c. 1999 Religion News Service

Muslim dropped from terrorism panel following Jewish protests

(RNS) A Los Angeles Muslim activist has been dropped from a congressional counterterrorism commission after some Jewish groups said Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council had condoned terrorism directed at Israel.

Al-Marayati, 38, who has long been active in Jewish-Muslim dialogue efforts in Los Angeles, was named in June to serve on the National Commission on Terrorism by Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House minority leader. The 10-member panel was established to review U.S. policy on preventing terrorist attacks.

But some Jewish groups _ including the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella agency for 55 leading Jewish groups _ objected to Al-Marayati. They maintained that Al-Marayati had excused terrorism by calling it an expression of Palestinian”despair and suffering”stemming from Israeli policies that have left them”no avenues to redress their grievances.” Seven members of the House of Representatives also wrote to FBI director Louis Freeh asking him personally oversee the agency’s investigation of Al-Marayati.

Thursday (July 8), Al-Marayati was told by Gephardt that his appointment had been withdrawn because of a”security clearance technicality.”Al-Marayati, an Iraqi-born naturalized American citizen, said he was told it would take a year for him to obtain F.B.I. clearance _ twice as long as the commission’s expected six-month tenure.

In an interview, Al-Marayati said he believed he had been dismissed solely because of the opposition of Jewish groups. He said he has already been cleared several times by the F.B.I. so that he could attend White House and State Department briefings and fly to the Israel-Jordan peace treaty signing as part of the official U.S. delegation.

Al-Marayati’s wife, Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, is a Clinton administration appointee to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a position that also included her receiving F.B.I clearance.

Salam Al-Marayati also said he believes his dismissal from the terrorism panel will setback already meager American Jewish-Muslim dialogue, which is severely strained by a host of issues connected to the Israel-Arab conflict.

However David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, one of the group’s that opposed Al-Marayati, said Jewish-Muslim dialogue”can’t be built on a false premise and it can’t be built by seeking to deny or negate certain core concerns. International terrorism is a core concern and we’re not going to compromise on that in pursuit of a lofty goal … If it sets back interreligious dialogue, so be it.” Both Salam and Laila Al-Marayati are sometime columnists for Religion News Service.

Hillary Clinton, bidding for N.Y. Senate seat, backs Israel on Jerusalem

(RNS) Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is running for a Senate seat from New York, has called Jerusalem Israel’s”eternal and indivisible capital”and said she supports moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem when the timing is right.

In New York, with its sizable, politically potent and overwhelmingly Democratic Jewish community, the first lady’s positions are standard for statewide candidates. However, they also put her at odds with her husband.

President Clinton has said Jerusalem’s final status should be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. In addition, he recently vetoed on national security grounds moving the American embassy to Jerusalem.

Hillary Clinton said she would vote in the Senate for moving the embassy, but that”the timing of such a move must be sensitive to Israel’s interest in achieving a secure peace with its neighbors.” The Palestinians want Jerusalem to also serve as the capital of their hoped-for state. They maintain that any change in Jerusalem’s status quo prejudices the final outcome. The issue is one of the most contentious still to be decided in the peace process.

Nabil Shaath, The Palestinian Authority’s planning minister, told the Associated Press Thursday (July 8) that Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were politically motivated. He also noted her previous comments in support of a Palestinian state _ comments that upset Jewish leaders.

The first lady’s remarks about Jerusalem came in a letter to Mandell Ganchrow, president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. Her language calling Jerusalem Israel’s”eternal and indivisible capital”was virtually identical to that used by Israeli leaders.

In response, Ganchrow called here statements”meaningful.” Clinton’s potential Republican opponent in the Senate race, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, has been a staunch supporter of Israel.

United Methodist membership decline continues to slow

(RNS) The United Methodist Church’s decades-long decline in membership continued to slow in 1998, with the denomination posting the smallest decrease in its history.

The church lost 38,477 U.S. members for the year ended Dec. 31, according to an unofficial tabulation by United Methodist News Service.

The figure is based on data provided by 64 of the denomination’s 66 annual conferences. The Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference (OIMC) didn’t report its numbers, and 77 Western Pennsylvania pastors failed to turn in membership data on time, so the analysis uses 1997 statistics for those two conferences.

The church’s U.S. membership stands at 8.4 million. Definitive figures will be provided this fall by the churchwide General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA).

Membership figures have been sliding ever since the creation of the United Methodist Church in 1968, when the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren denominations merged. At that point, membership was 11 million. Despite the U.S. trend, the church rolls are growing elsewhere in the world, particularly in Africa and the Philippines. With 1.4 million members in those areas and Europe, the denomination’s total membership is about 9.9 million.

The most recent drop in U.S. membership amounts to a .46 percent decrease. It follows a loss of 44,005 (.52 percent) in 1997. “We’re clearly reaping the benefits of evangelism efforts and church growth work in the annual conferences that are reflecting growth,”said Steve Zekoff, staff executive in the office of records and statistics at GCFA in Evanston, Ill.

Last year, the Southeast Jurisdiction was the only one of the five U.S. jurisdictions that had an overall increase in members, with a rise of 7,455. The others posted losses: North Central down 19,232; Northeast down 18,702; South Central down 936; and Western down 7,062.

Pope names former Vatican official as a new auxiliary of Detroit

(RNS) Pope John Paul II has named the Rev. Leonard P. Blair, a former Vatican official who presently is priest of St. Paul Parish in Grosse Pointe, Mich., to serve as auxiliary bishop of Detroit, the Vatican said Friday (July 9).

The Rome-educated Blair will be one of six auxiliaries to Cardinal Adam Maida in the archdiocese, which numbers 1.5 million Roman Catholics out of a total population of 4.3 million. He will have the title of bishop of Voncariana.

A native of Detroit, Blair, 49, studied philosophy at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome where he was enrolled in the North American College.

After his ordination in 1976, he was assistant priest in Regina Pacis Parish at Harper Woods, Mich., for a year and then returned to Rome to study historic and patristic theology at the Gregorian University.

Returning from Rome, Blair served as assistant priest in St. Christopher Parish, Detroit, and St. Paul Parish, Grosse Pointe, archdiocesan archivist and, from 1983 to 1986, as person secretary to the then archbishop of Detroit, Cardinal Edmund Szoka.

From 1986 to 1991, he worked as an official in the Vatican Secretariat of State, becoming a chaplain to the pope in 1990. Again in Detroit, he taught at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit and was archdiocesan director for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations from 1991 to 1994.

Called back to Rome in 1994, he served until 1997 as personal secretary to Szoka, who now is president of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State, and worked an official of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See.

He received a degree in theology from the Pontifical University of Thomas Aquinas, know as the Angelicum, in 1997 before returning to the Archdiocese of Detroit to become priest of the Grosse Point parish.

25th Annual Humanitas Awards Honor”October Sky,””NYPD Blue.” (RNS) The season finale of”NYPD Blue”and the Universal film”October Sky,”were the top winners at the 25th annual Humanitas Awards on Thursday (July 8), which honor film and TV scripts that”most enrich the human person.” The seven awards, with cash prizes totaling $120,000, were won by projects culled from 403 entries.”The one-hour dramas continue to reflect the best writing in television,”said Paulist Father Ellwood”Bud”Kieser, the Roman Catholic priest behind the Humanitas Awards and the old TV series,”Insight”and the 1989 film,”Romero.””October Sky,”based on the true story of a mining town teenager who becomes involved in the space race, won the $25,000 feature film award. The $25,000 90-minute TV award went to the season finale of”NYPD Blue”and how it depicted the death of its lead detective character, played by Jimmy Smits.

Humanitas officials also announced they have teamed up with the Sundance Institute to create a new $10,000 prize for independent films. Since its initial three-year funding from the Lilly Foundation, more than 175 Humanitas awards and $1.8 million of prize money have been handed out.

The $25,000 awards for a PBS/cable script went to Showtime’s”Thanks for a Grateful Nation.”The 60-minute TV award went to an episode of”Homicide: Life on the Street.”ABC’s situation comedy”Sports Night,”won $10,000 in the 30-minute TV category.

The two $10,000 children’s awards went to”Rugrats”animated episode and the HBO live action”Dags and the Dancer,”and”The Artists’ Specials.” Pastor: Northern Ireland’s Drumcree can become symbol of hope

(RNS) The pastor of a Protestant church in Drumcree, Northern Ireland, that has been the focal point of Protestant-Roman Catholic tensions during the so-called Protestant”marching season”says Drumcree could become a new symbol of hope for the troubled area.”As the tomb became a symbol of despair after Jesus’ death and a symbol of new life and hope after his resurrection so Drumcree can also be a symbol of new life and hope,”said the Rev. John Pickering, the Church of Ireland pastor of Drumcree church.”God can bring an unexpected change in Drumcree.” Since 1995, Drumcree has been seen as”a microcosm of the problems of Northern Ireland,”Pickering told Religion News Service.

Every year since 1807, members of the Orange Order, after parading from Portadown 25 miles south west of Belfast, attend a Sunday morning service at the church Pickering now pastors. But since 1995 the Orangemen have been prevented from parading along Garvaghy Road’s Catholic area on their return to Portadown.

The parade is seen as”triumphalist”by the Catholic residents and has been compared to a parade of the Ku Klux Klan in a black neighborhood.

But unlike previous years, this year’s Drumcree event was nonviolent.

Pickering’s Sunday (July 4) sermon to the Orangemen, heard over the constant throb of an overhead British army helicopter, focused on the divisions in Northern Ireland.”In Omagh my family property (consisting of a shop and a family residence) has been divided as a result of a bomb in 1998,”Pickering said.”This is an illustration of the divisions in Northern Ireland. The rolls of razor wire I see stretched across the fields and the metal barrier on the road is again a symbol of the sad divisions in Northern Ireland.” About 5,000 people attended the church service standing in or around the church. Pickering, with a loudspeaker in his hands, pleaded with the people to move towards the rectory field after the service and away from the barriers in the church field.”People were annoyed at the erection of the barriers. Moving them into the rectory field had a calming effect on them,”Pickering said.

Pickering also believes that the peaceful aftermath of the service is”an answer to prayer. On the day after the church service last year it was very anxious and tense.” Pickering said there is no reason why”Drumcree cannot become the turning point for Northern Ireland. The return to violence is a horrible thought.” On Thursday (July 8), the Orange Order was barred from holding another major demonstration _ this time near a Roman Catholic neighborhood in Belfast. The demonstration was planned for Monday, the climax of the summer marching season which commemorates historic Protestant battlefield victories.

Quote of the day: Kenneth Bobroff, University of New Mexico law professor

(RNS)”Tribes should be able to protect their symbols in the same way as states, cities and counties do. And especially so. Because unlike non-Indian symbols, these are religious.” _ University of New Mexico law professor Kenneth Bobroff, commenting an effort by Native American tribes to protect their sacred symbols from commercial exploitation. He was quoted by the Associated Press on July 9.

DEA END RNS