Five Egyptians killed in clashes between Christians, Muslims

By Ulf Laessing and Omar Fahmy, Reuters

Five Egyptians were killed and eight wounded in clashes between Christians and Muslims in a town near Cairo, security sources said on Saturday, in the latest sectarian violence in the most populous Arab state.

Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hardline Islamists repressed under his rule.
Four Christians and one Muslim were killed when members of both communities started shooting at each other in Khusus outside the Egyptian capital, the sources said.

State news agency MENA put the death toll at four.

The violence broke out late on Friday when a group of Christian children were drawing on a wall of a Muslim religious institute, the security sources said. No more details were immediately available.

FULL ARTICLE FROM NBC NEWS

Muslim Youth Leader Says: Evangelicals Can Grow to Love Muslims

by Eboo Patel

Editor’s Note: Eboo Patel is founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core. His new book is called “Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America.”

By Eboo Patel, Special to CNN

Paul Ryan has set off joyous cheers in the land of conservatives largely because of his fiscal views but also because of his Catholic faith.

He is just the most recent member of his church – think House Speaker John Boehner, Republican runner-ups Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, and Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia – to be viewed as a flag-bearer for the conservative cause, a movement whose foot soldiers are largely evangelical Protestants.

The dynamic of evangelicals cheering for Catholics is one of the most stunning shifts in American political history. Just 50 years ago, evangelicals were ringing the alarm about the rising prominence of Catholics in American politics, not falling in line behind them.

FULL ARTICLE FROM CNN 

Murder In Zanzibar: Christians, Muslims Struggle To Keep The Peace In Tourist Hotspot

Father Evarist Mushi was on his way to lead a service at the Betras Catholic Church in Mtoni — an area not far from Stone Town, a World Heritage Site — when assailants cornered and killed him. The incident echoes a similar attack in December, when attackers shot and seriously wounded another Catholic priest in the Tomondo area to the south of Stone Town.

Mushi’s death spurred condemnation from security officials on the island, who urged calm and vowed to apprehend the perpetrators.

“We understand that these crimes are being propped up by some bad elements under the pretext of politics, religion or economic reasons, though no religion or political grouping supports violence in principle,” said Said Mwema, the Tanzanian inspector general of police, according to the Tanzania Daily News.

Despite these assurances, the death of Father Mushi is sure to unsettle Zanzibar’s Christians, who are vastly outnumbered on the archipelago. Tanzania as a whole is 60 percent Christian and 36 percent Muslim. But in Zanzibar, more than 95 percent of residents follow Islam.

Religion is integral to Tanzanian society; a full 95 percent of both Christians and Muslims said that faith was a very important part of their lives, according to data from a comprehensive 2010 poll conducted by the The Pew Forum. Of Tanzania’s Muslims, 86 percent said the Quran should be taken literally; 78 percent of Christians said the same of the Bible.

A division between the country’s two largest religious groups is evident. Though the survey found that 95 percent of both groups said religiously motivated violence could not be justified, a majority of Muslims said they knew little or nothing about Christianity, just as the majority of Christians said they knew little or nothing about Islam.

FULL ARTICLE FROM INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES 

Does Islam Need Good PR?

Does Islam Need Good PR? My immediate answer is ‘No’. I also think that it is not for me, as a Christian, even if somewhat ‘expert’, to say what Islam needs, I will leave that to Muslim friends and colleagues. However, there are few areas that I would like to explore:

• Islam, and Muslims, have many good things to say which are often not heard
• There is so much focus on Islam that it would be great if there was less media exposure
• What should Christians be saying about Islam?
• How can we generate the right kind of PR?

FULL ARTICLE FROM ONISLAM.NET

Humbled by the Muslim response to Christians at Christmas time

Each Christmas, my family receives more greetings and gifts from Muslim friends than from fellow Christians.

We treasure handmade cards by Muslim children who do not celebrate Christmas. We cannot dismiss these efforts as tokenistic as they are annual and original. They are not five-second, to-from cards but well-worded peace messages in English and Arabic.

I only wish we took the time to reciprocate this goodwill gesture at the two Islamic Eids, their religious festivals, annually.

Throughout my childhood, we would be visited by Lebanese Muslim friends laden with generous gifts. This did not mean they had suddenly elevated the prophet Issa, as Jesus is known, to the son of God.

Their faith was not compromised and we felt humbled and honoured.

As I write this article, there is a knock on the door. Ahmad, my late father’s carer when he had Alzheimer’s, arrives looking like a bearded, smiling Santa bearing gifts.

When people say to him ”You do this but you are a Muslim?” he replies ”I do this because I am a Muslim”.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE AGE

God and Evolution: Easier For Muslims Than Christians?

If you think Christian scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller have a hard time defending their acceptance of evolution from creationists and atheists–you might be tempted to assume it’s probably as difficult for Muslim scientists.

Not necessarily.

Which is not to say that hostility to evolution isn’t widespread in Muslim countries, even where the education levels are rising quickly. American style creationism is making inroads, even in countries like Turkey where the government and education systems are more liberal about science.

So, it was fascinating to hear from evolutionary biologists like Ehab Abouheif, who runs his own lab at McGill, that doing science and practicing the family’s ancestral faith does not prompt any contradiction.

Abouheif and his team made a splash earlier this year with the discovery that many species of ants retain dormant genes that can be reactivated to generate an entire caste of ‘super-soldiers.’ [His team's paper was published in the January 6 2012 issue of Science.]

FULL ARTICLE FROM FORBES

Christians and Muslims Seek Common Ground in Cincinnati

For the past five years, a small, dedicated group of Muslims and Christians has been meeting in Greater Cincinnati, debunking myths and dissolving stereotypes, one personal relationship at a time.

The local Muslim-Christian Dialogue confronts tough topics head-on, says organizer Bill Lonneman of College Hill. “Even open-minded people are coming in with fears and concerns about terrorism. We don’t shrink away from addressing those issues.”

Dozens of such groups have been meeting for years across the nation and around the world, but co-organizer Karen Dabdoub thinks many Greater Cincinnatians would be surprised to learn that such an organization has been quietly at work here.

Without the group, “I think there would be a lot more distance between people of different faiths in our community,” said Dabdoub, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Cincinnati.

One issue the group confronts: Mainstream Muslims respect Christians and Jews as fellow “people of the book” who also believe in a holy text and one God, Lonneman said. Yet Muslim extremists, who make up a small portion of the Muslim population, draw the lion’s share of attention for their violent acts, he said.

FULL ARTICLE FROM CINCINNATI.COM 

Muslim Leaders Support Pakistani Girl Rimsha Masih who was Accused of Blasphemy

WASHINGTON (BP) — Muslim clerics and scholars — including representatives of radical groups — have voiced support for a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy. An official medical review, meanwhile, has revealed she has mental difficulties.

According to media reports, the All Pakistan Ulema Council, an organization of Muslim clerics and scholars, denounced the climate of fear and vigilantism surrounding Rimsha Masih, who was accused of blasphemy for burning religious texts and then arrested when an irate mob demanded action. The facts of the case — including what the young girl burned while cleaning — are in doubt, and some media reports say she has Down syndrome.

“The law of the jungle is taking over now and anybody can be accused of anything,” Allama Tahir Ashrafi, chair of the council, told the BBC.

He called on the government to impartially investigate the accusations and punish the accusers if they falsely pointed the finger, according to Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

“We see Rimsha as a test case for Pakistan’s Muslims, Pakistan’s minorities and for the government,” Ashrafi told a news conference in Islamabad, according to the McClatchy news service. “We don’t want to see injustice done with anyone. We will work to end this climate of fear. The accusers should be proceeded against with full force, so that no one would dare make spurious allegations.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM OPPOSING VIEWS

U.S. still viewed negatively by Muslims in Many Countries

WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) – The rise of pro-democracy movements in the Middle East has failed to improve the image of the United States in the region, a poll has determined.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project said a survey conducted prior to the death of Osama bin Laden found that people in key Arab nations and other predominantly Muslim countries still have a negative view of America.

In Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan, views are even more negative than they were a year ago, the poll indicated.

Pew said with the exception of Indonesia, U.S. President Barack Obama remains unpopular in Muslim nations it polled.

People in most of those countries disapprove of the way he has handled calls for political change in the Middle East, Pew said.

The poll found widespread support for democracy in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

FULL ARTICLE FROM UPI 

Jewish, Christian, Muslim musicians use music as bridge

Put an Israeli Jew, an Australian Christian and a Turkish Muslim together in a recording studio (or more accurately alone next to their own computers with file-sharing capabilities), and it may sound something like Three Waves Under the Bridge, the group effort of Ittai Shaked, Andy Bussuttil and Umit Ceyhan.

The bridge of a musical composition often connects disparate sections or ideas resulting in a cohesive whole. But the international trio’s Bridge Project takes that concept one step further by integrating musicians from diverse backgrounds resulting in a musical blend spiced by Middle Eastern instrumentation, Turkish rhythms, some Balkan beats and even a touch of klezmer.

According to violinist Shaked, the project’s lynchpin, what started out as an informal exercise with his fellow musicians does more than cross a chasm, it eliminates it entirely.

“We just wanted to show that you can bridge gaps, and thatmusic is stronger than anything else,” the life-long musician said last week from his Tel Aviv office at Waves, a successful Grammy Award-winning startup that develops audio mixing software for the digital age for sound engineers and producers. Shaked’s role at the company as a quality assurance coordinator played a pivotal role in the genesis of The Bridge Project.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE JERUSALEM POST