c. 2000 Religion News Service
McCain Labels Robertson, Falwell `Agents of Intolerance’
(RNS) Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Monday (Feb. 28) lashed out at the “self-appointed” leaders of the religious right, calling them “agents of intolerance” and comparing them to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and the Rev. Al Sharpton, the brash New York civil rights leader.
In a gutsy campaign appearance in Virginia Beach, Va., the home turf of Christian Coalition founder and president Pat Robertson, the Arizona senator billed himself as a candidate who can reach beyond the Republican Party’s conservative base and lead his party to victory in November.
“Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right,” McCain said.
The high-stakes strategy to reach beyond his party’s conservative core was an attempt for McCain to build a “bigger Republican Party” and galvanize those Democratic and independent voters who gave McCain decisive victories in New Hampshire, Arizona and Michigan.
McCain’s attack on Robertson and Falwell comes after his main rival, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, apologized to New York Cardinal John O’Connor for not speaking out against the anti-Catholic and racist policies at Bob Jones University, where Bush kicked off his South Carolina campaign Feb. 2.
Bush’s campaign has been dogged by charges of anti-Catholic bias following his speech at the university, and McCain’s campaign sent taped phone messages to Michigan voters before the state’s Feb. 22 primary faulting Bush for not speaking out against Bob Jones University. McCain continued the attacks in Monday’s speech.
“We are the party of Ronald Reagan, not Pat Robertson. … We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, not Bob Jones,” McCain said.
Bush, after hearing McCain’s comments, chided the senator for using religion to polarize voters and failing to follow the example of former President Ronald Reagan, a mantle both men seek to claim.
“Ronald Reagan didn’t point fingers,” Bush said. “He never played to people’s religious fears like Sen. McCain has shamelessly done.”
McCain did, however, praise some religious right leaders like former Nixon aide Chuck Colson, president of Prison Fellowship, and James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family.
Supremacist Groups on Rise in Northwest
(RNS) White supremacist groups are on the rise in Washington state and Oregon, culling new members from young people from the suburbs, according to a new report by a hate monitoring agency.
“We talk about (hate groups) as if they only exist in Idaho and Montana, and the heaviest concentration is right here in Puget Sound,” said Terre Rybovich, executive director of the Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity.
In its annual “Hate by State” report, the coalition identified 52 white supremacist groups in the country’s northwest region, the Associated Press reported, including neo-Nazis, the World Church of the Creator and the Ku Klux Klan. According to Rybovich, the number of such groups, primarily located along Interstate 5, is growing, and “that is our greatest cause for concern.”
The coalition’s report identified 17 white supremacist groups in Washington and 13 in Oregon. Eleven were located in Idaho and five more were found in Montana. Wyoming and Colorado each were home to three white supremacy groups, the report said.
Rybovich said the coalition was unable to pinpoint membership numbers of the supremacy groups.
EBay Halts Online Auctioning of Human Souls
Eds: Text of eBay ad, including spelling and punctuation, is CQ)
(RNS) A New Mexico teen-ager sold his soul on the Internet recently and expects to get $5 for it _ if the bidder comes through with the money.
According to press reports, the online auction giant eBay has put a stop to people trying to sell their eternal souls for a little extra cash because the existence of a soul is not something that can be documented, and therefore sold.
According to USA Today, 14-year-old Adam Fox of Las Cruces, N.M., put his soul on the auction block Feb. 3 and the bidding closed Feb. 13. The winning bid? $5. Fox told USA Today he got the idea after watching an episode of “The Simpsons” where wisecracker Bart Simpson sold his soul.
“i’m selling my soul! Cheap!” read Fox’s posting. “I need money fast, so I’m selling my soul. For a low price, you get a piece of paper saying you own my soul. You get the paper only. shipping is free! Bid know, I need money!”
For Fox, it was all a joke. But for the folks at eBay, the matter was a bit more serious. EBay also yanked a posting by Ontario resident Sterling Jones, 18, who was receiving bids as high as $20.50 for his soul before bidding was stopped, according to The (Riverside, Calif.) Press-Enterprise.
In an e-mail sent to Jones that was reprinted by The Press-Enterprise, eBay officials wrote: “EBay does not allow the auctioning of human souls for the following reasons: If the soul does not exist, eBay could not allow the auctioning of the soul because there would be nothing to sell. However, if the soul does exist, then, in accordance with eBay’s policy on human parts and remains, we would not allow the auctioning of human souls.”
An eBay spokesman cautioned, however, that the company was not taking a position on whether or not souls exist.
“You have to be in a position where you can deliver what you sell,” eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove told The Press-Enterprise. “It appears to be a prank, and we removed it. We will leave the debate over the existence of the soul to the theologians.”
Russian Orthodox Cleric: Time Not Ripe for Papal Visit to Moscow
(RNS) A high-ranking Russian Orthodox cleric has welcomed Pope John Paul II’s call for renewed Orthodox-Catholic dialogue but said the time is not yet ripe for a papal visit to Moscow.
“It is positive that the pope is interested in dialogue with the Orthodox,” Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, president of the Department of External Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, said Monday (Feb. 28) at an international symposium on “Orthodoxy in the Society of Eastern Central Europe and the Balkans” sponsored by the Agnelli Foundation.
John Paul visited the heads of the Orthodox churches of Romania and Georgia last year, but Kirill said a trip to Moscow would be of such importance it should come only as the final step marking the end of the Great Schism of 1054.
“The invitation will be sent when the results of a visit will be positive,” the cleric said. “The meeting between the patriarch of Moscow and the pope is of enormous importance, not only symbolic but as a means of resolving existing problems and healing centuries-old wounds.
“The meeting should help us to turn the page between the East and West, and for this reason we must be prudent and not compromise it. If, in fact, after the meeting nothing changed, we would have lost the ultimate means at our disposition.”
Kirill commented favorably on the pope’s call at an ecumenical meeting in Cairo Saturday for the speedy resumption of Orthodox-Catholic dialogue and on John Paul’s willingness to discuss the key issue of papal primacy, which the Orthodox Church rejects.
The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches suspended a scheduled meeting last year because of strains produced by the NATO bombing of targets in predominantly Orthodox Yugoslavia.
“There are things that unite us with the Catholic Church and things that divide us, and the primacy of the pope is among those that divide us,” the Orthodox cleric said. “It is positive to have dialogue.”
But Kirill said he saw no chance of rapid progress toward resolving the bitter dispute over property claimed by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Orthodox charges that Catholics as well as Protestants are proselytizing among the Orthodox. Dialogue, he said, “goes forward slowly.”
The metropolitan said conflicts in the Balkans involving Orthodox, Catholics and Muslims presented additional difficulties. He said he had the “impression” that “in the conflict in Kosovo and in ex-Yugoslavia the divergences between Catholics and Orthodox might have been rekindled and could be an enormous danger.”
U.N. Divided on Financing Muslim Pilgrimage for Iraqis
(RNS) Iraq has turned down a United Nations proposal to help finance an annual pilgrimage to Mecca for thousands of Iraqi Muslims.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s proposal, released Monday (Feb. 28), would have allocated about $50 million _ roughly $2,000 per person _ to help defray travel costs for the expected 24,700 Iraqi pilgrims traveling to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia, the Associated Press reported.
His proposal would avoid violating U.N. sanctions against Baghdad by allowing the United Nations _ instead of Iraq _ to oversee disbursement of money for the pilgrimage.
The Security Council excluded hajj pilgrimages from economic sanctions that were imposed on Baghdad after Iraq’s attack on Kuwait in 1990. For the past few years the council has tried to use revenue generated from the United Nations’ “oil-for-food” program _ which allows Iraq to sell oil in exchange for food and medicine for its population _ to help Iraqis make the journey to Saudi Arabia, which all financially and physically able Muslims must do at least once in their lives. But the council’s efforts have failed as it remains deadlocked with Baghdad over the issue of who will dispense the pilgrimage money.
The Security Council refuses to accede to Baghdad’s demands to transfer the entire $50 million into Iraq’s Central Bank, contending that doing so would violate economic sanctions. The council passed a resolution in December asking Annan to devise a compromise plan.
His plan allows the U.N. humanitarian program’s office in Baghdad to distribute $250 to pilgrims at the start of the trip, with the remaining $1,750 disbursed by agencies in Jordan and Saudi Arabia as Iraqis complete their journey.
Baghdad maintains Annan’s plans violate the country’s sovereignty.
“We don’t accept any proposal which hurts our sovereignty over oil resources and complicates this humanitarian and religious practice,” said Iraqi Ambassador Saeed Hasan. He said the proposal was “not only too little, but too late.”
Though the United States and Britain support Annan’s proposal, France _ backed by Russia, China and Malaysia _ balked at the plan. France suggested dispensing the entire $2,000 to individuals at the start of the pilgrimage with the understanding Saudi Arabia would confirm the completion of the trip. France also suggested creating a joint U.N.-Iraq agency in Baghdad to oversee distribution of pilgrimage money.
More than 400,000 of the expected 2 million Muslims have already arrived in Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage, which starts March 14.
University Returns Portion of Rare `Gold Koran’ to Turkey
(RNS) A section of a rare ninth century Koran will be reunited with the rest of the Muslim holy book at an Istanbul museum following a decision by Johns Hopkins University.
The first 18 chapters of the Gold Koran vanished from Turkey sometime after 1756. Those chapters became part of the Baltimore university’s collection in 1942 as part of a bequest of rare books. They were appraised at between $1.9 million and $2.9 million in 1998.
“I am pleased that this Koran will now be restored to its original home and reclaim its place as an important part of the Turkish national heritage,” said M. Istemihan Talay, Turkey’s minister of culture, during a ceremony Monday (Feb. 28) at the Turkish Embassy in Washington.
The entire Gold Koran will be housed in the Nuruosmaniye Library.
It is believed the Gold Koran was created in either North Africa or an area that is part of modern-day Iraq, the Associated Press reported. Its lettering is made of gold leaf and it is written in the early Arabic script Kufa.
“This is the only intact example of the practice of copying the Koran into gold,” said Marianna Shreve Simpson, director of curatorial affairs for the Walters Arts Gallery in Baltimore.
The part of the holy text that was at Johns Hopkins was last recorded in Turkey during a 1756 inventory. Johns Hopkins learned in 1993 that its section was part of a larger work but had no evidence it was removed improperly from Turkey, said James G. Neal, dean of libraries at the university.
After the rare document was displayed at the gallery in 1997, the Turkish Embassy requested that Johns Hopkins return it. School officials chose to return it because of its unclear origin.
Turkey acknowledged that the university did not act improperly in obtaining the Gold Koran as part of an agreement signed Monday.
Quote of the Day: Arizona Sen. John McCain
(RNS) “Neither political party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.”
_ Arizona Sen. John McCain, speaking at a campaign rally in Virginia Beach, Va., on Monday (Feb. 28).
DEA END RNS
