Tag: freedom of religion
The ‘Coastal Elites’ Are Reclaiming The Mantle Of God And Country

The ‘Coastal Elites’ Are Reclaiming The Mantle Of God And Country

This commentary was originally published in CT Viewpoints.

Since Election Day, a story has been told about those of us who live in Connecticut or along the coasts or who voted for the Democrat. We are told that we don’t get it. We don’t understand the working class or rural culture — the Real America.

We are “coastal elites,” we are told. Obsessed with “trigger warnings” and political correctness, we have lost touch with America’s fundamental values. I’m so done with this story.

Thank God, I’m not alone.

Democrats, liberals, and other “coastal elites” have begun taking back the mantle of God and country that has been denied them since 1980. With Ronald Reagan’s ascent, no one could be more patriotic than a Republican, according to Republicans. But with an authoritarian’s ascent, the Republicans are forfeiting, eagerly, the exclusive claim they once had to “restoring” the Constitution.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order closing the borders to people from seven Muslim nations. He fulfilled a campaign promise, the Muslim ban. It doesn’t beef up security. It doesn’t enhance screening. It simply excludes Muslims, and validates everything our enemies say about America. Some have tried spinning the ban into “temporary suspension,” but Trump himself called it “the ban.”

That alone would satisfy any reasonable definition of a religious test, an indefensible practice in a democracy claiming to honor and protect individual liberty. But there’s more to this. Trump made clear his preference for Christians. That’s not just a religious test. That’s the establishment of a religion — an abomination.

That’s why Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and other Democrats said the ban is “illegal.” They plan to introduce legislation to stop it. That’s why Sally Yates, the acting attorney general, said Monday the Justice Department would not defend the ban in court. That’s why the Democratic National Committee said, after Trump fired Yates Monday, that he “cannot silence the growing voices of an American people now wide awake to his tyrannical presidency.”

Let’s say that again, with feeling.

The Democrats are accusing a Republican of tyranny.

They are right.

The first freedom enumerated in the Bill of Rights is the freedom to worship as you wish. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The founders believed an agnostic government would permit religion to flourish, and they were right. The U.S. is singular among western nations for its widespread religious practice.

How often did Republicans suggest that Barack Obama was a lawless, illegitimate president who threatened freedom? How often did they suggest Democrats, and liberalism generally, stood opposed to God and country? Republicans voted over 60 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They suggested repeatedly and shamelessly that “Obamacare” was another name for tyranny.

Obamacare was not tyranny. It was a blessing. But when actual tyranny occurred this weekend — when the president prioritized Christianity; when his administration implemented a religious test for entry; when border authorities duped legal residents into surrendering their green cards; when presidential power beggared due process, and separated children from mothers — these “constitutional conservatives” were deafening in their silence.

If Trump’s executive order raised questions about appropriate levels of vetting, there would be two sides to this story. There would be two views, arguing over the same facts, both legitimate, both representing constituencies. But this is not one of those issues.

The only way a religious test could have two sides is if one side stood for democracy and the other stood for something that is not democracy, something that does not value religious liberty. In other words, we have arrived at moment in which Republicans will defend the indefensible, and in doing so, they betray not only conservative principles but the Constitution they say they love.

Meanwhile, we the “coastal elites” are actually defending the God-given right to worship as you wish, actually fighting against the religious test of immigrants fleeing God-forsaken lands, actually protesting Trump’s unthinkable establishment of a religion.

We haven’t lost touch with fundamental American values.

Trump and the Republicans have.

John Stoehr is a lecturer in political science at Yale and a New Haven resident. 

IMAGE: U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer talks to journalists after attending the Senate Democrat party leadership elections at the U.S. Capitol, November 16.

United States Carries Out 15 Air Strikes Near Iraq Dam

United States Carries Out 15 Air Strikes Near Iraq Dam

By Serene Assir

Badriyah (Iraq) (AFP) — U.S. warplanes and drones carried out 15 air strikes on Monday against Islamic State (IS) militants battling for control of a major dam in northern Iraq, the military said.

Fighter jets, bombers, and unmanned planes destroyed nine IS positions and eight vehicles around the Mosul dam, where insurgents are fighting Kurdish forces, US Central Command said.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters backed by federal forces and U.S. warplanes pressed a counter-offensive Monday against jihadists after retaking Iraq’s largest dam, as the United States and Britain stepped up their military involvement.

The recapture of Mosul dam marks the biggest prize yet clawed back from Islamic State (IS) jihadists since they launched a major offensive in northern Iraq in June, sweeping Iraqi security forces aside.

U.S. aircraft are carrying out strikes in support of the forces battling IS militants, who have declared a “caliphate” straddling vast areas of Iraq and Syria.

The jihadists also came under attack in their Syrian stronghold of Raqa by Syria’s air force for a second straight day on Monday.

In Iraq, “the planes are striking and the peshmerga are advancing,” a Kurdish fighter told AFP on Monday near the shore of the lake formed by the vast Mosul dam.

AFP journalists heard jets flying overhead, and saw smoke rising from the site of a strike that a peshmerga member said targeted one of the entrances to the dam.

Fighting on Monday also broke out in an area south of the barrage while engineering teams worked to clear booby traps and bombs left by jihadists, said Kawa Khatari, an official from Iraq’s main Kurdish party.

– ‘Dam entirely liberated’ –

And a senior peshmerga officer told AFP that there was sporadic fighting with militants in the town of Tal Kayf southeast of the dam, and that only a “small number” of jihadists remain in the area of the dam itself.

Iraqi security spokesman Lieutenant General Qassem Atta confirmed on Monday that Mosul dam was entirely liberated in a joint operation by Iraqi “anti-terrorism forces and peshmerga forces with aerial support”.

Atta added on state television that while the dam had been retaken, fighting was continuing in adjoining facilities.

The Mosul dam breakthrough came after U.S. warplanes and drones at the weekend carried out their heaviest-yet bombing against IS militants in the north since they began launching air strikes on August 8.

The U.S. Central Command reported that the military had carried out 14 air strikes Sunday near the dam located on the Tigris river, which provides electricity and irrigation water for farming to much of the region.

Sunday’s strikes destroyed 10 IS armed vehicles, seven IS Humvees, two armoured personnel carriers, and one IS checkpoint.

That military action followed nine U.S. strikes near Arbil and Mosul dam on Saturday.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Congress that the “limited” air strikes he has authorized on Iraq to support the fight for the dam protected U.S. interests there.

Highlighting the stakes at hand, Obama said: “The failure of the Mosul dam could threaten the lives of large numbers of civilians, endanger U.S. personnel and facilities, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and prevent the Iraqi government from providing critical services to the Iraqi populace.”

IS also faced air strikes on the Syrian side of the border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Raqa province, the Syrian air force on Monday carried out at least 14 raids against jihadist positions, a day after launching 16 strikes which killed at least 31 jihadists and eight civilians.

“The regime wants to show the Americans that it is also capable of striking the IS,” said the Britain-based group’s director, Rami Abdel Rahman.

British Prime Minister David Cameron described the Islamic State fighters sweeping across Syria and Iraq as a direct threat to Britain, and said all available tools must be used to halt their advance.

Cameron, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, said that while it would not be right to send an army into Iraq, some degree of military involvement was justified due to the threat that an expanding “terrorist state” would pose to Europe and its allies.

– ‘Extreme form of terrorism’ –

His Defense Minister Michael Fallon, in comments published Monday, said Britain’s Iraq involvement now goes beyond a humanitarian mission and is set to last for months.

“We and other countries in Europe are determined to help the government of Iraq combat this new and very extreme form of terrorism,” he was quoted as saying.

Two months of violence have brought Iraq to the brink of breakup, and world powers relieved by the exit of divisive premier Nuri al-Maliki are sending aid to the hundreds of thousands who have fled their homes as well as arms to the Kurdish peshmerga forces.

In the north, members of minority groups including the Yazidis, Christians, Shabak, and Turkmen, remain under threat of kidnapping or death at the hands of the jihadists, rights groups say.

Amnesty International, which has been documenting mass abductions in the Sinjar area, says IS has kidnapped thousands of Yazidis in this month’s offensive.

Tens of thousands have fled, most of them seeking refuge in areas of northern Iraq still under Kurdish control, or in neighbouring Syria.

AFP Photo/Ahmad Al-Rubaye

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Deadly Clash In China: An Ambush By Uighurs Or A Government Massacre?

Deadly Clash In China: An Ambush By Uighurs Or A Government Massacre?

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — What happened in the dead of night on a desolate road near a desert oasis in northwestern China is so shrouded in mystery that it would seem that nearly everybody who witnessed it took an oath of silence — or is dead.

But the most reliable accounts suggest that heavy-handed religious restrictions on the eve of one of Islam’s largest holidays provoked an uprising by Uighurs against police and civilians.

According to official accounts, 96 people died in the July 28 clash in Shache, also known as Yarkand, making it the deadliest incident of ethnic violence in China in five years. Uighurs, members of a Turkic Muslim minority concentrated in the Xinjiang region, say the death toll was much greater. Some are describing it as a massacre.

Nury Turkel, a Washington-based attorney who is active with the World Uyghur Conference, said it appeared the government was trying to hide something. “Something terrible has happened that they are trying to sweep under the rug,” Turkel said.

Like many such incidents, this one appears to have started small and spun out of control because of overreactions and miscalculations.

A resident of the town said the trouble began July 27 when Muslims were preparing for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which ends the holy month of Ramadan. About 40 women were detained for wearing clothing deemed excessively Islamic, which is banned in Xinjiang.

“The women’s husbands and sons went to talk to the relevant people, saying that the women had to go home to prepare for the holiday. They did not agree,” said the resident, who, like other Uighurs in China, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ghayyar Kuerban, a Uighur from Shache who lives in Germany but is in touch with the town’s residents, heard a similar story.

“There was a religious gathering, which the security thought was illegal. A large number of security forces came. There was a confrontation and things escalated,” Kuerban said. He said he was told that 15 to 20 people were shot at the gathering and that riots spread afterward to nearby villages.

“It is still very ambiguous,” Kuerban said. “There has been absolutely no independent reporting on what happened.”

Authorities allege that there was an “organized and premeditated” attack in which assailants armed with knives and axes ambushed cars and trucks on Route 215, the main road south into the town.
They identified the mastermind as Nuramat Sawut, a former imam who had links to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist group operating across the border in Pakistan.

The Xinjiang Daily, a state-run newspaper, reported Thursday that Sawut had been fired from his job as an imam in a village mosque because of his disrespect for the elderly and poor knowledge of Islam.

“He is the shame of our village,” the newspaper quoted a cousin of Sawut’s as saying. “After the terrorist attack, everybody has drawn a clear line. We all support the Communist Party and the government in their efforts to strike a hard line against terrorism and return a peaceful life to us.”

A government-run website, Tianshan, ran a melodramatic feature about two Uighur motorists who were killed in the road ambush by “mobsters waving big knives and axes whose eyes were red.”

“You need to join our holy war. Otherwise we will kill you,” a member of the mob told the motorists, according to the report.

“This is a crime. This is destroying the reputation of Islam. You are not real Muslims,” one of the motorists responded shortly before he was killed. The story did not identify the source of the dialogue.

According to officials, 37 civilians were killed in the incident and 59 assailants were shot dead by police. An additional 215 people were arrested.

Overseas Uighurs discount the Chinese version of events. They say authorities locked down the town for days, blocking telephone calls and the Internet to prevent news from leaking out. The only reporting on what happened has come from the state news media.

Rebiya Kadeer, head of the World Uyghur Conference, said in an interview with Radio Free Asia that her group had information that 2,000 to 3,000 people were killed.

“We have evidence in hand that at least 2,000 Uighurs in the neighborhood of Ailixihu township have been killed by Chinese security forces on the first day and they ‘cleaned up’ the dead bodies on the second and third day during a curfew that was imposed,” Kadeer told the news service.

Other Uighur activists say that estimate is probably too high, but they believe far more people were killed than the 96 reported by the government.

“The Chinese government needs to allow independent reporting here if they want to be a respected member of the international community,” Turkel said.

Photo via WikiCommons

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Sudanese Christian Woman Spared Execution Arrives In United States

Sudanese Christian Woman Spared Execution Arrives In United States

Washington (AFP) — A Sudanese Christian woman — sentenced to death for renouncing Islam but acquitted after international pressure on Khartoum — has arrived in the United States with her family.

Meriam Ibrahim Tehya Ishag flew first into the east coast city of Philadelphia Thursday, where she was welcomed by the mayor as a “world freedom fighter,” media reports said.

The mayor presented her with a model of the Liberty Bell, a symbol of U.S. independence, the reports said.

The 26-year-old, her two infant children, and her U.S. citizen husband Daniel Wani later continued on to New Hampshire, where Wani has family, and was greeted by cheering supporters with balloons and U.S. flags, the reports added.

After leaving Sudan, the family had spent eight days in Rome, where Ishag met Pope Francis, visited the Colosseum, shopped, and “learned how to live again,” she said.

The White House last week said it was delighted at Ishag’s release and looked forward to welcoming her to the United States.

A global outcry erupted in May after Ishag was sentenced under sharia law to hang for apostasy.

Days after her conviction, she gave birth to her daughter in prison.

Ishag’s conviction was overturned in June, but she was immediately rearrested while trying to leave Sudan using what prosecutors claimed were forged documents.

Two days later, Ishag was released from prison and she and her family took refuge in the U.S. embassy because of mounting death threats.

Ishag was born to a Muslim father who abandoned the family, and was raised by her Ethiopian Orthodox Christian mother. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum says Ishaq joined the Catholic church shortly before she married in 2011.

She was convicted under Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983, and that says Muslim conversion to another faith is punishable by death.

The court had also sentenced her to 100 lashings because under sharia law it considered her union with her non-Muslim husband to be adultery.

Ishag’s case raised questions of religious freedom in mostly-Muslim Sudan and sparked vocal protests from Western governments and human rights groups.

The case has re-focused attention on a country which has slipped from the international spotlight but where war continues with millions of people in need of humanitarian aid.

AFP Photo

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