Blog 11: “Religion” keeps a woman from getting a lifesaving abortion

A woman, Savita Halappanavar, arrived at her University Hospital on October 21, complaining of pain. When doctors examined her, they stated she was miscarrying. They would not remove the fetus because she was 17 weeks pregnant and it still had a heartbeat.  Her husband told reporters that the staff informed the couple that “This is a Catholic country.” When he told them that he was neither Catholic nor Ire land (coming from India), they told him they couldn’t do anything. The doctors told them that they couldn’t save the baby and Savita was in agony. She came to accept the fact that her baby wouldn’t survive. She asked if they could not save the baby could they at least end the pregnancy and the consultant said as long as there was a heartbeat they couldn’t do anything. They did not remove the fetus until its heartbeat stopped on its own. It was only then that they moved her t intensive care. She died on October 28 from septicaemia. An investigation has opened and Prime Minister Enda Kenny is facing a wave of outrage over the case. In Ireland, a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion if her life is in danger but in Savita’s case that didn’t happen.

This issue is widely considered around the world. Not only is this happening in just Ireland but everywhere. Places where pro-life is considered is often putting an unborn baby above a mother’s life, knowing the baby won’t survive. It could be considered a social problem if there was a lot of uproar and the society was trying to do something about it, but there wasn’t. Globally it is an issue because the same exact problem is happening around the world. No one is necessarily saying whether pro-life or pro-choice is right but when it comes to the life of an already living body to one that is not yet developed and definitely not going to survive, whose life should be put first?? It could even be considered a personal issue because Savita’s husband couldn’t do anything about his wife’s agony for both the pain the fetus was causing and the pain of losing it. He had to stand by and watch his wife die because she wasn’t given the option of abortion, due to the dominant religion. The fact that things like this still continues to strive is crazy. A mother’s life is just as important as a child’s life especially when it comes to a life and death matter between an unviable fetus and a woman’s life.

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/religion_keeps_a_woman_from_getting_a_life_saving_abortion/ 

Blog 11: Dalai Lama tells Internet that 'religion is no longer adequate'

                The question of today is whether faith is enough to curb the violence and unrest in today’s world. Dalai Lama is unsure of the answer. Dalai Lama, a world-renowned religious leader, made a statement that many might find odd on his Facebook feed. This statement was more than likely a response to the graphic turmoil that’s gripping the Middle East and other parts of the world. Dalai Lama’s statement was: "All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether." He has made other statements similar to that one on his Twitter page. He has also made a few other controversial statements in the recent years. He claims that he might be the last Dalai Lama depending on the Tibetan people and states that he is halfway through his retirement now. The process for Dalai Lamas is long and drawn out in search of a child who fits the bill. The religious leader has served as a religious symbol of Tibet’s fight for justice since the 1950s.

                This could become a social problem because Dalai Lama has made such an impact on society. Since he decided to embrace technology and modern communications, he has gained a lot of support. This will cause a social problem because if he becomes the last Dalai Lama, then it would affect people around the world…either in a positive way or a negative way. There are many people who know what’s going because of all his networking so it is national. Along with this it would be considered a global problem. Like stated earlier, everyone around the world would know, so it would affect everyone globally. It would also be considered a personal issue because Dalai Lama would have to deal with the issues of what’s going on and the reaction to the possibility that he could be the last Dalai Lama. Think about what he has to go through. He is a religious figure known throughout the world and he stated that the world needs to think about spirituality and ethics beyond religion and that within itself could be a problem. 

 http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/news/regions/asia-pacific/dalai-lama-tells-internet-religion-no-longer-adequate

Blog 10: Christians persecuted throughout the world

In Nigeria the latest bombing shows how Christians are increasingly suffering for their faith. Christians are falling victim to Islamist aggression. The Islamic government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Christian over the past 30 years. Islamic gunmen have firebombed churches and girls are being abducted and beheaded in their way to school because of their faith. Two days ago, a suicide bomber crashed a jeep filled with explosives into a packed catholic church in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, killing at least eight people and injuring over 100. This is just one of many attacks by Boko Haram, an exceptionally bloodthirsty militant group. Christians are targeted in greater numbers than any other faith group on earth. About 200 million church members face discrimination or persecution. Around the world Christians aren’t allowed to practice their religion openly and are often persecuted for it. Many of their churches are vanishing and people are concerned that all of the churches will vanish from their homeland. Christians generally become more tolerant and self-critical and have refused to respond with violence. Their plight is continuously being ignored.

The issue has always been religion. One religion believes their religion is better. Although we hear a lot about Christians being cruel to Muslims (the American film about the Prophet Mohammed), we never hear anything about the cruelty to Christians. This is not only a social problem but also a global problem. It is a social problem because there is a problem within the Christian community where they are being “hunted” and yet their effort to do something about it is being ignored. It is also a social problem because Muslims believe the problem is the Christian community and they’re thoughts of fixing the problem is destroying churches and chapels and killing off the Christian population. This affects the lives of 2 different groups with significant amounts of followers. This could be considered a global problem because many people know what is going on and want to make an effort to alleviate the problem. If people around the world don’t know about this issue they are slowly becoming aware. Since this is already happening around the world it is probably evident that many people, countries, know what’s going on and those governments not controlled by the religion that wants the Christian population to decrease will make an effort to stop this disaster. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9640825/Christians-persecuted-throughout-the-world.html

Blog 9: Egyptian Court Declines to Rule on the Legality of Drafting a New Constitution

       A court declined on Tuesday to rule on the legality of the committee drafting Egypt's Constitution, dealing a setback to critics who have called the committee unrepresentative and too heavily dominated by Islamists. The decision by the higher court ensured that the current group of authors will have time to finish it's work. There have been arguments over the makeup of the committee, and pitched battles over pages of text, including articles dealing with women’s rights, Islamic law, executive power and the proper role of the state. Liberal groups have been concerned that the Islamist majority is trying to create the basis for an Islamic state. Ultraconservative Muslims have argued that the constitutional drafts have been deferential to their concerns. Just two months before a scheduled public ratification vote, there is no idea of what the final document will say. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood called the decision on Tuesday positive. Apart from the Islamic law, there have been arguments about minority rights. There have also been complaints that the draft articles released so far are timid and hardly reflect the views envisioned by Egypt’s revolutionaries and their demands for justice, social rights and the dismantling of former President Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian state.

 

                The problem here has to do with the legislation of the Islamic culture. The people don’t agree with what’s going on and they are looking to change that. The people want to change it and worked to make changes and then bring to the attention of the government to get the changes made. This is a social problem because so many people in this society want a change and have decided to do something about it. This could also be looked at as a political problem because there are two different kinds of Islamic groups that want two different things. Even though the majority of the group wants equal rights, there is a small group that likes it the way it is. They just want equal rights among everyone, including women and they want changes involving the government. They are mostly looking for religious freedom in the government and freedom from the type of government they have. The changes they look for are slowly being made and that within itself has made it worthwhile because something is happening.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/world/middleeast/egypt-court-wont-halt-drafting-of-constitution.html?_r=

Blog 8: Pakistani Teenager in Hiding After Blasphemy Accusation, Police Say

A Christian teenager was accused of sending anti-Islamic text messages in the city of Karachi. This case follows a highly publicized one that happened earlier this year in which a 14-year-old girl was detained for weeks after being accused of burning pages form a religious textbook. 16-year-old Ryan Stanten had his home ransacked by a mob on Wednesday after rumors spread that he had sent blasphemous messages from his cellphone. He and his mother went into hiding soon after the allegations surfaced the previous day. The mob dragged furniture out into the street and set it on fire. One of Stanten’s relatives said some of his friends had used his phone to send objectionable messages to some religiously observant neighbors and it was not clear whether they did it as a prank or to cause harm. Mr. Stanten is not in custody and the police do not know his whereabouts. The police also state that they opened the case against him to calm the mob. In August the 14-year-old Christian girl in the capital, Islamabad, was arrested and detained after being accused of burning the pages of a textbook used to teach the Koran to children. After a public outcry against her prosecution, the court released the girl, Rimisha Masih on bail last month. Later the police filed charges against the cleric who had led the accusations against Rimisha. On Thursday the cleric was also granted bail by the court.

Pakistan has had blasphemy laws in place since the 1980s. It looks like those laws cause people to do outrageous things and that it may not lay well with many people. The first case is unsure of whether the boy actually sent the messages or not but the second case is obvious that a 14-year-old wouldn’t do such a thing. It seems as if people are trying to get others in trouble! Both situations could definitely be looked at as a personal trouble because it affects not only the individual but their family and possibly close friends. The beliefs and values of the culture were put into jeopardy because of religious scripts being used improperly. This could also be considered at public issue. The first situation caused a riot and a mob decided to take matters into their own hands. That in a way could also be seen as a social problem because a significant number of people recognized the problem and decided to do something about it or thought that something could be done through a collective social action. In the second situation it too could be considered a public issue because it involved the burning of sacred text causing the public to become conscerned about how people respect or honor their beliefs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/world/asia/teenager-in-hiding-after-blasphemy-accusation-pakistani-police-say.html

Blog 7: Rabbi, Called Jewish Indiana Jones, Is Sentenced in Torah Plot

Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who had provided Torahs through a charity while fraudulently claiming they had been rescued after being hidden or lost during the Holocaust, was sentenced to just over four years in prison on Thursday by a judge who called his scheme sad and incomprehensible. Youlus had pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. Prosecutors said he claimed to have found Torahs at concentration camps like Auschwitz. The Torahs were then provided to others by a charity he co-founded. Prosecutors also say that defrauded the charity by seeking reimbursements for doctored or inflated expenses or by diverting donations to him. The judge also ordered Youlus pay victim restitution of $990,000. The judge had received many letters from victims. One of the victims said that he had bought the Torah for $14,000 and donated it to his synagogue in memory of his deceased father. Later, he was falsely told that the Torah was found in a mass grave in the town where his father was born in Southern Ukraine. Youlus realized what he did and couldn’t object to anything. His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, made a strong appeal for leniency. He acknowledged that his client did a horrific deed but said he had been helping people all of his life. He also said that the money that the Rabbi had taken wasn’t spent on fancy cars or homes so there were “no trappings of wealth.”   

What the Rabbi did obviously caused a lot of concern and problems within the community. He took something very sacred to a certain religious group and tried to make money off of it. Not only did he take something sacred but he took a very sensitive time during the Jewish culture and made it part of his scheme. This is obviously not the norm it hurt not only the victims of his scheme but community also. The Torah is symbolizes their religion. Just like the Bible symbolizes Christianity. The Rabbi is supposed to be an honorable and trustworthy person in their community and he turns out not to be. This is a public issue because it affected the lives of many individuals. Not only did it affect the lives of the victim but also the lives of many Jewish people. Like stated earlier, the Torah is a special item significant to the Jewish culture and the Holocaust is a sensitive time in the Jewish culture.  Not only is a public issue but on a more personal matter it’s a personal matter. It affects the victims and their immediate family and friends. Many people bought the Torahs for special reasons. Like one victim, he claimed he felt embarrassed for being tricked into doing something so foolish. Just imagine how the other victims felt and how they felt in front of their families. That is embarrassing. The sentence given to the Rabbi is found just because of how sacred the text and the event were to the Jewish society.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/nyregion/rabbi-called-jewish-indiana-jones-is-sentenced-in-torah-plot.html?ref=nyregion

Blog 6:In U.N. Speech, Abbas Conceded Little to Jews Over Jerusalem

The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met a smaller number of so-called American Jewish leaders days before his U.N. speech. It wasn't the first time he tried to meet with a group that associated with both American and Israeli audiences. It was awkward because man leaders of the major American Jewish organizations declined to attend. They thought negotiating with them was no substitute for negotiating with the government of Israel. Abbas has refused to resume peace talks with Israel for four years now. Two months ago the Palestinian president’ office declared that the city “will forever be Arabic, Islamic, and Christian.” Other Palestinian officials said that Jerusalem was Palestinian “throughout history” and question whether there was ever a Jewish temple on Temple Mount. Abbas made a pledge to show more sensitivity and invited the group to watch his address to the U.N. General Assembly. The speech was a disappointment. Abbas supposedly made good with his pledge by saying that the “land of peace” was “the birthplace of Jesus, and ascension of the Prophet Muhammad, and the final resting place of Abraham- the land of the three monotheistic religions.” That notion was a bit subtle for most Jews. In Abbas’ statement he used the correct characters for the Christian icon and Muslim icon but when it came to the Jewish icon he used Abraham as a safer pick than Moses or King David. The issue is still not settled and Abbas meek acknowledgement of their ties to Israel may only have made things worse regarding his sensitivity.

                This issue is over land and it has been an issue for a long time. This is a social problem because you have two religions fighting over land. Enough people know about the issue going on to try to make a solution. It is affecting two religions! The issue has caused many physical solutions that haven’t helped but made things worse. Although it may seem ridiculous to most it means a lot to the Jewish claims. Their difference in religious beliefs make things worse because one religion thinks that the land belongs to them and the other the same. The journey to gain peace between the American Jewish groups and the Palestinians will be long because Abbas attempt of sensitivity to their Jewish claims are small. There will continue to be arguing and misunderstanding over the land because both groups believe their people were there first. It was hard to analyze this article because it’s obvious what’s going on. It’s possible that this could be a religious conflict but it’s mostly a conflict of beliefs. 

/http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/in-u-n-speech-abbas-conceded-little-to-jews-over-jerusalem/

Blog 5: Vatican Says Papyrus Referring to Jesus' Wife Is Probably Fake

The Vatican has raised doubts on a recently released of a text basically states that the Jesus alludes to having a wife. The Vatican believes it is a fake and considers it “problematic and controversial.” An editorial that was published on Friday in the Vatican newspaper stated that evidence existed to dismiss the papyrus as an “inept forgery.” Scholars that discuss the papyrus text end up in an intense discussion. Harvard scholar, Karen L. King, presented it as a fragment of a fourth-century gospel at an international conference of Coptic scholars this month in Rome. She didn’t say he was married; she just said questions his celibacy and marital status. Now the authenticity of the papyrus is being questioned. She arranged to have a chemical composition of the ink to be tested but it was hard for her to schedule a testing. The test should be able to approximate the date for when the ink was used. The suspicions that the papyrus was forged grew when Francis Watson, a scholar at Durham University in England, posted a paper online arguing that the text was cobbled together from phrases in the Gospel of Thomas. Experts say that kind of cobbling doesn’t prove it was forged because things like that show up in authentic ancient texts as well. Dr. Alberto Camplani said he was suspicious of the papyrus because it had been found on the antiquarian market and not through a dig. He believes that objects of such value demands for numerous precautions to establish its reliability and to exclude the possibility that it could be forgery.

                This is could definitely become a social problem because there are a lot of people who take the marital status of Jesus seriously and once it was out in the press it caused a lot of issues between Christians. There are a lot of people who already are conscious of what’s going on and are curious of what’s real and what’s not. It is also possible that it could extend to a global problem because religions that are closely knit to Christianity. It might cause other religions to look more into the topic because they too might think that Jesus did not marry or stay celibate. There is also a difference in beliefs in this situation.  Although it is within the Christian community the fact that some Christians believe one thing and others believe something else could cause controversy in a community. There is no telling how soon they can find out if the papyrus is real or not so until then it is quite obvious that there will be sn intense argument over what’s right and what’s wrong. There was also the issue of whether Dr. King should have given the information out to the press because they didn't know if it was real or not. That within itself is a controversy. I don’t see this situation getting worked out anytime soon because of the testing but maybe it will.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/world/europe/vatican-says-papyrus-referring-to-jesus-wife-is-probably-fake.html

Blog 4: Circumcision Debate in Germany Reflects Religious-Secular Tension

Rabbi David Goldberg, a 64-year-old Israeli who serves a community of about 400 Jews in Hof, has become an international celebrity after four German citizens filed complaints against him with the local prosecutor. His alleged crime was performing ritual circumcisions. Rabbi Goldberg doesn’t seem worried about the charges that were brought against him. Anyone can file a complaint against anyone else in Germany and never face formal charges. He hasn’t hired a lawyer and refused an offer from one who said he would do it free of charge. A more serious threat in the eyes of Rabbi Goldberg and many Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Europe is the “attack” by secular society on religious ritual. A decision by a lower court in Cologne, against a doctor who circumcised a Muslim boy, has fed a rapidly spreading drive to criminalize a practice that is core to Jewish and Muslim belief. The World Health Organization recommends circumcision as a way to reduce the spread of AIDS but many doctors in European countries regard the practice as harmful and barbaric. Some Jewish leaders say, the circumcision debate has proved how ignorant Germans are about Jewish belief. A German pediatricians’ association and a children’s aid group are helping in leading a petition drive calling for a two year moratorium on circumcision. For religious Jews that would catastrophic because the Bible tells them to circumcise a baby boy eight days after his birth unless there’s a medical reason not to. The complaint against Rabbi Goldberg in Hof was a State Court decision in Cologne in June that found that a doctor committed criminal bodily injury by performing a circumcision on a 4-year-old Muslim boy. Rabbi Goldberg hasn’t had a formal investigation against him and it seems that they won’t be happening anytime soon.

                This situation provides a religious division between the same religion.  Jews and Muslims are in a debate over circumcision and whether it is right or wrong. The problem in that is that some Jews believe it is harmful and some Jews believe it is what God wanted. So which one is right?? This is a social issue because a significant amount of people know what is going on and something can be done about it. German Jews have already tried to stop the circumcision process by attempting to put a two year moratorium on it. The culture for Jews has completely changed due to this debate and has caused a riff in the belief of their values. This could also be considered a public issue because it affects the immediate lives of many individuals. Parents who decide not to get their baby boy circumcised have to deal with Jews who believe that it’s against their religious belief to not get him circumcised. A lot of religious Jews believe that without being circumcised you cannot enter the Jewish society. This is a difference in not only beliefs but values also. In a way this could possibly be considered a value conflict because even though they are from the same religious group their values differ immensely. Both groups of Jews believe that their values are correct and should dominate over the other. Regardless, this has caused a huge controversial debate between Jews.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/world/europe/circumcision-debate-in-europe-reflects-deeper-tensions.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0