Love your neighbour: Islam, Judaism and Christianity come together over COVID-19

Faith leaders from Christianity, Judaism and Islam support government efforts to control the coronavirus.

• Young men and women of faith can supply their digital know-how to build good communication during the crisis.

• Discussions are taking place about how the three religions can collaborate on charitable initiatives.

 

The COVID-19 global pandemic requires an immediate, whole-of society approach to prevent the transmission of the virus. During this time of uncertainty, faith leaders such as ourselves have turned to our religious texts and theology to find comfort for the community and encourage safe practices.

We have seen fellow prominent faith leaders from Christianity, Judaism and Islam issuing opinions, guidance documents – and even fatwas – to their communities that re-analyse religious practices and provide theological opinions on how faith practices or rituals can be adapted to meet the response of COVID-19 and implement social distancing.

Listen to all three faith leaders in conversation in this podcast

To slow the spread of the virus, we’ve taken to media, email and radio to conduct daily prayers and worship, mobilize individual volunteers to serve the elderly and at risk. We’ve engaged in discussions surrounding personal well-being and found new ways to communicate to our communities the importance of listening to the safety guidelines promoted by governments and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“The ability to go to your church or synagogue or mosque in a hard time is really important to people,” empathized Rabbi Sharon Brous in the LA Times. Nevertheless, she practised social distancing and engaged with her community via virtual platforms, as recommended by medical and government authorities. She exhorted her synagogue members to find “resilience and level-headedness and kindness and cooperation precisely in their moment of greatest vulnerability”.

Lessons from the Abrahamic faiths

As some individuals may be wary of following the preventative messages pertaining to COVID-19 by government and international organizations, faith actors should utilize religious teachings to reiterate the importance of these measures for the safety of the community. The Abrahamic faiths all have teachings that profess the importance of taking action to assist others and save lives.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM 

Christian, Jewish, Muslim leaders join together in call to stop politicizing steps to slow coronavirus spread

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — Faith leaders at Duke University came together Thursday to talk about how believers can continue to grow together in their religion despite not being able to gather at places of worship.

Leaders of Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups at Duke University all echoed that the COVID-19 pandemic is challenging religious traditions.

Duke Divinity School Dean Greg Jones said it was important for all religions to stop politicizing faith. He said it was important to stop framing social gathering restrictions as a first amendment right or political power struggle.

“Plenty of evidence of when there have been gatherings, they have produced significant outbreaks,” Jones said.

Because of that, he said all religions shouldn’t be framing what’s happening as government stopping religious gatherings. Instead it should be thought of as all believers working to protect their members who are most at risk.

FULL ARTICLE FROM ABC11 (NORTH CAROLINA)

 

 

Muslim Literature: The Pros, The Progress, And The Pitfalls

The burgeoning field of Muslim literature, and Muslim fiction, in particular, is an exciting development for the English-speaking Muslim community. However, it is necessary for Muslim writers to seriously consider the quality of their work.

Once upon a time, it was extremely difficult for English-speaking Muslims to find good books – fiction and non-fiction alike – that was catered to their demographic. Fiction, in particular, was scarce, for both young children as well as teens. Much of it was poorly written, filled with atrocious spelling and grammar, and stilted from beginning to end.

It was not an enjoyable reading experience.

Alhamdulillah, the Muslim literary scene has evolved significantly since the early 90s. Today, we have award-winning Muslim authors such as Na’ima B. Robert, whose excellent YA novels have been published through mainstream publishers and numerous emerging writers whose debut novels are wonderful contributions to the existing body of modern Muslim literature.

Muslim publishers such as Kube Publishing, Daybreak Press, and Ruqaya’s Bookshelf are taking the lead in producing and distributing stories by and for Muslims. In addition, the publishing company Simon and Schuster launched an entire division dedicated to books by Muslim writers. Hena Khan, S. K. Ali, Karuna Riazi, and Mark Gonzales are just some of the authors whose Muslim-centered stories have been published through Salaam Reads and made accessible to schools, libraries, and the general public. The We Need Diverse Books movement has also played a significant role in promoting multicultural and marginalized voices within mainstream publishing, and the results are wonderful.

FULL ARTICLE FROM MUSLIM MATTERS

In search of the Muslim Gandhi

In Gandhi’s lifetime, there were enough Muslim Gandhis. How can their message be reclaimed in these troubled times?

New Delhi: The image of a fanatical and violent Muslim has become a dominant stereotype since 11 September 2001. In the contemporary world, including in countries like India, Muslim experiences of peace-making and nonviolence are lost to the stronger media-made images of Islam as a religion of conflict and war. Violence has become the symbolic image of Islam in the West and in the East.

Historically, however, Islam, like all other religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism, has shown both tolerance and intolerance towards other religions and communities. History provides us with many examples of Muslim tolerance towards other faiths. For more than a century during the Middle ages, for instance, Cordoba (in Spanish Andalusia) witnessed a great flowering of religious freedom, which, while not perfect, was tolerant enough to accommodate many Jewish and Christian intellectuals, who lived and wrote and flourished side-by-side with their Muslim counterparts in a strikingly pluralistic society.

The cultural legacy of Cordoba is impressive in its scale and splendour and remains a successful model of associative reconciliation and nonviolent cross-cultural learning that we see being put into action during the Moghul period in India and later by Muslims who collaborated with Mohandas Gandhi in the Indian Independence movement.

Through his “soft reading” of the Hindu scriptures, but also the texts of Christianity and Islam, Gandhi found a clarion call for active nonviolence in all these religions. As such, he thought whether one is a Christian, Jew or Muslim, faith can only push a person to promote peace and nonviolent social change. For him, the basic principles of religions were not just pious ideals, but actual laws of action in the world. Maybe this is why Gandhi challenged fervent believers of different religions to seek God through their own active pursuit of truth and nonviolence, instead of being literalist interpreters of the Hindu, Muslim or Christian scriptures.

FULL ARTICLE FROM LIVE MINT (INDIA)

Can Muslims get a fair shake in India?

India is back to square one, thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move Monday to scrap special political rights for a Muslim-majority state in the Hindu-dominated country. The Muslim-rights issue, which led to the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland in 1947, has now resurfaced: Can the Muslims get a fair shake in India?

By scraping Kashmir’s special autonomy status, Modi has taken a dangerous step toward implementing the vision of his ultra-nationalist party’s spiritual guru, the late V.D. Savarkar, who proposed more than 90 years ago to keep minorities under control in an India ruled by the Hindu majority.

Sitting in a prison cell on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the convicted-armed-revolutionary-turned-Indian-nationalist drew up his solution to the vexing question of India’s minorities. His idea: The Muslims and Christians can stay in India, but they will be subservient to the Hindus; they will be granted no rights that may infringe upon Hindu rights; and since they are minorities, they must obey the majority.

This was not his initial plan, however. He initially wanted to convert the Muslims and the Christians back into Hindu. But he faced a big obstacle. Savarkar could convert the Muslims or the Christians, but could not arbitrarily decide their caste. A Hindu must belong to a hierarchical caste, and it is acquired through birth only. Hindu religion does not permit assigning a caste.

To overcome this insurmountable barrier, he revised his idea. He decided he is a Hindu, not an Indian. His motherland is Hindustan, which encompasses the land from the Himalayas to the Indus River. Hindustan boasts a 5,000-year-old rich culture, which influenced a vast number of people from Greece to Japan. On the contrary, India is a concept championed by the nationalists who wanted an independent united country for all of its inhabitants, regardless of their religion.

FULL ARTICLE FROM HISTORY NEWS NETWORK 

In new book, Muslim doctor encourages Christians to ‘love thy neighbor’

(RNS) — Ayaz Virji had a well-paying position at a Pennsylvania hospital when he decided to uproot his family in 2013 and move to Dawson, Minn., a town with about 1,500 residents and the distinction of being “Gnometown, USA.”

Virji’s Muslim faith and values inspired him to look for a job that was more than just lucrative. In Dawson, he said, he felt he could provide what he called “dignified medicine,” spending time getting to know his patients in an underserved rural community.

Then came the 2016 election.

Most Dawson residents had voted for President Trump. And many of Virji’s patients — stirred by Trump’s insistence that “Islam hates us,” his suggestion of a Muslim registry and his promise of a Muslim ban — began to question his family’s presence. As far as anybody knew, they were the first Muslim family to live in Dawson.

That’s when Virji discovered another vocation: speaking to Christian audiences about his faith in order to dispel myths about Islam.

FULL ARTICLE FROM RELIGION NEWS

Undoing Stereotypical Representations in Arab and Muslim Cinemas: Challenges, Interruptions, and Possibilities

Troubled by a history of misconceptions on Western silver screens, Arab and Muslim filmmakers have kept their cinematic productions thematically close to the reality of their postcolonial cultural and social conditions, while trying to represent their communities in complex ways. In many efforts of artistic excellence, the films they make aim to reverse the frisson of alterity upon which the conception of their disgraced images have been historically predicated; in the process, the films aspire to alter these images and representations. Rarely however does the work of these Arab and Muslim filmmakers reach a global audience. This article locates themes and creative forms in many cinematic narratives of representation, and recommends their interpretation and mediation to a global audience. The article responds to a recent “intellectual turn” in contemporary debate on Arab and Muslim films, calling for the invention of a category called “Muslim Cinema”. The article contextualizes this turn within the contours of Western institutions as sites of epistemological authority and examines its epistemological, racial, and ideological implications and underpinnings in connection to representation.

Introduction

Like most Third Cinemas’ post-independence era productions, Arab/Muslim films are known for the cultivation of a realist aesthetic and a commitment to national struggles and identity discourses. Historically, however, filmmakers in Arab and Muslim societies have addressed domestic issues and censored themes often considered too sensitive and beyond national meta-narratives. Civil wars, Shi’a/Sunni entanglements in proxy wars, religious fanaticism and terrorism, irregular migration, the heterogeneous composition which characterizes Arab and other identities in the region, gender politics, and the haunting verisimilitude of the Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation, have all been persistent themes for filmmakers and audiences. Never have these filmmakers been unified over a particular configuration of alterity, or collectively endorsed one specific representation of otherness in the same manner that Hollywood had their disfigured images molded and frozen over time as villains and terrorists. Aware that their identity has been “represented by others, mediated by Hollywood, Dan Rather, or The New York Times… [deploying misconceptions of] lazy Mexicans, shifty Arabs, savage Africans, and exotic Asiatics…” (Stam 1984: 51) on their movie screens, Arab/Muslim cinematic productions have been consistently exploring different strategies to speak for themselves.

FULL ARTICLE FROM ARAB MEDIA AND SOCIETY 

Christians worldwide urged to sign letter thanking family of Muslim man who died saving churchgoers

Christians around the world are being urged to sign a letter to the loved ones of a Muslim police officer who sacrificed his life to save hundreds of churchgoers in Egypt.

Persecution watchdog group International Christian Concern published the letter online Wednesday, addressed to the family of Major Mustafa Abid, who was killed on duty on Jan. 5.

Abid, along with other officers, was responding to a bomb discovered on the roof of the Virgin Mary and Father Seifin Church in Nasr City, near Cairo, when it detonated and killed him, injuring three others.

The incident took place a day before the Coptic Christian Christmas Eve, and as International Christian Concern noted, fears are that hundreds of Christians, including children, would have been killed if the expositions had gone off as planned.

“By signing onto this letter, I wish to express my highest praise, deepest gratitude, and heartfelt sympathy for your injuries and loss incurred while following your conscience and your duty on Jan. 5, 2019. Your actions ensured that hundreds of Egyptian men, women, and children were not unjustly murdered during a deadly attack on the Virgin Mary and Father Seifin Church,” begins the letter which is also addressed to members of the bomb squad.

“I wish to thank the members of the bomb squad and various police officers who put themselves in danger for the sake of others. I pray for complete healing for all who were injured. I also join in mourning with the family of Major Mustafa Abid and express my heartfelt sorrow for your tragic loss,” it continues.

“The Bible says, ‘Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ I believe that Major Abid’s actions demonstrated that kind of love, and I honor him for it.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM CHRISTIAN POST 

Minnesota author, refugee, hopes to inspire kids

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Habso Mohamud was born in a refugee camp in Kenya.

While living in the camp, Mohamud traveled with her grandmother to traditional villages and places where nomads lived. Her grandmother wanted her and her siblings to see “the other side of the world.”

Because to Mohamud’s grandmother, they were lucky — they had shelter and knew where their next meal would come from.

“My grandmother would take us and show us you could have it worse. Be appreciative — at a very young age that’s what I learned,” Mohamud told the St. Cloud Times.

Mohamud lived in the refugee camp until she was 10. Now 24, Mohamud lives in St. Cloud. She attended St. Cloud schools and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at St. Cloud State University. She also works for the UNESCO Center of Peace and recently published a children’s book.

In her book, “It Only Takes One Yes,” Mohamud hopes to inspire children — especially young girls — to see themselves as being able to make a difference in the world.

“I want to make sure kids have a voice,” she said. “But I want to do it in my community because this community needs me.”

Despite working for the United Nations, Mohamud chooses to live in St. Cloud.

“I love it here. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I came back,” she said. “I want to give back. Without this country and without the opportunities that were presented to me, I wouldn’t be who I wanted to be.

“And this is the country where you can be anything you want to be in this world.”

Mohamud’s parents lived in Somalia before fleeing the country for Kenyan refugee camps during the civil war in Somalia. Her mother never finished high school but her father went to college and was a medic in the military.

Mohamud received an education in the camp but said it was very basic and without a set curriculum because the population changed so frequently.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE SIOUX CITY JOURNAL 

LOOKING WITHIN: WHAT’S BEHIND THAILAND’S BUDDHIST-MUSLIM DIVIDE?

Before he was Phra Visuddho, he was Pisut Aungsupalee. In Thai “Pisut” means “purity”. When his master, Phra Upaseno ordained him as a monk, he took the Pali equivalent, “Visuddho”. Pali is the language of Buddhist texts.

Born in Yaowarat, Bangkok’s Chinatown district, Pisut – who is Chinese-Thai – grew up helping his parents run their fruit shop on weekends. “If I needed to open the shop, then I would wake up at six in the morning.”

The long hours tending his parents’ shop fed Pisut’s young mind. Observing people come and go, he wondered what made them smile or frown.

Red Shirts, Yellow Shirts: will there ever be united colours of Thailand?

“When I was nine I already thought about what it means to be happy. This is why I eventually wanted to become a monk, to understand happiness – not physical but eternal.”

At the age of twelve, he and his family moved to Nonthaburi Province in the countryside.

“Bangkok was dense and polluted, whereas Nonthaburi had forests. The air was fresh and it was not crowded.”

Even then, Pisut would drive back to Bangkok on weekends with his father to tend to the family business.

“I would wake up really early in the morning. This helped me prepare for life as a monk. As a monk I wake up before six for bintabaht.”

Monks usually start their day with bintabaht, the collection of food alms – Phra Visuddho doesn’t go a day without it. Photo: Hezril Azmin

Bintabaht is the collection of alms that make up a monk’s meal. “Before noon, I can eat. Afterwards, I can only drink water or juice.” Bintabaht isn’t a daily obligation for monks, but Phra Visuddho does not go a day without it.

In his last year of secondary school, Pisut made up his mind to study sociology.

“I wanted to study ourselves – as human beings – and about life.”

He ended up at Kasetsart University in Bangkok.

FULL ARTICLE FROM SCMP.COM