversy have little do with religious dogma, and much to do with power structures (within the family or the state) and politics. Conversion will never be seen as a purely individual matter when one religiously-defined community is at war or armed standoff with another. During Northern Ireland’s Troubles a move across the Catholic-Protestant divide could be life-threatening, at least in working-class Belfast—and not merely because people felt strongly about papal infallibility.

And in any situation where religion and authority (whether political, economic or personal) are bound up, changes of spiritual allegiance cause shock-waves. In the Ottoman empire, the status of Christians and Jews was at once underpinned and circumscribed by a regime that saw religion as an all-important distinction. Non-Muslims were exempt from the army, but barred from many of the highest offices, and obliged to pay extra taxes. When a village in, say, Crete or Bosnia converted en masse from Christianity to Islam, this was seen as betrayal by those who stayed Christian, in part because it reduced the population from which the Ottomans expected a given amount of tax.

In the days of British rule over the south of Ireland, it was hard for Catholics to hold land, although they were the overwhelming majority. An opportunistic conversion to the rulers’ religion was seen as “letting the side down” by those who kept the faith. Similar inter-communal tensions arose in many European countries where Jews converted to Christianity in order to enter university or public service.

In most modern societies, the elaborate discrimination which made religious allegiance into a public matter is felt to be a thing of the past. But is this so? In almost every post-Ottoman country, traces exist of the mentality that treats religion as a civic category, where entry and exit is a matter of public negotiation, not just private belief. Perhaps Lebanon, where political power is allocated along confessional lines (and boat-rocking changes of religious affiliation are virtually impossible) is the most perfectly post-Ottoman state. But there are other holdovers. In “secular” Turkey, the Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish minorities have certain poorly observed rights that no other religious minority enjoys; isolated Christians, or dissident Muslims, face great social pressure to conform to standard Sunni Islam. In Greece, it is unconstitutional to proselytise; that makes life hard for Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. In Egypt, the fact that building a Christian church requires leave from the head of state is a direct legacy of a (liberalising) Ottoman decree of 1856.

Tactical manoeuvres

But the Ottoman empire is by no means the only semi-theocratic realm whose influence is still palpable in the governance of religious affairs, including conversion. In an odd way, the Soviet Union continued the legacy of the tsars by dividing citizens into groups (including Jews or some Muslim ethnicities) where membership had big consequences but was not a matter of individual choice. In post-Soviet Russia, the prevailing Orthodox church rejects the notion of a free market in ideas. It seeks (and often gets) state preference for “traditional” faiths, defined as Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. This implies that other forms of Christianity are “poaching” if they seek to recruit Russians.

Illustration by Garry Neill

But issues of conversion are also painful in some former territories of the British empire, which allowed its subjects to follow their own communal laws. Take India, which once aspired to be a secular state, and whose constitution calls for a uniform civil code for all citizens. That prospect is now remote, and the fact that different religious groups live by different family laws, and are treated unequally by the state and society, has created incentives for “expedient” conversion. A colourful body of jurisprudence, dating from the British Raj, concerns people who changed faith to solve a personal dilemma—like men who switched from Hinduism to Islam so as to annul their marriage and wed somebody else. In 1995, the Supreme Court tried to stop this by saying people could not dodge social obligations, or avoid bigamy charges, by changing faith. What India’s case law shows, says Marco Ventura, a religious-law professor, is the contrast between conversion in rich, liberal societies and traditional ones, where discrimination tempts people to make tactical moves.

And in many ways religious freedom is receding, not advancing, in India. Half a dozen Indian states have introduced laws that make it hard for people to leave Hinduism. These states are mostly ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But last year Himachal Pradesh became the first state led by the more secular Congress party to bring in such legislation: such is the power of Hindu sentiment that even non-religious parties pander to it.

The state’s new law is billed as a “freedom of religion” measure, but it has the opposite effect: anyone wishing to switch faiths must tell the district magistrate 30 days before or risk a fine. If a person converts another “by the use of force or by inducement or by any other fraudulent means”, they can be jailed for up to two years, fined, or both. Local pastors say “inducement” could be taken to mean anything, including giving alms to the poor.

Supporters of such laws say proselytisers, or alleluia wallahs, are converting poor Hindus by force. It is true that Christian evangelism is in full swing in parts of India, especially in its eastern tribal belt, and that it enjoys some success. Officially, fewer than 3% of India’s 1.1 billion people are Christian. But some Christians say the real total may be double that. Christian converts, most of whom are born as dalits at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, often hide their new faith for fear of losing their rights to state jobs and university places kept for the lower castes.

But it is unlikely that many Hindu-to-Christian switches are forced. In states with anti-conversion laws, credible allegations of conversion under duress have very rarely been made.

Anyway, India’s arguments have more to do with politics than theology. Hindutva, the teaching that India is a Hindu nation and that Christians and Muslims are outsiders, has been a vote-winner for the BJP. Even in Himachal Pradesh, voters were unmoved by the Congress party’s attempt to ride the religious bandwagon; the BJP still won the latest elections.

The contest between theocratic politics and a notionally secular state looks even more unequal in another ex-British land, Malaysia, where freedom of choice in religion is enshrined in the federal constitution, but Islamic law is imposed with growing strictness on the Muslim majority.

Until the mid-1990s, say Malaysian civil-rights advocates like Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, the federal authorities enforced religious freedom; the National Registration Department, a federal agency, would comply when anybody asked to record a change of religion. More recently, both that agency and Malaysia’s top judges have deferred to the sharia courts, which enjoy increasing power in all 13 states of the Malaysian federation; and those courts rarely let a registered Muslim quit the fold. A recent exception was an ethnic Chinese woman who was briefly married to an Iranian; a sharia court let her re-embrace Buddhism, but only on the ground that she was never fully Muslim, so the idea of “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim” remained intact.

A more telling sign of the times was the verdict in the case of Lina Joy, a Malay convert from Islam to Christianity who asked a federal court to register the change on her ID card. By two to one the judges rejected her bid, arguing that one “cannot, at one’s whims or fancies, renounce or embrace a religion”. Too bad, then, for any Malaysians who have a moment of truth on the subway, especially if the faith to which they are called happens not to be Islam.

July 24th, 2008, The Economist

Perhaps it's because I'm an American, but I believe that religion is, should be, has to be a matter of individual choice. It's a belief, therefore your religion should change based on your actual belief system(or lack thereof). Problems arise because a religion is also seen as a community, and leaving or joining a community will always raise some questions, and sometimes provoke hostility. However, state-imposed religion is the most serious problem. When the government gets involved, religion is no longer a belief system or a community, but simply a label. A label that allows one to be placed in a category, given special privileges, assigned special restrictions, charged extra taxes, and even restricted in their job eligibility. Why is the American approach to religion the exception when it makes religious discrimination a lot more difficult? The world would be better off if all governments left religion the way it should be: as an individual choice.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

The Return of Mr Nyet

An abrasive Russian veto is prompting fears at the UN of a new diplomatic logjam that recalls the bad old days


Corbis

IN THE corridors of the blue-tinted building on the East River, the shock is still palpable. Despite the recent insistence of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, that human rights and security are intertwined, Russia and China have blocked an effort to isolate and punish the despots of Zimbabwe, in a move that seems to bode ill for action by the Security Council in other places.

Especially disappointing for many Westerners was the abrupt way in which Russia vetoed sanctions against President Robert Mugabe—only a day after Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s new head of state, had joined his partners in the Group of Eight, a rich-country club, in deploring Zimbabwe’s rigged and violent elections. The G8 statement had included a warning of “financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for violence”.

For Western governments that now face the prospect of working with Mr Medvedev over global hot spots from Iran to North Korea, the Zimbabwe veto raised several hard questions. Was there a failure of judgment by the new Russian leader? Was he overruled by other people, such as his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, who is now prime minister and was given formal responsibility this week for implementing foreign policy? Did Russia’s sour mood reflect other gripes, say over America’s vocal support for Georgia, or its missile-defence deal with the Czech Republic?

Other questions: was Russia boosting its own interests in southern Africa, or just acting up? And is the UN heading for a rerun of the cold war, when Soviet leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and his envoy Andrei Gromyko (pictured above) sparred with the West over almost everything?

The Kremlin, for its part, reacted peevishly to the West’s dismay. Russian officials said there had been no change in their policy, and that the West was once again distorting their position maliciously. The G8 statement had indeed carried Russia’s signature, but it made no mention of UN sanctions. The main point, they added, was that Zimbabwe’s travails posed no threat to regional or global stability; they were outside the Security Council’s remit.

Such talk is consistent with a foreign-policy style that has altered little since Mr Medvedev took power. He may avoid Mr Putin’s belligerent tone, but there is no sign of the Kremlin becoming friendlier to the West. Just to quash any doubts, Mr Putin has stressed that Mr Medvedev is “just as much a Russian nationalist, in a positive sense, as I am.” Mr Medvedev has done his best to prove that point, repeating Mr Putin’s warnings about American unilateralism. And even if Mr Medvedev wants to repair Russia’s relations with the West, it seems unlikely that he has carved out any real power to make independent decisions, at least so far. This week, he told diplomats to be “more aggressive”.

But none of this quite explains why Russia picked a fight with the West for the sake of a country in which it has no obvious interest. One reason, say Russia-watchers, is that punishing Mr Mugabe for stealing the elections and suppressing human rights sounded a bit close to the bone.

Indeed Russia’s foreign ministry hinted at this when it said that punishing Mr Mugabe would “set a dangerous precedent, opening a way to the Security Council interfering in countries’ internal affairs over various political events, including elections.” Given the dictatorial nature of many of Russia’s friends—like Belarus—and its own spotty record on human rights and elections, it is hardly surprising that Russia was unhappy about punitive sanctions against Zimbabwe.

In this climate, Western illusions that Russia might side with America against the regime in Zimbabwe betray a basic lack of understanding of what makes Russia tick, says Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think-tank. These days, Russian thinking divides the world into America and its docile friends on one hand, and “sovereign” countries, like China, India and South Africa on the other. Given Russia’s aim to speak for the second camp, its veto was logical—and as Russian officials stressed, it reflected the African Union line.

But Russia’s move doesn’t indicate that it has any constructive aim in southern Africa—other than exploiting whatever vestigial ties may linger from the era when Soviet arms (like the Kalashnikov, a national symbol in Mozambique) helped to overthrow white rule.

Ties that don’t bind

Igor Sechin, one of Mr Putin’s toughest aides, was once a Soviet “interpreter” in Mozambique, when it was in the grip of Marxist fervour. But even in those days, the Soviet attitude to Africa was ambivalent; as they dished out the rifles, its envoys used to mutter racist predictions about the likely effects of black rule.

And at the height of its involvement in southern Africa, the Soviet Union was often frustrated that its largesse did not translate into influence, says Georgi Derluguian, a professor at America’s Northwestern University who worked as a Soviet adviser in Mozambique. But much more recently, a semi-official Russian foreign-policy report said Africa was still a zone of competition with the West. Western countries wanted “control over natural resources, dominance in consumer markets and decisive influence in [the region’s] economic and political evolution,” it thundered.

Compared with China, Russia’s efforts to counter the West in Africa have so far been feeble; China’s trade with Zimbabwe is ten times that of Russia. Although (or possibly, because) it has more interests at stake, China has seemed somewhat more amenable than Russia to arguments about the need to behave responsibly in Africa.

To many observers, it seems that the Kremlin’s determination to play geopolitical games on every front could end up benefiting China, which is happy to let Russia take the blame for coddling dictators. But if Russia overplays the role of spoiler-in-chief, that could easily backfire. Mainly because of their veto rights, Russians are deeply attached to the UN as the only legitimate forum for solving geopolitical problems. Anatoly Gromyko (son of Andrei and a former head of the Soviet Union’s Africa Institute) still speaks of the Security Council as the world’s “greatest organ for maintaining stability”.

But if Russia makes a habit of saying nyet to everything, in the churlish way that was a hallmark of the older Mr Gromyko, then the Security Council itself will lose effectiveness and prestige. And all its permanent members (especially the weaker ones) would then lose out too.


The Economist

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If no one is willing to negotiate, then nothing gets done. Perhaps Mr Gromyko will recognize that, but then again, perhaps not. The best way for this issue to be solved, of course, is if Russia chooses not to be a total nay-sayer. Other than that, Mr Gromyko will have to be cajoled into agreeing and this may fail. Then people on both sides get pissed off and everything is deadlocked. Not good news for those living in terror under despots, or for those living in the E.U, either.