08AR13-35

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Apologia Report 13:35

October 8, 2008

Subject: How the media decides who's "Orthodox"

In this issue:

ISLAM - co-opting rights law as political strategy in Canada

+ the nasty global influence of Wahhabi funding

SCIENTOLOGY - strong opposition in France continues

TERMINOLOGY - an instructive discussion of media influence in religion coverage

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ISLAM

"Rights bodies vulnerable to 'political Islam': B'nai Brith, 'Human rights commissions just don't get it'" by Joseph Brean -- this summary of a report "written by B'nai Brith's senior legal counsel, David Matas" repeats the observation (noted in AR 13:15) that "the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an international Muslim group [has] 'successfully hijacked UN institutions to impose its own radicalized agenda.'"

Brean explains that "The Canadian Islamic Congress ... brought three high-profile human rights complaints of Islamophobia against Maclean's magazine, and has close ties to the OIC." He adds that "Tarek Fatah, the co-founder of the reform-minded Muslim Canadian Congress, said Canadians are 'not at all' aware that Islamists are 'using Western law to attack Western values.'" Fatah identifies the two primary strategies of the Islamists. First, "Non-Muslim critics of Islam are labelled 'Islamophobic.' Second, "Muslim critics ... are labelled 'apostates.'" Fatah emphasizes that by doing so, the label is also a "hidden death threat."

Matas concludes that "condemnation of human rights law's jurisdiction over hate has become surrogate for criticism." National Post, Aug 30 '08, <www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=756743>

"Saudi Textbooks Teach Students to Hate" by Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. She is the author of 2008 Update: Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance [1]. In this article, Shea reports that "The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education publishes and disseminates teachings that Muslims are to hate and treat as 'enemies' other religious believers, including other, non-Wahhabi Muslims. Those were our findings in a 2006 study of Saudi government textbooks. And despite the media outcry that followed, our most recent investigation shows that Saudi textbooks, now available on the Saudi Ministry of Education website, have not been cleaned up. The same violent and intolerant lessons remain.

"These textbooks assert that it is permissible for a Muslim to kill an 'apostate,' an 'adulterer,' those practicing 'major polytheism,' and homosexuals. They promote global jihad as an 'effort to wage war against the unbelievers,' including for the purpose of 'calling [infidels] to the faith.' They continue to teach that 'the hour [of judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,' that Shiite practices amount to 'polytheism' ..., that the Christian Crusades never ended, and that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are historical fact. ...

"According to Lawrence Wright in his book Looming Tower [3], the Saudis, constituting one per cent of the world's Muslims, support through the Wahhabis '90 per cent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions of Islam.'" The editorial prelude to this article notes that "Among the tens of thousands of schools using these textbooks worldwide is the Islamic Saudi Academy, run by the Saudi Embassy, in Fairfax, VA." Washington Post, Sep 4 '08, <www.tinyurl.com/5strmz>

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SCIENTOLOGY

"Scientologists charged with fraud in France" by Thierry Levequ -- briefly reports that "A French judge has ordered two departments and seven prominent members of the Church of Scientology in France to stand trial on charges of organized fraud, a judicial source said on Monday.

"The case is the latest in a series of legal battles that have pitted the French judicial system against the Scientologists, who could be forced to stop their activities in France if found guilty.

"The latest suit centers on a complaint made in 1998 by a woman who said she was enrolled into the Church of Scientology by a group of people she met outside a metro station.

"In the following months, she said she paid 140,000 francs (21,340 euros) for 'purification packs' and books which she said were a fraud. Other complaints then surfaced, prolonging the investigation."

Scientology "has faced numerous setbacks in France, with members convicted of fraud in Lyon in 1997 and Marseille in 1999. In 2002, a court fined it for violating privacy laws and said it could be dissolved if involved in similar cases." Reuters, Sep 8 '08, <www.tinyurl.com/4darx3>

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TERMINOLOGY

In "The Audacity of Claiming the Last Word on This Word," Peter Steinfels finds that "it is peculiar, to say the least, when the news media make themselves the arbiter of who is, say, an orthodox Roman Catholic or an orthodox Buddhist and who is not.

"A recent New Yorker article [2] on religion and the presidential race, for example, counterposed Catholics who welcomed the changes in the church initiated by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s with Catholics 'who hewed to orthodoxy.' ...

"Does this mean that the Catholics who rallied enthusiastically around Vatican II, and the popes who preceded John Paul II in interpreting it, and a majority of bishops who had been steering the American church for two decades, were not orthodox? Were they all, knowingly or unknowingly, unorthodox Ñ or even heretical?

"That would be a pretty sweeping judgment, but it is one held, explicitly or implicitly, by many conservative Catholics. (Of course, there are ultraconservative Catholics who think John Paul II was also a heretic.) The real question is, Why should The New Yorker decide?"

Steinfels considers "the confusion between uppercase Orthodox and lowercase orthodox" - first among Jews (with examples), and then with Christians (more examples), where in both instances usage "has become a settled matter" regarding the uppercase.

"Lowercase orthodoxy is quite another matter.

"In many religious groups, the word, from the Greek for 'correct doctrine' or 'right belief,' designates not one side in theological controversies but precisely what is at issue: What constitutes correct or true teaching within that particular tradition?"

Steinfels explains that "in the particularly contentious ranks of theologically minded Catholics, or perhaps in the polemic-weary ranks of mainline Protestantism, there are those who have surrendered the label of orthodoxy to conservatives, either because they no longer have the energy to protest or because they have concluded that the whole idea of orthodoxy - correct doctrine or right belief - is too encrusted with questionable notions to be worth defending." He then suggests journalistic alternatives.

He concludes: "When it comes to nomenclature, writing about religion is of course a minefield. Terms like 'conservative' and 'liberal,' 'traditionalist' and 'progressive' are almost unavoidable shorthand, though they suffer from their origins in political categories and almost inevitably oversimplify and dichotomize religious realities that are multifaceted.

"But 'orthodox' is a special case, because it suggests a sharp boundary between those who properly belong and those who are properly excluded, the way that 'patriotic' can suggest a boundary between loyal citizens and something verging on traitors. Religious leaders have a hard enough time wrestling with such matters. Journalists should not get in their way." New York Times, Sep 13 '08, <www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/us/13beliefs.html>

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Sources, Digital:

1 - <www.hudson.org/files/publications/saudi_textbooks_final.pdf>

2 - Steinfels didn't give any source credits, but this seems to fit: <www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/08/080908fa_fact_boyer>

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Sources, Monographs:

3 - The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright (Vintage, 2007, paperback, 576 pages)

<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400030846/apologiareport>

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