Blog Post #3: Iran and Christianity

Blog #4: Iran and Christianity

                Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani of Iran is a Christian and he is going through Iran’s Supreme Court because they want him to renounce his god.  This is an example of the crackdown on Christians in Iran.  The government is doing this because citizens of the Islam religion are leaving and converting faith to Christianity.  The Iran government has only recently released this information to the public so this is the cause of the crackdown on Christianity.  Many others in Iran believe that the Pastor was targeted because he had the courage to speak out against the other religions.  House Speaker John Boehner said, “I urge Iran's leaders to abandon this dark path, spare Yousef Nadarkhani's life, and grant him a full and unconditional release."

                This is a significant change and when most of the Supreme Court members are Islam it makes it harder to have a fair trial.  Something else I saw on the blog posts under the article was people arguing that he was in a cult and that didn’t make him a Christian.  Even so this would not give the Supreme Court the right to discriminate because of what his religion is.  He didn’t kill anyone and he didn’t destroy anything.  What does Iran want out of targeting one religion?  I believe this only will lead to war within the nation.  There needs to be negotiations for both of the different religions.  They need to make a truce or a compromise to work this problem out.

Israel is Under Heavy Pressure

Ryan Wehrenberg

SOC 202-01

9/22/2011

Israel is Under Heavy Pressure

                Israel wants to be a country of peace and live along with the Muslims but they have a different plan because they want to attack the people in Israel and depending on what Israel wants to do about it this could start a war.  Many people in the west say that sacrificing Israel in this manner will improve the situation rather than weakening itself in a global battle it should be winning hands down.  Many westerners think that denying the Muslims access would be just pouring gasoline on the fires of religious war.  Most of these people that are trying to take over Israel have gutted their armies of their military professionals.  Each small set back that these economies face is pushing these countries into more bloodshed. 

                If something like this did explode into something bigger than it already is, then I think that the United States shouldn’t get involved with conflict that we don’t have any say in because the only side that we would be able to fight for is Israel and it would be confusing to get into a religious conflict when there are many people who are Muslim that live in our country.  Most of the time it is hard for other countries to work against religious conflicts because religion in itself is more of an opinionated basis so it makes it tough to pick and choose.  If everyone could pitch in a hand then I think that this could work out a lot better than we assume it will.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richardlandes/100105285/israel-should-hold-fast-and-let-muslims-vent-their-rage/

Blog #3: UN Urges Nigeria to Stop Ethnic, Religious Violence

                Violent ethnic and religious chaos exploded early last month in Nigeria’s Middle Belt causing death, injury and destruction.  The UN says that seventy people have been killed so far.  This has been a problem for a long time but it hasn’t been as violent until just recently.  In the past five years there has been an area of prominent religion that has developed on each side of the country.  The U.N. Human Rights Chief, Navi Pillay called for a concerted effort to deal with the underlying causes of such repeated violent outbreaks.  Many leaders are trying to take immediate action because most of the violence is contained to the Middle belt because the Christians are in the south and the Muslims are in the north.  Pilay also mentions that the security forces sometimes make the situation worse by appearing to take one side or the other so it’s hard to just decide to send them out. 

                Regardless of how security forces seem to favor a side (which that would make sense because they might believe in one of the religions that is part of the quarrel) something needs to be done about this matter before serious fights start to happen and Nigeria becomes a separate nation.  The leaders need to handle this as a fragile situation but I think the sooner they get out there and stop the fighting the better off the nation will be as a whole.  I think military presence would be the smartest thing for the community.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/UN-Urges-Nigeria-to-Stop-Ethnic-Religious-Violence----129528013.html

9/11 Controversy, Ryan Wehrenberg

Ryan Wehrenberg

9/1/11

Religious Division

Remembering 9/11

            The 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is coming up very soon but there is chaos when it comes to discussing the event.  The New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided that the focus of the event would be on the families who lost loved ones during the attacks and both president Obama and George W. Bush will make brief remarks.  Another problem that has raised some controversy is that the first responder’s won’t be speaking and many of them don’t like that fact but they will still get recognized for the great things that they have done.  The main controversy is that the Mayor will not be allowing any clergies to come and speak.  There will be six moments of silence so that people can pray or meditate.  There is even a petition that is being put into action to demand that Bloomberg switches the course of his actions. 

            After analyzing the situation that the Bloomberg is in I think that he is doing the right thing because you can’t always make people happy because most people that are going to be at this event are going to have a different religion.  Plus he doesn’t want to turn this event into a debate when it is there so that we can remember all the people that we lost and all the hero’s that saved so many people.  I think that when speeches are done then they can be religious in nature and that’s fine but he doesn’t want people to come and speak about a particular religion.

http://blog.au.org/2011/08/30/concocted-controversy-religious-right-complaints-about-911-commemoration-ring-hollow/

Religious Tension in Egypt

Religious Tension in Egypt

It has been almost ten years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and there is still much tension and discrimination against the religion of Islam.  Even polls repeatedly show that even ten years after the terrorists attacks that there is still widespread hatred for America and Britain.  This comes from the same Middle Eastern part of the world also.  Egypt also has a lot to do with this situation when it comes to disliking Americans.  This discrimination is still happening but the war is also happening along with it so it’s understandable in a sense.  The new leader of Egypt  Ayman al-Zawahiri, was very persistant when it came to asking for the pictures of bin Ladens body.  This would also help people understand many conspiracy theories.  Many people still follow bin Ladens word and so this would only fuel anti-American sentiment.  The article said that we didn’t produce those images because we have the strength to do so.  It said that we didn’t produce them from fear that many people would spring into action towards the united states  for this.

                This needs to be more important because we have made enemy’s with these people that were united under one leader that they were trusted and even if he was twisting his words around there were so many people that cared about him and we needed to approach this way more cautiously.  I think our nation needs to make it a priority to speak to this nation about all the issues we have and make as much of an effort as possible to keep peace, or create it.