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Religion News Report - March 19, 2001 (Vol. 5, Issue 337)
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=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Aum Doomsday Cult Shadows Japan
2. Key Members of the Aum Cult

=== Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God
3. Uganda Cult Mass Murder Anniversary
4. Up in smoke or into thin air? Uganda's killer cult leaders a year on

=== Ho-no-hana Sanpogyo
5. Taxman sinks boot into foot cult
6. Bureaus put foot down over Honohana taxes
7. Foot cult leader failed to declare 750 million yen in income

=== Falun Gong
8. Girl Set Ablaze in Tiananmen Dies
9. Exhibition Targeting Falun Gong Begins in Hong Kong
10. Falun Gong puts spotlight on HK civil servants
11. Analysis: US, China still clash on Falun Gong

=== Scientology
12. Threat of Scientologists' Legal Wrath Prompts Slashdot to Censor a Posting
13. Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot
14. Slashdot buckles to Scientology loonies
15. Xenu Do, But Not on Slashdot
16. Holy? Or wholly without grounds

=== Buddhism
17. 'Buddha's hair' found in China

=== Islam
18. 400 Afghan clerics decided to destroy statues: Minister
19. Taliban Ways Under Question

=== Catholicism
20. Italy threatens to silence Vatican [Radio]
21. Few confessions

=== Mormonism
22. SLOC and the LDS Church downplay the church's involvement in the Olympics
23. From SLOC Leadership to Liquor, Church Has Long Had a Powerful Olympic Voice
24. Special Treatment for the Church?
25. Non-LDS Religious Leaders Cite Minimal Input
26. Courting Controversy
27. Sex change worshipper sues the Mormons

=== Hate Groups
28. Bertollini sues Coeur d'Alene newspaper
29. Parade foes to put best foot forward
30. Report Links Putin to Anti-Semitism
31. Estee Lauder's latest tangle
32. What's in a Name?

=== False Memory Syndrome
33. Jury awards family millions

=== Faith Healing
34. Senate Panel Backs Faith-Healing Ban When Kids At Risk
35. Mandatory medical aid for sick kids gets committee OK

=== Other News
36. Atheist leader's remains found on Texas ranch
37. China Extends Cult Crackdown to Protestants, Says Rights Group
38. Sect Not Allowed to Build Cult Hall [Universal Church of the Kingdom of God]
39. Man Shot Dead As Bulletproof Magic Fails
40. Moscow police make arrest in multiple murder
41. Poles rethink anti-sect moves after minority church complaints
42. Appeals court says Ohio motto is acceptable

=== Faith-Based & Community Initiatives
43. Conservatives call for ouster of director of faith-based charities



=== Islam

18. 400 Afghan clerics decided to destroy statues: Minister
South Nexus (India), Mar. 18, 2001
http://www.southnexus.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
KABUL, Mar 18: The order to destroy ancient statues from Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past followed a decision by 400 religious clerics from across the country, who declared them against the tenets of Islam, Information and Culture Minister Qadratullah Jamal said on Saturday.

''Once their decision was made and the ruling was issued we had no choice, we had to follow it,'' Jamal told reporters in an interview in Kabul.

''They came out with a consensus that the statues were unIslamic,'' he said.

Even the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, who has taken the title Amir-ul Momineen or King of the Muslims, could not deviate from their decision, said Jamal. He had to issue the demolition order.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


19. Taliban Ways Under Question
AP, Mar. 17, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
What sort of religious regime would demand the demolition of grand artworks that have stood for 15 centuries? Or eliminate schooling for girls after age 8? Or chop off the hands or feet of thieves at stadium rallies?

According to the zealous Taliban who have ruled most of Afghanistan since 1996, faithfulness to Islam requires such unprecedented harshness, enforced by police from the omnipresent Ministry of Virtue and Vice.

But Muslim moderates and scholars in other lands say the Taliban are wrong.

Afghanistan's destruction of two monumental Buddha statues in recent days has provoked near-universal outrage, from Muslim leaders as well as art lovers.
(...)

``Such behavior comes to undermine the image of Islam and even to make some Muslims skeptical whether their faith can face the challenges of modernism,'' former Egyptian diplomat Hussein Ahmed Amin wrote this week.

An Afghan scholar in the United States, Amin Tarzi, charges that his homeland's rulers feed off the peoples' ``illiteracy and lack of knowledge of traditional Islamic teachings.''

The Taliban employ religion as well as Pashtun tribal traditions ``to legitimize their rule based on a terror system,'' says Tarzi, of the Monterey (Calif.) Institute of International Studies. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's largest ethnic group.

Others are simply baffled.

``I personally don't have any idea where they get some of their ideas,'' says Professor Anis Ahmed of Pakistan's Islamic University.

Some tenets come from literal interpretation of the Quran, the Muslim scripture, Ahmed explains, but ``if you take things literally that will lead to extremism.'' He says the Quran must be read in light of its context and application in the Sunnah, the authoritative sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Muslim world has largely spurned the Taliban. The Organization of the Islamic Conference refuses to admit the regime and only three of the 56 member nations (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) grant it recognition.

Even neighboring Iran, whose 1979 revolution energized militant Islamists worldwide, spurns the Taliban, although that hostility stems from alleged Taliban persecution of fellow Shiite Muslims. Islam's larger Sunni branch dominates in Afghanistan.
(...)

As for the Buddha-smashing, Islam abhors worship of idols and, consequently, pious artists do not depict the human form. Muhammad cleared Mecca of idols when he inaugurated the religion. But Muslims did not believe that required elimination of pre-Islamic statuary when they conquered Egypt and Iran soon after Muhammad's lifetime.

Qatar's Al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, this month that the Afghan statues are not active idols and thus do not threaten belief or contradict doctrine.

The Taliban can cite one precedent. Afghanistan's 12th century Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi rampaged across northern India smashing many Hindu idols. But Tarzi says the sultan probably used religion as a cover for acquiring the gems and precious metals the figures were encrusted with.
(...)

In January, Omar decreed that anyone who converts from Islam to another religion, or who seeks such conversions, will be killed. The Quran (16:104) prescribes ``a dreadful penalty'' for a Muslim who ``utters unbelief,'' and some other Muslim nations have similar laws, but actual executions are rare.

Other Taliban rules follow fundamentalist Islamic or Pashtun traditions that most believers do not see as faith requirements. Among them:

The only allowable music is religious song, unaccompanied by instruments. (However, police have not interfered with music played privately in worship by the Hindu and Sikh minorities.)

Television, movies and videos are banned. So is kite-flying, seen as a frivolous distraction from a life of prayer.

Public bath houses have been shut down, even though the masses lack running water.

Material published outside Afghanistan is forbidden, and bookstore owners selling material about other religions or critizing Islam face five years in prison.

Men cannot clip their beards or shave (punishable by public beating) or wear long hair over the forehead.

Men's attendance at mosque is enforced by rifle-toting soldiers.

Taxi drivers are publicly beaten if they carry solo women passengers.

Women are encouraged to paint the first-floor windows of their homes black so men cannot peer inside.

Paper bags are illegal for fear recycled paper would include discarded copies of the Quran.

Overall, says Tarzi, the Taliban are in the process of creating a variant that Islam has never before seen, extending far beyond the puritanical Islamic reform that the 19th century Wahhabi movement imposed in Saudi Arabia.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]
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