Mission & Justice

8/8/08; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1009368.html

The ultra-Orthodox community has come up with a response to the growing popularity of Israel’s organ-donor cards, also known as Adi cards. The community has issued a new card called a “life card,” which expresses its holders’ wish not to donate organs. The new card states: “I do not give my permission to take from me, not in life or in death, any organ or part of my body for any purpose.” The initiative came after the organ-donor law regulating organ donations in compliance with Jewish law in cases of brain and respiratory death, was approved by the Knesset in March. Sources within the ultra-Orthodox community told Army Radio on Wednesday that organ donation cards were actually a “way of stealing organs from helpless people.”

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Adil Salahi; 8/8/08

Many Muslims avoid discussing the subject of entertainment because they fear that they will end up with a verdict that much of what they do for entertainment is wrong and cannot be approved by Islam. Yet this is a wrong perception, resulting from the fact that many Muslim countries went through a long period when education was poor and limited to a very small proportion of the population. This was particularly true in the 19th century, and under colonial rule stretching well into the 20th century. We should remember that Islam is a religion that caters for all life’s needs, and that people cannot continue to function without enjoying periods of relaxation and entertainment.

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Adil Salahi; 8/8/08

Question. Please comment on those people who claim that wearing a beard is not important from the Islamic point of view. They even say that it is not something to talk about. However, Imam Muhammad ibn Al-Hasan reports a Hadith which states that “Ibn Omar used to hold his beard with one hand and trim any longer hair.” Therefore, the Hanafi school considers shortening one’s beard below that length to be forbidden, and says that this is the view of all scholars, which proves unanimity. Sheikh Abdul.
Answer. This question shows the unfortunate state of lack of knowledge that has long prevailed among Muslims concerning the details of their religion. Let us briefly consider the Hadith the reader quotes, assuming that it is authentic, and outline what it implies. The Hadith simply speaks of the practice of one of the Prophet’s companions who commands great respect for his thorough knowledge.

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Akiva Eldar; 4/8/08

The Interior Ministry’s Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee approved the original plan of the reconstruction project for the Temple Mount’s Mugrabi Gate on the condition that certain changes be made in it. At the end of a hearing some two weeks ago, the committee accepted the objections submitted by the Ir Amim organization to the plan for transformation of the area underneath the new bridge into a space for Jewish prayers. In so doing, it rejected an initiative of the Western Wall’s rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, which had gained the support of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to take advantage of the collapse of the bridge as an opportunity to expand the women’s section at the site. The bridge leading from the Western Wall plaza collapsed in 2004, and the “rescue dig” conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority ahead of construction of a new bridge sparked the anger of the Muslim Waqf, the Arab world and especially Jordan and Turkey. The significance of this latest decision is that it will now be necessary to revise the construction plans according to the committee’s directives before a building permit is issued.

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Adil Salahi; 3/8/08

Question. Is it true that God says that we can marry up to four wives provided that we maintain fairness in treating them, but since we are human, it is impossible for us to do so? Emran Khan
Answer. Some people try to paint this picture as you have described, for one of two reasons: Either to say that marrying more than one wife is not allowed in Islam, or to suggest that there is contradiction in the Qur’an. Both are incorrect.

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Phillip Adams; 2/8/08,
“Even fewer hard questions were asked of the papal invasion than of the invasion of Iraq…the media was truly embedded”
Now that the dust has settled on WYD SYD, let us calmly examine the significance of the event. While conceding that the visiting kids behaved much better than soccer hooligans, some of us have a few issues, including being woken up on the morn of the mass by a heavenly host of helicopters heading for Randwick. The sky was so dark with the throbbing monsters that memories of Apocalypse Now came flooding hack. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. (Though on the Randwick flight path and very close to the racetrack, we did not detect a hint of the smell of incense. The usual brass handbags emitting clouds of fragrant fug must be on the back-burner as a papal concession to greenhouse emissions.)

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Hassna’a Mokhtar; 31/7/08

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice began enforcing a ban on the sale and escorting of cats and dogs in public places in Riyadh yesterday, a local newspaper reported. Prince Sattam, acting governor of Riyadh province, issued a decision prohibiting the sale and escorting of cats and dogs in Riyadh in line with a fatwa issued by the Council of Senior Scholars. The Makkah governorate in August 2006, acting on a request from the commission, prohibited the sale of pet cats and dogs

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29/7/08

A British Sikh teenager won a High Court discrimination case today against a school which banned her from classes after she refused to remove a religious bangle. Sarika Watkins-Singh, 14, was excluded by Aberdare Girls’ School in south Wales for breaking its no jewellery rule. But she and her lawyers argued that she was a victim of unlawful discrimination and judge Stephen Silber agreed, ruling that the school was guilty of indirect discrimination under race relations and equality laws. The teenager is now due to start back at the school when the new term begins in September and will be allowed to wear the Kara - a narrow steel bangle. Ms Watkins-Singh said she was “overwhelmed” by the finding and added: “It’s marvellous to know that the long journey I’ve been on has finally come to an end.

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Adele Ferguson; 28/7/08

Charities and other non-government organisations could lose billions of dollars’ worth of tax perks as the Rudd Government’s taxation review prepares to examine whether the concessions offered to the $80 billion non-profit sector are justified. The investigation, by Treasury boss Ken Henry, is expected to meet with resistance from some of the sector’s most powerful groups. Most of the country’s religious groups, which make up about $25billion of the sector, run commercial enterprises. Among them is the Seventh Day Adventists’ cereal giant Sanitarium, which generates more than $300 million a year. Many of the operations have little to do with charitable work but are exempt from various taxes including corporate tax and capital gains tax. The Catholic Church has long opposed reforms such as the creation of a national charities commission to regulate the sector, or charging tax on commercial enterprises.

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Ronald P. Sokol; 24/7/08

Moroccan-born Faiza Mabchour speaks French fluently, has three children born in France, and a French husband. Yet France’s top administrative court last month denied her bid for citizenship. The reason? Mabchour wears a burqa, a long veil that some Muslim women use to cover themselves from head to toe. In an interview with officials, she said she wore the burqa not for any special religious belief but because her husband asked her to. A government report stated that “she lives in total submission to the men of her family, and the notion of questioning this submission does not even occur to her”. The court said such a radical religious practice is incompatible with fundamental French values such as the equality of the sexes; thus, she was judged unable to assimilate - a must for citizenship.

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