Bishop Massimiliano Palinuro arrives at the Jan. 29, 2024, funeral of Tuncer Murat Cihan, 52, who was murdered during Sunday Mass at Santa Maria Italian Church on Jan. 28 in Istanbul, Turkey. / Credit: Sercan Ozkurnazli/Getty Images
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Parental and religious freedom rights advocates, including a group of Muslim parents, on June 6, 2023, protest a Maryland school system policy that removes parents’ authority to opt their children out of homosexual and transgender coursework. / … […]
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St. Louis, Mo., Apr 18, 2023 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
The mayor of Minneapolis on Monday signed into law a new ordinance allowing the Islamic call to prayer, or adhan, to be broadcast on loudspeakers from the city’… […]
Vatican City, Mar 3, 2021 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis said on Wednesday that he was “delighted” to learn that a Muslim group had overseen the translation of his latest encyclical into Russian.
In a message released by the Holy See pres… […]
Baghdad, Iraq, Feb 2, 2021 / 03:19 pm (CNA).- During his upcoming trip to Iraq, Pope Francis will meet with the Shia Muslim leader Ali al-Sistani, a man in his 90s who many international analysts consider a decisive player in the region since the end of the Iraq War.
Pope Francis will visit Iraq March 5-8. According to the Holy See Press Office, Pope Francis will visit Baghdad, the site of Ur, Mosul, Bakhdida, and Erbil.
The details of the schedule of Pope Francis’ voyage have not yet been released yet. However, Raphael Cardinal Sako, Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon, revealed some of Pope Francis’ possible activities.
In a Jan. 28 meeting with journalists organized by the French Bishops Conference and the association Oeuvre d’Orient, Cardinal Sako said Pope Francis would have on March 6 a private meeting with Ali al-Sistani.
According to Cardinal Sako, the two leaders will release a joint declaration against “all those who attack life.” Cardinal Sako could not confirm if the two would sign a document on human fraternity, as is the cardinal’s wish.
According to Chaldean sources, Cardinal Sako has been working for two years behind the scenes to see this meeting happen. Right after the Declaration on Human Fraternity, signed by Pope Francis in Abu Dhabi with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, a major figure in Sunni Islam, in February 2019, Cardinal Sako said that it would be important that the Pope might make a similar gesture with a Shia leader.
Cardinal Sako deemed that having a declaration for human fraternity signed with a Shia leader would be necessary for Pope Francis to embrace all the Islamic world. And Al-Sistani seems to be the most qualified person.
Ali al-Sistani was born in 1930. Hailing from Iran, he moved to Najaf in the 1950s. In 1993, al-Sistani succeeded Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei in Najaf’s Hawza, the senior Shia clerical leadership.
The Senior Vatican watcher Sandro Magister described al-Sistani in 2007 as “the most authoritative and consistent supporter of a vision of Islamic quietism.”
al-Sistani’s view was in contrast with that of the Iranian ayatollah Khomeini, who lived in Najaf from 1965 to 1978. Khomeini thought that “only a good society can create good believers,” and on this basis, he empowered the Muslim clergy and set the foundation for the theocratic state of Iran.
On the contrary, al-Sistani maintains that “only good citizens can create a good society.” In the last decade, al-Sistani has raised as the most heard and influential voice in Shia Islam and Iraq.
al-Sistani became famous outside of Iraq only after the overturn of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003. His opinions on the fall of Saddam Hussein and the end of the Baathist regime quickly grabbed international media’s headlines.
In particular al-Sistani sent a message to the Iraqi people, saying that he “wished the Iraqis to overcome this difficult period of their history without being framed in sectarian and ethnic conflicts.”
The 2004 Battle of Najaf pitted US and Iraqi forces against the Mahdi Army, a Shia Islamis militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr. al-Sistani was in London for a medical visit when the battle began, and he promptly returned to Najaf, advocating a truce between the parties.
Between 2006 and 2007, Iraq experienced a wave of sectarian violence that broke with the strike of two military imams’ shrines in Samarra. Even in that extreme situation, al-Sistani showed his moderate side: he asked to abstain from violence and condemn the acts of violence “striking and dividing the country.”
al-Sistani backs the separation between religion and politics, and he supports a civil government based on the people’s will, not a common position among Muslims.
In 2017, Iraqi forces were about to defeat the Islamic State that had invaded the Nineveh Plains three years before. al-Sistani’s intervention was crucial. He called all Iraqi citizens to take arms to defend the country, regardless of their ethnicity or religious beliefs. Thousands of volunteers responded to the call and formed the Popular Mobilization Forces, playing a crucial role in stopping the Islamic State.
That al-Sistani has a different view from the Iranian Shia was evident in 2014, when the Iraqi premier was Nouri al-Maliki, considered a strategic partner to Iran. al-Sistani did not back his confirmation as premier, although he had won the elections. However, al-Sistani’s position did not go unheard: Haider al-Abadi, a moderate Shia, was appointed Prime Minister.
Recently, al-Sistani hit the headlines for another initiative: Ahmed al-Safi, one of his public representatives, asked in his behalf the abolition of pensions and privileges for high ranked officials. The saved resources, he suggested, should be allocated to provide service and alleviate the low-income population’s situation.
The pension for a member of parliament amounts to $6,500 a month, and is for life, which goes along with security, housing, and other privileges.
Iraq’s 2020 was not only characterized by the spread of COVID but also by protests. Thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand for a change in the political-institutional system and the end of rampant corruption.
The protesters sent several appeals to al-Sistani since they believed he was the only one able to understand their requests. And so it was natural to most of the international observers to set the gaze on al-Sistani since they knew that every word of his was going to be listened to.
al-Sistani is also strongly opposed to any kind of external interference on Iraqi issues. After the Iraq War, he weighed in the public debate asking to call for new elections, thus pushing the transition between US Ambassador Lewis Paul Bremer, who had served as Provisional Coalition Administrator of Iraq, and the interim government led by Ayad Allawi.
Despite his advanced age and precarious health conditions, al-Sistani is still considered a stability factor in Iraq.
For local observers, Pope Francis’ meeting with al-Sistani will, in the end, close the circle. First, the Pope backed the re-opening of the dialogue with Al-Azhar. The renewed rapport with Al-Azhar led to Pope Francis’ trip to Egypt in 2017, then to five consecutive meetings between the Pope and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, and the Document on Human Fraternity signed by the Pope and the imam in Abu Dhabi on Feb. 4, 2019.
Now, it is time for Pope Francis to extend his arms to Shia Islam, and Cardinal Sako saw in a meeting with al-Sistani an excellent opportunity to do that. The meeting between the Pope and al-Sistani could also tell the Iraqi people that the Pope backs the “quietist” –non-violent, more spiritual- wing of the Muslim world.
All of these issues will be part of the March 6 meeting. It will not be in Najaf, as Cardinal Sako hoped. It will be, anyway, an important meeting.
Rome Newsroom, Jan 28, 2021 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis will meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani during his trip to Iraq, a cardinal said on Thursday.
Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, told … […]
CNA Staff, Dec 18, 2020 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- Despite concern that a Belgian law bans Jewish and Muslim religious slaughter practices, a European Union court has said the law is justified by the need to promote animal welfare even if it does not accommoda… […]
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 04:21 pm (CNA).- A ban on headscarves for elementary school students was discriminatory and unconstitutional because it singled out Muslim girls’ headscarves, the Austrian Constitutional Court has ruled.
The court said the law banning headscarves for girls under 10 years old “contravened the principle of equality in relation to freedom of religion, belief and conscience.”
Drafters tried to keep the text of the law neutral, banning “ideologically or religiously influenced clothing which is associated with the covering of the head.”
Judge Christoph Grabenwarter, however, said additional material from the government made it clear that the law could only be understood as targeting Muslim head coverings. The law violated the principle of equality and the state’s obligation to be religiously neutral because it singled out Muslim students.
Grabenwarter voiced concern of the ban’s effects on students.
“It carries the risk of hindering Muslim girls’ access to education and more precisely of shutting them off from society,” Grabenwarter said, according to the German news site Deutsche Welle.
Austria’s coalition government of the center-right People’s Party and the far-right Freedom Party passed the measure in 2019, just days before the government collapsed amid a corruption scandal.
Backers depicted the proposal as a “child protection law,” claiming it protected girls and women against sexism and politicized Islam. They also said it would protect the nation’s culture from Islamic influences and the infiltration of parallel societies.
The new government, a coalition of the People’s Party and the left-wing Green Party, had wanted to extend the ban to girls under age 14.
Two Muslim children and their parents challenged the law, noting that it applied only to headscarves and not to smaller religious head coverings like those of Jewish or Sikh boys. In addition to religious freedom and equality concerns, they objected to the law’s infringement on religious upbringing of children.
Umit Vural, president of the Austrian Islamic Faith Community, praised the decision, the German news site Deutsche Welle said.
“Equal opportunity and the autonomy of girls and women in our society cannot be achieved through bans,” said Vumal, who also criticized pressuring girls to wear a headscarf.
“We don’t condone disparaging attitudes towards women who decide against the headscarf… and we also cannot agree with the curtailing of the religious freedom of those Muslim women who understand the headscarf to be an integral part of their lived religious practice.”
People’s Party Education Minister Heinz Fassmann said the ministry would “take note of the judgement and look into its arguments.”
“I regret that girls will not have the opportunity to make their way through the education system free from compulsion,” he said, according to Agence France Presse.
In 2018 the Muslim community in Austria had voiced concerns over the proposal, calling the proposal “counterproductive.” They said that “very few” girls under age 10 wear headscarves to school.
CNA Staff, Dec 2, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- In the wake of several suspected Islamist attacks in France this year, President Emmanuel Macron has asked the country’s Muslim leaders to sign a “charter of republican values” agreeing to a rejection of Islam as a political movement.
According to the BBC, Macron’s proposed charter is one part of a wider government strategy to curb foreign influence and prevent violence and threats from extremists.
Macron has, since his 2017 election, emphasized support for secular government and has criticized what he calls “Islamist separatism,” encouraging the nation’s Muslims to integrate into French society. As part of legislation that Macron has introduced to tackle extremism, homeschooling would be restricted.
The charter will, among other things, state that Islam is a religion and not a political movement, the BBC reports.
Members of the French Council of the Muslim Faith agreed in November to form a national council of imams, and the CFCM is set to meet with Macron this week to discuss the proposed charter. The CFCM will be charged with accrediting imams.
France is home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority, at around 5 million.
The debate over the charter and the “French values” it contains continues following at least three suspected Islamist terrorist attacks during 2020.
In mid-October, a Muslim student beheaded teacher Samuel Paty after Paty showed his class a cartoon depicting Muhammad.
Eyewitnesses said that suspect Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov shouted “Allahu akbar”— Arabic for “God is great”— as he murdered Paty near the middle school where he taught. The 18-year-old Russian national of Chechen origin was shot dead by police shortly after the murder.
Public schools in France held a minute of silence in tribute to Paty Nov. 2, and some classrooms held discussions on freedom of expression.
The discussions of freedom of expression led to the police investigation of at least 17 minors, one of whom is Catholic, the New York Times reported.
The justice ministry said 14 minors were interrogated in police stations or held in custody. Some of their families were questioned about their religious practices.
One 16-year-old near Marseille was arrested for continuing to listen to music on headphones during the minute of silence.
Another Islamic attacker on Oct. 29 killed three people inside Notre-Dame de Nice. Police shot and arrested the perpetrator, Brahim Aouissaoui. Aouissaoui reportedly arrived in Europe in late September, first at the Italian island Lampedusa before traveling to France.
Other attacks took place in France Oct. 29. In Montfavet, near Avignon, a man waving a handgun made threats and was killed by the police two hours after the Nice attack. Radio station Europe 1 said the man was also shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the CFCM, condemned the terrorist attack and asked French Muslims to cancel their festivities for Mawlid, the Oct. 29 celebration of Muhammad’s birthday, “as a sign of mourning and solidarity with the victims and their loved ones.”
Macron introduced sweeping anti-radicalization legislation following the attacks, which is set to be debated in the French cabinet Dec. 9. Restrictions on homeschooling are among the provisions of the bill.
Other provisions of the bill include stricter punishments for those who intimidate public officials on religious grounds; extending national identification numbers— which most students in France already have— to homeschoolers to ensure that students are attending school; and a ban on sharing personal information that allows people who want to harm a person to find them, a practice known in the U.S. as “doxxing.”
The concept of laïcité, or secularism, has been a fixture of French law since 1905. At that time, the Third Republic officially established state secularism, causing a subsequent wave of anti-Catholicism, which included the end of government funding for religious schools, mandatory civil marriage, and the removal of chaplains from the army.
The principles of laïcité have evolved over the years to apply to private citizens as well as the government, and in recent decades been applied to Muslim women who wear hijabs or other religious garb in public.
During summer 2016, the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, ruled that the burkini ban in the town of Villeneuve-Loubet “seriously and clearly illegally breached fundamental freedoms,” including freedom of belief.
On Nov. 30 this year, the French Council of State ruled that a proposed 30-person limit on Masses and other forms of public worship is a “disproportionate” government measure and must be modified by Dec. 2.
The country’s Catholic bishops welcomed the decision Nov. 29, saying in a statement that “reason has been recognized.”
France has suffered over a dozen Islamist terrorist attacks since 2015, including a January attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, and a series of coordinated attacks in Paris during November 2015 that killed at least 130 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks.
Father Jacques Hamel was beheaded by supporters of the Islamic State while offering Mass July 26, 2016. Following Paty’s killing this year, religious leaders gathered at a memorial to Hamel and laid a wreath in Paty’s honor.
In England, multiple Catholic bishops have expressed concern that the government’s push for “British values” in schools, meant to counter Islamist extremism, could instead harm sincere religious believers and burden Catholic schools.
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