May 25, 2007 | 8:17 pm

Bumbling God Blogger

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Jewish Television Network stopped by my office (cubicle) last week and interviewed me for a video blogs project that launched today. Yes, this vlog is rather self-indulgent; no, I’m not very articulate. I can’t figure out how to embed it, but if you were interested, here it is.

May 25, 2007 | 11:47 am

Gay rights opponent picked for surgeon general

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

President Bush sure knows how to pick a fight. I can only imagine he has another on his hands with the selection of Dr. James W. Holsinger to be the country’s 18th surgeon general. CBS News is reporting Holsinger wants to fight child obesity.

But my buddy the Bible Belt Blogger—who caught Jimmy Carter’s tongue in a trap last week—points out that Holsinger, a member of the Asbury Seminary board of trustees, has taken a strong stance against homosexuality.

Time‘s Richard N. Ostling wrote in 1991: Holsinger thinks Methodism could lose millions of members if an upheaval in church policy is ever approved. But Julian Rush of Denver, a pioneer gay Methodist minister, says, “I don’t expect any change in my lifetime. The church won’t lead the way on gays. It has to come from society into the church.”

Holsinger is also a member of the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church. Last year, he ruled in favor of a Methodist minister who had refused to allow a gay man to join his church, according to the Religion News Service.

As a judicial council member, he has also ruled that “a self-avowed practicing homosexual,” cannot be appointed as a pastor by a bishop, according to the United Methodist News Service.

The United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline states that “Since the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.”

 

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May 24, 2007 | 4:59 pm

Moderate Muslim leader dead *

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Tashbih Sayyed, the moderate Muslim who founded and edited the paper Pakistan Today, died yesterday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

I can’t find the news online, but here is what Roz Rothstein, national director of StandWithUs, had to say in a e-mail to friends:

  We are deeply saddened over the passing of our treasured friend and true hero Tashbih Sayyed. Tashbih’s insights, firm moral principles and courage to speak out, unaffected by hostility and threats, inspired all of us fortunate enough to know him. His humility, warmth, playful humor, and unwavering commitment touched our lives in countless ways. He will be deeply missed.

  Tashbih was a brilliant scholar, journalist, political analyst and author, but most importantly he was a beloved husband, father of three children, brother and cherished friend to many.

Born in 1941, Sayyed was a Shiite Muslim who fell out of favor with other Muslims—and into it with some Jews—because of his plainspoken politics. His fall from grace began in 1994, according to this article by Journal Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman, after he criticized “‘anti-Zionist governments’ for having a hand in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina that killed 87 people.”

  Sayyed also went on CBS’s “48 Hours” and told correspondent Bob Simon that Arab threats against terrorism expert Steven Emerson were real and credible. The mainstream Arab community reviles Emerson, author of “American Jihad” (Free Press, 2002). The backlash was immediate. “Brother,” Sayyed said one Arab leader told him, “now you are HIV positive.”

  Within a month, Pakistan Today’s advertising revenue fell from $4,000 per week to $350 (the sole remaining advertisers are two Hindu store owners). Muslim-owned stores stopped carrying his paper. Sayyed said he received “veiled physical threats.” His contributors threatened to stop payments unless he ran a full-page apology — on the front page. When he refused, the money dried up.

  Faced with $3,200 in weekly bills he could no longer pay, Sayyed had to decide whether to close the paper, or sell his (Laguna Hills) house. “My wife understood,” he said. He dabbed at tears in his eyes. “I apologize. It broke me.”

  The Sayyeds now produce Pakistan Today out of a small, rented house in Fontana. He still struggles to pay the printer and wire service bills, and his circulation has dropped to 4,000. (U.S. Census Bureau figures put California’s Pakistani population at 20,093, though Pakistanis I spoke to believe there are tens of thousands more). Pakistan Link, the largest national Pakistan weekly, publishes 25,000 copies per week.

  Sayyed acknowledges that in pushing unpopular opinions he has created — surprise — an unpopular paper. Others in the Muslim community say he is simply too far outside the pale to make a difference. “Our goal is to build bridges of understanding,” Akhtar Faruqui, editor of the Irvine-based Pakistan Link told me. Faruqui’s editorials have spoken approvingly of Seeds of Peace, a program that promotes Palestinian and Israeli coexistence. Faruqui, whose paper does reflect many moderate and liberal ideas, said he received no negative response for supporting Seeds of Peace, but he said he wouldn’t publish some of the opinions found in Pakistan Today, such as Op-Ed pieces critical of the Saudi royal family. “We try to promote understanding,” Faruqui said. “We don’t go to extremes. That would be too extreme.”

  Publishing such pieces has pushed Sayyed to the fringes of the local Muslim community, said Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. “Every religion has its extremist fringe,” Marayati said. “We believe mainstream moderates represent the mainstream of the faith. The extremist fringe has been given way too much public attention by people whose political purpose it serves.”

  Marayati said that several years ago, Aslam al-Abdullah, editor of the local Muslim magazine, The Minaret, shaved his beard to protest the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. For that he received threats and negative letters. “Everybody goes through this,” Marayati said, “for some it’s more of a story.” Sayyed accused Marayati of being a Muslim extremist in Western clothes.

On Tuesday, the Pew Research Center reported most Muslim Americans were more like Sayyed—middle-class, mainstream and moderate. But the study found that younger American Muslims, those between 18 and 29, were more sympathetic of Islamic extremism, with 26 percent saying suicide-bombing attacks on civilians could be justified when defending Islam.

Here is Sayyed’s final column, about Arab Israelis.

* Updated: Sayyed will be buried Sunday, May 27th, at 1:00 p.m. at Harbor Lawn Mount Olive Memorial Park and Mortuary in Costa Mesa, 1625 Gisler Ave. There will be traditional Muslim prayers from 1:00 to 1:20, followed by a brief grave-side service.

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May 24, 2007 | 10:25 am

Which ones would you keep?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s called “selective reduction”—the choice IVF patients make to abort one or more fetuses when several embryos take. GetReligion has a good wrap-up of a few stories published recently about fertility treatment and this medical procedure, and on Tuesday, I heard Washington Poster Liza Mundy talking about it on NPR.

Mundy had a powerful piece in Sunday’s WP magazine and is the author of a new book about the complications of fertility treatment, particularly the health complications that drug- or treatment-induced multiple pregnancies can cause both the mother and the unborn children.

Selective reduction is one of the most unpleasant facts of fertility medicine, which has helped hundreds of thousands of couples have children but has also produced a sharp rise in high-risk multiple pregnancies. There is no way to know how many pregnancies achieved by fertility treatment start out as triplets or quadruplets and are quietly reduced to something more manageable. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which publishes an annual report on fertility clinic outcomes, does not include selective-reduction figures because of the reluctance to report them.

Two weeks ago in the LA Times, Dan Neil shared this personal story of reduction:

MY WIFE AND I just had an abortion. Two, actually. We walked into a doctor’s office in downtown Los Angeles with four thriving fetuses — two girls and two boys — and walked out an hour later with just the girls, whom we will name, if we’re lucky enough to keep them, Rosalind and Vivian. Rosalind is my mother’s name.

We didn’t want to. We didn’t mean to. We didn’t do anything wrong, which is to say, we did everything right. Four years ago, when Tina and I set out on this journey to have children, such a circumstance was unimaginable. And yet there I was, holding her hand, watching the ultrasound as a needle with potassium chloride found its mark, stopping the heart of one male fetus, then the other, hidden in my wife’s suffering belly.

We don’t feel guilty. We don’t feel ashamed. We’re not even really sad, because terminating these fetuses — at 15 weeks’ gestation — was a medical imperative. This has been a white-knuckle pregnancy from Day 1, and had it gone on as it was going, Tina’s health would have been in jeopardy, according to her doctor. The fact is, multiple pregnancies are high risk, and they can go bad very suddenly. I wasn’t going to allow that, though the fires of hell might beckon.

But does “selective reduction” constitute abortion in the generally understood sense? Life is being ended, but life is also being created. Because doctors won’t implant multiple embryos without a patient’s acceptance that reduction may be necessary, the willingness to abort has become a prerequisite to older mothers bringing into this world a new life.

What do you think?

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May 23, 2007 | 5:10 pm

Cheney’s lesbian daughter gives birth

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Mary Cheney, VP Dick Cheney‘s lesbian daughter, gave birth today to a healthy little boy.

“I love babies, even Republican ones, and I’m glad he was born healthy,” my old colleague Greg Hernandez writes on his blog, Out in Hollywood. “I just wish he had a grandfather who loved him enough and loved his gay daughter enough to not endorse such anti-gay policies.”

Granted Dick and Lynne look awfully happy in this picture, but we all know where the Bush administration’s political base lies—and it’s not in bed with a party of the same sex.

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May 23, 2007 | 2:36 pm

Gay bishop not invited to Anglican gathering

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

When the archbishop of Canterbury sent out more than 800 invitations to the once-a-decade worldwide Lambeth Conference, two names were conspicuously missing: Martyn Minns, the Virginia bishop of a conservative break-away group, and V. Gene Robinson, the gay bishop of New Hampshire whose appointment has embodied the Anglican Church’s fracture.

From the NY Times:

Bishop Robinson said he was extremely disappointed at his exclusion and asked in a statement, “At a time when the Anglican Communion is calling for a ‘listening process’ on the issue of homosexuality, how does it make sense to exclude gay and lesbian people from the discussion?”

The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, who has expressed liberal views on homosexuality in the past, has been determined to keep the communion intact. In his invitation letter, Archbishop Williams wrote, “I have to reserve the right to withhold or withdraw invitations from bishops whose appointment, actions or manner of life have caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the communion.”

 

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May 23, 2007 | 1:27 pm

‘All types of nonsense’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is no doubt the following statement from a Catholic News Service article is accurate.

LONDON—The media spread “all types of nonsense” about religion, sometimes out of malice, but usually out of ignorance, said U.S. Archbishop John P. Foley.

The Revealer and GetReligion do a good job showing that. But the Dallas Morning News’ religion blog thought the same shoe could be put on the other foot:

LONDON—The clergy spread “all types of nonsense” about the media, sometimes out of malice, but usually out of ignorance, said Fill-in-the-Blank-Expert.

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May 23, 2007 | 11:05 am

Jewish ‘security-hawk’ and Iraq veteran turns against the war

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jon Soltz, a Jewish Army veteran, was an Iraq idealist. Now, he’s the man behind a half-million-dollar anti-war advertising effort that launched last week. From the Forward:

Soltz, 29, is one of the leading protesters of the Iraq War, but don’t call him a pacifist. A self-described “security hawk,” he fell in love with the idea of military service while touring Israel as a teenager. He describes himself as a “pro-Israel, pro-military guy.”

And in May 2003, he arrived for duty in Iraq as a supporter of the war.

“When I went to Iraq, I didn’t change my dog tags — I kept ‘Jewish’ on my dog tags because I believed in the war, because I believed, when I watched the president, that I was fighting for the national security of America,” Soltz recalled. The decision to keep his faith close to his heart, he noted, could have landed him “in big trouble” if he were to be captured by Iraqi insurgents, but he said he felt it was “the morally, religiously, right thing to do.”

            By the time that Soltz returned home in September 2003, having served as an operations manager for logistics convoys, he was worried that the troops, stretched too thin with too few resources, were on an impossible mission.

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May 22, 2007 | 11:07 pm

The Simpsons gospel and edible goodies

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I have a 26-year-old friend who still eats a Flintstones vitamin every day. But now, if he wishes, he can suck down a Simpsons Squirts, thanks to St. Hill Pharmaceutical Corp. (Hat-tip: Bible Belt Blogger)

Speaking of The Simpsons, Orlando Sentinel religion reporter Mark I. Pinsky, who is Jewish, is about to release an expanded version of his 2001 book, “The Gospel According to the Simpsons.” I just got a copy in the mail yesterday. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy it more than this guy.

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May 22, 2007 | 1:40 pm

Jewish parents decide to not circumcise

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This story has been going around for a while. Today it creeps up in the Chicago Tribune, under the headline “Some Jewish parents break ranks over circumcision.”

  When Leo Grossinger was 8 days old, his parents invited their relatives and friends to a ceremony welcoming him into their midst, as Jewish families have done for thousands of years.

They recited Hebrew blessings, lit candles, shared wine and challah, a braided bread. A rabbi conferred Leo’s Hebrew name, Asiel, which means “created by God.” When the ceremony was over, the guests ate bagels and lox.

  All in all, the event looked a lot like any other bris, or ritual circumcision. The only difference was that Leo never had to shed his diaper.

“I wanted to feel that connection with tradition,” said Leo’s mother, Erica Wandner. And it was important to her that the baby be given a Hebrew name in memory of Wandner’s mother. But neither Wandner nor her husband, Robin Grossinger, wanted to inflict pain and trauma on their new baby for a surgical procedure doctors say is not medically necessary.

The couple, of Berkeley, Calif., are among a small but growing number of American Jews who are questioning what is arguably the most sacred rite in Judaism.

First off, I think some people believe that eating bagels and lox is the most sacred rite in Judaism.

Second, despite the fact that the “rate of U.S. babies being circumcised before leaving the hospital has gone from an estimated 85 percent in 1965 to 57 percent in 2004,” it’s not universally accepted that circumcision is without health benefits. In December, the National Institutes of Health reported that circumcision dramatically reduces the transmission of AIDS in Africa.

As for why Jews have traditionally circumcised their boys—and, thank God, not their women, as some Muslim cultures promote—stems from this conversation God had with a 99-year-old, soon-to-be-circumcised Abraham.

Aside from the certain pain of Joshua circumcising the adult Israelites before taking Jericho, the bris has at times caused deeper trauma, including, in 2004, an ultra-Orthodox New York mohel’s infecting three babies with herpes, one of whom died.

(Here’s what is being said in The Jewish Journal’s reader forums.)

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May 22, 2007 | 9:52 am

Muslim attitudes *

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

After speaking with more than 1,000 American Muslims, the venerable Pew Research Center reported today that Muslims are generally happy in the United States and aren’t hung up with the issues that have caused the global “clash of civilizations.”

This, though, was a startling discovery:

Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.

In fact, a poll last month by WorldPublicOpinion.org found “most respondents have mixed feelings about Al Qaeda.”

The survey only found about 2.35 million Muslims living in the United States, far fewer than the seven million that CAIR claims live here. Other key findings:

- American Muslims have a positive view of society.

- The majority believe hard work pays off.

- Though many are relatively recent immigrants, they are fairly assimilated.

(* Update—here’s the AP story.)

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May 21, 2007 | 8:03 pm

The stoning in Iraq

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

For more than a year, Iraq has been besieged by sectarian assassinations—Sunnis and Shiites killing each other simply because each Muslim group considers members of the other heretics. We’ve grown callous to this news. But the story of the 17-year-old Iraqi girl stoned to death in an “honor killing” makes me burn with anger, almost to the point of tears. From the LA Times:

BAGHDAD — The video is shaky, but the brutality is clear.

A slender, black-haired girl is dragged in a headlock through a braying mob of men. Within seconds, she is on the ground in a fetal position, covering her head with her arms in a futile attempt to fend off a shower of stones.

Someone slams a concrete block onto the back of her head. A river of blood oozes from beneath her long, tangled hair. The girl stops moving, but the kicks and the rocks keep coming, as do the victorious shouts of the men delivering them.

In the eyes of many in her community in northern Iraq, 17-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad’s crime was to love a boy from another religion. She was a Yazidi, a member of an insular religious sect. He was a Sunni Muslim. To Duaa’s uncle and cousins, that was reason enough to put her to death last month in the village of Bashiqa.

Women’s groups say the video shows Iraq’s backward slide as religious and ethnic intolerance takes hold.

“There is a new Taliban controlling the lives of women in Iraq,” said Hanaa Edwar, a women’s rights activist. “I think this story will be absolutely repeated again. I believe if security is not controlled, such stories will be very common.”

The U.N. recently reported that these “honor killings” were on the rise in Iraq; in the first two months of the year, 40 women were killed for alleged “immoral conduct”—from having an affair to simply sitting in a car with a non-relative male.

I decided not to embed the video, but you can click here to watch it.

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