When your face and your religion determine your future ...

Lynne Murphy

Admin · 5 August at 23:48

My name
Am from pakistan parachinar.
I did not leave my country for search of allowence or food .
If there was peace in my country.
I would have never chosen being refugee.
If there was peace,I would have never left my family hometown and my best friends,.
If there was peace I would have never...
Left my country,that anyone call me Refugee And look at me like criminals and killers
And punish me based on my face and religion.
If there was peace in my country I would have never chosen being locked and be pensive, to keep watching to the door, who brings a hopeful news to chare me up.
I left my country, family and friends..
Because I'm shia .
I have left my country due to being shia and shia in pakistan parachinar are condemned to die.
Because they believe in peace, justice and education. which it's throughly unbearable... I didn't leave my country on purpose. The war, injustice, persecution, armed killing, abduction, and systematic discrimination for decades forced me to leave.
If there was peace in my country...
I would have made it the most secured home for all people from around the globe, and I would have became it's security..
Till people feel peace and comfort.
Note, being refugee is not optional, l myself did not choose to be refugee please don't look at me as a criminal.😥😭💔

~ From a refugee, waiting the long wait in limbo in Indonesia

Religion among the conservatives in modern Australia

One would think the last thing Malcolm Turnbull needs is a new round of the culture wars - this one over whether extra protections are needed for religion - just as he’s coming up to next year’s election.

But that seems likely when the government finally releases the Ruddock report on religious freedom.

The review was set up essentially to salve the hurt of those in Coalition ranks on the losing side of the same-sex marriage debate. Unfortunately in politics, short-term gestures can come back as longer-term distractions.

The government won’t be putting out the report before the July 28 byelections, and that tells us something. There are concerns about how this issue – the detailed carriage of which is with Attorney-General Christian Porter - will play in the public domain.

We don’t know what former Howard government minister Philip Ruddock and his panel have found – in particular what they’ve recommended about legislation to protect religious freedom.

But cabinet minister Dan Tehan has fired an early shot in the battle with his St Thomas More lecture, delivered in late June and run in The Australian last Saturday.

Tehan targeted two fronts: what he called “the creeping encroachment from the state on religious belief” and the “the use of political correctness to marginalise and silence the religious perspective”. A modern problem, he said, is “where religious freedom rubs against laws written to protect other rights”.

He’s concerned about what he sees as inadequacies in the present state and federal legal framework; he urges a Religious Discrimination Act to protect against discrimination on religious grounds and ensure other laws, such as state sex-discrimination acts, don’t restrict religious freedom more than is required.

In this debate, the onus is surely on the advocates of change to establish that present protections aren’t adequate. Tehan’s evidence (such as a complaint against Catholic anti same-sex marriage literature that was withdrawn) seems slight. Liberal senator James Paterson, who supports legislation, also was light on convincing examples when interviewed this week.

But it is the second part of Tehan’s argument that is more disturbing.

“The reality for Australians today is that there is another threat to religious freedom and it does not come from the application of various laws,” he said. “Rather, it comes from what former prime minister John Howard describes as ‘minority fundamentalism’ – which he calls, ‘the assumption that long-held custom, practices and beliefs represent or implies an attack on those who do not support it’”.

Tehan said: “We have woken up in a nightmare where the value of your contribution to a debate depends on what you claim to be a victim of.

"When the forces of political correctness continually marginalise and dismiss contributions to debate informed by a reasonable religious belief it sends a very clear message: you are not welcome here, your views are not welcome here, and your religion is not welcome here’”.

He gives the examples of the boycott of Coopers Brewery after its involvement with the Bible Society in the same-sex marriage debate, and the backlash against rugby union’s Israel Folau after he denounced homosexuality.

“There is more disrespect directed at people who share their faith publicly,” Tehan maintains.'

But what are we looking at here? We can condemn retaliation against a business that has engaged in some well-motivated political act, but we’d surely not want to curb the right of people to protest in this way (provided it’s done peacefully).

And in talking about “political correctness” let us remember this can come in very different stripes, from the right as well as the left, and can be subjective.

When young Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied posted her “LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)” she was pilloried - not just criticised robustly - for expressing a provocative and disrespectful view. Her most ferocious attackers, including high-profile Liberals, approached her post from what some might characterise as their own school of “political correctness”.

Tehan fears the decline in the proportion of Australians who profess themselves Christians. Citing census figures, he said that while “Christianity remains the most common religion, practiced by 52% of the population”, the proportion is falling, especially among the young. The trend will lead to the day when “the Australians who are part of any religion will become a minority."

"In preparation for that day, we need to consider how we will defend religious rights in this country from political correctness”. He exhorts people of faith to stand up for their views, but this is not enough. “Given the changing nature of the law in Australia, and including the flow towards increasing secularism, we need a Religious Discrimination Act”.

Of course believers should fight for their causes. But a fall in Christian adherence does not make a case for a new law to protect a religious minority – who often might have split opinions anyway.

The legalisation of same-sex marriage was an exercise in democracy in our secular society; the plebiscite’s result reflected how views had changed over a few years. Church voices in opposition were not suppressed - they just lost the argument and so failed to garner the numbers.

There is no credible reason to believe the opportunity for religious views to be put on various issues will be stifled in the future. It may be that they will be rejected, but that is completely different.

From the government’s point of view, there is little upside in the coming debate.

Talk of a Religious Discrimination Act would trigger calls for a wider bill of rights – somewhere the government won’t be going.

And there is always a risk with such legislation of unintended consequences – witness the fallout around some terms in the Racial Discrimination Act’s section 18C.

The strong proponents within the Coalition of this new protection are coming from a Christian point of view. But protection for religion would extend across faiths, potentially raising issues about practices of some non-Christian religions that, while not contravening Australian law, mightn’t fit so well with Australian values. Do we want to get into that mire?

It’s hard to see the religion issue being a vote-changer for Turnbull. The Liberals might hope to wedge Labor, but the ALP has proved skillful at dodging wedges. There could be a greater danger of it dividing Coalition MPs.

The most sensible course would be to put the issue on pause. But that’s not how these things go.

Civil disobedience and hijab protests in Iran

A young Iranian woman waves a white headscarf 

in protest against her country’s compulsory hijab rule.

From the New York Times

On Dec. 27, Vida Movahed stood bareheaded on a utility box on one of Tehran’s busiest thoroughfares, waving her white head scarf on a stick. Within days, images of the 31-year-old, who was detained and then released a few weeks later, had become an iconic symbol.

In the weeks since Ms. Movahed’s peaceful protest of the compulsory hijab, long one of the most visible symbols of the Islamic Republic, dozens of women, and even some men, throughout Iran have followed her lead. So far, at least 29 women in cities throughout the country have been arrested.

These bold acts of defiance against the hijab are unprecedented in the nearly 40-year history of the Islamic Republic, but a movement that may have helped inspire them has been going on for years. It began on the social media account of a Brooklyn-based Iranian journalist named Masih Alinejad. In 2014, Ms. Alinejad started a Facebook page called “My Stealthy Freedom,” urging women to post images of themselves without the hijab in public places. Last year, she launched “White Wednesdays,” inviting women to wear white scarves on Wednesdays in protest of the compulsory hijab law. (Ms. Movahed carried out her protest on a Wednesday and held a white scarf, though her actual allegiance to Ms. Alinejad’s campaign is unknown).

Ms. Alinejad, who worked as a journalist in Iran before emigrating to England in 2009, says her campaign came about by chance. She posted a photo of herself driving her car in Iran without hijab and invited others to share “hidden photos” of themselves on her Facebook page. The overwhelming response — the page now has more than a million followers — prompted her to focus more on the issue. “I was a political reporter, but the women in Iran forced me to care about the issue of personal freedoms,” she told me.

For Ms. Alinejad and the protesters, the struggle against the compulsory hijab is about regaining a woman’s control over her own body, not a matter of questioning the validity of the hijab itself. Now that bareheaded women are joined in these acts by women who proudly wear the full-body chador, it is clear that the movement on the ground is also about a woman’s right to choose how to dress — something that, over the past century, various Iranian leaders have tried to deny.

The founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, banned the hijab, in a gesture of modernization, in 1936, which effectively put some women under house arrest for years since they could not bear to be uncovered in public. The leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, made the hijab compulsory in 1979.

Mass protests by women were unsuccessful in overturning the edict. Pro-hijab campaigners invented the slogan “Ya rusari ya tusari,” which means “Either a cover on the head or a beating,” and supervisory “committees” — often composed of women in full chadors — roamed the streets and punished women they deemed poorly covered. Those who opposed the strict measure called these enforcer women “Fati commando,” a derogatory term that combines Islam — in the nickname Fati for Fatemeh, the prophet’s daughter — and vigilantism.

While the requirements have remained firmly in place, Iranian women have been pushing the boundaries of acceptable hijab for years. Coats have gotten shorter and more fitted and some head scarves are as small as bandannas. This has not gone without notice or punishment: Hijab-related arrests are common and numerous. In 2014, Iranian police announced that “bad hijab” had led to 3.6 million cases of police intervention.

But for years, many women’s rights activists have written off the hijab as secondary to other matters such as political or gender equality rights. In 2006, the One Million Signatures for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws campaign, one of the most concerted efforts undertaken by Iranian feminists to gain greater rights for women, barely mentions the hijab. Iranian feminists have also been determined to distance themselves from the Western obsession with the hijab, almost overcompensating by minimizing its significance. Western feminists who have visited Iran and willingly worn the hijab have also played a hand in normalizing it.

But fighting discriminatory policies has not resulted in any real change, as the crushed One Million Signatures campaign proved. So now Ms. Alinejad and a younger generation of Iranian women are turning back the focus on the most visible symbol of discrimination, which, they argue, is also the most fundamental. “We are not fighting against a piece of cloth,” Ms. Alinejad told me. “We are fighting for our dignity. If you can’t choose what to put on your head, they won’t let you be in charge of what is in your head, either.” In contrast, Islamic Republic officials argue that the hijab bestows dignity on women.

The government has had a mixed response to the protests. On the day that Vida Movahed climbed on the utility box to protest the hijab, Tehran’s police chief announced that going forward, women would no longer be detained for bad hijab, but would be “educated.” In early January, in response to recent weeks of unrest throughout the country, President Hassan Rouhani went so far as to say, “One cannot force one’s lifestyle on the future generations.” In the past week, faced with a growing wave of civil disobedience, Iran’s general prosecutor called the actions of the women “childish” and the Tehran police said that those who were arrested were “deceived by the ‘no-hijab’ campaign.”

But these young women appear undeterred. Their generation is empowered by a new media ecosystem, one that not only unites protesters but also helps to spread potent images of defiance. Ms. Alinejad believes that the movement has already, in a sense, succeeded. “Women are showing that they are no longer afraid,” she said. “We used to fear the government, now it’s the government that fears women.”

Nahid Siamdoust is a postdoctoral associate of Iranian studies at Yale University and the author of “Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran.”

And you might like to read this, too.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. 

Religious freedom for Indonesian native faiths

Court recognises Indonesian native faiths in victory for religious freedom

·       Jewel Topsfield

·       Karuni Rompies

This story is from The Age of 8 Nov 2017

Dewi Kanti adheres to a traditional Indonesian religious belief system known as Sunda Wiwitan, which venerates the power of nature and the spirit of ancestors.

She is among perhaps 15 million native-faith followers in Indonesia who have been discriminated against for decades by Indonesia's policy of only recognising six official religions.

As it stands, Indonesians have had to list their religion as Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist or Confucian on their national identification cards –or leave the religion field blank.

But those who left their ID cards blank had difficulty registering their marriage, obtaining birth certificates, accessing employment as civil servants and applying for government services.

Now, in an historic victory for religious freedom in Indonesia, the Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday it was discriminatory to require native-faith followers to leave the religion field blank.

Constitutional Court Judge Saldi Isra said this was not in line with the spirit of the 1945 Constitution, which enshrines religious freedom.

The court recommended that a seventh category be created – native-faith followers –  although the card would not specify the particular faith.

Sunda Wiwitan is one of several hundred native-faith beliefs across Indonesia. They follow an animistic system of belief but over time have been influenced by other religions including Hinduism and Islam.

Ms Dewi welcomed the Constitutional Court decision. "Our fight has borne fruit," she said.

"The most important thing is the restoration of civil rights especially for those who have been stigmatised. Under the repressive New Order regime, I was stigmatised as (following) a deviant sect. This is a realisation on the part of policymakers that there has been an abuse of our constitutional rights."

Despite practising a native Javanese faith, Ms Dewi's husband had been forced to put "Catholic" on his ID card so the couple could obtain birth certificates for their children.

She said it was almost impossible to know how many people still adhered to Sunda Wiwitan, because there were no administrative records.

"In 1964 there were around 10,000 to 15,000 of us," she said.

However, blasphemy laws passed in 1965 stipulated only six religions would be officially recognised.

"The New Order regime said it was compulsory for all citizens to follow a religion, this was a policy to fight communism because communism was regarded as atheist or not believing in God," said Bonar Tigor Naipospos, the vice chairperson of the Setara Institute for democracy and peace.

"Native faith was regarded as not believing in God because it was ethnocentric."

He said the Constitutional Court ruling provided protection to followers of native faiths and granted equality among followers of other religions.

Human Rights Watch Indonesia researcher Andreas Harsono said the court ruling marked the end of Indonesia only recognising six religions.

See also Wikipedia entry - Native Indonesians

See also SETARA Institute

Andreas Harsono - his website

See also Religion of Java

Pope Francis and his meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi : Francis to visit Myanmar in November : Will he meet the Rohingya : Will there be any left to meet

Pope Francis met Aung San Suu Kyi in the Vatican in May 2017 

CREDIT:  TONY GENTILE/ REUTERS POOL

Nicola Smith

28 AUGUST 2017 • 2:00PM

Pope Francis will visit Myanmar in November, the Vatican has announced, amid mounting concern at treatment of that country’s Rohingya Muslim minority

Monday’s announcement came as thousands of refugees attempted to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh after a renewed bout of violence between local insurgents and the army in the restive province of Rakhine.

Members of Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority attempt to enter Bangladesh 

CREDIT: MUSHFIQ ALAM/AP

The pontiff on Sunday decried the “sad news about the persecution of the religious minority of our Rohingya brothers,” urging worshippers gathered in St Peter’s Square in Rome to pray that God “saves them.”

The Myanmar government has reported over 100 deaths since Friday, when armed rebels, reportedly from a group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, attacked 30 police outposts with knives, sticks and crude bombs.  

Advocates for the Rohingya told Al Jazeera that at least 800, including dozens of women and children, have been killed in the violence. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

The army has reportedly surrounded the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung, home to 800,000 people, and imposed a nighttime curfew.

An estimated 3,000 refugees entered Bangladesh over the weekend.

The violence marks a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered in the region since October, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s government sent thousands of troops into villages in Rakhine after nine policemen were killed by a suspected Rohingya armed group.

Over 87,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh since amid claims of arson and abuse by the army.

In February, a UN investigation concluded that there had been grave and widespread abuses by the military that “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity.

The treatment of Myanmar’s 1.1 million strong Rohingya minority, who are denied citizenship in the mainly Buddhist country has emerged as one of the biggest challenges for Aung San Suu Kyi since the former political prisoner secured a landslide in the November 2015 elections.

The Nobel peace laureate has been accused by some Western critics of defending the army’s actions and of not speaking out on behalf of the long-persecuted minority.

Benedict Rogers, East Asia team leader at human rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said the pope’s visit to Myanmar could be an important step towards “genuine peace, reconciliation and justice.”

“To have a worldwide Christian leader such as Pope Francis speaking out and standing in solidarity with a persecuted Muslim community sends a vital message about the importance of freedom of religion or belief and inter-religious harmony,” he said.

~~~~~~

The above is this year's sadness and murder.

Below is the 2015 crop of sadness and murder.

Coming closer to us in Australia.

These refugees below made it to Indonesia.

Indonesia Rescued Hundreds of Likely Rohingya Refugees in Aceh

Posted On 12 May 2015

By : Arvelia Yardhika Ong

Indonesia has rescued almost a thousand boat people, believed to be Rohingya refugees, stranded off Aceh coast. (Photo source: Reuters)

Banda Aceh, GIVNews.com –Almost 1,000 likely Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, including children and women, were rescued in Aceh after two wooden boats stranded off the coast on Monday (11 May 2015).

The first group of 547 refugees was spotted on Sunday morning near the city Lhokseumawe in Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia. The overcrowded boats were towed to shore by Indonesian fishermen after they were reportedly running out of fuel. They have been sailing from Thailand since seven days ago and some of the refugees passed away in the journey. The second group was spotted on Monday around 2 AM local time. The evacuation process was carried out by the Search and Rescue Agency in Aceh.

Causes of fatality include dehydration, starvation or abuse by boat crews. Out of all the immigrants who can be rescued, fifty have been sent to the hospital for treatment.

“In general, they were suffering from starvation and many were thin,” said the Chief Police of North Aceh Adj. Sr. Comr. Achmadi, as quoted by the Jakarta Globe.

The refugees will be placed in several shelters and will go through immigration process as well as health and security checks. The International Organization for Migration has sent their officials to Aceh to carry out investigation on this issue. Meanwhile, the local government has been providing food and water for the refugees. Yet, the supply is limited and would not be comparable to the overflowing number of refugees.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, in the first three months in 2015, there have been an estimated of 25,000 Bangladeshis and Rohingyas refugees who boarded people-smugglers’ board, which has doubled the number of the same period in 2014. The long-persecuted Rohingya people have been fleeing out of Myanmar, also known as Burma, due to the ‘ethnic cleansing’ efforts on the minority Muslims. In spite the fact that the Muslims have been living in Myanmar for generations, they are still perceived as invaders from Bangladesh by people in Myanmar who are majority are Buddhists.

The United Nations listed Rohingya as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. Previously, Malaysia has also received more than 1,000 refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh in Langkawi. The arrival of refugees in Malaysia and Indonesia might be due to the fact that there was a crackdown on human trafficking in Thailand, one of the first South East Asian destinations in the human smuggling network. The discovery of mass graves and captives in southern Thailand has prompted a crackdown which led to the arrest of several local officials, powerful politicians, tourism business operators and police officers. The refugees reportedly suffered from extortions, abuses and rapes at camps located in southern Thailand.

Contrast this picture of "human debris"
with the photographs on this post 
of a beautifully groomed Aung San Suu Ky.

Aung San Suu Kyi has denied her government 

is involved in ethnic cleansing 

CREDIT: ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP

however,
there comes a report of brighter news.
IT IS NOT THE BRIGHTEST OF GOOD NEWS.
BUT IT BELIES THE PICTURE OF HUMAN DEBRIS ABOVE.

Coming event: Interfaith Service of Remembrance 6pm Thursday related to the recent events in #Paris and #Beirut

Please stay tuned.  

Plans are underway for an Interfaith Service of Remembrance at 6pm on Thursday 

related to the recent events in #Paris and #Beirut. 

It will be held at Christ Church Anglican Cathedral, Lydiard Street, Ballarat.