Author: Reuters Staff

A German hotline for victims of sexual abuse by clerics was deluged with thousands of calls in the week after the Roman Catholic Church launched the counseling service in a bid to restore trust.

Some 13,293 people attempted to call the hotline over the course of the first week but only 2,670 were able to connect with the overwhelmed 11 counselors on duty, church officials said.

“We didn’t expect so many calls,” said Stephan Kronenburg, spokesman for the diocese of Trier where the hotline control center is located. “It’s been well received. Many have called to say they’re grateful for it.”

On its first day, the hotline received 4,459 calls but the counselors, who work in four-hour shifts, were only able to handle 162 and the service was forced to shut down temporarily. In addition to the 11 counselors handling the phones, seven are dedicated to online queries.

Read the full story here.

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Malaysia will set up an interfaith committee to promote religious harmony, a cabinet minister said on Tuesday, after a series of religious disputes have fueled tensions in the mainly Muslim country.

The interfaith committee will look into religious groups’ disputes with one another and promote understanding among them, Koh Tsu Koon, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, was quoted by the online version of the Star newspaper as saying.

The development came a week after the government dropped a caning sentence imposed on a woman for drinking beer, a case that raised concerns of intolerance in the country.

The woman, Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, was sentenced to six strokes of the cane and a fine after she was caught drinking beer by Islamic enforcement officials two years ago at a hotel lounge in the central state of Pahang.

Malaysia practises a dual-track legal system, with Islamic criminal and family law applicable to Muslims. Non-Muslims, who make up about 45 percent of the Southeast Asian country’s 28 million residents, are subject to civil law.

In January, churches were attacked as a row escalated over the use of the word Allah to refer to the Christian God.

The dispute was sparked by a 2009 court ruling allowing a Catholic newspaper to use the word “Allah” in its Malay-language editions to describe the Christian God.

Analysts said growing religious disputes risk dividing the country, which has significant religious minorities, and complicate Prime Minister Najib Razak’s plan to win back support from non-Muslims before the next elections due by 2013.

Do you think this approach can be effective? Some doubts have already been expressed.

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By the time thousands of parishioners stream into the 3,000-seat Ebenezer AME Church on Easter Sunday, church leaders hope to have something else to celebrate: financial revival.

The congregation, one of America’s largest, has been scrambling to raise funds to save the arena-sized sanctuary from potential foreclosure. To that end, it has enlisted national leaders, such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Harvard Law School’s Charles Ogletree, who was President Barack Obama’s law professor.

Thanks to its 10,000-member congregation and connections with business and civic leaders, Ebenezer expects to avoid the fate of a growing number of U.S. churches, which are defaulting on loans, facing foreclosure and even declaring bankruptcy at an unprecedented pace.

“It’s happening to virtually every church,” said the Rev. Grainger Browning, senior pastor of Ebenezer. “At a recent meeting with the 100 top pastors in the country, it was amazing how all of us were facing some sort of challenge with the banks.”

You can see the whole special report by Tom Hals here.

(PHOTO:Parishioners hold their offering envelopes and say a pray of thanks for their life’s blessings during a Sunday morning worship service at Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Maryland, March 28, 2010. Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

Indian police extended a curfew to several areas of the IT city of Hyderabad on Wednesday after four days of religious clashes between Hindus and Muslims left two dead and scores injured.  The religious strife has heightened tension and worried authorities in the southern city of Andhra Pradesh state, which houses major operations of such companies as Microsoft, Google and Mahindra Satyam.

Here are some questions and answers about the latest crisis:

WHAT ARE THE CLASHES ABOUT IN HYDERABAD?

Clashes started after a Hindu group replaced Muslim flags with Hindu ones on streets during a festival, triggering clashes with Muslims. Nearly 125 people have been arrested so far.  The once princely dominion in Hyderabad has a history of religious tension with Hindu groups taking on Muslims over festivals and respective customs to gain supremacy.

Political leaders from both communities have also ignited communal clashes in the past, hoping to win support of voters from their respective communities, experts say.  A bomb blast in May 2007, and recent protests over the carving of a new state called Telangana in Andhra Pradesh, are examples of how violence has often hit the city.

WHAT IS BEHIND THE RELIGIOUS FLARE UP?

Old tensions may have played a part, especially at the beginning with spontaneous responses from both Hindu and Muslim groups, who came out of their homes with rods and sticks.  Local media also said police high-handedness was a provocation, while in other areas police were reported to have reacted slowly, and allowed rioting from both sides to grow.

The city police chief said the riots were premeditated without saying who was responsible.  Some politicians from Hyderabad city and coastal Rayalseema region, who do not want the formation of Telangana, may be behind the riots, pro-Telangana leaders say.

WHAT BUSINESSES HAVE BEEN HIT BY THE CLASH?

Operations in high tech companies in the IT hub of Cyberabad, about 20 km (12 miles) away from the main city of Hyderabad, remain unaffected with a large police presence keeping rioters at bay.

But a wholesale food grains market and a popular garment trade business has been hit inside Hyderabad, where a curfew has been imposed. Trade bodies say they are incurring losses worth more than $65 million a day.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN?

Regular violence in Hyderabad could make the city a less attractive destination for multinational firms and communal clashes might heighten tension, also worrying investors, experts say.

Instability could affect business soon and the present clashes could spiral out of control if political parties fail to come together on issues such as Telangana.

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A Belgian parliamentary committee voted Wednesday to ban the full Islamic face veil, a move that, if ratified, could make Belgium the first country to enforce such a ban.

The lower house of parliament will vote on the bill on April 22 and it could enter into law in June or July.

Some lawmakers in France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, have called for full Islamic veils to be banned, although a top advisory board said Tuesday that this would carry serious constitutional risks.

The draft law proposes to criminalize wearing clothing that covers all or part of the face, including the facial veil known as the niqab and the full outer garment, or burqa, widely worn in Afghanistan.

The French-speaking liberals, who have proposed the law, argue an inability to identify people who have hidden their faces presents a security risk and that the veil was a “walking prison” for women.

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The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Isabelle de Gaulmyn is Religion Editor of the Paris Catholic daily newspaper La Croix and author of Benoît XVI, Le pape incompris (Benedict XVI, The Misunderstood Pope). She blogs in French at Une foi par semaine, where this first appeared.

Are Catholics masochists? After all that’s been happening these days, this looks like the question to ask. There were probably more than 3 million Catholics in France who went to church to celebrate Palm Sunday today. And during this Holy Week, millions more will to prepare for Easter. If the news we hear is anything to go by, these Catholics must be either mad or masochistic.

Why not take advantage of this Sunday to go fishing or play tennis rather than frequent a place full of pedophile priests and leaders who lie  and hush up the truth? How can there still be people in the pews, on pilgrimages, in monasteries or volunteering in one of many charities?

And what about the adults who will be baptised as Catholics on Saturday evening?*  Are they thoughtless, suicidal or stupid? In short, are Catholics “the blind being led to slaughter,” as was written in a militant secularist pamphlet dropped into my mail box?

These are legitimate questions if we go by the image of the Church found in the media now. It’s no surprise that the media focuses on the real flaws and shortcomings of the Church. But it makes Catholics feel hopeless and hurt to see their Church presented in a way that has little in common with what they experience daily in their own faith communities.

Today, the big problem Catholicism faces may not be secularisation but the Church’s inability to show the rest of society what actually happens in each of its parishes.

What do you think? Is there a disconnect between the Catholic Church you see in the news and the parish nearest you?

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* 2,903 adults will be baptised in France at Saturday evening’s Easter Vigil, a traditional time for adult baptisms. The number of adult baptisms has grown by 20%  over the past decade. The French Bishops Conference has an extensive dossier on adult baptisms (here in French).

Next week is the time of year when millions of people around the world look to Jerusalem as the source of inspiration for the Christian festival of Easter and Jewish Passover celebrations. But this week the city is also the recurrent focus of bitter dispute. The United States has directed rare strong criticism at Israel over its plans to expand Jewish settlements there, saying the building undermines U.S. efforts to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Want to know more? Following are links to a sampling of recent Reuters stories about Jerusalem and a Reuters graphic on new Israeli construction in East Jerusalems:

LATEST NEWS

Israel awaits word, signs are no deal with US

Israel, undeterred, to build in East Jerusalem

FEATURE STORIES

Jerusalem struggle goes on, years after war

Researchers dig up controversy in Jerusalem

ANALYSIS/BACKGROUND

Leaders’ Jerusalem rhetoric mirrors conflict

Q+A-Jerusalem: What’s at stake? Why does it matter?

Jerusalem clashes could signal more trouble

Jerusalem, focus of faith, conflict

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Rehabilitation and religion were the two themes Tiger Woods was most open about discussing in his first television interviews Sunday since revelations about his marriage infidelities emerged last November.  Woods has long been connected to Buddhism through his Thai mother and he said his detachment from the religion had been behind his fall from grace.

“Going against your core values, losing sight of it,” he said when asked how he lost control of his life. “I quit meditating, I quit being a Buddhist, and my life changed upside down.  I felt entitled, which I had never felt before. Consequently, I hurt so many people by my own reckless attitude and behavior.”

Woods wore a thin Buddhist bracelet, which he showed to Golf Channel viewers and said he would be wearing when he returned to golf at the U.S. Masters on April 8.  “It’s Buddhist, it’s for protection and strength and I certainly need that,” he said.

Given a number of celebrities in the U.S. have “discovered” religion at times of crises, Woods may find some skepticism about his readiness to be publicly associated with Buddhism now. But he discussed it in a video and text interview with Reuters in March 2008. He said he practiced meditation and went to a temple with his mother every  year.

Here are the Buddhist bracelet story, another news story on the interview, the full transcript and video of the Golf Channel interview and the full transcript and video of the ESPN interview.

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Reuters Video Report — DNA confirms that a secretive African tribe are direct descendants of Jews who fled the Holy Land 2,500 years ago, and one their religious artifacts might be linked to the lost Ark of the Covenant.

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U.S. Muslim activists launched a campaign on Wednesday against a series of educational books that they say promote anti-Islamic sentiment among American school children.  “The World of Islam,” a 10-book series, encourages young readers to believe Muslims are terrorists and seek to undermine U.S. society, said the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy organization.

One book contains the passage: “For the first time, Muslims began immigrating to the U.S. in order to transform American society, sometimes through the use of terrorism.”

Moein Khawaja, civil rights director for CAIR in Pennsylvania, said the group has gotten dozens of complaints about the books, which are intended for middle- and high-school students, from Muslim parents around the country.

The books were published in late 2009 by Mason Crest Publishers of Broomall, Pennsylvania, which worked with the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute to ensure their accuracy. Khawaja said at a news conference that the books are “rife with incorrect information and fear-mongering” and called the FPRI a “pro-war think tank that has vigorously advocated for the Iraq war in the past and continues to defend that position.”

The Foreign Policy Research Institute denied the charge.

Read the full story here.

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Indian Muslim women reacted positively to a bill passed by the upper house of parliament last week that would reserve one-third of seats in the directly elected lower house of parliament and the state assemblies for women. There are 59 women lawmakers in the lower house of parliament at present, out of a maximum of 545. The bill must still be passed by the lower house, the Lok Sabha.

Championed both by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, the legislation aims to help empower women politically and thus economically in a country where they lag far behind on many social and health indicators.

While parliament is mostly populated by older men, India has a history of women at the top of the political class, including Sonia Gandhi and her mother-in-law, the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

But millions of poor women face steep odds, with shorter schooling, worse nutrition and a literacy rate more than 20 percentage points lower than men.

By Renee Maltezou

ATHENS – A senior cleric has accused Greece’s socialist government of being hostile to the Orthodox Church  for imposing taxes on it as part of a drive to tame a budget crisis that has shaken global markets.

Greece, where about 90 percent of the 11 million-strong population are Christian Orthodox, will tax bequests and revenues from church property as it seeks to tackle a 300 billion euro ($409.9 billion) debt pile.

In a country where a bishop sits on the board of the biggest bank and the top cleric swears in the government, many on the streets of Athens felt the church should do its bit given the sacrifices they are making.

“It was about time the Church paid. It’s fair,” said Christina Alexiadou, 55, an accountant and frequent church-goer. “It can’t be that only ordinary people pay for everything.”

The Church of Greece, one of the country’s biggest owners of prime real estate, has until now been largely exempt from taxes even though the state pays priests’ salaries.

The government, which had announced earlier this month that the church would have to contribute to its budget drive, said late on Monday that church income from real estate holdings would be taxed at 20 percent.

Cash bequests will face a levy of 10 percent and property bequests a 5 percent charge.

“The 20 percent hits us right between the eyes,” Bishop Anthimos of Thessaloniki told public television on Tuesday. “This is a hostile stand, I don’t intend to hide it.”

Details of the measures come just two weeks before Easter, the Orthodox Church’s biggest festival of the year.

Polls show the majority of Greeks are ready to accept draconian austerity measures that include tax rises, pension freezes and lower pay for public sector workers.

“The church is wealthy and can help the country out of the crisis,” 36-year old bus driver Alexandros Kagris said. “Isn’t this what the church is for, to help people?”

GREEK SALVATION

According to an internal report published by Greek daily Kathimerini last year the Church’s total income reached 20 million euros in 2008, including 12.7 million from renting out church property. Its profit for the year was 7 million euros.

A spokesman for the church, which owns a 150 million euro stake in National Bank of Greece, declined to comment on its income or the new tax bill which is expected to go to parliament on Monday and enter force as soon as it is adopted.

It is not the first time church and state have clashed. In 2000 they fell out over EU rules requiring that religion be dropped from ID cards.

Theodore Couloumbis, deputy head of the ELIAMEP think-tank, said he did not expect the church as an institution to speak out against the taxes, however.

“The fact that we are going through a major crisis will make it easier for the Church to accept this measure, otherwise it will be thought of as not contributing to the salvation of Greece’s economy,” said Couloumbis.

The church’s ruling body issued a statement blessing politicians but making no reference to the new taxes.

German Catholic politicians and lay activists urged Pope Benedict on Monday to speak out about sexual abuse cases by priests that have shocked the country and led to questions about his management of the crisis. The calls came amid widespread criticism in the media that the Bavarian-born pontiff made no statement after getting a briefing on the scandals at the Vatican on Friday from the leader of the Church in Germany, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch.

In Bavaria, a convicted abuser priest whose transfer to Munich in 1980 while Pope Benedict was archbishop there threatened to draw the pontiff into the scandal, was suspended from his post in a spa town, the Munich archdiocese announced.

“The Holy Father needs to say something about this,” Dirk Tänzler, head of the Federation of German Catholic Youth (BDKJ), told the Berliner Zeitung daily. “The Church needs to be more honest and stricter with itself, and that naturally includes the pope,” Wolfgang Thierse, a vice president of the German parliament and member of the Central Committee of Catholics, told ARD television.

A Vatican prelate, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, said Benedict would soon speak with “his clear and decisive voice, without hiding anything” in an expected letter on similar scandals in Ireland, but gave no date or hint if it would mention Germany.  Fisichella, in an interview with the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, echoed Vatican attacks on the media for pursuing the scandals. “The rage against the pontiff is insane,” he said.

Read the whole story here.

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Iraq’s Arab neighbours fear a split Iraqi election could further marginalise minority Sunnis and hope any coalition government formed by the Shi’ite frontrunner will resist Iran’s sway. Many Sunni Arabs had wanted a stronger showing by secularists, who they now hope will bring cross-sectarian balance to any coalition government that could be formed by Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

“These election results show that there is a Shi’ite wave in the region which threatens Arab security in the region. Iran has a hidden role in the Arab region and it supports Shi’ite elements in the area, particularly in Iraq,” said Magid Mazloum from the Centre for Gulf Studies in Cairo.

Early election results showed Maliki pulling ahead on Sunday in an election Iraqis hoped would end years of sectarian strife, but a divided vote suggested long and fraught talks to form a government are ahead. But the overall picture, reflecting a nation fragmented by decades of sectarian and ethnic conflict, was still incomplete a week after the vote.

Sunni-led Arab countries, particularly in the Gulf where there are significant and marginalised Shi’ite minorities, worry about the repercussions of Iranian influence in Iraq. They fear meddling by Shi’ite non-Arab Iran in Iraq, an Arab country with a Shi’ite Muslim majority, could incite their own Shi’ite populations and that sectarian instability in Iraq could spill over.

Read the whole story here.

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Irish bookmaker Paddy Power said Friday it had cut the odds on Pope Benedict resigning after allegations of child abuse by priests in Germany gripped the Roman Catholic Church.

Ireland’s biggest bookmaker, which has branches in Britain as well as Catholic Ireland, said it had cut the odds from 12 to 1 to 3 to 1 following a “cascade of bets.”

The bookie also said it had cut the odds on Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze becoming the next pontiff to 4 to 1, after what it called a significant gamble. The firm said Arinze was now the clear favourite.

“The dark clouds of clerical abuse scandals show no sign of abating and recent reports from Germany are surely a little too close to home for the pope,” the company said in a statement.

Read the whole report here and tell us what you think. Would Benedict ever resign? Does Arinze still have a chance?

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Sharia boards face increased scrutiny and criticism as high-profile corporate defaults and cautionary comments from respected scholars cast a harsh light on the fast growth of financial products touted as Islamic.

Experts say rapid growth in the industry, which some estimates value at around $1 trillion, has put more pressure on scholars to sign off on increasingly complicated structures, wrapped in sharia packaging.

“In areas that have to do with capital guarantees, fixed income and derivatives … 40 to 50 percent of what’s being sent out is form over substance,” said Jawad Ali, managing partner at Dubai-based law firm King & Spalding.  “Mistakes do happen when a sharia board focuses on the instrument being presented … and there is little scrutiny on how the structures are being implemented.”

Influential scholar Sheikh Taqi Usmani rocked the industry last year when he said many structures presenting themselves as Islamic didn’t meet the definition of true sharia compliance, raising concerns in the industry that some deals could be deemed un-Islamic after investors had bought them.  Those concerns increased when Kuwait’s Investment Dar — which defaulted on a $100 million sukuk last May — presented a legal defense in the British High Court that one of its wakala, or agency deals, wasn’t sharia compliant.

Read Shaheen Pasha’s full story here.

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Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, who as the head of Egypt’s most prestigious seat of Islamic learning al-Azhar was Sunni Islam’s top authority, died of a heart attack on Wednesday on a visit to Saudi Arabia, religious officials at al-Azhar said. He was 81.

Mohamed Wasel, Tantawi’s deputy, will temporarily take charge of the Sunni Muslim institution until Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appoints a new head. Wasel has been heading al-Azhar’s committee for inter-faith dialogue.

Al-Azhar, which runs schools, universities and other educational institutions across Egypt and sends scholars to teach in countries across the Muslim world, receives most of its funding from the state.

“The government usually chooses a moderate sheikh and all we can ask of them is that their coming choice will be a sheikh who will work for the best interest of the people and will be biased not for the government but for truth,” Sheikh Mahmoud Hamdy Mugahed, former Azhar scholar and now parliament member, said.

Read the whole story here.

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Germany’s justice minister has accused the Vatican today of covering up severe sexual abuse in the Church after fresh reports surfaced at three Catholic schools in Bavaria.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called the developments “frightening” after the cathedral choir in Regensburg, the Benedictine monastery school at Ettal and a Capucian school in Burghausen revealed new cases of sexual and physical abuse.

The revelations followed reports last month that Catholic priests had sexually abused over 100 children at Jesuit schools around Germany, which led to a public apology from Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference.

“In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence,” Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a secular liberal politician who has been the government’s leading critic of the Church, told Germany’s Deutschlandfunk radio.  “Even the most severe cases of abuse are subject only to papal secrecy and should not be disclosed outside the Church,” she said, citing a 2001 Catholic congregation directive.

Church officials rejected her charges. Bishop Stephan Ackermann, who speaks for the Church on abuse matters, called the minister’s comments “absurd”.

Read the full story here.

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After scoring gains in local elections, Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders is now primed to make waves in a national poll in June by tapping into discontent over Islam and globalisation.

In the first test of public opinion since the collapse of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s coalition government last month, Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) became the largest party in the city of Almere and came second in The Hague on Wednesday.

Drawing strength from a savvy public relations machine and a populist anti-immigration stance that plays well with part of the electorate, Wilders also represents a vote against the political elite, political experts say.  “He thrives on discontent in society and multiculturalism and he has targeted Islam,” said Nico Landman, an associate professor in Islamic studies at Utrecht University.

Muslims now make up about 6 percent, or 1 million of the 16 million population of the Netherlands.  “We need to give an opposing voice and that’s what we want to keep doing and we haven’t done that enough,” said Henny Kreeft, chairman of the Dutch Muslim Party chairman.  “Wilders creates fear and reacts to the Islamisation of the Netherlands, but there is no Islamisation of the Netherlands.”

Read Aaron Gray-Block’s full analysis here.

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More and more countries are abolishing the death penalty and even the most active capital punishers are taking steps to restrict it. Fifty-six countries continue to execute people, while 141 countries do not use it, including 93 that have formally abolished it.

Read the whole story, then cast your vote in this poll: