eChurch Blog

64% of Britons held a favourable opinion of Muslims. This represented a fall of seven points since 2005 (just before 7/7) but a 4% recovery from 2010. It was also, jointly with France, the best figure among the six Western nations, higher than Russia (62%), USA (57%), Germany (45%), and Spain (37%).

Nevertheless, 22% of Britons regarded Muslims unfavourably, which was far more than took the same view of Christians (6%) or Jews (7%). 83% were well-disposed to Christians and 76% to Jews, much the same as in 2004.

Moreover, only 39% of Britons assigned no negative traits to Muslims. Specifically, 43% described them as fanatical, 38% as arrogant, 32% as violent, 29% as selfish, 18% as immoral, and 16% as greedy. Similarly, 61% did not associate Muslims with respect for women, 45% with tolerance, 34% with generosity, and 22% with honesty.

52% in Britain saw most Muslims as wanting to remain distinct from mainstream society, rising to 59% for those without degree-level education. Apart from the USA (51%), other Western countries recorded even higher figures, as much as 72% in Germany. Just 28% of Britons thought Muslims wanted to adopt British customs, albeit an improvement on 19% in 2005 and 22% in 2006.

52% of British adults assessed relations between Muslims around the world and Westerners as being generally bad (nine points less than in 2006) and 40% as generally good. 48% of Americans also said bad, 58% of Spaniards, 61% of Germans, and 62% of French.

Of Britons who said relations were bad, 34% believed Muslims were mostly to blame for this state of affairs (compared with 25% in 2006), 26% Western people, and 24% both groups.

So-called ‘Islamic extremism’ seems to have soured relations. 70% in Britain were concerned about this and a mere 28% unconcerned. Notwithstanding, 70% represented a fall of 7% since the 2006 (post-7/7) survey and a return to 2005 (pre-7/7) levels. Russians (76%) and Germans (73%) were more concerned than Britons, Americans (69%), French (68%), and Spaniards (61%) somewhat less.

In similar vein, 52% in Britain claimed that some religions were more prone to violence than others, and three-quarters of these cited Islam as the single most violent religion (against 63% immediately before 7/7).

59% of Britons thought Muslim nations should be more economically prosperous than they were. This lack of prosperity was largely attributed to internal deficiencies in those nations: government corruption (51%), lack of democracy (46%), lack of education (36%), and Islamic fundamentalism (31%). No more than 15% were willing to allocate blame to US and Western policies.

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Addiction is a matter of life and death, not a soap opera.

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RIP Amy Winehouse – 14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011

Kind Lord Jesus

Grant her rest

Kind Lord Jesus

Grant her everlasting rest

A time is coming when people will go mad and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad because you are not like us.” – St. Anthony the Great

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Oh, Lord No:

At least 84 people died when a gunman opened fire at an island youth camp in Norway, hours after a deadly bombing in the capital, Oslo, police say.

Police have charged a 32-year-old Norwegian man over both attacks.

The man dressed as a police officer was arrested on tiny Utoeya island after an hour-long shooting spree. The search for other possible victims continues.

The Oslo bombing killed at least seven. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said the attacks were “like a nightmare”.

Mr Stoltenberg, whose offices were among those badly hit by the blast, described the attacks as a national tragedy and said civil servants were among the dead in Oslo.

“Never since the Second World War has our country been hit by a crime on this scale,” he told a news conference in Oslo.

He added that he was due to have been on Utoeya – “a youth paradise turned into a hell” – a few hours after the attacks began. Many others were injured there as well as those who died.

Mr Stoltenberg said he knew some of the dead in the Oslo attack. “Beyond that I cannot give further details while the police carry out their investigation.”

He said it was too early too comment on a possible motive for the attacks. No group has said it carried them out.

The suspect is reported by local media to have had links with right-wing extremists. Police named him as Anders Behring Breivik. His Oslo apartment was searched overnight.

The BBC’s Richard Galpin, near the island, says that Norway has had problems with neo-Nazi groups in the past but the assumption was that such groups had been largely eliminated and did not pose a significant threat.

Police say they are investigating whether the attacks were the work of one man or whether he had help.

“At Utoeya, the water is still being searched for more victims,” deputy police chief Roger Andresen told reporters.

“We have no more information than… what has been found on [his] own websites, which is that it goes towards the right and that it is, so to speak, Christian fundamentalist.”

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And:

Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old suspect in Friday’s attacks in Norway, held right-wing views, say police.

Police chief Sveinung Sponheim said his internet postings “suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views”.

“But whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen,” he told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

Little is currently known about him apart from what has appeared on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter – and these entries appear to have been set up just days ago.

On the Facebook page attributed to him, he describes himself as a Christian and a conservative. The Facebook page is no longer available but it also listed interests such as body-building and freemasonry.

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UPDATE: Joe over at Harry’s Place has put together some background information on Behring Breivik.

The Church in Wales says it is investigating after a Gwynedd rector burnt some pages from the Bible.

The Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth of St Peter ad Vincula Church, Pennal, also cut up pages from the King James Bible to create an artwork.

Unveiling it at a church event, he said it revealed a “cruel and vile God”.

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“I cut out all the nasty bits of that Bible, the language of which is being celebrated all over the place this year, because I don’t think you can separate that language from the God it is representing.

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“The King James Bible should be praised for its language but not for the God it represents – the two need to be separated.”

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He said he also planned to create a “wall of shame” at the church naming all of God’s “cruel actions”.

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Catholic Women’s Ordination, which campaigns for women to be ordained as priests, has appealed to the charity tribunal against the Charity Commission’s decision not to grant it charitable status.

The organisation, which provides support to female lay members in the Catholic Church and organises prayer vigils and study days in addition to its campaigning work, applied last year to be registered as a charity. The commission turned down the application.

Gareth Morgan, senior partner at the charity consultancy the Kubernesis Partnership, is representing CWO on a pro-bono basis.

He said CWO’s campaigning work was one reason behind the commission’s decision. “It’s fine for a charity to campaign if this is an attempt to further its charitable objects, but what needs to be decided is whether CWO’s proposed charitable objects would provide the public benefit needed for charitable status,” he said.

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What do you make of this development?

“The mosque of Jesus Christ” is the exact name given to the mosque in the city of Madaba, south of the Jordanian capital Amman. It is the first to ever be named after the central figure of Christianity in the modern Arab world, a name which in Islam is identified with one of the most important prophets.

But the fact that such a Christian name was chosen for a Muslim place of worship, did not fail to provoke the curiosity of Muslims, Christians and the mass media alike. According to the newspaper “Al Quds Al Arabì” that published the story, what makes Jesus’ mosque so special is that both Muslims and Christians have shown appreciation for it.

The mosque of Jesus Christ is situated near a famous Church in the city of Madaba. According to ANSA reports, the idea for the name came from Jamal Al Sufrati, the mosque’s imam. “It occurred to me, the imam stated, that the Arab world is full of mosques that are named after all prophets except Jesus.”

The imam explained that “the mosque wishes to send out a message of togetherness and tolerance, particularly after the tensions between the two religions over two offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad.

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The United Kingdom is arguably the European hub for numerous forms of Islamist activity, ranging from violent jihadist terrorist cells to “soft power” Islamists.  Although the threat from jihadist terrorists is widely recognized and accepted by both government and civil society in Britain, there remains relatively little interest in the wide variety of ostensibly non-violent Islamists who wield significant power and influence. Senior politicians from across the mainstream political spectrum are largely in agreement about the threat faced by terrorism, but they are far from reaching any consensus on how to deal with Islamists and what role, if any, they should play in countering extremism and terrorism.

Particularly since the July 7, 2005 London bombings, Islamist groups in Britain have tried to position themselves as the gatekeepers of British Muslims, claiming to represent everything from their political opinions to their views on halal meat products. These organizations also assert that they alone have the credibility to convince young British Muslims to turn their backs on violence and to instead involve themselves in the political process. They argue that Islamist terrorism is a natural response to government policy, both foreign and domestic, and that the threat will only diminish once a number of their demands are met.

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I thought this fascinating:

When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women’s lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

Agents of the country’s Anti-Witchcraft Unit were quickly dispatched and set about trying to break the spell that used the beast’s head.

Saudi Arabia takes witchcraft so seriously that it has banned the Harry Potter series by British writer J.K. Rowling, rife with tales of sorcery and magic. It set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in May 2009 and placed it under the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPV), Saudi Arabia’s religious police.

“In accordance with our Islamic tradition we believe that magic really exists,” Abdullah Jaber, a political cartoonist at the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, told The Media Line. “The fact that an official body, subordinate to the Saudi Ministry of Interior, has a unit to combat sorcery proves that the government recognizes this, like Muslims worldwide.”

The unit is charged with apprehending sorcerers and reversing the detrimental effects of their spells. On the CPV website, a hotline encourages citizens across the kingdom to report cases of sorcery to local officials for immediate treatment.

In the case of the wolf’s head, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in Tabouk was able to break the spell. The Saudi daily Okaz reported on Monday that the unknown family that had fallen victim to the spell had been “liberated from the jaws of the wolf.”

The Anti-Witchcraft Unit was created in order to educate the public about the danger of sorcerers and “combat manifestations of polytheism and reliance on other Gods,” the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

The belief in sorcery is so widespread in Saudi Arabia, that it is even used as a defense in criminal court cases. Last October, a judge accused of receiving bribes in a real-estate project told a court in Madinah that he had been bewitched and is undergoing treatment by Quranic incantations, known as ruqiyah, a common remedy for the evil eye.

Jaber noted, however, that most sorcerers both inside and outside the kingdom were charlatans that take advantage of illiterate citizens who believed they were afflicted by the evil eye. He said that such beliefs were more prevalent among older, rural and often illiterate individuals than with younger, educated Saudis.

“A while ago my arm was hurt and I couldn’t draw,” the cartoonist said. “Many older people told me that I must have been afflicted by the evil eye and should be treated by a Sheikh.”

“It’s a matter of ignorance,” Jaber added. “If people were more educated they wouldn’t believe in this.”

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Although in common practice morality and ethics are used interchangeably, in philosophy ethics is used to distinguish theories of right and wrong, good and evil, from morality, the real-world practices and beliefs concerning proper conduct: “The ethical man knows it is wrong to steal; the moral man does not steal.” Or, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, I’d rather play poker with a man who was dubious about philosophy but bred to believe that “a gentleman does not cheat” than with an impeccable ethical philosopher raised among card sharks.

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