'Faithbook, a new social networking facility for people of different faiths on Facebook, goes live tomorrow,' said the press release yesterday. I'm sorry to say I didn't get too exercised. Surely this was just one more of many thousands of groups on Facebook, my own included. But in fact it is much more than that, as our news story shows. Senior members of the nine main faiths, including Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, have signed up and are contributing to discussions. The group, set up by the Movement for Reform Judaism with the help of Simon Cohen of Global Tolerance, is also taking the scriptures of each faith seriously, with illustrations and plans for analysis of the common ground between the faiths as found in the scriptures. See Dave Walker's interesting take on it in The Church Times.
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Sinister turn of affairs in Iran where the plight of the unfortunate Baha'is, persecuted there for a century and a half, worsens. Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli and Vahid Tizfahm, all prominent members of the faith, have been arrested. In addition, Mahvash Sabet has been held in custody since 5 March this year after she was summoned by the Ministry of Intelligence to answer questions, ostensibly about the burial of an individual in the Baha'i cemetery in that city.
Continue reading "Persecution Index 10: Iran" »
Life in Iran, in particular for women, can already be pretty grim, as the blog from which this picture was taken testifies. But it is about to get a whole lot worse. For just about everybody. The Iranian parliament is discussing a new penal code, under which citizens who convert from another religion will face execution. The Baha'i community, among the most persecuted of all in Iran as I've reported previously, today described this as a 'gross violation' of Iran's human rights obligations. At the same time, as we report, pollsters YouGovStone have found that nearly one in third of Britain's most influential people welcome the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent intervention on sharia as a useful contribution to the debate.
Continue reading "Sharia in Iran: 'Death to converts'" »
This student is from Iran's long-suffering Baha'i community. She is studying music in the UK, and is here practising a piece by a composer from her homeland. Soon, she must return to Iran. There, her future like that of her family and all Baha'is is uncertain. We cannot identify her for fear of putting her family in danger. It's more than a year since I last addressed this issue. Things since then have got worse. Far worse.
Continue reading "Iran ruthless in persecution of peace-loving Baha'is" »
'Faithbook, a new social networking facility for people of different faiths on Facebook, goes live tomorrow,' said the press release yesterday. I'm sorry to say I didn't get too exercised. Surely this was just one more of many thousands of groups on Facebook, my own included. But in fact it is much more than that, as our news story shows. Senior members of the nine main faiths, including Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, have signed up and are contributing to discussions. The group, set up by the Movement for Reform Judaism with the help of Simon Cohen of Global Tolerance, is also taking the scriptures of each faith seriously, with illustrations and plans for analysis of the common ground between the faiths as found in the scriptures. See Dave Walker's interesting take on it in The Church Times.
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