Opinion

Attacks against Palestinian Christians deepens determination to stay on the land

Palestinian Christians are doing their utmost to encourage their cohort to stay put on their lands.

Palestinian citizens of Israel protest over the spiraling rate of violent crime in their communities, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, Aug. 6, 2023. More than 130 people have been killed in violent crime inside Israel's Arab communities this year, according to Israeli media, already surpassing the number of killings in all of 2022. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

August 21, 2023

By 

Daoud Kuttab

(RNS) — Palestinian Christians living in Israel or the occupied West Bank have been facing a slow decline in numbers over the past few decades. In the first half of the 20th century, their numbers ranged between 20%-25% of the overall Palestinian population. Today, they are fluctuating between 1% and 2%.

Wars and conflicts have caused many to emigrate. The fact that they are generally located in the Jerusalem and Bethlehem areas, as well as the Nazareth and Galilee areas, has meant that they are generally in close touch with foreign tourists and pilgrims, relations that have fostered connections with Christian institutions — especially universities — abroad. Many have never returned.

The ascension of the most right-wing Israeli government in the history of Israel has made things worse for all Palestinians, but for Palestinian Christians the current regime has been a time of unprecedented attacks on churches, their leaders and their communities in Jerusalem and Haifa as well as cemeteries and other Christian locations. In addition, internal violence among Israel’s Arab communities has led to the death of some Christians since the beginning of this year through mid-July. Local leaders say Israeli police do little to stop this criminality

Further poisoning the atmosphere is the Israeli government’s refusal to even negotiate about the fate of the occupied territories and the appointment of convicted racist leaders as ministers of police and finance. The mixture of religious Jewish fundamentalists with extreme nationalism has made life for Palestinians toxic and dangerous. Deaths among Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces in 2023 have passed 200, among them 35 children.

In addition, the Religious Freedom Data Center, which documents attacks on Christians, estimates that since January 2023 at least 60 incidents of attacks against Christians have occurred. Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem, especially near New Gate and the Armenian Quarter, have been targeted by radical Jewish hooligans. Priests are regularly spat on. In Haifa a radical Hassidic community has been showing up in force to pray at the Stella Maris Monastery, claiming it is a Jewish site built on the remnants of the prophet Elisha and forcing local Christians and supporters to stand up to the Jewish pilgrims.

Meanwhile, bureaucrats in the government have frozen zoning decisions, preventing  Palestinians from gaining official permits to build homes. Since 1967, churches have funded a few small housing projects that have also allowed Palestinian Christians to overcome the prohibitive cost of living in Jerusalem, but no major housing developments in East Jerusalem have been approved in that time. Meanwhile Jewish Israelis are entitled to government-subsidized mortgages. 

When they build homes illegally, Israeli bulldozers knock them down, and the owners are sent a bill for the cost of the demolition. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, in May 2023 alone and on orders from the Israelis, 46 structures, including 30 homes belonging to Palestinians, were demolished.

There are other slights. Israeli legislatures have tried to ban Christians from sharing their faith under the guise of preventing “proselytization,” and Israeli Interior Ministry officials have barred evangelical Christian volunteers from obtaining a work visa. A video of an Israeli official banning a priest from accompanying the German minister of education to the Western Wall because he was wearing a cross has gone viral.

Lay people from the Latin church — the Christians who are in full communion with the pope — have been putting pressure on their leaders to speak out against the escalating attacks against Christians. Church leaders have been been making public appeals about the escalation of attacks on the churches and Christians to the Israeli government, which has been doing very little to stop the attacks. The protests have not changed official policy but have brought some relief

In the Haifa case, media coverage and the advocacy of Palestinian Christians led to a visit by the Israeli president and the chief of police, which appears to have temporarily quieted the radical Jewish group.

While the situation looks dark for the tiny Palestinian Christian populations, many are doing their utmost to defend, protect and encourage Christian Arabs to stay put on their lands.

In Galilee, two Palestinian Christians, Botrus and Samar Mansour, and their spouses decided to renovate their grandparent’s home in the biblical village of Cana, where Jesus is believed to have turned water into wine, into a chapel for visitors. The Cana Wedding Chapel has attracted pilgrims and tourists wanting to renew their vows.

The uptick in tourism is helping such efforts, as tourists have flooded hotels and restaurants in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, providing Palestinian Christians with more money to overcome economic deprivation. But as with much in the Middle East, tourism’s effect is complicated, as the outmigration for education shows. Church leaders of all denominations have tried to fight the trend by setting up local higher educational institutions, including the Anglican Bir Zeit University, one of the best Palestinian schools, and the Catholics’ Bethlehem University.

It will be difficult to encourage the many Palestinian Christians who have emigrated to return, but the effort is underway to ensure that the tiny community stays put and has what it takes for sustainability.

But a longer-term fix would be to address the growing religious-nationalist threat, and sooner rather than later. The world community has supported Israel for decades by claiming that they have “shared values.” What is happening to Palestinians in general, and Palestinian Christians specifically, contradicts that claim. 

(Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian Christian journalist from Jerusalem and the former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Iran’s street art shows defiance, resistance and resilience

Iranian artists are showing renewed determination to promote freedom as a cultural necessity in Iran, even in the face of a government crackdown.

'While the teachers are detained, the classrooms will be closed,' reads one artist's painting on a wall. (Khiaban Tribune via Instagram)

August 30, 2023

By 

Pouya Afshar

(The Conversation) — A recent rise in activism in Iran has added a new chapter to the country’s long-standing history of murals and other public art. But as the sentiments being expressed in those works have changed, the government’s view of them has shifted, too.

The ancient Persians, who lived in what is now Iran, adorned their palaces, temples and tombs with intricate wall paintings, showcasing scenes of royal court life, religious rituals and epic tales. Following the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, murals in Iran took on a new significance and played a crucial role in shaping the national narrative. These murals became powerful visual representations of the ideals and values of the Islamic Republic. They were used to depict scenes of heroism, martyrdom and religious devotion, aiming to inspire national unity and pride among Iranians.

Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire in what is now Iran, was founded by Darius the Great in the sixth century B.C.E.
Laurens R. Krol, CC BY-SA

Over the centuries, these artworks came to adorn many public spaces, including the walls of mosques, universities and government buildings, becoming symbols of patriotism and religious devotion.

After the Islamic Revolution overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, murals began to convey new political messages and ideological propaganda. They celebrated the ideals of the Islamic Revolution and showcased the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini and other prominent figures of the revolution.

Murals frequently depicted anti-Western sentiments, condemning foreign interference and imperialism. They also highlighted the concept of martyrdom and the importance of defending the Islamic Republic against external threats, aiming to inspire national unity and pride among Iranians.

In 2022, the Iranian morality police arrested Mahsa (Jhina) Amini for allegedly failing to wear her hijab properly. After she died in police custody, public protests broke out across the country with the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” – and led to a new round of public art in Iran.

As a scholar of Iranian contemporary art, but more importantly as someone who studies the development of Iranian artists, I see their renewed determination to promote freedom as a cultural necessity in Iran, even in the face of a government crackdown.

‘Such bravery was hidden in this land’ reads an Iranian protest mural.
Khiaban Tribune via Instagram

Street art as protest

In the months following Amini’s death, artists, activists, and, most importantly, ordinary citizens poured into the streets to claim the public spaces and call for freedom.

Iranian street art shows a woman raising her arms, with fists clenched.
Khiaban Tribune via Instagram

Street art emerged as a powerful medium through which individuals could address a wide array of pressing social and political issues, including women’s rights, freedom of expression, political activism and the desire for a life free from the constraints of religious laws.

Fountains in Tehran were turned the color of blood in protest at the government crackdown on protests.
Khiaban Tribune via Instagram

Graffiti artists, in particular, played a vital role in expressing dissent and resistance. Throughout Iranian cities, evocative graffiti murals have appeared, telling stories of struggle, liberation and the indomitable spirit of the movement through the past 45 years since the 1979 revolution.

‘If you do not finish the job, you will be finished’ reads a piece of graffiti in Iran.
Khiaban Tribune via Instagram

Watching the progression of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the distribution of art created parallel to it, I noticed that artists turned public spaces into platforms for political messages, critiquing policies, advocating social change and promoting gender equality.

Sometimes even a dialogue emerged on the walls between the oppressed and the oppressor. Artists depicted pictures of the killed citizens, the activists detained, as well as iconic images of the revolution. The government erased or painted over the graffiti, but protesters came back with new images and messages.

Central to this movement is the participation of both professional artists and non-artist citizens, instigating change and fostering consciousness through powerful imagery created on the city walls. Ordinary people participate in changing the city’s visual landscape by expressing themselves through art.

The government responds

The rise of protest art in Iran has faced opposition from the government, which viewed these forms of expression as acts of defiance.

A street sign honoring someone who died in the Iran-Iraq war has that person’s name covered up and replaced with that of Mohsen Shekari, hanged in 2022 for participating in anti-government protests.
Khiaban Tribune via Instagram

Government suppression tactics in response to murals and expressions of dissent have been alarmingly severe. These tactics encompassed frequent physical removal of murals that challenged the status quo, aiming to silence the voices of those speaking out against injustice by detaining, kidnapping and threatening the lives of their creators. In addition to this visual erasure, authorities imprisoned artists and other demonstrators for their activism and imposed employment restrictions as punitive measures.

Despite governmental opposition and legal challenges, artists and activists persevered. They have used art to voice their concerns, challenge societal norms and advocate for change.

(Pouya Afshar, Associate Professor of Art & Design, UMass Lowell. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

In a new ‘Animal Liberation,’ Peter Singer consolidates advances in animal rights

‘A lot has happened in the past 33 years,’ said the ethicist about his update to his classic 1975 book.

"Animal Liberation Now" by Peter Singer. Cover via Harper Collins

August 11, 2023

By 

Charles C. Camosy

(RNS) — It may appear strange that a Catholic moral theologian (me) would interact with an atheist philosopher who has consistently rejected the sanctity of human life (Peter Singer) while demanding we humans respect the lives of nonhuman animals. But the Australian ethicist and Princeton University professor has long proved himself willing to consider and debate other viewpoints with both rigor and generosity. This has been the basis of our friendship and collaborations for more than a decade.

Singer’s claims about animals were made most famously in his 1975 book, “Animal Liberation,” a foundational text for the philosophy behind veganism. In May he published a new edition, “Animal Liberation Now,” updating his original to account for the changes in attitudes toward animals over the past half century. I talked to Singer about the new book and how Christian ethics have affected his thinking on these topics. The interview has been edited.

Why would a thinker with your views engage seriously with Christian ethics?

Philosophy is about using reason and argument to examine the foundations of our views. We can’t do that well without engaging with thinkers who start from different foundations. In ethics, in particular, if we just assume one normative theory — say, utilitarianism, or a natural law view, or Kantian ethics — is correct, we would only be describing the implications of that view, and so would not have adequate grounds for saying that our moral judgments are sound.

You ask specifically about my engagement with Christian ethics in regard to its view of the sanctity of human life. This is a topic of great importance in bioethics, with implications for abortion and euthanasia, as well as allowing people to die by withdrawing or withholding treatment. It is also relevant when we try to answer when it is wrong to kill nonhuman animals. The natural law tradition has attracted many eminent thinkers, and I can’t imagine teaching or writing on the central questions of bioethics without engaging with the best thinkers in that tradition.

You’ve shifted your views on this over the years, but is Christian ethics still the bad guy when it comes to treatment of animals?

I still think that the Christian tradition is a malign influence on our thinking about animals, but, thanks to Christians like you, as well as Andrew Linzey and David Clough, I accept that it has some positive elements as well. The problem is that the most influential Christians have written about animals as if they don’t matter at all. Take Paul’s “doth God care for oxen?” — obviously a rhetorical question to which he assumed that the answer is “no.” Or Augustine’s assertion that Jesus sent the devils into the Gadarene pigs (who then drowned themselves) in order to teach us that we have no duties to animals.

---

ARCHIVE: Fish, fowl — and faith

---

That claim influenced Aquinas, who says that we cannot sin against animals, and that being cruel to them is bad only because it might lead us to be cruel to humans. I acknowledge that Francis has rejected the view that the dominion verse in (the Bible’s Book of Genesis) means that we can treat animals as we please, but it would be good to have similarly clear statements of the need to reject the claims made by Paul, Augustine and Aquinas.

And I’m waiting for a pope to say that raising animals in factory farms is a misuse of God’s creatures, and Christians ought not to support this abuse by eating products from animals who have been treated in this way.

What reasons did you have for coming out with a new version of “Animal Liberation”?

“Animal Liberation Now” is very different from “Animal Liberation,” and that is why HarperCollins, the publisher, has given it a new title by adding the “Now.” It has to be different, because the text of the earlier book dates from 1990, and a lot has happened in the past 33 years. The first chapter describes new research on animal consciousness, and on which animals are likely to be capable of feeling pain. The two longest chapters — the second chapter, on the use of animals in research, and the third chapter, on factory farming — indicate what is happening in these areas now, instead of what was happening in the 1980s. The fourth chapter discusses ethical eating and describes some powerful new reasons for not eating meat or dairy products: slowing climate change and reducing the risk of another pandemic.

---

RELATED: What are pigs for?

---

I also give more attention to the way we treat fish, a question that I neglected in the earlier editions. When we consider the vast number of fish we raise in factory farms, and the even greater number we catch and kill in painful ways, it is clear that there is no justification for the view that somehow eating fish is better than eating mammals and birds. Towards the end of Chapter 5, in which I trace the history of speciesist attitudes in Western thought, I applaud the new direction that you and the other Christian thinkers I have just mentioned are taking. In the final chapter, I outline the progress that has been made, but also what else needs to change.

What do you think is the most important thing Christians can do when it comes to respecting nonhuman animals?

Avoid factory farmed products, including farmed fish, and encourage your fellow Christians to do the same.

 

Appealing to Orthodox Jews, Israeli media remove women from view

Determined to return women’s images to the public sphere, a feminist Orthodox Israeli has created a unique photo bank of religious Jewish women and their families. It has become a resource for positive images of religious Jewish women.  

Jewish women study Jewish texts together. Photo by Laura Ben-David, courtesy Jewish Life Photo Bank

July 21, 2023

By 

Michele Chabin

JERUSALEM (RNS) — For more than a decade, Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, an Orthodox Jewish feminist, has been chronicling the gradual disappearance of women from magazines, advertisements and other media in Israel as modesty customs spread beyond the Orthodox Jewish world.

“It’s been happening in the private Orthodox sphere, where magazines and advertisements and circulars don’t include photos of women and girls. It’s become the norm,” Jaskoll says. “It started with showing women in modest clothing, to blurring women in pictures, to completely taking them out.”

The trend began in the 1990s as Haredi and even some mainstream Orthodox communities in Israel and abroad embraced a more stringent definition of religious modesty.

The ultra-Orthodox Israeli newspaper Shacharit covered Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s July 19, 2023, address to the U.S. Congress in Washington, but erased Vice President Kamala Harris when it ran an article. Screen grab

In response, some fervently Orthodox men demanded that women sit in the back of public buses so as not to come in contact with men, a practice Israel’s Supreme Court deemed illegal.

Eventually, the guidelines on modesty spread to some segments of the non-Orthodox world, especially businesses and organizations with Orthodox clients.

From 2004 to 2012, Israel’s largest transportation company, Egged, stopped running advertisements with women’s photos in Jerusalem after the ads were repeatedly defaced. In 2017, the furniture manufacturer Ikea created an alternative Israeli catalog without a single photo of a woman. Both Egged and Ikea backtracked after public pressure.

But against the urging of women’s rights and human rights organizations, many non-Orthodox businesses, banks, cellphone companies, health maintenance organizations and even government agencies continue to show only men in their advertising, at least in some locations.

Determined to return women’s images to the public sphere, Jaskoll has created a unique photo bank of religious Jewish women and their families. Launched by the religious women’s advocacy organization Chochmat Nashim, the Jewish Life Photo Bank has become a resource for positive images of religious Jewish women.

Jaskoll came up with the idea after public relations consultant Rachel Moore, a friend, complained about the near impossibility of finding high-quality photos of religious women for her clients.

“I was consistently looking for creative ways to make content that wasn’t necessarily targeted to a religious demographic, but that showed regular people doing regular things while not half-dressed,” Moore says.

An Orthodox Jewish woman holds a Torah scroll as her daughter hugs a toy Torah. Photo by Fruma Landa, courtesy Jewish Life Photo Bank

The typical stock photos available from Israeli and international photo banks depict women in clothes that many Orthodox Jews would consider immodest: tight pants and other figure-hugging clothing; sleeveless, often low-cut shirts or dresses; and above-the-knee skirts or shorts.

The few available stock photos of Orthodox people, meanwhile, are usually of men and boys, often in prayer, with few images of women.

To jump-start the project, Jaskoll put out an online call to Orthodox women to ask if they would agree to be photographed performing their day-to-day activities.

“The response was incredible,” Jaskoll said. Within 48 hours more than 250 women in several countries had volunteered to model or photograph others, or offered a space for a photo shoot. Photo shoots have taken place in Israel, the U.S., England and France.

A variety of the photo categories available at the Jewish Life Photo Bank. Screen grab

The photo bank offers images in 35 categories, including parenting, Torah learning, holidays, family, business and sport. Many show Orthodox women in settings where they are often present but rarely photographed — engaging in business meetings, lecturing at a synagogue, studying religious texts, holding or praying from a Torah, playing tennis or touch football.

Others depict couples or families in scenes Haredi publications don’t publish, even when a couple is being honored together at a fundraiser.

While the photo bank hasn’t yet had a measurable impact within the Orthodox world, the Jewish Press, a mainstream Orthodox paper in New York, is a subscriber. 

“The bank is a great resource because it features pictures of frum (religiously observant) people in frum settings that we’re able to use without reservation,” says Shlomo Greenwald, editor of the paper’s print edition.

In all, since going live in late 2021, the bank has sold 22 all-access subscriptions, 129 multi-image packages and hundreds of individual photos.

“We are happy to support one of the photo bank’s goals, which is to help increase female representation in Orthodox media, where it is sorely lacking in some places,” Greenwald added.

Keren David, managing editor of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, a weekly newspaper with a religiously mixed readership, subscribes to the bank because “it’s difficult to source authentic photos of Jewish life. We’re not the sort of newspaper that is happy with the ‘men only’ images used by some papers.”

Many Orthodox women exercise and play sports. Photo by Adina Levitan, courtesy Jewish Life Photo Bank

Although she supports Orthodox women’s visibility, Elana Sztokman, a feminist activist and author of the 2015 book “The War on Women in Israel,” notes that “the erasure of women isn’t only about Orthodox women. While I’m all for newspapers writing about and including photos of Orthodox women, we should shift the focus to say we need to write more about all women, their opinions and achievements.”

Jaskoll understands Sztokman’s concerns but says that Orthodox women are in a uniquely difficult position. “Yes, the Orthodox media erases all women, but we’re the ones who are being erased from our own media, and we have to put ourselves back in.”

She is worried, too, about the way secular, formerly religious and non-Jewish creators portray and “fetishize” Orthodox Jewish women.

“Just look at Netflix, at (the shows) ‘My Orthodox Life’ and ‘Unorthodox,’ and how oppressed they say we are.”

The photo bank, which was created by Orthodox Jewish women, shows a different, more realistic reality, Jaskoll says.

“We are telling our own stories.”

Drag queen, Christian artist Flamy Grant joins lawsuit over Tennessee’s anti-drag act

She joins LGBTQ nonprofit Blount Pride in suing a Tennessee district attorney who threatened to prosecute them over a pride event where Grant is scheduled to headline.

Drag queen Flamy Grant poses in front of a sunset. Photo courtesy of Flamy Grant

August 31, 2023

By 

Kathryn Post

(RNS) — Flamy Grant, a drag performer and Christian music artist, has joined an LGBTQ nonprofit in suing a local prosecutor in Tennessee who threatened to prosecute them over a pride event where Grant is scheduled to headline on Saturday (Sept. 2).

“I think it’s an issue of defending our First Amendment rights as artists, queer people and as citizens,” said Grant, the first drag queen to top iTunes’ Christian music charts.

Earlier this week, Ryan Desmond, the district attorney general in Blount County, south of Knoxville, warned Blount Pride in a letter that he intended to enforce the Tennessee Adult Entertainment Act, better known as the “anti-drag act,” if he found any violations of the act at Blount Pride’s festival on Saturday. The festival is slated to present comedy revues, choir concerts and drag performances.

The entertainment act, which prohibits “adult cabaret entertainment” from taking place in public or in a place where it could be viewed by children, passed the state Legislature in February. But in June a federal court ruled that the law is unconstitutionally vague. 

Desmond’s letter argues that because that decision is being appealed by the state’s attorney general, Blount County can prosecute violations of the act. The attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, is named along with Desmond as a defendant in the lawsuit, as are three Blount County law enforcement officials.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit late Wednesday on the plaintiffs’ behalf, calling Desmond’s letter “a naked attempt to chill Plaintiffs’ speech and expression in retaliation to Blount Pride’s social media posts.”

Grant told Religion News Service after joining the suit, “This is an infringement of the rights of Americans, it is a violation of our personal rights, and it’s just a bad faith, bigoted law, that unfairly targets people based on their sexual identity and orientation, their gender identity, and in my case, their career as a drag queen.”

In an email to local news outlet WVLT news, Desmond said he wrote his letter “simply to give individuals reasonable and fair notice that there is criminal statute that is still in effect in this jurisdiction.” Desmond could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

The lawsuit claims that because the anti-drag law was found unconstitutional based on its legal merits, not just based on facts limited to a particular county, it can’t be enforced anywhere in the state. It argues separately that the law is unconstitutional and that Desmond and his co-defendants sought to restrict plaintiffs’ right to free speech and expression. It also asserts that the plaintiffs have a “reasonable fear” that the law enforcement officials named in the suit will target the event for surveillance and enforcement.

“This law, which specifically targets drag performances, threatens to return the LGBTQ+ community to the days when they had to hide their identity and their art behind blacked-out windows,” the suit says, in requesting an injunction and temporary restraining order to prevent enforcement of the anti-drag law.

---

RELATED: Flamy Grant: A drag queen’s journey from church kid to chart-topping Christian artist

---

As of Thursday evening, the event was still planned for Saturday at Maryville College, a school connected to the Presbyterian Church (USA). Despite the possibility of protests — Desmond’s letter referred to potential “protestors and counter-protestors” — Grant says she’s excited to return to Maryville, a town where last year she held a packed-out concert on one of her favorite stops of her tour.

“I want to support this community, their right to continue to gather and throw a rainbow shindig and have a good time together,” said Grant.

Though the event is not faith-based, a local Episcopal church is one of the sponsors, and Grant’s performances, which feature full-throated folk songs about growing up in the church, are known for their spiritual flair. She told RNS she hopes the lawsuit can debunk the myth that drag is an inherently sexualized art form. It’s a queer art form, she said, one that has as much range as theater or dance.

“Drag is a liberating thing. It shines a light on the ways that we have forced ourselves to fit in boxes that we weren’t meant to fit in,” she said. “And for me, spirituality is all about liberation, it’s calling shame what it is, and calling people into liberation and pride, so they are proud of who they are, and that they know they are worthy and loved. I think drag absolutely can be a spiritual art form.”

---

RELATED: Over the weekend, fusions of faith and extremism at drag show protests across country