In some of Chicago’s troubled neighborhoods, it’s not unusual for boys to join gangs at a young age. For many, it’s a road fraught with violence.
But a group called Becoming a Man (BAM) is working on getting to those youngsters before they’re drawn into gang life or drop out of school.
On March 13, Bishop Mouneer Anis of Egypt reported that the Rev. Hamdy Doud, the assistant rector of Christ the King Church remained in Tripoli, caring for the church.
Two of the three clergy have been evacuated from Libya as have the Western expatriate members of the congregation, Bishop Anis reported. However, a number of Anglican Africans remained in the city, unable to flee.
“It is my responsibility to keep the Christian presence here,” Fr. Hamdy told Bishop Anis, adding that he and the city’s “Roman Catholic priests are having a good time of fellowship in spite of the crisis in Libya.”
(ACNS) Preaching at the memorial service held at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster , London , on 17 March 2011 for Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan Minister of Minorities, Bishop Tony Robinson, Chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pakistan Focus Group, reflected, “Death came with the fire of the gun. There was no gentle death for Shahbaz Bhatti ”“ as there is also not for many other Christians who are suffering as part of the of minority population of Pakistan.”
Shahbaz Bhatti, a Roman Catholic Christian who was part of the Cabinet of the Federal government of Pakistan was murdered by gunmen in Islamabad on March 2.
The service, held in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the High Commissioner of Pakistan was a tribute to a remarkable man who had made a practical difference for the minority populations in his country even though his life was cut short at the age of 42, but also an act of dedication by those present to seek to continue the tasks he had set himself.
“On Tuesday morning, 15 March 2011, five men armed with guns arrived at Bishop Seoka’s Pretoria home, declaring their intention to kill the bishop and his wife,” the SACC said on Thursday.
“The bishop and his wife were not at home at the time, but the intruders returned later in the day looking for them.”
The men “made remarks” that suggested that they were watching the movements of the bishop and his wife, the SACC said.
The Obama administration may not care to admit it, but it did make a decision, and one of benefit to Gaddafi. Why? One factor was surely Obama’s preference for a less activist foreign policy in general.
But there were special considerations in Libya, and they were clearly stated in a piece by General Wesley Clark for the Washington Post last Friday. The former US commander in Kosovo and a 2004 Democratic presidential candidate wrote: “We don’t have a clearly stated objective, legal authority, committed international support or adequate on-the-scene military capabilities, and Libya’s politics hardly foreshadow a clear outcome.”
The key phrase here is “Libya’s politics”. For the past few days, Washington policy circles have been worrying over a piece of research circulated last week: “On a per capita basis ”¦ twice as many foreign fighters came to Iraq from Libya ”“ and specifically eastern Libya ”“ than from any other country in the Arabic-speaking world. Libyans were apparently more fired up to travel to Iraq to kill Americans than anyone else in the Middle East. And 84.1 per cent [74] of the 88 Libyan fighters ”¦ who listed their hometowns came from either Benghazi or Darnah in Libya’s east.”
Possible interventions include not only a no-fly zone but also providing weapons to the rebels, offering inducements to Gaddafi loyalists to defect, jamming Libyan military radio transmissions or bombing Mr. Gaddafi’s tanks and artillery when they move east. Each option carries risks for the United States, and Mr. Obama’s caution is understandable.
On the other hand, Mr. Gaddafi’s military is weak, and many Libyans clearly are desperate for change. And a Gaddafi victory also carries risks for U.S. interests, as Mr. Obama himself has said. A sacking of Benghazi will be accompanied and followed by a horrific bloodbath. A revitalized dictator is likely to be distinctly unfriendly to Western interests. And other despots will conclude that Mr. Gaddafi’s brand of merciless revenge brings better results than the Tunisian and Egyptian models of accommodating people’s yearning for freedom ”” and that American threats to the contrary can be discounted.
World leaders on Tuesday refused all forms of military intervention in Libya, abandoning Col Muammar Gaddafi’s fleeing opposition to its fate.
France and Britain failed to persuade other world powers meeting in Paris to impose a no-fly zone over the country, where pro-Gaddafi forces claimed to have taken the last major town before the rebel capital, Benghazi.
The no-fly proposal was absent from the G8 foreign ministers’ closing statement in Paris, following resistance from Russia, Germany and the US. China, a United Nations security council veto-holder, is also opposed.
As Congress is considering the extent of Islamic extremism in America, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic wonder whether the liberal Protestant theology of the last two centuries must share some blame for the violence committed by Muslim radicals….
A strategic town is lost in the east with another expected to follow soon. In the west, a symbolic centre of resistance is about to suffer an onslaught that it is unlikely to survive. With no international action to stop Muammar Gaddafi’s fierce offensive, the survival of Libya’s revolution hangs in a precarious balance.
Just four days ago the picture was very different: the rebel fighters were seemingly on a march to the capital, Tripoli, and the enemy was in disarray and retreat. But a series of misjudgements, and chronic lack of planning and organisation, have resulted in a dramatic reversal. The regime’s troops are poised to strike at Benghazi, the capital of “Free Libya”.
By yesterday afternoon, the opposition had abandoned Ras Lanuf, an oil port on the key coastal route. They withdrew to Aghala, outside Brega, another petrochemical complex. Control of the two locations would provide the regime with the reserves of fuel needed for the tanks and armoured cars arriving in increasing numbers on the frontline. It would also put Tripoli in a position to shut down power supplies to Benghazi.
The Arab League has backed the idea of a no-fly zone over Libya, as rebels continue to be pushed back by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.
A special meeting in Cairo voted to ask the UN Security Council to impose the policy until the current crisis ended.
The UK and France have pushed for the idea, but have failed so far to win firm backing from the EU or Nato.
France and Britain on Thursday agreed that Libya strongman Moamer Kadhafi “must go” and called on the EU to consider the country’s rebel national council a valid political interlocutor, Sarkozy’s office said.
“To stop further suffering of the Libyan people, Muammar Gaddafi and his clique should leave,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a joint letter to European Union president Herman Von Rompuy.
France earlier recognised the rebels as the country’s rightful representatives.
As the Obama administration wrestles over what to do about Libya, the voices on Capitol Hill offer no consensus on military action.
Influential senators John McCain, a Republican, and John Kerry, a Democrat, have kept up a drumbeat for U.S. military action such as a “no-fly” zone to aid the rebels fighting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
But other senior lawmakers, like Republicans Senator Richard Lugar and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, are warning against getting the United States into a Libyan war.
NATO foreign ministers are preparing to discuss imposing a no-fly zone over battle-torn Libya amid some of the fiercest fighting of the uprising against Moamar Gaddafi.
Counter-attacks by Gaddafi loyalists suggest the embattled leader, in power for four decades, will not go as quietly or quickly as fellow leaders in Egypt and Tunisia did in a tide of popular unrest rolling across the Arab world.
The rebellion against the Libyan leader is now in its fourth week.
Bhatti, 42, was shot repeatedly Wednesday as he left his mother’s home in Islamabad. As the Federal Minister for Minorities, he was an outspoken opponent of Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws, which can impose the death penalty for actions judged to insult Mohammed.
He is the second Pakistani official to be murdered for his opposition to the laws in as many months. Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province, was killed in early January by his bodyguard.
“Both were killed for the same reason,” said Father Lombarid, “because they opposed the blasphemy law, a law that is itself truly a blasphemy, because in the name of God it causes injustice and death.”
In the history of some countries there comes a period when political and factional murder becomes almost routine ”” Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, Germany and its neighbours in the early 1930s. It has invariably been the precursor of a breakdown of legal and political order and of long-term suffering for a whole population. And last week, with the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, Pakistan has taken a further step down this catastrophic road.
To those who actually support such atrocities, there is little to say. They inhabit a world of fantasy, shot through with paranoid anxiety. As the shocked responses from so many Muslims in this country and elsewhere make plain, their actions are as undermining of Koranic ethics as they are of rational politics.
But to those who recognise something truly dreadful going on in their midst ”” to the majority in Pakistan who have elected a government that, whatever its dramatic shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism ”” we have surely to say, “Do not imagine that this can be ”˜managed’ or tolerated”.
(This article is based on the piece just preceding it posted on the blog below–KSH)
One prominent figure on Pakistan’s religious Right, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-iIslam-Fazl, yesterday warned the West not to use international disgust at Mr Bhatti’s murder to put pressure on them to moderate their behaviour. He said: “I have already condemned the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti in the Parliament but it seems as if an international lobby is using such incidents to gain a leverage on religious parties.”
Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, told a memorial service for Mr Bhatti at the weekend that the Government “will try our utmost to bring the culprits to justice”.
But Dr Williams makes clear that patience in Christian-dominated donor countries is wearing out. “To the majority in Pakistan who have elected a Government which, whatever its dramatic shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism, we have surely to say, ”˜Do not imagine that this can be managed or tolerated’.”
In a more nuanced way, a number of influential scholars, such as Rodney Stark and Regina Schwartz, have also cast monotheism as particularly intolerant towards the “Other” and thus a fertile ground for violence.
But I would like to ask whether there actually is an intrinsic link between monotheism and violence? Is such violence virtually inevitable?
There are a number of points that can be made in response to this question. The first is why is there such a preoccupation with religious and Monotheistic forms of violence, often to the point of dismissing secular violence? Why are violent secular causes often let off the hook?
(Hat Tip:Al Jazeera Libyan liveblog)
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces have encircled the western town of Zawiya after being pushed back by rebels earlier today, according to reports, while rebels captured the oil port of Ras Lanouf.
“Zawiya is encircled by Gaddafi’s forces, there are a lot of checkpoints. They are tightening their grip on the centre,” a Reuters journalist said, adding government forces were manning checkpoints some two miles from the centre of town.
“Access to central Zawiya is completely blocked,” she said.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said he will investigate Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his sons and senior aides for crimes against humanity.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo said no-one had the right to massacre civilians.
Thousands of people are thought to have died after security forces targeted protesters in unrest which began in mid-February.
According to a 2006 Today’s Christian Woman article,1.5 percent of Americans engage in self-harming behavior. This jumps dramatically to 12 percent among college students (most self-injury begins in the teen years). Most self-harmers are female (60-70 percent), and many, although not all, struggle with eating disorders, too. I’ve not seen research on the incidence of self-harm among Christians compared with the general population, but my experience shows that this problem is far from rare within the church….
I’m not surprised that self-punishing behaviors occur among Christians. And this is not to blame the church. For legalism ”” and I would argue that this is what these behaviors are at their core ”” comes in guises both religious and secular. The desire to control the destiny of a few moments, if not our lives, is a fact of the human condition. But it is a fact that directly opposes the gospel of grace. Indeed, our vain attempts to mete out our own justice and punishments and thus save ourselves merely reflect the universal human desire to be our own God. For those who self-harm, the gospel comes as an invitation to trust in the One who has enacted perfect and complete justice before God on our behalf, through his body, so we don’t have to punish our own.
Even as diplomats in Geneva have begun discussions on fresh measures to push Muammar Gaddafi out of power, rebels have overrun several of the Libyan strongman’s strongholds in the western part of the country.
Libyan rebels established a transitional national council to coordinate administration in several cities seized from the Gaddafi regime, and have called on the army to help them take Tripoli, the capital.
The cities now controlled by the opposition include al-Zawiyah, less than 30 miles west of Tripoli, where thousands have taken to the streets to welcome visiting journalists. There was no sign of Libyan security services, who had waged bitter battles with anti-government forces in the town last week, leading to at least 35 deaths.
For close to two years, Ms. [Angela] Sims has traversed the country in search of such memories, the recollections of African-American elders about lynching. From New Jersey to California, through Alabama and Oklahoma, she has recorded nearly 85 men and women speaking on a subject most had been determined to avoid, a degradation never to be reawakened.
Ms. Sims has sought to elicit and so defang the sense of shame. As an ordained Baptist minister and a professor of ethics and black church studies at the St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo., she is gathering the accounts to preserve the historical record and to grasp the faith that allowed lynching’s witnesses and survivors to persevere.
“I’m listening for what salvation and redemption might look like,” said Ms. Sims, 54, during a break between interviews. “I’m listening for how grace might play out and for notions of forgiveness.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged the global body’s Security Council to take “decisive action” over the Libya crisis.
He said violations of human rights had been carried out by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, and more than 1,000 had died.
Speaking at a meeting of the Security Council in New York, Mr Ban warned of a growing refugee and food crisis.
The popular revolts shaking the Arab world have begun to shift the balance of power in the region, bolstering Iran’s position while weakening and unnerving its rival, Saudi Arabia, regional experts said.
While it is far too soon to write the final chapter on the uprisings’ impact, Iran has already benefited from the ouster or undermining of Arab leaders who were its strong adversaries and has begun to project its growing influence, the analysts said. This week Iran sent two warships through the Suez Canal for the first time since its revolution in 1979, and Egypt’s new military leaders allowed them to pass.
Saudi Arabia, an American ally and a Sunni nation that jousts with Shiite Iran for regional influence, has been shaken. King Abdullah on Wednesday signaled his concern by announcing a $10 billion increase in welfare spending to help young people marry, buy homes and open businesses, a gesture seen as trying to head off the kind of unrest that fueled protests around the region.
While analysts agree that global oil and gas supplies are hardly at risk, as Libya accounts for only 2 percent of world oil output, countries like Italy, France, and Spain relied on Libya in 2010 for as much as 22 percent, 16 percent, and 13 percent of total crude consumption, respectively ”“ a supply not easily replaced on short notice. Europe receives over 85 percent of Libya’s crude exports.
And that’s causing energy planners to reassess the wisdom of counting on North Africa, where southern European governments have invested significantly to decrease dependence on supplies from Russia and Iran, even if Libya’s civil unrest ends with a peaceful resignation of Qadaffi.
“Europe has to choose between becoming more dependent on Russia or the Middle East, or both,” says Herman Franssen, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former chief economist of the International Energy Agency.
Christian clergy in Libya said they have no intention of leaving the country, where several days of protests and retaliation by government armed forces have left hundreds of people dead.
“We feel we belong here with our sisters who are giving their services in social centres. Their work is so much appreciated by the Libyans here and often finds support and appreciation,” Rev. Daniel Farrugia, a senior Roman Catholic priest at the St. Francis Catholic Church in Tripoli told ENInews on 22 February.
He said the leaders were safe as well as the church structures, with the church’s life in the mornings being almost normal, although many foreigners were leaving the country.
Thousands of African mercenaries and militiamen were massing on roads heading toward Tripoli on Wednesday to reinforce the stronghold of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi as rebels protesting his 40-year rule claimed to have taken control of cities closer to the capital, witnesses said.
The week-old uprising that has swept Libya now appears headed for a decisive stage, with Colonel Qaddafi fortifying his bastion in Tripoli and opponents in the capital saying they were making plans for their first coordinated protest.
“A message comes to every mobile phone about a general protest on Friday in Tripoli,” one resident there said, adding that Colonel Qaddafi’s menacing speech to the country on Tuesday had increased their determination “100 percent.”