News Briefs
Episcopal News Service. February 13, 2003 [2003-031-1]
Muslim group launches national ad campaign
(CAIR) A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group has announced it will launch a year-long "Islam in America" ad campaign designed to foster greater understanding and to counter what the group says is a rising tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will kick off the campaign with an ad headlined, "We're All Americans," in the New York Times February 16. The ad features images of an African-American girl, an Asian man, and a man of European heritage, asking the question, "Which one of us is a Muslim?" The response is, "We all are...we're American Muslims."
The weekly ads, each explaining an aspect of Islam, will be distributed by CAIR to Muslim communities around America for placement in local newspapers. As each ad is published in New York, it will be available on a web site, www.americanmuslims.info, specifically designed to promote the campaign.
"Without accurate and balanced information about mainstream Islam and Muslims, ordinary Americans are vulnerable to the purveyors of hate, in this country and around the world, who seek a perpetual religious and civilizational conflict," said CAIR board chairman, Omar Ahmad.
"American Muslims must take on the task of defining their faith," said CAIR executive director Nihad Awad. "Otherwise, that definition will be left to those whose agenda serves religious and political goals that are in conflict with our nation's long-term interests." He cited the anti-Islamic rhetoric of evangelical Christian and right-wing commentators, and the extremist views of some Muslims claiming to act in the name of Islam.
(For more information visit the CAIR web site at www.cair-net.org or call Ibrahim Hooper at 202-488-8787.)
South African explores limits of remorse--and forgiveness
(ETSS) "Once perpetrators begin to examine their evil, go beyond just feeling guilty about it, and allow themselves to feel true remorse, they're human again--not monsters," an Anglican South African educator who was a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission told an audience at a seminar on the campus of the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest recently.
"What does it mean when we discover that the incarnation of evil is as frighteningly human as we are?" asked Dr. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, describing the testimony of Eugene de Kock about the "gruesome and unspeakable" atrocities he had committed while leading a notorious government death squad during the last years of the apartheid regime in South Africa. "I felt pity when I looked at him. There was utter despair in his face," she said in her talk, "Are Some Things Unforgivable--Exploring the Limits of Remorse and Forgiveness." She has described her experiences in a recently published book, "A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness," and in appearances on several nationally broadcast talk shows.
The book describes her interviews with de Kock in the late 1990s, in a prison where he was serving two life sentences and an additional 212 years for crimes committed as commander of a brutal prison farm where anti-apartheid activists were taken to be tortured and killed.
The goal of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she said, was to break the cycle of violence and build a cohesive society while restoring dignity and respect to both victims and perpetrators. Victims who appeared before the commission relived their trauma so vividly that it seemed to happen only days before, not years.
De Kock asked to meet privately with the widows of those he had killed. The widows forgave him and "could begin a journey of mourning where they could retrace the steps and be with their husbands as they died," Gobod-Madikizela said. She said that the model of the TRC could be used to help settle the horrors of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the massacres in Sierra Leone, but leaders of those countries must be as solidly committed to the process as Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, former president of South Africa's Afrikaner government. She even said that it might be used to thwart the revolving door of the American prison system. "Placing prisoners back into society would be a lot easier because the method transcends hatred. Prisoners feel cleansed after asking for forgiveness," she said.
Gobodo-Madikizela was on the seminary campus to participate in a program to help train missionaries for the Episcopal Church. More information on her and her book, as well as the struggle for independence in South Africa, can be found on the web at www.etss.edu.
Orthodox church leaders condemn UN peace proposals for Cyprus
(ENI) Orthodox church leaders in Greece and in Cyprus have condemned a new peace plan sponsored by the United Nations that would end the island's 30-year division in time for planned entry to the European Union in 2004.
The plan would reunify Cyprus under a common government, while also giving almost complete autonomy to the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities that make up 82 percent and 18 percent of the population, respectively. Cyprus was partitioned in 1974 following a Turkish invasion in the northern third of the island.
The synod of the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus has rejected the proposal, describing it as "dishonest and unworthy of the UN principles," and arguing that it would "give legal character" to the Turkish occupation of the northern section of the island. The UN plan would legalize the settlement of Greek-owned land and homes by "Turkish assailants," the synod said in a statement. It would also give "disproportionate representation" to the minority Turkish Cypriot community in the island's executive, legislative and judicial bodies. The plan calls for a rotating presidency of the united island.
Turkey, which is also hoping to join the European Union, has urged Turkish Cypriot leaders to end their opposition to the plan. Tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots demonstrated in the divided capital of Nicosia on January 14 in favor of the plan, which is also backed by many Greek Cypriot leaders. The plan allows for the return home of more than half of the 162,000 Greek Cypriot refugees displaced by the 1974 Turkish invasion.
Second team of ecumenical accompaniers going to Middle East
(WCC) The national coordinating committees for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) are finalizing their recruiting and selection of participants for a second group that will begin work in March. The program is coordinated by the World Council of Churches.
The first group of 17 volunteers--from Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Norway and the United States--began work last August. They have been working in Jerusalem, the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus, and in the Gaza Strip. The names have not been disclosed for security reasons.
"The accompaniment program so far has done some excellent work on documenting, reporting and raising awareness, particularly on the devastating aspects of the wall being built on the Green Line around greater Jerusalem," said Rebecca Johnson, a Canadian who has been appointed program coordinator in Jerusalem. "But some of its most important work is simply to be present as a symbol of international solidarity and hope that a just peace can be found."
The first phase of EAPPI is now being assessed. "Our local partners, the churches, keep saying, 'Stay with us. Don't leave like other delegations,'" said Salpy Eskidjian, WCC program executive for International Affairs. "The accompaniment program has produced many expectations internationally and locally. We have raised a lot of hope, and that gives the international ecumenical family a lot of responsibility."
Eskidjian has no illusions about the difficulties that lie ahead. "I think we're going to have a lot of bloodshed for a long time to come. There is rigidity and fear on both sides. Each side dehumanizes the other. This makes efforts like ours--to continue to build bridges and highlight non-violent actions that address the occupation as the root cause of the violence--so vital."
(Photos and reports can be found on the WCC web site at www.wcc-coe.org/wcc.)
Trustees at General Seminary endorse strategies for the future
(GTS) Trustees of the General Theological Seminary in New York approved in principle new strategic initiatives--including a plan to raise $21 million in capital, endowment and operating funds; exploring long-term financing for construction of a new education center; and appropriating $1.7 million for urgent repairs to Hoffman Hall, which houses the seminary's historic refectory.
While most of their deliberations centered on new initiatives, trustees also expressed deep disappointment with collapse of plans to relocate the national offices of the Episcopal Church to the seminary's campus in Chelsea on Manhattan's West Side. A few days before the February 6-7 trustees meeting, the Episcopal Church's Executive Council officially decided to "discontinue" exploration of the project. The board decided to send a three-member delegation to meet with Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold and House of Deputies President George Werner to express regret over the lost opportunity for the church and the seminary.
Using the themes of people, programs and property, Dean Ward Ewing spoke of the seminary faculty, students and staff as the institution's greatest assets. He pointed to examples of innovative programs for Hispanic/Latino students and a new MA program designed to attract and serve lay leaders in the church, as well as programs for continuing education for clergy. Current and future property enhancements, the dean argued, must always be evaluated in terms of how they serve the seminary's mission to provide leaders for the church.
Ewing also cited the seminary's first high-tech classroom, in its first year of operation, as a real success in terms of mission, and he offered reasons why the cornerstone of the capital campaign--a new conference/education center--was central to the seminary's efforts to meet the demand for short-term, summer, and continuing education programs.
"I believe our meeting marks a new beginning for General Seminary," Ewing said at the conclusion. "We centered directly on our mission to educate and form leaders for the church in a changing world and addressed how we will pursue this mission with renewed commitment in the 21st century."