Religion & politics

The controversy over the proposed Islamic Centre — The Cordoba House, now known as Park51 — several blocks from the site of the World Trade Center evokes a rather strange memory from my own youth. During the 1950s, the Jewish community in a small Long Island town, to which my family belonged, wished to build a Jewish Center on that town’s Main Street. After all, that was where all the other communities had built their churches. Of course, the Jewish community was reassured that building a house of worship and community center was certainly within its rights. And no one would dream of denying...

The website Socialist Unity is not exactly a bastion of socialist thought. Andy Newman, the man behind it, supports everything from Iran’s mature democracy to foxhunting, and defends articles attacking Peter Tatchell’s ‘gay imperialism’ (translation: not supporting religious homophobia). His recent article, Pope Welcome Here (see here ), really takes the biscuit. Not only does Newman defend the government’s decision to spend £12 million hosting the Pope, he also claims that religious leaders deserve not merely our tolerance but our respect, writing ‘Christianity is still a major cultural and...

Edward Maltby spoke to Marco Tranchino, organiser of the 14 February London demonstration “No Vatican — London for a Secular Europe” EM: Why did you organise the march? What are your demands? MT: This demonstration is organised by “Facciamo Breccia” (a coalition of Italian secularist associations) every year the no VAT (i.e. not Vatican) demonstration sees thousands of Italians marching in Rome to protest against the power of the Vatican and its undemocratic interference in Italian politics. However, the Vatican's influence is such that the mainstream media hardly report this event. It’s...

On Sunday 14 February three hundred people marched on the Italian embassy in London to protest against Pope Benedict XVI’s proposed September visit to the UK, a visit which will be costing the British taxpayer an estimated £20 million. “No Vatican — London for a Secular Europe”, was organised in solidarity with Facciamo Breccia, a coalition of Italian secularist organisations who, on the anniversary of the creation of the Vatican on 11th February 1929, mobilise thousands of Italians onto the streets of Rome to protest against the Vatican’s influence in Italian politics. “The secular movement...

What happened in Iran is a military coup. The coup was made by the Republican Guard with the connivance of the Supreme Leader. It is a war at the top between two very strong factions in an extremely complicated and fluid Iranian political system. Allied with the Republican Guard are the baseej militias. In Iran people tell you they are the “army of 20 million”. They are supposed to be 20 million. That is not true. They are four or five million. But a few months ago a plan was hatched to bring them to the level of 13 million. Every baseeji had to recruit four or five others. In the rural...

A young child is removed from his family, taken to live in a remote community, made to engage in strange rituals, denied the company of ordinary children, dressed in unusual clothes and surrounded by adults who worship him. Are these scenes from some despotic cult? No, this is the way that new religious leaders are “nurtured” under the auspices of what are widely held to be the enlightened and progressive practices of Tibetan Buddhism. Osel Hita Torres was identified whilst just a baby as the reincarnation of then recently deceased Lama Yeshe. The Tibetan Buddhist Federation for the Protection...

The second day of emergency demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington was about the same size as the day before, even though it was a working day. Again, young people of a Muslim background were the most radical and pushed through the police barriers early on, and blocked Kensington High St again for about three hours. This demonstration was formally called by the Palestine Solidarity campaign, the Stop the War Coalition and the British Muslim Initiative. The presence of socialist activists was smaller than in previous years’ mobilizations about Palestine and the Middle East...

IN ASISSI Midst the avarice and sanctity In Asissi, white in sun and years, Two flushed, pale-bloused, young-breasted girls, Their mouths half-open, smiling, watch Two pidgeons fucking in the sun. Breath held in Francis-empathy, Delighted, knowing hands entwined, Unconsciously at one, they catch Life fired by the pantheistic sun. And then, their eyes cloud and drop, As the shade-faced, fussing shepherd nun Comes at a dry stiff trot — cast down Like the dead saint's communistic friends Who broke the sacredotal line, To set life over property. They burned in priest-set fires, whose minds Too...

REQUIEM FOR DAVID O'CONNELL "Ireland without her people means nothing to me" —James Connolly "They think they have pacified Ireland… They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland un-free shall never be at peace" — Patrick Pearse Six hundred years of strife behind, Of conflict, slaughter, sept and sect; And Tone said, we needs must grow blind To creed and race, for self-respect. But History spawns on rancid need Malign sly...

Why, again and again and again, time after time, does Jew-baiting, in one form or another, become a force in history? There are always "immediate" historical reasons, but one central, continuous, underlying "cultural" reason is this: anti-Semitism is threaded into the very fabric of Europe's 2000-year-old Christian civilisation. Christianity is saturated with anti-Semitism. The New Testament of the Bible is one of the main documents of historical anti-Semitism. As Karl Kautsky, the leading writer of early 20th Century Marxism, showed in his book The Foundations of Christianity, the writers of...