As if Benjamin Netanyahu didn't have enough to deal with in forming a new government in Israel, a feud over getting married threatens to further complicate his bid to secure a ruling coaltion.

 The Likud party leader was chosen to form a government after a right-wing majority was elected in a Feb. 10 parliamentary election. Netanyahu has been shuttling between factions, trying to cobble together as broad a coalition as possible that will have a better chance of long-term survival.

Major stumbling blocks so far have been over the future of Palestinian statehood talks and strategies to heal a contracting economy.

But recently, two potentially important coalition partners have been butting heads over the legalisation of civil marriage. Secular nuptials are not recognised by the Jewish state's religious authority, the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinical Court. And clerics have a monopoly on marrying people in Israel.

Avigdor Lieberman, whose Yisrael Beiteinu party is the third largest, wants  a new law, while the ultra-Orthodox Shas has said it would not join a government that promotes any such
change. Both Lieberman and Shas leader Eli Yishai have been key Netanyahu supporters in his post-election bid for the premiership.

Lieberman's popularity has steadily increased, mostly thanks to his nationalist proposals that have made headlines worldwide. But his party roots are among the million Israelis who immigrated from the former Soviet Union since the 1980s, many of whom are not considered Jewish under Orthodox law and are therefore designated as "ineligible to wed" in Israel.

A new law on civil unions was one of five issues that Lieberman has conditioned to his joining Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Shas officials have said outright that they "would not compromise on the Halacha", referring to Jewish law.

Both sides, however, have hinted that a middle ground could be found with the easing of the ban to recognise the civil marriage only of two non-Jews.

The issue have aroused debate outside of political circles with the Chief Rabbinate's Council convening to discuss "halachic" solutions for non-religious marriage.

While the two parties continue to negotiate, a Netanyahu spokeswoman said the Likud chief is not worried and is confident the sides will reach an agreement.

The start of a high-powered Vatican-sponsored acadmeic conference on evolution was anything but fossilized.

The third STOQ International Conference, called Biological Evolution, Facts and Theories, began on Tuesday at the Pontifical Gregorian University (picture right) under the patronage of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture.

The conference, which has been organised together with the University of Notre Dame to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, had barely gotten underway when charges of censorship and undemocratic and unacademic behaviour began flying.

At the end of the first session Oktar Babuna, a Turkish doctor and collaborator of prominent Turkish anti-Darwin campaigner Harun Yahya,asked for the floor to put forward a question. Babuna, a proponent of the Islamic creationist campaign against evolution, spoke about his view that there were insufficient transitional forms from species to species to support the theory of evolution.

After he began speaking two professors on the dias, Francisco J. Ayala of the University of California at Irvine and Douglas Futuyma of the State University of New York were visibly irritated. Someone in the hall can be heard saying “turn the microphone off” and seconds later two organisers approached Babuna. One of them abruptly took the microphone away from Babuna and another ordered him to go back to his seat. Watch it all here

“After I walked back to my seat someone said “only evolutionists can ask questions,” Babuna told Reuters afterwards. “This is very anti-democratic and very unacademic. If this is a scientific meeting … if you have scientific questions to ask, they should be responded to scientifically, everybody accepts that … if you force people to shut up and don’t let them ask any question … then it is not a scientific theory but an ideology.” The spat was filmed by Babuna’s associate Dr Cihat Gundogdu, who put an edited version on the Harun Yahya website.

Both men attended the conference with English and Italian versions of Harun Yahya’s super-slick mega-book Atlas of Creation (picture left) in hand. We have done numerous blogs on Islamic creationism, its proponents and its opponents. Some of the links are listed below. But what do you think about the debate and, more importantly, do you think officials at the Gregorian University were right or wrong to yank the microphone from Babuna at a scientific conference?

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/02/05/just-before-darwin-day-pew-reviews-faith-and-evolution-in-us/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/12/24/a-one-stop-shop-for-the-latest-on-islamic-creationism/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/11/25/harun-yahya-dangles-big-prizes-for-creationism-essays/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/10/27/richard-dawkins-rips-into-harun-yahya-and-muslim-creationism/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/06/19/harun-yahya-preaches-islam-slams-darwin-and-awaits-jesus/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/04/07/harun-yahyas-islamic-creationist-book-pops-up-in-scotland/

I went to Carnival in the Bolivian city of Oruro expecting to be blown away by tens of thousands of dancers and musicians, towering devil masks and llama sacrifices in the mines. I was. But even more striking was the pervasive small-scale ritual of “ch’alla,” the offering of libations to the earth goddess Pachamama taking place in the streets and fields during Carnival.

After viewing the massive Carnival processions in Oruro, I traveled to Bolivia’s main city, La Paz, last week. There, I saw small groups of Bolivians from all walks of life gathered on street corners. Each group defined a ritual space on the sidewalk with colorful paper streamers and flower petals. The people set off firecrackers in the center of the improvised altar, and then stood around or sat on chairs drinking beer from cases they brought with them. Before each quaff, they poured a little beer onto the ground, or onto the wheels of a car that was decorated with ribbons, balloons and flowers. By making the offerings to Pachamama, they hoped to be blessed with luck, safety and abundance. 

Driving through the Andes, I saw Bolivians on streets, in the fields, and in the patios of their houses, getting together for ch’alla rituals, making offerings to the Pachamama and blessing their cars. Apparently Bolivians do ch’alla often when they drink — spilling or flicking alcohol onto the ground — but the practice becomes a full-blown ceremony on special days, such as at the end of Carnival, just before Lent begins.

What intrigued me was that many of the people I saw doing the ritual appeared to be of mixed European and indigenous descent and were dressed in so-called Western clothes, instead of the typical garb of Aymara or Quechua Indians. Pre-Columbian spiritual practices are part of everyday life in Bolivia and I was fascinated with how intermingled they are with Catholicism. In a drive to improve rights for indigenous people, President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, included guarantees of freedom of religion in a new constitution. The previous constitution explicitly recognized and supported the Roman Catholic Church.

He is a “living Buddha” with an iPod, the 23-year-old possible successor to the Dalai Lama who may bridge the gap between Tibet’s elder leaders and both an alienated Tibetan youth and a suspicious China.

For the Karmapa Lama, who fled Tibet nine years ago to India and is now the third highest ranking Lama, it is time for Tibetans to modernize to survive.

My colleagues Alistair Scrutton and Abhishek Madhukar got a rare interview with the young man many Tibetan exiles regard as a “living Buddha”, which you can read here.

This year, as the 73-year-old Dalai Lama marks the 50th anniversary of his flight from Chinese rule into exile, there is speculation he could pave the way for a successor — and it is the Karmapa who is most talked about.

(Photo: Karmapa Lama speaks during an interview with Reuters in Dharamsala. REUTERS/Abhishek Madhukar (INDIA), March 2, 2009)

James Dobson may be stepping down as chairman of Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian advocacy group he founded over three decades ago, but that hardly means he’s going into retirement.

Dobson, a leading figure in the U.S. “Religious Right,” will continue his regular radio broadcasts which reach millions and will still write his monthly newsletter which is sent out to 1.6 million people, Focus on the Family said in a statement on Friday.

Dobson, 72, has built Focus into an evangelical empire in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and for decades he has been one of the leading voices in the U.S. conservative Christian movement, which remains a key base (some would say now the only base) for the Republican Party.

Dobson himself has long claimed that politics is a distant interest to his main “focus,” which is defending  the “traditional family” unit and old-fashioned Christian values. But in the past, few endorsements meant more to Republican candidates for high office.

And he has spent much time in the trenches of America’s “culture wars” with his unstinting opposition to abortion and gay rights.

Dobson stepped down as president of Focus six years ago. The affable Jim Daly assumed those reigns two years later in 2005 and has since been seen as the “heir apparent.”

Daly will not be stepping into the board chairmanship but analysts say Dobson’s move signals a desire to allow the younger man more room to build his public image.

“Dobson wants to give Daly a chance to raise his profile ahead of the 2012 election … he needs a public persona and it takes years to develop that,” said Michael Lindsay, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston and a leading expert on the U.S. evangelical movement.

Dobson will still dispense advice on family and other matters to millions of mostly evangelical Americans as well as to a global audience. But it is another sign that the “Old Guard” of the Religious Right is slowly making way for the next generation.

Photo: Provided by Focus on the Family

It is written: U.S. women are more religious than men.

This is according to a newly released bit of number crunching from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which bases the numbers on its massive U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Most of the research was conducted in 2007 and the survey remains a treasure trove of facts and figures on religious life in America.

You can see the new analysis here. Among other things it finds that U.S. women trump men on being affilated to a specific faith (86 percent to 79 percent), on daily prayer (66 to 49 percent), and attending a worship service weekly (44 percent to 34 percent).

Would anyone care to comment on why they think there is a gender imbalance in U.S. religious beliefs and practices?

(Photo: an attendee prays during the inauguration ceremony of U.S. President Barack Obama. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton, Jan 20, 2009, USA)

Traditionally, Israelis have only been exposed to Orthodox Judaism and Dreyfus said the lack of options has led so many of them to become secular.
“I always considered it their loss,” said Dreyfus, 57, who on Sunday will become the second woman to head the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR).

“Many Israelis are looking for a deeper way to express their Jewishness other than just being a member of the Jewish state. And they are not going to find it among the black hats,” she said, referring to the traditional ultra-Orthodox Jewish garb.

Growing up, most Israelis learn little about “progressive” Judaism. When travelling around the world, they are often surprised to see men and women sitting side-by-side and praying together in less-conservative Jewish congregations. Most synagogues in Israel have separate-sex seating. But over the past decade, Dreyfus said, awareness has grown.

Some 20 percent of Jews in Israel are Orthodox, about half of whom are ultra-conservative “Haredi”. They follow strict Jewish law, wear traditional clothing and do not consider the more liberal denominations of Judaism to be authentic.

They believe such a disciplined lifestyle is necessary for the survival of Judaism, which is estimated to have fewer than 15 million believers worldwide. The Conservative movement and the even more liberal Reform movement in Judaism have shed many of the stricter edicts and adopted more modern traditions. In Reform Judaism, many worshipers work on the Sabbath, eat non-kosher foods and marry non-Jews. The Haredi see this assimilation as a threat to Judaism, and point to the high rate of intermarriage among non-Orthodox Jews. 

The Reform movement was introduced in Israel decades ago as a “transplant” from diaspora communities. Only in recent years have native Israelis become more active. They have even set up a “progressive” religious court to compete with the ultra-Orthdox chief Rabbinate. (It is not recognised by the government.)
The CCAR meets every year to discuss religious pluralism, current events and show support for the burgeoning progressive Jewish movement in Israel, which they hope will help the non-Orthodox in Israel “reclaim the Jewish texts”.
The ultra-Orthodox community are quick to protest events or behavior that conflict with their beliefs. They boycott stores open on the Sabbath. They threatened violence at a gay rights parade in Jerusalem. In the most observant neighborhoods, they even throw stones at cars that drive through on holy days.

I asked Rabbi Peter Knobel, the outgoing head of CCAR, if the ultra-Orthodox community has protested their conference in any way.
“Not at all,” he said. “The Orthodox have chosen not to take note of the fact that we are even here.”

Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions either backing or criticising Pope Benedict for readmitting ultra-traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson into the Roman Catholic Church. The supporters are ahead in statistical terms, but this isn’t really a representative sample so it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions. It does give some idea, though, of how much interest the issue has created.

(Photo: Bishop Williamson leaves for London after expulsion order from Argentina, 24 Feb 2009/Enrique Marcarian)

The Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich reports today that about 30,000 people, including many theologians,  have signed a petition criticising the readmission of ultra-traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson and urging Pope Benedict to defend the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The petition (here in English translation) was launched by the lay reform movement Wir sind Kirche (We are Church), which the SZ says will present it to German bishops holding an assembly in Hamburg next week.

Searching on the support side, I found a French-based petition claiming 47,222 signatures so far. It praises Benedict for lifting the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops and adds: “By this brave gesture, You acted (as) the Good Shepherd of the flock entrusted to You by God.” The site includes a “letter of encouragement” by Rev. Régis de Cacqueray, head of the large French chapter of the SSPX, and sports a selection of logos from traditionalist websites — mostly not SSPX — supporting the petition.

One other petition that popped up on a google search was on the website of the French Catholic weekly La Vie, this one critical of the move as its title signals: “No negationists in the Church.” It doesn’t tally its figures but it has 90 intellectuals as initial signatories and over 6,000 comments from readers.

Any other petitions like this out there?

Ten days have passed since Pakistan cut a deal with Islamists to enforce sharia in the turbulent Swat region in return for a ceasefire, and we still don’t know many details about what was agreed.  The deal made international headlines. It prompted political and security concerns in NATO and Washington and warnings about possible violations of human rights and religious freedom.

(Photo: Supporters of Maulana Sufi Mohammad gather for prayers in Mingora, 21 Feb 2009/Adil Khan)

In the blogosphere, Terry Mattingly over at GetReligion has asked in two posts (here and here) why reporters there aren’t supplying more details about exactly how sharia will be implemented or what the  doctrinal differences between Muslims in the region are. Like other news organisations, Reuters has been reporting extensively on the political side of this so-called peace deal but not had much on the religion details. As Reuters religion editor and a former chief correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I’m very interested in this. I blogged about the deal when it was struck and wanted to revisit the issue now to see what more we know about it.

After consulting with our Islamabad bureau, reading other news organisations’ reports and scouring the web, I have the feeling — familiar to anyone who has reported from that part of the world — that the more you look at this deal, the less you see besides the fact of the deal itself. The devil isn’t hiding in the details because there aren’t many there. He’s playing a bigger political game.

First, look at the deal that made all the headlines. On February 16, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government agreed with the local Swat Islamist leader Maulana Sufi Mohammad what was essentially a sharia-for-peace swap. The short text was all of two paragraphs in the original, as reported in the Urdu daily Roznama Express (Daily Express, below). The MEMRI Blog has the Urdu original (click here) and a translation that says they agreed that:

“…all non-Shari’a laws, i.e. those which are against the Koran and the Hadith, will stand ineffectual and cancelled, in other words, terminated …

“…Shariat-e-Muhammadi [Prophet Muhammad’s Shari’a] will be expediently implemented whose details are present in the books of Islamic jurisprudence and which is derived from four sources: Allah’s book [the Koran], Sunnat-e-Rasool [Prophet’s deeds], Ijma [Consensus], Qiyas [Reasoning].  No decision against it will be acceptable. In the event of revision, i.e. appeal, a house of justice, in other words a Shari’a court, will be created… whose decision will be final…

” …A sharia court system “will be implemented in totality with mutual consultation following the establishment of peace in the Malakand Division.”

The wording is so broad that it’s open to all sorts of interpretations. It was so vague that even the Pakistani media didn’t quote it much when reporting on the deal. After the overall fact of the deal itself, the news nugget here is the promise of a sharia appeals court for the area. A federal sharia appeals court already exists in Islamabad, so this seems to be more a practical local issue than a larger doctrinal one.

With that deal done, the government needs to issue a regulation establishing it in law. None has been signed so far, none has been published and journalists in Islamabad say none has been issued there. The Pashtun Post website has posted a text it describes as the proposed resolution, but it is actually a text drawn up last year when the NWFP government first considered reestablishing sharia in Swat. It’s a good bet that the final wording will be quite close to this long legal text, which basically sets out the composition of the more sharia-compliant courts to be established in the region.

How does it stipulate sharia should to be applied? In the relevant paragraph, it simply says:

“A Qazi (Islamic judge) shall seek guidance from Quran Majeed (Noble Koran) and Sunna-e-Nabvi (way of the Prophet) … for the purposes of procedure and proceedings of conduct, resolution and decision, of cases and shall decide the same in accordance with Shariah. While expounding and interpreting the Quran Majeed and Sunna e Nabvi … the Qazi shall follow the established principles of expounding and interpreting Quran Majeed and Sunna-e-Nabvi … and, for this purpose, shall consider the expositions and opinions of recognized Fuqaha’a (jurists) of Islam.”

(Photo: Swat girls return to school after peace deal, 23 Feb 2009/Adil Khan)

In other words, we still have no specifics. And it’s looking like we won’t get many more even when President Asif Ali Zardari signs and issues the final text. Sharia looks secondary here to the ceasefire the deal ushered in. The final sentence of the Feb. 16 agreement summed it up:‘‘We request Maulana Sufi Mohammad bin al-Hazrat Hasan to end his peaceful protest [for implementation of Sharia] and help the government in establishing peace in all the areas of Malakand Division.’’

That sentence also contains the deal’s Achilles heel. Maulana Sufi Mohammad is only one player on the Islamist scene in Swat. “Help the government in estabilishing peace” means convincing his son-in law Maulana Fazlullah, who has forged ties with other Pakistani Taliban factions and al Qaeda, to give up the fight.  His group did announce a ceasefire this week, but he might just be using that to refresh his forces for the next round of fighting. As our report noted: “Authorities have struck peace deals with militants in several parts of the northwest over recent years, including one in Swat last May, but none has succeeded in eliminating militant sanctuaries.”

We’re not the only ones saying that. For example, Najmuddin Shaikh, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary and its former ambassador to Washington, explained in the Daily Times why the deal is getting such short shrift:

“It is a sad but almost foregone conclusion that this agreement will be no more effective than the ones concluded in the past, and that while there will be a welcome albeit temporary respite from the daily bloodletting in Swat, the strife will soon resume.”

Another question is why Pakistan should agree to a local sharia regime if it already has sharia law. Well, it does and it doesn’t. The constitution says no law can be repugnant to Islam and there are some specifically Islamic laws, such as the one on hudood offenses such as blasphemy, fornication, apostasy and blasphemy. But the court system is based on the secular model established during the British colonial period. Courts are overloaded with cases and some are shamelessly corrupt. So a traditional sharia court where the qazis handed down verdicts with more speed and less fuss than the civil courts can appeal to Pakistanis frustrated with the secular system, regardless of the school of Islam they follow.

The Swat deal would set deadlines of up to six months to decide cases and would also set up an appellate court for the region. But they will not be “qazi courts” run by Islamic scholars and the judges will not even need to be experts in Islamic law. The 2008 text says hiring preference would be given to “those judicial officers who have completed a Sharia course of four months duration from a recognised institution.”

(Photo: Swat residents inspect a school blown up by Taliban, 19 Jan 2009/Abdul Rehman)

These details are interesting, but they hardly mean much to an outside reader. And they pale in the wider context of the major political struggle going on in the region, which is what Reuters and other main news organisations are focusing on. In his column in The News, Islamabad political analyst Ayaz Amir warned against “missing the essence of Talibanism”:

“I think we are not getting it. Talibanism in Afghanistan is a revolt against the American occupation … Pakistani Talibanism … is a slightly different phenomenon …  It is a revolt against the Pakistani state. Or rather a revolt against the dysfunctional nature of this state.

“If this were Nepal this would be a Maoist uprising. If this were a Latin American country it would be a peasant or a Guevarist uprising. Since it is Pakistan, the revolt assaulting the bastions of the established order comes with an Islamic colouring, Islam reduced to its most literal and unimaginative interpretations at the hands of those leading the Taliban revolt.

“…This revolt is spreading. Hitherto it was confined to the Frontier Province. But on February 7 we saw this revolt cross the River Indus for the first time when a police check post in Mianwali (Qudratabad near Wan Bachran) was attacked by Taliban fighters. On Feb 11 another police outpost near Essa Khail came under attack.”

If Pakistan were considering a more sharia-compliant justice system in relatively calm areas such as Islamabad or Lahore, it would presumably hold lengthy discussions and produce detailed guidelines to be followed by law-abiding citizens. That would be interesting to drill down into. But Swat and neighbouring areas of NWFP are in the grip of an armed insurgency. The Taliban militants have unleashed a reign of terror on the region, killing and beheading politicians, singers, soldiers and opponents and destroying nearly 200 girls’ schools. They’re the men with guns who will ultimately decide how this vague deal is implemented. Or if it is implemented at all.

In the depths of what may be Japan's worst recession ever, more than a few people feel like they have been kicked hard.

At Bimbogami Shrine, in the mountains about four hour's drive from Tokyo, the downtrodden can hit back -- literally.

I travelled to the shrine where male and female pilgrims were beating the hell out of the God of Poverty, in an age old ritual.

Under instruction from the head of the shrine, the stressed and impoverished offered a little common-man payback, using a red rod to whack the god's wooden pillar.

The founder of the shrine, an entrepreneur who has suffered several businesses busts including an ostrich farm, says his own failures taught him the importance of perseverance in trying times.

The shrine, which gets up to 500 visitors a day, is a low-income operation for those wanting to vent their spleen at a low-income world. 

There's another shrine in Osaka and even one in Tokyo that I haven't visited, but bad times may indeed mean good business for the God of Poverty.