Faith Communities Council of Victoria - FCCV - September 2018 Newsletter

FCCV SEPTEMBER 2018 NEWSLETTER
	NEWS | EVENTS | HOLY DAYS
2018 VICTORIAN INTERFAITH NETWORKS CONFERENCE: REGISTRATION NOW OPEN Registration is now open for the 2018 Victorian Interfaith Networks Conference to be held Sunday, November 18th 2018 @ St. Albans Community Centre.
MEHREEN FARUQI TO BECOME FIRST FEMALE MUSLIM SENATOR AMID FRASER ANNING OUTRAGE Mehreen Faruqi, who will on Wednesday become Australia’s first female Muslim senator, has slammed Fraser Anning as a “merchant of hate” who has “spat in the face of our successful multicultural society”.
A FAITH COMMUNITIES PERSPECTIVE ON THE ISSUE OF REFUGEES IN MANUS AND NAURU There are around 1,650 asylum seekers and refugees, adults and children, currently in Manus and Nauru. These are people who arrived by boat after 19th July 2013 and are still awaiting resettlement.
AUSTRALIA'S DROUGHT CRISIS: SIKH FARMERS FIGHT TO SAVE THEIR CROPS On the New South Wales mid north coast, time is running out for a group of farmers from the Sikh community to save their crops.
NEW JEWISH WAR MEMORIAL UNVEILED IN CANBERRA A new national war memorial has been unveiled to remember the 341 Jewish servicemen who laid down their lives fighting for Australia, 100 years to the day since Monash was knighted on the battlefield.
LIVING THE CHANGE: FAITHFUL CHOICES FOR A FLOURISHING WORLD For those who have not heard, a diverse range of faith communities around the world are awakening to a fresh opportunity to help create a safer climate future.
UNIONS SEEK TO END RELIGIOUS BODIES' RIGHT TO DISCRIMINATE IN HIRING Australia’s union movement will lobby for churches and other religious organisations to lose the legal right to fire some workers on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity.
SCOTT MORRISON - AUSTRALIA'S FIRST PENTECOSTAL PRIME MINISTER Australia has its first Pentecostal Prime Minister with Scott Morrison elected Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister of Australia.
LORD IT'S COLD OUTSIDE: THE HOMELESS PEOPLE SLEEPING IN CHURCHES It's 7pm on a Wednesday and, good Lord, it's cold in the Melbourne suburb of Heathmont. If Glenn wasn’t sleeping inside (the heated) Heathmont Baptist Church tonight, he would be shivering in a pitch-black Vermont water tunnel.
THE KORAN VERSE SPLITTING IMAMS ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Some imams in Australia still teach that the Koran permits husbands to beat their wives, with police reporting Muslim men are citing scripture to justify abuse. Now a new generation of faith leaders is working to undo the damage.
2018 NATIONAL RELIGIOUS SHORT FILM PRIZE WINNER ANNOUNCED Charles Sturt University (Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture) announced the winners of the 2018 Religious Short Film Prize at a special ceremony in Canberra on Wednesday 8 August.
BENEDICTINE ORDER TO JOIN BUDDHISTS AS SOUTHERN TASMANIA TO BECOME HUB OF MONK BUSINESS An order of Catholic monks famous for their six-day silent retreats and chanting have bought a property in southern Tasmania that they hope will become their new Australian base.
SWEDEN MUSLIM WOMAN WHO REFUSED HANDSHAKE AT JOB INTERVIEW WINS CASE A Swedish Muslim woman has won compensation after her job interview was ended when she refused a handshake.
POPE FRANCIS CONDEMNS CHURCH SEX ABUSE IN RESPONSE TO NEW REVELATIONS IN US Pope Francis has issued a letter to Catholics around the world condemning the "crime" of sexual abuse committed by priests and demanding accountability.
THAI CAVE RESCUE: RESCUED BOYS COMPLETE TIME AS NOVICE BUDDHIST MONKS With their heads bowed and wearing orange robes, the members of the boys' soccer team rescued from almost three weeks trapped in a cave in northern Thailand have completed their time as novice Buddhist monks.
HOW ONE MOVIE IS SPARKING A CONVERSATION ON BEING BAHA'I: AN INTERVIEW WITH ‘THE GATE’ DOCUMENTARY CREATORS Ask most people what the Bahá’í faith is, and you will get puzzled looks. It is one of the relatively newer religions and has around five million members around the world. The documentary 'The Gate' is trying to change that.

NO HIDING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN TUNISIA --- NOT EVEN WITHIN MARRIAGE

Tunisia: 

Women celebrate their rights

Decades of protest have paid off: Tunisia's parliament has passed a historic law on violence against women. It punishes all forms of violence and sets the country up for a potential cultural revolution.

Tunisia's parliament approved legislation on Wednesday that protects women from all forms of violence. The country's Family Minister Naziha Laabidi called it a "historic project."

"It's a very important law," said Abir Alhaj Mawas, a sociologist who works for Terre des Femmes, a women's rights nongovernmental organization. The law addresses women who are isolated, she said, so that they can enjoy rights already common for women elsewhere, such as in Europe.

The centrepiece of the law is, for Mawas, the paragraph dealing with punishing domestic violence. "Rape within the family has long been handled as a private matter easy to cover up, rather than a crime," she said. "This has now changed."

No safety in marriage

The new law changes how violence against women is prosecuted. Authorities must investigate a matter even if the woman herself rescinds her claim, regardless of cause for the claim's withdrawal. The law sees to the legal and psychological support for women who have been victims of violence in a way that aims to "support human rights and gender equality," Minister Laabidi said. Shelters and information centres are to be established where women can receive immediate assistance.

Sociologist Mawas has welcomed the new law

Tunisia's parliament also addressed a long-time demand of women's rights activists by striking down the paragraph protecting adult men from prosecution for having sex with a minor if he married her.

Violence by the numbers

Many women in Tunisia suffer from violence and harassment. A recently published study found that 64 percent of the 4,000 women surveyed would seek the permission of a male family member before leaving home. Nearly 70 percent reported being insulted on public transport, and 76 percent of married women reported physical and psychological violence at home.

Such violence has a number of sources, Mawas said, including ideology and false interpretations of the Quran. The 2011 wave of uprisings across the Arab world, dubbed the Arab Spring, made matters for women worse, Mawas said. Protests often took an authoritarian turn, and women received the brunt of the violence, she said.

Social conditions are also cause for violence against women. Poorly educated women have limited employment opportunities and can easily become victims of violence. "These women lack the means to make good on their rights," Mawas said.

In Tunisia, the protests in favor of expanding women's rights paid off

Conservative criticism

There was broad support across Tunisian society for the new law, with calls for a cultural reform that compels men to accept women as equals. But by conservatives' religious standards, a person is a consenting adult from the age of 13, Islamic politician Noureddine Bhiri told the newspaper Jeune Afrique. Lawmaker Salem Labiadh told Tunisia's Business News newspaper that the new law "can lead to a radical feminism, destroy the foundation of the family and legalize homosexuality."

Some readers reacted with disdain and mockery in the newspaper's letters to the editor section.

Backward thinking

There are also men who deny their wives rights without religious cause, due to external pressure, Mawas said. "They would be heavily criticized for giving their wives their freedom," she said, adding "even secular men are influenced by a religious climate."

Women in the Arab world continue to suffer under conservative dogma, wrote the Tunisian newspaper, Le Temps. "This must change if we really want equality and dignity to become a reality."