c. 19) suspended indefinitely a ruling by a lower, Islamist-dominated court that an Egyptian professor, accused of insulting Islam, must divorce his wife.
The legal battle between conservative Muslim lawyers and the more secular scholar and his wife has been watched around the world as a barometer of whether Muslim activists, intent on installing Islamic law in Egypt, will prevail over more moderate and secular Muslims committed to intellectual and academic freedom.
Similar struggles sometimes violent ones are being waged in other Muslim nations such as Algeria and Turkey.
“This ruling suspends the carrying out of the divorce order forever,” Abdel-Moneim el-Sharkawy told the Associated Press. “It is as good as canceling the ruling.”
The case centers on Nasr Abu Zeid, a professor of Arabic literature, accused by a group of conservative Islamic lawyers of insulting Islam in his writings. They brought a court case calling for Abu Zeid’s divorce from his wife of four years, Ibtihal Younis, an art history professor, on the grounds that the scholar’s writings made him an apostate one who has renounced his faith and that therefore he could not remain married to a Muslim women.
The couple has insisted they would not divorce and fled Egypt after the lower court ruling. They are now teaching in the Netherlands.
Abu Zeid has said that he is a good Muslim who has exercised his right to freedom of thought under Islam. He has defended his work as a scholarly analysis of the language of the Koran, Islam’s scripture.
Catholic bishops: Abolition of nuclear weapons should be U.S. policy
(RNS) The United States carries a moral burden to lead the world to eliminate nuclear weapons, a top Roman Catholic bishop has told the Clinton administration.
“The bishops believe the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons is more than a moral idea,” Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark, N.J., said in a letter to Clinton’s newly appointed National Security Advisor Samuel Berger. “It should be a policy goal of the United States that is clear in its public commitments and especially in its actions.”
McCarrick is the chairman of the International Policy Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and its social policy arm, the U.S. Catholic Conference.
Since the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the drive to eliminate nuclear weapons has both faded from the headlines. It has also created a new breed of nuclear abolitionists who believe the possibility of eliminating all nuclear arsenals is a realistic goal.
Most recently, on Dec. 4, retired Air Force Gen. George Lee Butler, commander of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces at the time of his retirement in 1991, issued a call for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. “Accepting nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict condemns the world to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety,” he said.
McCarrick, in his Thursday (Dec. 19) letter to Berger, said the United States and other nuclear powers “bear a heavy moral burden, which is given legal effect by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to make good faith efforts to negotiate an effective ban of all nuclear weapons.” Clinton, he said, should use his second term to take new steps toward disarmament, including prompt ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty and make a commitment “never to use nuclear weapons first.” Three Scientologists expelled from Germany’s governing party (RNS) Three members of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union have been expelled from the governing party because they are members of the Church of Scientology. The dismissals Thursday (Dec. 19) came one day after Kohl’s government decided to create a central coordinating office for its drive to keep people linked to the Church of Scientology out of certain public jobs, the Associated Press reported. In a statement, the party said state and federal governments will work jointly to try to keep people and companies linked to Scientology away from jobs such as those involving counseling and teaching. The party said in a statement that it was expelling the three, who were not named, to distance the union from the public image of the Church of Scientology. The German government claims Scientology is mostly a money-making group that threatens democracy and seeks world domination, the AP reported. The Los Angeles-based church denies it has political aims and accuses officials of Nazi-like persecution. Scientology officials say they have 30,000 members in Germany. The Church of Scientology in Germany issued a statement from its Munich press office accusing the government of “spreading the propaganda of state church extremists.” The church was founded in 1954 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and teaches that technology can help solve human problems and can expand the mind. The Rev. Robert Vitillo named Campaign for Human Development executive (RNS) The Rev. Robert J. Vitillo, an official of a worldwide Catholic social service organization, has been named executive director of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Campaign for Human Development. He will head the nation’s largest private funder of organizations that work to eliminate poverty and injustice. Vitillo has been the Caritas Internationalis delegate to the United Nations in New York and to the World Bank in Washington since 1995. Caritas Internationalis is the international confederation of Catholic social service and development organizations in 150 countries. Prior to serving in other Caritas positions, he was executive secretary of the Secretariat for Social Ministries of the Diocese of Paterson, N.J., from 1982 to 1986. Vitillo will succeed the Rev. Joseph Hacala, who was the Campaign for Human Development’s executive director from 1991 through 1995. The appointment is effective Jan. 6. Muslim math teacher in England objects to Christmas carols (RNS) The tensions created by religious pluralism so familiar in the United States erupted in England this week when a Muslim teacher in Birmingham disrupted the dress rehearsal of a school Christmas carol concert to protest the fact that Muslim children were made to sing Christian songs. Math teacher Israr Khan jumped up when the senior school choir at Washwood Heath secondary school had finished singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” About 60 percent of the school’s pupils are Asian and most of them are Muslim. “Who is your God?” the teacher cried out. Children in the audience then started yelling “Allah” and booing the choir. Khan said that there were “Muslim boys and girls in this choir who are saying that Jesus is their God by taking part. This is totally wrong.” But Yahya Yacob, director of Birmingham’s Islamic Resource Center, said it was up to individual Muslim children whether or not they took part in celebrating the Christian festival of Christmas. Yacob criticized Khan for the timing and manner of his response. “I just cannot understand why he did not raise his concerns earlier with the leaders of the school choir,” he said. “As a teacher he should be aware that he has to be very sensitive about these issues. to interrupt the singing and begin shouting out is confrontational and quite wrong.” The Rev. Harry C. Spencer, United Methodist communicator, dies (RNS) The Rev. Harry C. Spencer, a pioneer communicator in the United Methodist Church, died Wednesday (Dec. 18) after a lengthy illness. He was 91. Spencer was in charge of the radio, television and film production of the former Methodist Church and its successor unit, United Methodist Communications from 1952 to 1973, when he retired. During his tenure, the commission’s staff grew from two people to more than 40 and produced motion pictures and television and radio programs for the denomination. Quote of the Day: Perspectives on the reported sighting of the Virgin Mary in Clearwater, Fla. (RNS) As thousands of worshipers flocked this week to an image some say is of the Virgin Mary on a two-story black glass building just off a busy highway in Clearwater, Fla., people are voicing various perspectives on the phenomenon. Here are two, as reported by the St. Petersburg Times: Joe Mannion, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg: ”There is no reason for us to believe it is beyond natural causesâÂ?¦If you want contact with the Lord, you can keep his commandments and love one another and help those in need.” John Morreall, religious studies professor at the University of South Florida: “Christianity has a God who is not physical, and we, as physical beings, want to have something we can touch and see and relate to. That’s why you see people going up and kissing that windowâÂ?¦I see a lot of potential good in this. Anything that focuses our attention on something higher than driving on U.S. 19 and looking for Nintendo 64 is good. Anything that shakes us up.” END RNS AP-NY-12-20-96 1646EST
