c. 2008 Religion News Service

Dalai Lama has `given up’ on Tibet talks with China

(RNS) The Dalai Lama will abandon efforts to persuade China to allow autonomy in Tibet, the exiled Tibetan leader said Saturday (Oct. 25).

“As far as I’m concerned I have given up,” the Dalai Lama said from Dharamsala, India, home to the Tibetan government-in-exile, according to The Associated Press.

It’s now up to the 6 million Tibetans to determine a new plan, the 73-year-old Buddhist leader said. Around 300 Tibetan delegates will hold a special meeting next month in India, according to Reuters.

For decades, the Dalai Lama has advocated a “middle way” diplomatic approach, under which Tibet is ruled by China but has space to continue its ancient Buddhist culture.

“There hasn’t been any positive response from the Chinese side,” the Dalai Lama said, according to the AP. An eighth round of Tibetan-Chinese talks is planned for later this month.

Younger Tibetans are pressing for a more combative approach in pursuit of total freedom for Tibet.

It was the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s first public statement since he was released from an Indian hospital earlier this month after being treated for gallstones.

Since 1950, when Communist Chinese forces invaded Tibet, religious freedom there has been radically curtailed, according to the U.S. State Department.

_ Daniel Burke

British government sees room for minimal Islamic law

LONDON (RNS) The British government has ruled that some aspects of Islamic sharia law can be accepted into the country’s legal framework, provided they comply with standard practices of jurisprudence.

Bridget Prentice, a justice minister in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government, told Parliament that family courts in England and Wales could “rubber stamp” sharia decisions if they decide the Islamic rulings are fair.

Sharia is a set of principles governing the lives of Muslims, 1.6 million of whom live in Britain, and has occasionally come into conflict with traditional British law.

But Prentice said a sharia decision dealing with money or children could be submitted in the form of a consent order that a formal court could consider.

“This,” she said, “allows English judges to scrutinize it to ensure that it complies with English legal tenets,” and likewise in Wales, and that if they rule it is fair, it would constitute a legal contract.

Earlier this year, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams fueled the debate over Muslim law in Britain when he suggested that some aspects of sharia incorporated into civil law seemed “unavoidable” in the future.

But the government’s major opposition, the Conservative Party, argues that the proposal smacks of setting up a parallel legal system that does not belong in Britain.

“There can be no place for parallel legal systems in our country,” said Conservative justice spokesman Nick Herbert. “It is right that agreements decided privately in family cases must be authorized by a judge applying English law if they are to have any legal effect.”

_ Al Webb

College free speech lawsuit settled

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (RNS) Shippensburg University and a religious student group have settled a lawsuit over alleged violations of free speech rights at the state-owned university.

The Christian Fellowship of Shippensburg University asserted in a federal lawsuit filed last May that it had been threatened with being shut down because it requires members to be Christians and its president to be a man.

The group said the school violated a 2004 settlement of a separate lawsuit over the school’s student code of conduct.

In the 2004 case, a civil liberties group sued the university over a student code that barred “acts of intolerance” including racist, sexist and homophobic speech. University officials said they would revise the code after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction barring its enforcement.

The Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom said the latest lawsuit stemmed from Christian Fellowship’s expulsion from campus by the student senate in February in a dispute over its membership and leadership requirements.

The group, which has been recognized by the university since the early 1970s, was later told it could resume operations but said it feared the possibility of further sanctions.

The fellowship alleged university officials had undermined free speech by enacting “vague and overbroad speech codes” and by requiring students to report violations.

The Alliance Defense Fund said the university “has agreed to correct the policies and respect the constitutional rights of its students.”

The section of the Student Association Handbook for recognized clubs and organizations now includes the provision: “A student organization formed to foster or affirm political or sincerely held religious beliefs of its members may select its members and leaders in accordance with those beliefs.”

Shippensburg confirmed that the suit had been settled and said in a statement that it had not disciplined students for violating rules about speech, “nor has the university taken action against a student organization based on its membership criteria.”

Quote of the Day: Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan

(RNS) “As a Catholic, I can say to be pro-cure is to be pro-life.”

_ Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, speaking of her support for Proposal 2, a state ballot initiative that would loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. The Democratic governor was quoted by The Grand Rapids Press.

KRE/RB END RNS