c. 1996 Religion News Service

Muslim woman calls for release of Christian husband who faces flogging

(RNS) A Muslim student in South Carolina is calling on officials of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to”unconditionally release”her Christian husband, who has been sentenced to a year in prison and a flogging after an Islamic court ruled that the couple’s interreligious marriage was invalid.

Elie Dib Ghalib, a 30-year-old Lebanese Christian, has been imprisoned in Abu Dhabi since his arrest last November, five months after his marriage to a Muslim woman.

Last month, an Islamic court determined that Ghalib was guilty of adultery because any marriage between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is illegal in the UAE. The court sentenced Ghalib to an additional year in prison and to a flogging of 39 lashes.”I am asking for justice. I just want them to leave my husband alone,”said Mona Ghalib, 25, in an interview with RNS Monday (Nov. 18).

Mona and Elie Dib Ghalib met in the UAE, where he was working as a restaurant manager. They were married in Lebanon in June 1995.

In late July 1995, Mona came to the United States, where she is a business major at Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C. Elie Dib Ghalib returned to his job in Abu Dhabi.

Mona said that after UAE authorities learned about the marriage, they arrested her husband and subjected him to repeated interrogations and severe beatings. She said she decided to”keep quiet”about the situation while she petitioned UAE officials for help. “I didn’t know this would happen,”she said.

However, after the October ruling, she said she decided to bring her husband’s case to the attention of the international community.”Is it enough reason for a man to be beaten and flogged and jailed for a year just because he married me? Is this fair?”she asked.

According to Mona, sources inside the UAE have told her the flogging could take place before the end of the month.”This is the 20th century. Flogging should not still exist,”she said.”It is very hard to believe this is happening.” The international human rights group Amnesty International has taken up Ghalib’s case. Amnesty has called on the Crown Prince and the UAE minister of the interior”to effect the immediate and unconditional release of Ghalib, if indeed his marriage is the sole reason for his imprisonment.” In a statement, Amnesty also expressed opposition to the use of flogging”as a judicial punishment in all cases as a violation of the right not to be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report said that while the Provisional Constitution prohibits torture or degrading treatment in the UAE,”Shari’a (Islamic) courts frequently impose flogging on Muslims found guilty of adultery, prostitution and drug and alcohol abuse.”The report noted that”in a few cases”the sentences are also carried out against non-Muslims.

According to a State Department description of flogging in the UAE,”the individual administering the lashing traditionally holds a Koran under the arm and swings the whip using the forearm only.” The UAE Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request by RNS for comments about the case.

French Protestant leader urges new resistance against rising racism

(RNS) The president of the French Protestant Federation is urging churches to lead a new”resistance movement”against rising racism in France.

In a letter written to the 16 Reformed, Lutheran and evangelical churches affiliated with his organization, the Rev. Jacques Stewart called for a new spiritual and theological study of racism, according to Ecumenical News International (ENI), a World Council of Churches-based religious news agency in Geneva.

Stewart suggested the new effort as a response to statements made by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front political movement, who recently spoke about the”inequality of races.””Racism is becoming part of everyday life,”Stewart told ENI.”We are increasingly seeing statements and behavior which place the blame for some people’s economic and social problems at the door of foreigners.” The Protestant leader said he sees the need for churches to help society”understand the base roots of the phenomenon”of racism. Stewart said racism”is a way of negating the biblical foundations of Judaism and Christianity.” According to a recent survey commissioned by the Christian television company, Le Jour du Seigneur, 13 percent of French Roman Catholics believe that the views of the National Front are not compatible with Christian teaching.

Pastor: traditional healing and modern medicine belong in `harmony’

(RNS) An official with the Protestant Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) says traditional healing practices and modern medicine must be brought together in a new”harmony of healing”in order to improve the health standards of people in the developing world.

In a speech to a Guatemala medical conference, the Rev. Rolando Villena, coordinator of Andean region ministries for the council, called for a moratorium on the tensions in many areas of the world between modern medicine, and traditional healing practices, the ecumenical Latin American and Caribbean Communication Agency reported.”The church can help open some creative spaces of mutual support where we can come to understand these two medical traditions as convergent and complementary,”said Villena.

Villena noted that some physicians still refuse to see traditional healers as medical colleagues.”We’ve got to create a new sense of teamwork, bringing together different medical approaches in a new harmony of healing,”said Villena, a former bishop of the Methodist Church in Bolivia.

The Nov. 4-9 seminar,”Nature and Cultures: Sources of Comprehensive Community-based Primary Health Care,”brought together representatives from 15 countries to discuss the implications of traditional healing and natural medicine for church health ministries.

Another speaker, identified as Professor B. Turay from the College of Medicine at the University of Sierra Leone in West Africa, also complained that the church has too long been”a big obstacle”to traditional healing. “There are people who died who didn’t have to, but they refused effective treatment because a church had declared the therapy something demonic,”Turay said.”I’m so happy that the church is changing its attitude.”

Foundation for New Era Philanthropy’s broker plans settlement

(RNS) Prudential Securities, the broker for the now-bankrupt Foundation for New Era Philanthropy, plans to settle four lawsuits brought against it by paying $18 million to some of the groups who lost money by investing in New Era.

The suits against Prudential were filed by dozens of nonprofit groups after New Era collapsed in a financial scandal, the Associated Press reported.

Federal investigators say that New Era’s”matching grant”program was a Ponzi scheme that created the illusion of financial success by using contributions from new investors to pay previous ones.

New Era collapsed in 1995 when Prudential moved to freeze the charity’s assets to cover a $45 million credit line it had extended to New Era founder John G. Bennett Jr. Within a week, New Era filed for bankruptcy.

The settlement was approved Friday (Nov. 15) by a federal district court judge, but still must be approved by a federal bankruptcy judge in Philadelphia. If the bankruptcy judge agrees, Prudential Securities would be released from all claims against it, according to Charles Perkins, Prudential’s attorney, and Stuart M. Brown, attorney for the bankruptcy trustee.”The funds provided by Prudential Securities to the bankruptcy estate from the settlement will benefit the various nonprofit organizations that were victimized by New Era,”their joint statement said.

Prudential also plans to withdraw all objections to other settlements made by the trustee.”This settlement should assure the swift administration of the bankruptcy case and enable me to obtain authorization to make an interim distribution of funds to those charities victimized,”said bankruptcy trustee Arlin Adams.

More than 600 religious groups, museums, colleges and philanthropists claimed more than $500 million in losses after New Era collapsed. At the time, the charity had $34 million in assets.

Bishop offering confession by phone ruffles Irish hierarchy

(RNS) Bishop Michael Cox, a schismatic traditionalist Roman Catholic bishop in Ireland, has ruffled the feathers of the church’s hierarchy by offering”telephone confessions”to Catholics as a means of raising money to restore his church in Birr.

The bishop offers callers the chance to confess over the phone if they call a special premium-rate number similar to 900 numbers in the United States.

Cox is associated with the Palma de Troya group, an organization branded as schismatic because it refuses to accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and insists on retaining the Tridentine liturgical rite, which was reformed by Vatican II.

According to the Irish Times, callers telephoning Cox are given the option of an interview with the bishop, a healing line, a special intention line, or the confession and absolution service.

On the healing line, callers are invited to leave details of”any medical problems that might be troubling you”for which a Latin Mass will be offered the following Sunday.

The Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy warned that Cox’s offering of confession over the telephone has no value in the eyes of the church. “Confession is a personal encounter with Christ, with the priest merely standing in,”said a spokesman for the Irish bishops’ conference.”Catholics should be aware that the confessions he is offering on his phone have no value whatsoever in sacramental terms.”

Pope names new bishop for Juneau, Alaska

(RNS) Pope John Paul II on Tuesday (Nov. 19) named the Rev. Michael Warfel, 48, the new bishop of Juneau, Alaska.

Warfel, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Anchorage, is a native of Elkhart, Ind., and studied theology at the Athenaeum of Ohio after military service in Vietnam and Korea. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Anchorage in 1980 and has served parishes there since then.

The diocese of Juneau, where only 7 percent of the 83,000 population is Catholic, stretches over 37,000 square miles in the southeastern part of the state.

Quote of the day: William J. Bennett, co-chair of Empower America

(RNS) William J. Bennett, author of the bestselling”Book of Virtues”and co-chair of Empower America, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative thinktank, addressed Monday (Nov. 18) the National Press Club, where he issued a call for spiritual renewal and a return to traditional values. In the question and answer period, Bennett was asked whether religious organizations are failing to stimulate spiritual renewal:”… The question is what goes on there (in church), what are the consequences, what’s the carryover, and what’s the impact. … I’m not sure that it (church-going) means anything. This is also … the country which is the sweetest, the nicest, the most generous, most considerate, the most sensitive to the needs of people in the world and its owns citizens. And yet the kinds of (bad) things that go on everyday in America, suggest we’re of two minds about this. I don’t think that going to church does it anymore. Maybe it would have convinced people at some point, I don’t think it does anymore. I think that for a lot of us … all it amounts to is going to church.”

MJP END RNS