The pamphlet claims Wellington City Council wants mosques to broadcast the Islamic Call To Prayer throughout the city.

The Better Wellington campaign group behind the pamphlet expected 80,000 of them to be delivered this week - but posties are refusing to do so.

What the pamphlet says

The pamphlet asserts that "the Council wants the city's six mosques to broadcast the Islamic Call to Prayer across the city".

Not true, FIANZ's Abdur Razzaq said. In fact Better Wellington's statement was so far from the truth that he initially thought it was a prank.

But it's not a joke though. It's not even just misinformation. "It's malicious misinformation" Razzaq said.

What the Muslim community actually asked for

Razzaq said Wellington's Islamic Association had approached the Council on 15 March about the possibility of broadcasting the adhan, or call to prayer.

The adhan was to commemorate the 51 people who were murdered in the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019.

It was to be a one-off adhan and the Muslim community has no desire to do it more often than this, he says.

Better Wellington's statement reinforces anti-Islamist sentiment and risks provoking others into action.

"This is not free speech. Coming out and telling this kind of lie and trying to incite hatred against a community. It's wrong, plain and simple. They should actually apologise" Razzaq said.

Better Wellington's view

A Better Wellington supporter disagrees the pamphlet risked calling up anti-Islamic sentiment.

It just regurgitates media reports about Wellington Council and the Call to Prayer.

He said "left wing" councillors are undermining Better Wellington's efforts, in order to distract the public from the other issues.

"It could be an Anglican faith having hallelujah doing the same thing. We're a secular organisation and a secular country. We take no position in regard to Islam or any religion or faith."

Posties refuse delivery

National co-president of the Postal Workers Union, John Maynard said the Union supports the posties who refused to deliver the pamphlet.

"We considered that New Zealand Post has an obligation under the State Owned Enterprises Act to exhibit a sense of social responsibility in regard to the interests of the community and we think they [Better Wellington] are doing exactly the opposite ..." Maynard said.

Leaflets are not posted into boxes which show a No Circular notice unless they are from a government authority - though posties were asked to deliver the pamphlet to everyone.

ACT Party leader David Seymour doesn't think the Postal Union has the right to choose whether or not to deliver items.

"People have a right to express themselves ... It is absolutely not the right of any union to tell the public what they can and can't hear" Seymour said.

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau told RNZ she is proud of Postal Union members who refused to deliver the pamphlets.

She will be seeking advice about how best to deal with a growing disinformation problem.

Source

• RNZ

Russia's government also persecutes other faith communities in the war-torn country.

Desecration, violence

Ukrainian military chaplain Mark Sergeev was a youth pastor until Russian troops seized his home town.

Sergeev said that Russian troops terrorised him and his nine-year old son, while forcing his father on pain of torture to make a video in front of the church saying "this is already Russian territory and Putin is our president".

Russian troops took over the church, tore down its 12-metre cross and replaced it with the Russian flag. The church is now used for troops' social events.

Clergy targeted

Professor Catherine Wanner from Pennsylvania State University is a specialist on religion in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine.

Religious persecution has been part of the war since its outset in 2022, she said.

She told the Commission that since 2022 "over 40 clergy have faced reprisals and five have been killed".

The Ukraine's broad religious diversity "clashes with the imposition of the Russian world ideology that comes with Russian rule" she explained.

Testimony about religious persecution given by Steven Moore, a former chief of staff in the US House of Representatives and humanitarian aid facilitator, lined up with Wanner's.

He has spent a significant period in Ukraine since the war started and recounted several cases of Ukrainian pastors being beaten and tortured by Russian agents and officials.

"Most Ukrainian Christians can't speak out" - even overseas - for fear of reprisals on families, he told the Commission.

Rumours gaining credence

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church made similar claims to Wanner, Moore and Sergeev in a June 25 media interview.

There are no Greek Catholic or Roman Catholic priests in the occupied territories, he said.

Russian forces are destroying or appropriating churches while driving out clergy and banning Catholic organisations, including Caritas.

Russian Orthodox and Kremlin partnership

Moore told the Commission that the Russian Orthodox Church "is not a church as we would think of one, but it's a working arm of the Kremlin".

"Prominent members of the media and even some members of Congress continue to tell Americans that the Ukrainian government persecutes Christians" said Moore.

Russia and President Vladimir Putin must be held accountable for their numerous war crimes so that they will be deterred from further attempts to use religion to inspire violence and justify repressing religious minorities.

Source

• OSV News

The study was conducted in 2023 by researchers from Massey University and funded by the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand and the New Zealand Islamic Think Tank.

It followed several discussions between government and Muslim organisations following the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks. Read more

The alleged Muslim attackers and others mobbed 12 students while they were conducting a traditional house-to-house rosary service on 5 May.

For many Indonesian Catholics the month of May is special, a time to visit Marian grottos and shrines to pay their respects to the mother of Jesus.

Pray at home

The man at the head of an Islamic extremist group said Christians should gather in church.

"If you perform any praying, do it in your church as we local Muslims are used to in our mosque; not in a residential house like this" a man told witnesses.

He and his fellow attackers ordered the students to stop the prayer activity and disperse.

The man then returned with a mob who attacked the students.

Police complaint lodged

"We were at the police's command post until 3am to demand perpetrators be held accountable for last night's hostile deed" one of the students says.

Two female students were injured and one Muslim man was assaulted for defending the students.

The victims were saved as other Muslims extended help.

The police have now opened an investigation.

Speaking to local media, Chief Superintendent Alvino Cahyadi said police were looking into the case after a video about the incident was posted on social media.

Some female students suffered minor injuries.

Arrests made

Police in South Tangerang presented the suspects to media on Tuesday this week.

"In a series of case proceedings, we concluded that there was sufficient evidence so they were named suspects" police say.

A police statement says the suspects provoked the students and shouted at them "in a loud voice with a tone of swearing and intimidation".

It also says others carrying knives joined in the attack.

Source

• UCA News
• Asia News

The report, "Singled Out: Islamophobia in the Classroom and the Impact of Discrimination on Muslim Students," is based on a statewide survey of about 1,500 Muslim students between 11 and 18 years old.

It was released Wednesday (Oct. 16) by the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

The organization found that 40% of participating students experienced some form of bullying because of their religion. That's down from the 53% in 2017 who reported being bullied — either verbally insulted or abused — for being Muslim. Read more

Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that Christian children and other faith minorities were using different names to prevent them from being subjected to abuse.

He said: "Many minorities give their children Islamic names so they will not be singled out as Christians and become potential targets for discrimination in primary or secondary schools or at the college level. Read more

New South Wales Liberal MP Julian Lesser spoke out at a St Thomas More Society meeting saying, while preparing for the upcoming religious discrimination debate in parliament, he canvassed faith-based leaders across his Sydney electorate.

In doing so, he said he heard stories he never believed he would hear expressed in Australia.

"Anti-Semitism is sadly on the rise in this country, with a 60 per cent increase in attacks on Jews in Australia over the last 12 months.

"When I have consulted Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists in my electorate about their religious freedom, they have told me of people...[being asked]...to remove ­articles of clothing that denote their religious devotion and of public libraries not wanting to stock their holy books.

Lesser said that although Christians have fewer physical threats made against them, "there is a cultural and existential threat to Christianity as people are ­trying to delegitimise the place of Christ­ianity in the public square and force it off the national stage."

Lesser said Christians presented eight specific concerns during the consultation. In essence, they are worried about:

• Their freedom to quote the Bible
• Their ability to preach and share Jesus's message
• What their children are being taught about gender and sexuality
• What they will be allowed to teach about gender and sexuality to the next generation
• Employees continued right to follow their conscience and object to work-based ­corporate social ­responsibility programmes without their jobs being threatened
• Attacks on the right of church institutions to preach, teach, employ (or not employ) and ­provide (or not provide) services in ­accord­ance with their faith
• People using the discrimination law in the name of human rights as a weapon against Christians
• The media culture and in particular the ABC bias against Christians and Christian leaders.

Targeting the church and Christian organisations is "a bad development" for Australia, he says.

"Christianity is not a religion to be afraid of."

He said he wants Christians in the community to make submissions about the draft religious discrimination bill.

Source

• The Australian
• Head Topics
• Image: Eternity News

Given a chance to roll those comments back a few minutes later, Jones did the contrary, saying the Catholic Church had done well financially from the influx of Filipino workers into New Zealand. Read more

A woman threatened and abused a Muslim woman sitting quietly in her car.

Bush wants more research to establish whether there is a need for hate-crimes legislation.

He is concerned about a rise in reports of hate crimes.

However, it is clear that the incident is already covered by the law. Continue reading

The U.S. State Department warned that religion-based terrorists as well as some governments across the globe are threatening the liberties of religious minorities.

"One of the best ways to deny these murderers their victory is by ensuring that those they have sought to destroy not only survive, but thrive," said Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, announcing the 2015 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom last Tuesday.

Though the report has often focused on serious violations of religious freedom by governments across the globe, Blinken said it also details the "major threat" by groups like Daesh (ISIS) al-Qaida, al-Shabab and Boko Haram.

"There is, after all, no more egregious form of discrimination than separating out the followers of one religion from another — whether in a village, on a bus, in a classroom — with the intent of murdering or enslaving the members of a particular group," he said.

The document, in its 18th year, includes details of how almost 200 countries are faring in protecting the religious liberty of their citizens.

David Saperstein, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said 24 percent of the world's countries — in which 74 percent of the world's population lives — have serious restrictions on religious freedom, based on government policies or hostile acts by individual organizations or societies.

He highlighted the report's emphasis on laws around the globe about blasphemy and apostasy: "No one region, country or religion is immune to the pernicious effects of such legislation."

Source

• Religion News Service
• UPI
• Malaysiakini
• The Whitehouse
• Asia Times
• Image: mccluresmagazine.com

Ignorant media hype, foul abuse of the faith or godlessness of others, ugly violence calculated to scare and kill: such practices are now familiar features of daily life in democratic polities where religion was once supposed to be a settled issue.

India is no exception to the troubling trend.

The democracy with the most innovative constitutional formula for handling tensions among multiple faiths - the Indian brand of secularism - is nowadays plagued by organised bigotry, often led by elected representatives bent on outfoxing their opponents and winning elections.

The thuggish tone is audible in the recent remarks of Manohar Lal Khattar, chief minister of the BJP-run state of Haryana. ‘Muslims can continue to live in this country but they will have to give up eating beef. The cow is an article of faith here', he told The Indian Express.

‘Culturally, we are democratic', he added. ‘Democracy has freedoms, but those freedoms have a limitation. Freedom of one person is only to the extent that it is not hurting another person.'

Khattar conveniently forgot to mention that growing numbers of India's Muslim citizens (they're one-seventh of the total population) feel deeply offended and threatened by such remarks, and by the rising numbers of murderous assaults they're facing throughout the country.

Proud defender of his state's strict ban on the killing of cows, in a country that is among the world's largest beef exporters, Khattar instead went on to defend the mob that recently beat to death a Muslim farmer for allegedly eating beef at home.

It was the ‘result of a misunderstanding', he said, and ‘both sides' had committed wrongs. He claimed the victim had made a ‘halki tippani [loose comment]' about cows which hurt the sentiments of the men who subsequently went on the rampage.

Khattar compared the incident with a man whose anger gets the best of him after seeing his mother being killed, or his sister molested. Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation, from an article by John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney.
• Image: wired.co.uk