Church/state
October 29th
posted: October 29, 2007 2:17 EST
Was it a Kenyan assassin who killed the St. Louis missionary — or was it madness? Seven years later, the verdict is in.
By Aimee Levitt, Riverfront Times
Just before dawn on an August morning seven years ago in Kenya, John and Henry Kanbo drove toward the market town of Naivasha to buy cattle. The Naivasha-Nakuru Highway is usually one of the busiest roads in southwest Kenya's Rift Valley, but at 6 a.m. it was deserted, except for the battered white Toyota pickup perched on the edge of a ditch near a grove of acacia trees. The brothers pulled over and noticed a string of pink rosary beads hanging from a switch on the dashboard and a body lying in a brick drainage culvert.
In the dim morning light the Kanbos made out the corpse of a large white male, 6-foot-2-inches and 200 pounds. He lay on his back, his black leather jacket and gray trousers splattered with mud. There was a pile of blankets and sheets at his side and a double-barreled shotgun at his feet. Blood oozed from where the back of his head should have been.
When police arrived, they had little trouble identifying the body. The man's name was John Anthony Kaiser. He was much loved by the people of Kenya for the work he did on behalf of the poor and dispossessed. He was an American priest who had first come to Africa 36 years ago as a missionary, fresh from his ordination in St. Louis, where he attended Saint Louis University and began studying for the priesthood.
At first the Kenyans knew him as Father Seven Oxen because of his physical strength. Later they called him the Rhino because he was tough and stubborn, not a man to be crossed. In the few years before his death, he'd become the Key, or the Voice of the People, unafraid to speak out against the corruption that permeated the Kenyan government.
Father Kaiser was 67 years old when he died that early morning of August 24, 2000. Naivasha police told the Kenyan newspaper The Nation he'd been shot in a "gangland-style execution."
Kaiser was not the first outspoken Catholic priest in Kenya to perish under mysterious circumstances. "You'd be surprised at how much went on in western Kenya in the 1990s," says Dave Durenberger, a former U.S. Senator from Minnesota and a high school classmate of Kaiser. "A lot of priests spoke out against the government, and the government tried to scare them off and keep them in their place." Sometimes they went even further, says Father Cornelius Schilders, the current Bishop of Ngong, Kaiser's old diocese. "Many people who spoke out against the oppression and corruption disappeared," he explains in a recent e-mail.
In public forums and in the Kenyan and international press, Kaiser accused Kenya's president, Daniel arap Moi, of staging bloody tribal wars in order to drive people from their land and seize it for the government. Throughout the 1990s, Kaiser had been followed, harassed and even beaten and placed under house arrest by Kenyan police and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). "I reckon they tried to frighten him so he would leave Kenya," Schilders writes. "But then they really did not know him! Nothing would make him do that, only death."
read on . . .
comments (0)
October 22nd
posted: October 22, 2007 5:19 EST
Praying, eating and bowling with the most hated student group at UC Irvine
By Derek Olson, OC Weekly
It’s dusk on the UC Irvine campus, and the members of the Muslim Student Union (MSU) begin ambling toward a picnic table near Ring Road, a narrow walking and biking road encircling the park. They are hungry. It is late September, and the holy month of Ramadan is in full swing. The students break their sun-up-to-sundown fasting regimen—no food, water, sex—with a sweet date.
I eat a date, too; it’s good. Kareem Elsayed, a 21-year-old student, tells me that dates are high in glucose, providing an instant rush of energy and potassium for rehydration. The perfect appetizer for a thirsty, starving Muslim.
The women and the men of the group eat at separate tables. It’s part of tradition, one of the students tells me. Like the conservative dress of the women, eating separately is a way to avoid the distractions of physical attraction so one can focus only on God.
I pile delicious lamb and some kind of spicy rice on a plate and move to a table full of solemn faces. “Mind if I sit down?” I ask with a smile.
They neither object nor invite. They barely look at me, instead staring at their plates. Three thin freshmen and a man in his 40s who looks like an Arab Tony Soprano sit at the table. Not a word is said for several minutes. One of the young men is somewhat sloppily eating with his hands; the rest use plastic cutlery.
“So,” the Soprano look-alike asks me, “how long have you been a Muslim?”
“I’m not a Muslim,” I answer.
He raises his eyebrows and turns his attention back to his food. He seems to regard me suspiciously, not surprising considering the MSU is likely the most hated––and feared––student group at the university.
• • •
Critics call the MSU an anti-Semitic hate group that supports the destruction of Israel with terrorism. Bloggers, from local activists to Jewish hate-watch websites, track every public move of some prominent MSU members, sometimes dedicating entire pages to profiling individuals.
The controversies began when most of the MSU’s oldest current members were still in high school. In 2003, the Los Angeles Times wrote that members of the group participated in a flag-football tournament for Muslims using team names such as “Mujahideen, Intifada and Soldiers of Allah.” In 2004, the group made headlines again by wearing green “shahada” armbands to UCI’s commencement ceremony, bands some associate with Hamas, but which the MSU contends are simple declarations of their faith. In 2004, someone painted a Star of David dripping with blood, an act that the Zionist Organization of America has tried to tie to the MSU.
read on . . .
comments (0)
October 17th
posted: October 17, 2007 11:10 EST
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
Today's scheduled embrace of the Dalai Lama by George W. Bush represents a major change in foreigner policy by the White House.
Bush's new plan: If you meet the Buddha on the road, get a photo-op with him.
That's a shift from the Blackwater philosophy: If you meet an Iraqi on the road, shoot him.
In any case, plagued by a war that his own regime started, the president has chosen to burnish his image by meeting with a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not Al Gore, who looks as if he's won several pizza prizes since Bush's operatives stole the presidency from him in 2000.
This Nobel winner is Tenzin Gyatso, who was proclaimed the Dalai Lama when he was only two years old and ruled Tibet until China ousted him years ago. Gyatso won the 1989 Nobel prize "for his consistent resistance to the use of violence."
Meanwhile, China is pissed, as the L.A. Times notes this morning:
"We solemnly demand that the U.S. cancel the extremely wrong arrangements," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters before the meeting. "It seriously violates the norm of international relations and seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China's internal affairs."
Too bad that Hunter S. Thompson, the Dalai Lama's deceased twin, isn't around to write about this absurd face-to-face between two spiritual leaders whose approaches to violence are so different.
Will the peace-loving Buddhist leader have any impact on Bush? It's too late for that. The best we can hope for is that, instead of gonzo pol Karl Rove whispering into Bush's ear, "Stick to principle, stick to principle," this Gyatso pol will whisper, "Stay in the moment, stay in the moment."
It would be nice if he also told Bush, "Don't stay in Iraq, don't stay in Iraq."
comments (0)
October 16th
posted: October 16, 2007 11:54 EST
Prophet Warren Jeffs' conviction won't stop underage marriages among his followers, much less end polygamy.
By John Dougherty, Phoenix New Times
The recent conviction of Mormon polygamist leader Warren Steed Jeffs on two felony counts of rape as an accomplice is a huge public relations victory for Utah and Arizona authorities who have been under intense pressure to crack down on so-called "spiritual" marriages of underage girls.
But it is doubtful that the conviction of the leader of the nation's largest polygamist sect — considered by his followers to be God's prophet on Earth — will stop illegal marriages of children or stem polygamy.
That Jeffs is headed for prison will not even mean a new prophet will reign over the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Insiders say Jeffs' second-in-command, Wendell Nielsen, is running day-to-day operations of the church but that Warren, reminiscent of top organized crime figures, will rule the FLDS from behind bars. That includes deciding who will marry whom in the religion.
More than 50 years of government indifference toward widespread abuses within the FLDS has allowed the sect to grow from fewer than 400 people scratching out a living on the remote Arizona Strip in 1953 to an economic powerhouse with more than 10,000 members spread across the West.
The sheer size and wealth of the rapidly reproducing congregation, which accounts for only a quarter of the estimated number of polygamists in Arizona and Utah, have forced law enforcement to focus on the most notorious crimes while conceding that little will be done to stem a practice that violates the Arizona and Utah constitutions and has been found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Still, Jeffs' high-profile arrest while on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List and subsequent conviction on felony charges — which could bring him life in prison — have focused the nation's attention on abuses that have flourished for decades within the closed FLDS society.
read on . . .
comments (0)
September 24th
posted: September 24, 2007 8:04 EST
Too late to ask Bill Kunstler about that.
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
The most thorough news story so far about putative Attorney General Michael Mukasey comes, not from the mainstream press, but from the Jewish Week. And James D. Besser's extremely well-balanced account cuts right through to the topics of church-state separation, the Patriot Act, and civil liberties.
Faith is an issue when it comes to Mukasey, and that has nothing to do with the Jew-hating websites that are foaming at the mouth about him.
It figures that the Bush administration would replace a dumb but avid opponent of civil liberties — Alberto Gonzales — with a smart but avid opponent of civil liberties, as I pointed out in "War of Terror's New Front: Mukasey." But with the Arab world blowing up all around us, do we have to have an attorney general who's not only an ardent supporter of the Patriot Act but also an avid Zionist?
We already know, as I pointed out earlier, that Mukasey regards the Bill of Rights as less important than the rest of the Constitution because it was tacked-on and that he wants the citizenry to have faith in their government.
The New York Times managed to write an entire story this morning about Mukasey's handling of "war on terror" suspects without mentioning his handling of terror suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case. Philip Shenon's story even says this:
Although Mr. Mukasey is otherwise widely admired by prosecutors and defense lawyers alike in New York, his handling of the cases of … material witnesses taken into custody in terrorism investigations after Sept. 11 produced some rare, sharp criticism of his performance on the bench and raised concern among civil liberties groups.
"Widely admired"? That's not backed up in the story. "Material witnesses"? That's the Times's euphemism for the thousands of Muslims unjustifiably scooped off our streets by the hysterical AG John Ashcroft (see my August 2004 review of the film Persons of Interest).
The Wall Street Journal is the only mainstream outlet that even mentioned that William Kunstler tried to have Mukasey removed from the 1993 bombing case because of the judge's Orthodox Judaism. But the September 18 Journal piece was misleading, saying that Kunstler wanted him removed because he's Jewish. No, it's because Mukasey is both Orthodox and Zionist. There's a difference between that and simply being Jewish.
The Jewish Week story by Besser you haven't read? Check it out, particularly a telling analysis of Mukasey and civil liberties from, of all people, Marc Stern of the ardently pro-Israel American Jewish Congress:
Mukasey presided over the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in a case involving the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and ruled in the controversial case involving Jose Padilla, charged in a "dirty bomb" plot.
Mukasey, while differing with the Bush administration on some details, earned a reputation as a forceful defender of the controversial legal procedures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism.
"He has not been a rubber stamp for the administration's policies on terrorism but he is a very deep skeptic about the law's ability to cope with terrorism," said Stern. "He doesn't take the reflective response of civil libertarians that the only way to fight terrorism is through the ordinary legal system. The only question is whether he goes too far the other way."
Now that is interesting: a judge who is a "very deep skeptic" about the legal process concerning terror suspects. Stern accurately notes that the only question is whether Mukasey goes too far. And Besser accurately portrayed the Kunstler v. Mukasey episode:
During the World Trade Center trials, defense attorneys demanded Mukasey be removed from the case because of his Jewish affiliations. Attorney William Kunstler argued in a district court motion that Mukasey's Orthodox Jewish and Zionist views rendered him unfit to try the case.
But Besser stopped there. In fact, Mukasey cleverly had Kunstler removed as the sheik's lawyer. Without context, Shenon's story this morning mentioned a very similar move by Mukasey in an October 2001 case of Osama Awadallah, a college student with no criminal record who was one of thousands of Muslims rounded up on U.S. streets after 9/11:
Judge Mukasey sided with prosecutors and refused to allow a prominent Arab-American criminal defense lawyer, Abdeen M. Jabara, to help defend Mr. Awadallah.
Prosecutors argued that Mr. Jabara had a conflict of interest because he defended Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 in a terrorist plot to blow up New York City landmarks. Judge Mukasey was the judge in that trial.
Talking about bending the law for political purposes. I thought Bush didn't like "activist judges."
Anyway, Besser did a good job in his story by talking to Muslim groups, among others:
[M]ajor Muslim groups are being cautious in responding to the appointment.
"We won't be taking any formal position on the nomination. Instead, we are hoping that whoever becomes attorney general will maintain the civil liberties of all Americans, an issue that has been the top concern of the American Muslim community," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
But he said his group will have "concerns about any nominee who favors aspects of the Patriot Act that we believe violate civil liberties."
Mukasey's status as an Orthodox Jew is "irrelevant," Hooper said. "We would hope he would not allow his political and religious beliefs to cloud his judgment as attorney general, but that goes for any attorney general of any faith."
Besser's story points out that Mukasey's views on the separation of church and state are not really known. But his story itself helps provide the troubling answer.
First off, Ibrahim Hooper was simply being shrewdly politic about Mukasey. The future AG's status as an Orthodox Jew is highly relevant.
Just as right-wing Christians use their faith as a political bludgeon, so do Mukasey's fellow Orthodox Jews. He's a graduate of the Ramaz School, an Upper East Side school affiliated with Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (which calls itself "KJ"), and his wife was a teacher there.
Here's the congregation's mission statement. See if it differs much from the kind of politicized religion practiced by the likes of the late, unlamented Jerry Falwell and the alive, unlamented Pat Robertson, among many others:
Our identification with the State of Israel and our fellow Jews extends well beyond the more conventional UJA/Federation, Israel Bonds and tree-planting campaigns (although KJ is an active promoter and participant in all of the foregoing important programs). KJ participates in and sponsors political action groups supporting Israel and oppressed Jews around the world, and runs several well-attended missions each year to Israel for the primary purpose of demonstrating solidarity and support to our brethren, especially in these incredibly difficult times for the State and its citizens.
Church-state separation? No. Political action by a religious organization? Yes. I'm not saying this is remarkable or even right-wing. This is the way most American Jewish congregations look at Israel.
But why do you think that American Muslims protest when their own ties to overseas Muslims are unfairly questioned and even prosecuted?
More to the point of church-state separation: When it comes to most sects of Orthodox Judaism, there ain't no separation. So that's bound to raise some worries about Mukasey from those who defend such a separation.
I guess that, with the hawks like Cheney beating the drums for some kind of war with the mullahs of Iran, we might as well have a Zionist as attorney general.
comments (0)
September 13th
posted: September 13, 2007 3:27 EST
Fore! More Years! At Least!
U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Jacob Boyer
No grunts, please: A sergeant and a captain tee off at the Camp Victory driving range.
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
While Americans were being shelled Tuesday by White-House-driven propaganda from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in D.C., rebels bombed our Camp Victory in Baghdad, a little-noticed Xanadu that illustrates the golf between us and the Iraqis.
Five years ago we "liberated" Saddam Hussein's sumptuous Al Faw Palace and planted the Pentagon's flag there.
By now we could have returned the palace to Iraq's citizens, who are dying of the heat, among other things. But all we've done is given it a friendlier second name, Camp Al-Nasr, for PR purposes aimed at Iraq's surviving Arab populace.
The only lifeguards with a good track record at Camp Victory are probably those at its pool — here's a photo of the actual palace swimmin' hole.
On Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Camp Victory, the U.S. military HQ, was shelled. Here's an AP report from this morning:
A fatal attack launched two days ago against the sprawling headquarters base of the American military in Iraq was carried out with a 240 mm rocket — a type of weapon provided to Shiite extremists by Iran, a U.S. general said Thursday.
One person was killed and 11 were wounded during the "indirect fire" attack Tuesday against Camp Victory, which includes the headquarters of Multinational Forces-Iraq. …
The attacks came despite the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began Thursday for Iraq's Sunni Muslims, and Friday for the country's majority Shiites. Tradition requires faithful to abstain from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset during the monthlong observance. …
The attack was overshadowed by congressional appearances by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Washington.
And talk about surges and track records: How about that Christopher Harris! I still remember his Ironman Triathlon at Camp Victory in October 2005. The U.S. Army captain conducted his one-man surge while his wife competed in Hawaii's Ironman Triathlon.
But Iraqis are pretty fortunate, too. Praise Allah for good timing: Ramadan's month-long fasting coincides perfectly with the current food crisis. As IRIN reports:
The monthly food rationing system on which millions of Iraqis depend is not working properly, according to officials. They warn that delays in food deliveries will have a serious impact on those fasting during the upcoming holy Islamic month of Ramadan (beginning around 13 September), when Muslims go without food and drink from dawn to sunset.
The shortage of food can't be that serious if they're already fasting. Mind if we play through?
comments (0)
September 12th
posted: September 12, 2007 9:41 EST
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
Osama wants Americans to convert, but many of us are already religious fanatics.
Sounding like a presidential candidate, Osama bin Laden sympathized with our "insane taxes and real estate mortgages," according to Al Qaeda's tape, brilliantly dissected by Anne Applebaum in Slate.
Bin Laden's solution for beleaguered Americans? Convert to his brand of hardline Islam.
That wouldn't be much of a leap for many Americans, because 12.6 percent of us are "traditional evangelical" Christians, according to a 2004 survey by the political science prof John Green at the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.
And what do traditional evangelical Christians believe in? Evangelizing, by definition, which is what bin Laden was doing on that tape.
And here's a reminder: Most evangelical Christians believe in the Rapture, as beliefnet.org's Deborah Caldwell noted in an excellent 2002 article. For you who are unaware, this is how religioustolerance.org explains the Rapture:
Most Evangelical Christians believe that the Rapture … will happen precisely as described [in the Bible], sometime in the near future. All previously saved Christians, totaling perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the world's population, will suddenly have their bodies converted into a different form that they will wear for all eternity in Heaven. They will rise vertically into the air. Many believe that they will pass right through ceilings, roofs of cars, etc. to meet Jesus Christ in the sky. Although the vast majority of humans will be left behind, there will be much devastation as planes, trains and automobiles as their pilots, engineers and drivers suddenly disappear and the vehicles crash.
And Americans make fun of Islamic fanatics' beliefs about meeting virgins in Heaven?
Bin Laden's a violent creep, but his brand of religious fanaticism would be a pretty good fit for evangelical George W. Bush.
Reporters for Frontline's The Jesus Factor (2004) talked with top Southern Baptist official Richard Land — whose denomination is the biggest in the U.S. — about Bush's inauguration for his second term as Texas governor:
"The day he was inaugurated there were several of us who met with him at the governor's mansion," says Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "And among the things he said to us was, 'I believe that God wants me to be president.' "
OK, I'm convinced: God is vengeful.
(Land, by the way, wears presidential-seal cuff links; see my September 2004 item "The Christocrats.")
I guess that those of you who voted for Bush — Twice! For Christ's sake! — are off the hook, in both senses of the phrase.
Judging by the results of the 2004 religious survey, the turban of conservative Muslim bin Laden would wear well on quite a few other Americans, as much as they rightly detest him.
Hardliners of one religion have more in common with hardliners of another religion than with the rest of us. They all believe in conservative, patriarchal "family values" and they give us the same fiery message: Convert, or burn in hell — and we'll light the match.
You still think there's no comparison between bin Laden's homicidal brand of Islam and the beliefs of America's Rock-of-Ages-rigid traditional Christian evangelicals? Here's the grim FAQ about the future of us unbelievers, according to the killer logic of raptureready.com:
What do most countries do with those who commit treason? The governments either incarcerate the traitors for the rest of their lives or they execute them.
Rejection of God is surely treason because mankind originates from Him: the DNA to form our bodies, the gravity to keep it intact, air to keep us breathing, food and water resources to sustain our bodies, materials for shelter, materials for clothing, and all the other good things about life that we take for granted everyday.
What, then, does a human being deserve when he dismisses God, disregards His law (that is written on our hearts), then even goes so far as to say He does not exist and that evolution is our creator?
Let this be a warning.
comments (0)
September 10th
posted: September 10, 2007 2:30 EST
Mitt Romney and his fellow Mormons believe that Adam ate the forbidden fruit in Independence, Missouri.
By Justin Kendall, The Pitch (Kansas City)
There is a volleyball net staked on the grassy hill where Jesus will rule the Earth during the Second Coming. A signpost at the bottom of the hill explains the spot's historical and spiritual significance: On August 3, 1831, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith Jr. dedicated this land in the City of Zion for the Lord's temple, and Mormons believe that Christ will rule from a throne here for a millennium.
The City of Zion is also known as Independence, Missouri.
The same year that Smith blessed the land — 1831 — he had a revelation that the Garden of Eden was in Independence, which he called "the center place." Most Judeo-Christian theology places the Garden in the Middle East. But the Mormons, more formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, believe that Adam and Eve lived in Independence before being expelled and that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge grew nearby.
That's why I'm here — I'm searching for the Garden of Eden. My logic is simple. Smith marked the site for Christ's temple. He even knew where Adam and Eve went after they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden (which he put about 85 miles north of Independence, in a place he called Adam-ondi-Ahman, just outside Jameson in Daviess County). Surely Smith marked the spot of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life. With 20,000 Mormons living in the Kansas City area (worldwide Mormonism claims 13 million followers), I figured that someone could show me where the Garden grew.
Let me explain by first saying I am not a Mormon, nor am I particularly spiritual, having been born into a family of Sunday-football-watching, nonpracticing Lutherans. My experience with Mormonism has been limited to a 2003 episode of South Park in which the blue-and-red-stocking-capped Stan disputes Joseph Smith's claim that the Garden sprouted in Jackson County. "If you're going to say things that have been proven wrong, like the first man and woman lived in Missouri and that Native Americans came from Jerusalem, then you better have something to back it up," Stan scolds his family and a Mormon family.
The rest of America's experience with Mormons is also somewhat limited.
read on . . .
comments (0)
August 23rd
posted: August 23, 2007 4:42 EST
Daffodil Altan
The doors of local mosques were flung open for OC visitors on Sunday, August 19.
Click here for the OC Weekly slideshow.
comments (0)
August 22nd
posted: August 22, 2007 10:27 EST
By Lisa Rab, Cleveland Scene
Ken Blackwell, that lovable Ohio Secretary of State who did everything in his power to waste your money while keeping you from voting ("Better Dead Than Red," November 10, 2004) is back.
In his latest reincarnation, he’s a fellow — a Ronald Reagan fellow, no less — at the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy in Columbus. There, he gets to sound off on everything from a "faithful" Supreme Court to poor, tax-burdened private equity fund managers.
And if you lived in Cleveland, you could hear him pontificate in person. The Lakewood Republican Organization invited him to its fundraiser at the Cleveland Yachting Club today. The suggested entrance fee for his VIP reception was $200, almost as much as he used to spend on lunch in Columbus. To make Blackwell most comfortable, attendees were encouraged to pay in large sacks of unmarked bills.
comments (0)
Just before dawn on an August morning seven years ago in Kenya, John and Henry Kanbo drove toward the market town of Naivasha to buy cattle. The Naivasha-Nakuru Highway is usually one of the busiest roads in southwest Kenya's Rift Valley, but at 6 a.m. it was deserted, except for the battered white Toyota pickup perched on the edge of a ditch near a grove of acacia trees. The brothers pulled over and noticed a string of pink rosary beads hanging from a switch on the dashboard and a body lying in a brick drainage culvert.
