Religious freedom restricted in 1/3 of the world

[caption id="attachment_7745" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Jew, Catholic nun and Muslim on World Religion Day"][/caption]

Carol Forsloff - While most Americans continue to reinforce the concept of religious freedom and the First Amendment rights of the Constitution, across the rest of the world religious tolerance and freedom have actually declined.

The Pew Forum conducted a three-year study on religious restrictions around the world.   The organization’s research found that 6.9 billion people or nearly a third of the world’s population live in countries where government policies on religion or social hostilities involving religion have increased substantially during the period 2006 -2009.

Illustrations of this growing trend are reflected in government and social policies that have developed in Denmark and France.  France has restricted Muslim women from wearing the burka and school children from wearing clothing that displays religious symbols.  French conservatives view the increasing multiculturalism of France to be a threat to the French way of life.  They point to a major difference in assimilation of Muslims in France and African Americans in the United States and that a lack of shared culture, language and religious belief is largely responsible for the problems France is experiencing with respect to dealing with immigrant groups.

White separatists and right-wing groups have found fertile ground in the stresses of assimilation. Dr. Orly Taitz is specifically directing Europe’s struggles with Muslim groups and tying this to America’s policies with the Middle East while targeting President Barack Obama as being sympathetic to the Muslim causes due to his father’s religious affiliation with Islam.  She uses Denmark’s growing restrictions on Muslims as an example of the risks America faces if it continues to court Middle Eastern favor.

Recently England has faced riots in many sections of its major cities that the media has observed comes primarily from the youth in impoverished areas.  Like Denmark and France, new immigrant youth find it difficult to find jobs in a recession, and many of these same youth do not wish to comply with new traditions in order to assimilate.  US News and World Report pointed out in 2006 the growing problem Europe faces with respect to its immigrant population and the children of those immigrants and wrote:     "Europeans are uncomfortable with Islam, and they see it as an alien body in their midst. ... Europe's got a huge problem, and they're just getting their minds around it now."

These cultural pressures in the middle of economic strife and competition are, according to experts, at the heart of the tensions among population groups, a tension that will likely grow and produce the right wing political growth, religious restrictions and community violence in response.

The riots in England. My dear and beautiful England

[caption id="attachment_7730" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A woman jumps from a burning building during the riots in London England 2011"][/caption]

Michael Cosgrove - England, my dear and beautiful England, has been rocked to the core by the recent riots. They started in Tottenham in London and quickly engulfed other areas of the capital before spreading to several other towns and cities such as Birmingham, where three people died, and, sadly, my hometown, Liverpool. People have been murdered and burned out of their homes, shops and local amenities have gone up in flames, and up to 2000 people have been arrested to date, with more to follow.

As is to be expected, the country is in shock. There have been at least five deaths, hundreds of injuries, and, for the first time in its history, England has seen vigilante groups of residents and shopkeepers out on the streets, armed with baseball bats and iron bars to protect their communities and interests against the gangs of rioters, which were composed mainly, but not uniquely, of immigrant-origin elements.

Now that things have calmed down however, we are beginning to discuss and analyse why these riots happened and what should be done to prevent them from happening again.

That should be good news, but I can’t help thinking that there is something depressingly familiar about the recent riots, as well as public, political, and press reaction to them, and I am feeling uneasy.

What we have been witnessing over the last week is nothing new. England has seen similar riots in the past which began for similar reasons, although which causes are the most pertinent - a lack of moral discipline, mindless thuggery and excessive social benefits on the one hand, or banksters, poverty, a lack of investment in the young and a materialistic and callous society on the other - depends on the opinions of the person expressing them. Whatever the point of view however, the fact is that we've heard all this before.

The public's ideas about why the riots happened often quote one or more of the above, and most people's opinions - including my own - are based on their individual belief systems and political convictions. From the 'hang 'em all' brigade to the 'it's capitalism's fault' cohorts, they are no more than long-standing knee-jerk reactions.

Politicians, of course, cannot allow themselves to react so quickly and viscerally. They have to be aware of what the public is saying and thinking before expressing themselves, which is probably one of the reasons why David Cameron delayed his return to London for as long as possible after the riots kicked off. Labour opposition leader Ed Miliband adopted a similar strategy, wisely keeping his head down under the parapet until he had analysed which way public opinion was blowing.

Then, once the debate began in earnest, it was all about treading on eggshells, and woe betide any politician who said anything outside of the sacrosanct boxes of accepted means of expression, as the hapless opposition Labour MP Harriet Harman found out to her cost when her tactical error in a TV debate led to a fierce mauling by government member Michael Gove. After all, all is fair in love and politics. At the end of the day though nothing has emerged from political opinion on either side of the divide that doesn't remind me of how politicians reacted to past episodes of rioting, such as those in the 80's and 90's, with the possible exception of  this week's dumbly impossible-to-implement proposal to shut down social networking sites in the UK during rioting. This too is no more than the same old platitudes dressed up in newly fashionable terms such as 'feral kids' and 'social repair.'

Which leads me to the press. No prizes for guessing what the right-wing Daily Mail and similarly-minded papers had to say. The noisy onslaught of self-righteous indignation and categotical condemnation of the rioters, vying for screaming headline spacse with sententious reminders about moral values and today's degenerate kids made it inevitable that race, immigration and the 'nanny state' would be used to glue their reactions together.

On the other hand, The Guardian, The Independent and The Times have of course been hammering on about 'understanding' the social plight of the rioters and the 'underlying reasons' for what they did, whilst all the time having to fend off accusations of being apologists for criminality. A lot of what they have written is arguably valid, but it has been oh-so-predictably expressed in its own - albeit more genteel and subtly expressed - self-righteous manner.

At the end of the day though, I get the impression that I've read and heard it all before. Nothing I have read or heard by anyone has inspired me to think "oh, now there's a useful take/opinion/angle", and none of the suggestions designed to remedy the situation have struck me as being anything else but a rehashing of past formulas. Even Russell Brand's beautifully brutal yet persuasive piece couldn't quite hide the fact that he didn't really have any new leads for us to follow either. (Oh, and Russell, if you read this, quit your job as a Hollywood superstar and start running for parliament.)

Nevertheless, and despite the fact that many of the reactions I have heard and read are obviously honest and heartfelt, it all leaves me feeling slightly depressed. We are still using the same old left arguments, the same old cure formulas, the same old to explain the same old phenomena.

In other words, unless someone comes up with a more insightful and consensus-based means of identifying and addressing the causes of these riots, thereby giving England the chance to ensure they do not happen again, it is only a matter of time before someone else Tweets the words "it's kicking off in.... (insert place name)" and sets us all off on yet another paper-chasing binge of fruitless conjecture about why it happened and what should be done about it.