Best parallels:
- Raif Badawi – individual versus state/religious dictatorship – whipped for his views about freedoms; Saudi Arabia
- British Ministers call climate change deniers the “flat earthers” of the 21st century
- Blasphemy laws… it is a crime to defame Mohammed/ prophet (Charlie Hebdo). Muslims in countries like Pakistan often persecute many individuals from other religions on the blasphemy charge for all sorts of crimes…
- Parallel of someone who defends principles to the death, eg. Sri Lankan Journalist…
- Soldier stories…
Church’s perspective
Just as Galileo challenged the status quo during the 16th century, and stated that the earth was round (not flat), so too have many politicians and climate-deniers been labelled “flat-earthers”. This is because many scientists believe that they dogmatically cling to outdated views and values and refuse to recognise the challenges of science and a changing world.
Tim Yeo, chairman of the United Kingdom’s parliamentary select committee on energy and climate change, described those who question the science of climate change as “the flat earthers of the 16th century”.
In 1988, Ms Thatcher (herself a scientist) placed climate change on the global agenda: “It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways,” she said. Lord Deben criticised Mr Abbott: “Australia’s Mr Abbott is not talking about leaving a better world than before. That is not Conservative. And it is a distorted market that makes people rich today at the cost of people tomorrow.”
Agreeing that climate change is the greatest “moral challenge” of our time, President Obama urges action on climate change
President Barack Obama says, “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” (January 2015)
He declared, “2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.” “It has serious implications for the way we live right now. Stronger storms. Deeper droughts. Longer wildfire seasons.”
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world.” (October 2014)
Professor Brian Schmidt Nobel Laureate: “As for my grandkids, I really do fear for them and humanity if we don’t tackle climate change.”
While our environment literally burns, the powerful, the wealthy, and many billionaire-miners are dictating their priorities and peddling, what many commentators believe, are their misinformed views. Scientist and former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery says, “there’s a lot of money on the other side (the coal and mining industries) – billions of dollars of vested interests and they are quite keen to keep people misinformed”. He sarcastically reminds us, they are like the pesticide industry telling us how great pesticides are.
Whilst 300 scientists recently confirmed in the Interpanel on Climate Change report that man-made events are catastrophically changing the environment, many believe that the environment is just “changing”. Such a clash is often the case when new ideas challenge the status quo.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt searches for answers on wikipedia. Tony Abbott quoting Dorothy McKellar’s poem: “Australia is a hot country: always is and always will be.”
The governor of Miami, Rick Scott, has forbidden public officials, including engineers and scientists, from using the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in official communication.
One of the Republican contenders for President, Marco Rubio said, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”
Evidently, the debate in Australia reflects that between scientists and creationists, which alarms Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester. He believes that the climate deniers take “pages from the creationists’ PR playbook” and manufacture doubt about fundamental issues in climate science that were decided scientifically decades ago. He says “creationism” has rebranded itself as “creation science” and has infiltrated classrooms across America. It is “transparently unscientific” and sets out to deny evolution at the highest levels. States such as North Carolina have banned state planners from using climate data in their projections of future sea levels.
Such a conflict shows how, once again, the church is trying to occupy centre stage with the debate, as it did in 1670.
Church parallels:
Father Musala, Ugandan priest, raised the alarm about rampant sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Uganda; he was sacked and accused of being gay.
Last year, Father Musala wrote to the Archbishop of Kampala, Cyprian Lwanga, asking him to investigate sexual abuse and warning that the issue threatened to blow up in Uganda as it had in Europe. The Archbishop accused the priest of threatening the morality of the Church. Musala said it was a “diversionary tactic”. He was accused of being a homosexual which is a dangerous slur in a homophobic society like Uganda, in which fundamentalist Christian groups have called for the death penalty for homosexuals.
Anyone who thinks that the power of the Church after the royal commission into the child abuse scandals is dwindling, just ask Father John Reynolds. He is a well-known local priest who was recently defrocked. He believes he was treated worse than the paedophile priests because of his inclusive views: he desire to include same-sex parishioners and was prepared to support women priests. He did not last long. Viva the church.
So don’t be surprised if this Government, the creationists and the billionaire-miners start believing all over again that the earth is flat, that the P&O cruise liners will be falling off the edge of the earth.
See longer version on Galileo and scientific background based on Michael White’s excellent biography of Galileo: Antichrist
As the Charlie Hebdo incident shows, defamation of the prophet Muhammad can be a dangerous thing. In many Muslim countries such as Pakistan there are blasphemy laws. It is illegal to blaspheme the prophet Muhammad.
In Pakistan, reformers and religious conservatives have been clashing for the past 20 years over the country’s blasphemy law. It states that anyone found to have defiled the name of Muhammad in writing or speech should be punished with life imprisonment or death. Up to 65 people, including lawyers and judges, have been murdered since 1990 over blasphemy allegations.
On the one hand, the government is seeking to reform blasphemy legislation. The governor of the Punjab province was gunned down in 2011 because he criticised the blasphemy law which is often exploited by individuals who wish to silence or kill people against whom they may have a grievance. Contrastingly Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry, the leader of the Khatm-e-Nubuwwat lawyers’ Forum, believes that the punishment for blasphemy should be “only death
In 2011, Asia Bibi, a mother of five, was told to bring water to fellow workers in a field in rural Pakistan. They declined to drink, saying that as a Christian she had contaminated it. They pressured her to convert to Islam. She allegedly said she did not believe Muhammad was a true prophet. For that remark she has been sentenced to death.
Without even seeking her account, a Pakistani court condemned her to hang under the country’s blasphemy law.
Thanks to international pressure, including a plea from the Pope, she may receive a presidential pardon, but Islamist groups have promised to kill her anyway.
Last month Latif Masih was shot dead after being bailed on another blasphemy charge, that he “desecrated a Koran”. His accuser then admitted he had invented the tale because he wanted to take over the 22-year-old Christian’s shop in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
In many Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Pakistan, Christian women are often abducted, raped and forced to marry Muslims.
In almost every Muslim country, to be a Christian or another religious minority, or even a Muslim of the wrong description, may be to live a life of fear, danger and constant, systemic discrimination much worse than the undoubted difficulties faced by many Muslims in the West.
Syrian human rights activists
“They put an AK47 to my head, but I laughed at them” says Souad Nofal a school teacher who stood up to ISIS. So enraged was Ms Nofal at the hypocritical religious beliefs of the IsiS militants that she stood for more than two months outside the ISIS headquarters in Raqqa carrying placards. Each placard criticised the group’s ideology and behaviour. “Show us your religion through decency, compassion and good deeds, ” was one such demand.
Ms Nofal ‘s courage shows that during times of conflict individuals are often forced to defend their principles in the face for death. She also exposes the gulf between a group’s pretended ideals and their real values. She said that the group also practice slavery and intolerance towards all infidels or “non-believers.”
According to Salman Rushdie, who won the Pen Pinter award in 2014, there is none braver than Syrian Mazen Darwish who courageously fights for free expression and human rights in one of the most dangerous places in the world. He was arrested by Syrians Air Force Intelligence and has disappeared from public view, possibly dead or languishing in prison with the 11,000 other tortured political prisoners.
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