JAIPUR: In a break from the past, a non-Muslim candidate from Rajasthan has topped the all-India entrance exam for a master’s course in Islamic studies at the Central University of Kashmir.
“Islam is portrayed as a radical religion and there is lot of misconception about it. The division in the society is growing today and it is really very important to understand each other’s religion,” said Shubham Yadav, who would join the course in Kashmir for two years.
The result of the common entrance test, held on September 20, was declared on October 29.
The university, which had set up the Islamic studies centre in 2015, confirmed that Yadav is the first non-Muslim candidate to top the exam.
“This is the first time a non-Muslim has topped the entrance exam. We’ve had non-Muslim scholars in the past,” Professor Hamid Naseem Rafiabadi told PTI.
Yadav (21) has done BA honours in philosophy from the Delhi University and hails from Alwar where two lynching cases of Pehlu Khan in 2017 and Akbar alias Rakbar Khan in 2018 took place.
“Such kind of incidents also made me think and gave motivation to read about the religion (Islam). I convinced my parents to pursue Islamic studies by making them understand that it will be about Islamic history and culture and they agreed,” he said.
Yadav said that he developed an interest in Islamic studies during his college days and has informally studied about the Arab spring, Iran issues, early days of Islam and Prophet Muhammad and is looking forward to learn more about it in the formal course.
“Some of my friends who are from Muslim community are studying global Islamic politics,” said Yadav, who is also preparing for the civil services exam.
Yadav has a younger brother studying in class 11 while his father runs a general store in Alwar.
European Commission Speech Brussels, 17 Nov 2020 Cher Monsieur Almunia, cher Joaquín,
Mesdames, messieurs,
Je vous remercie pour votre invitation à cet événement qui porte sur un su…
The Lead Bishop for Prisons of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (Cbcew) has called on the British Government to go further in protecting prisoners and staff during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last Spring, the Government introduced an Early Conditional Temporary Release Scheme allowing the release of vulnerable prisoners who do not pose a threat to the public, including pregnant women and new mothers. The head of the Department, Bishop Richard Moth, contacted the UK Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland QC, to express the Catholic Church’s support to the decision.
The letter
In a new letter to the Secretary, the prelate asked the British Government to consider measures to counter the growing number of Covid-19 outbreaks among prisoners and staff by extending the Scheme. “Through releasing some prisoners who pose a low risk of harm and who are nearing the end of their sentences, it may be possible to ease pressure on the prison estate. This can also help to protect vital family support networks, which have come under increasing strain throughout the pandemic”, he said.
Although recognizing the great efforts of governors and prison staff in minimising the loss of life from Covid-19 among the prison population, Bishop Moth also highlighted the “significant cost that has been paid in terms of prisoners’ mental and physical health, restrictions to rehabilitation activity, and reduced family contact”. According to the prelate “this situation needs further attention.”
Over one third of Ukrainians were tobacco smokers in 2019, according to the results of the first nationwide, large-scale STEPwise approach to surveillance (STEPS) survey on the main risk factors for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in Ukraine. The data also demonstrate a large gender gap: 50.3% of men smoked compared to 16.7% of women.
“While NCDs represent a significant global public health challenge, this is particularly so in Europe, where they cause 89% of deaths and 84% of years lived with disability. The current COVID-19 pandemic serves as a reminder of the impact of NCD comorbidities, which have a detrimental effect on both disease severity and sickness duration,” said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe.
“The STEPS survey in Ukraine makes an important and relevant contribution to the European Programme of Work, as it measures not only the prevalence of NCD risk factors but also the coverage and effectiveness of selected priority interventions,” Dr Kluge added.
“WHO has supported Ukraine in addressing NCDs in the country in the past years,” explained Dr Jarno Habicht, WHO Representative and Head of the WHO Country Office in Ukraine. “To complement actions with population-level surveillance, the STEPS survey, conducted in Ukraine for the first time, allows us to determine the behavioural and biological risk factors for NCDs, and to collect extensive relevant data across the country to evaluate progress, set priorities, and plan policies, interventions and actions to protect Ukrainian people’s health and reduce the rate of mortality due to NCDs in coming years.”
Tobacco and alcohol use, physical inactivity, and unhealthy diets are the major risk factors for NCDs, including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. NCDs cause 91% of all deaths in Ukraine.
To assess the major behavioural and biological NCDs risk factors among the Ukrainian population, the nationwide population-based health examination survey was conducted in 2019 using the WHO STEPS methodology. In total, 4409 adults aged 18–69 years were interviewed and examined to collect data on key NCDs risk factors, including tobacco and alcohol consumption, unhealthy diets and physical inactivity.
The study revealed very high prevalence of NCDs and their risk factors in Ukraine, including high tobacco and alcohol consumption, very high salt intake, and low fruit and vegetable intake. Despite relatively low levels of insufficient physical activity, overweight and obesity are widespread in the country.
“Ukraine, like most other European countries, is characterized by a significant prevalence of NCD risk factors, which are responsible for the critical health indicators of the Ukrainian population,” said Mr Maxym Stepanov, Minister of Health of Ukraine.
“As the STEPS survey was conducted in Ukraine for the first time, it was mainly aimed at obtaining basic information on the main NCD risk factors, both behavioural and biological. The country included some additional questions related to mental health, cervical and breast cancer, and injury and violence in the survey. In this way, the information obtained can serve as a starting point for monitoring NCD risk factors in Ukraine, allowing the effectiveness of the National Plan implementation to be monitored,” he added.
The study results were presented during an online event in Ukraine on 17 November 2020. They will allow the country to track progress on the health-related Sustainable Development Goals as well as national, regional and global action plans and commitments related to the prevention and control of NCDs and their risk factors.
The survey was conducted by WHO, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the Public Health Centre of the Ministry of Health and the Oleksandr Yaremenko Ukrainian Institute for Social Research, with support from the World Bank.
The WHO STEPS tool is a standardized method for collecting, analysing and disseminating comprehensive data on NCDs, their risk factors and the responses of health-care systems. Data are collected on a wide range of behavioural and biological risk factors, as well as on individuals’ medical history of NCDs.
The path of conversion to Catholicism that primarily included care for our common home was the path taken by Knox Peden, a Texan from Dallas who had moved to Australia in 2011. Thanks to Pope Francis’s teaching in the Encyclical Laudato si’, he put his relationship with creation at the center of his own human and professional life. “I took to heart the call to ecological conversion,” he explains to Vatican News. “It’s also built on the idea of integral ecology which builds on other forms of Catholic teaching about, you know, the integral nature of our community, and our family and our society.” The Pope, he says, “encourages us to expand these ideas of relationship and communion to all of creation and realise that our life is based in relationships, it is essentially comprised of relationships and that we have a responsibility to maintain those relationships.” Among these relationships, Peden believes that, “the most important is our relationship to creation, to our common home on this planet.”
Knox Peden outside of his parish in O’Connor, Canberra
A historian and philosopher, and professor of European Enlightenment Studies at the University of Queensland, Knox Peden is one of over 10 thousand Laudato si’ Animators throughout the world formed by the Global Catholic Climate Movement. These are people who, for the most part, were already dedicated in their own local parishes, associations, or religious traditions and who feel particularly called to live integral ecology and Laudato si’, committing themselves to service in their own communities.
Within his own parish community, dedicated to St Joseph in O’Connor, a suburb of Canberra, Peden organizes conversations among the faithful around the message of the 2015 Papal document, as well as prayer walks in nature. Though “not an activist by nature,” he clarifies, “I never turn down the chance to talk about ideas I’m passionate about.” During the Season of Creation, from last 1 September to 4 October, he participated in the redevelopment of his parish’s flowerbeds and gardens, collaborating with Erin, a fellow-parishioner who guided the group in the planning and planting.
Erin guides the planting project at St Joseph’s Parish
Pope Francis’s teaching
Peden grew up in the United States as a Presbyterian. Later on, he did not practice his faith for many years. Among the various aspects that Peden highlights regarding his conversion to Catholicism, which came about in July 2019, is that of the Pope’s “perspective” regarding the climate crisis and his teaching in general: “the more I read, the more I was drawn into his teaching,” he recounts. Talking about the course of his conversion, Peden says, “It had been coming on for several years, through developments in my academic work and also in my personal life. Convergence all around, no doubt due to God’s grace.” Becoming a father, he confesses “was a catalyst for change.”
A new discovery
“I was baptized and confirmed Presbyterian when I was 12 years old. My family”, Knox recalls, “wasn’t religious, but the church and its community were very important to me at that time. So when I started going to services again several years ago, I initially went to a Presbyterian church in Canberra.” Then, during a trip to Paris in 2018 with his family, he crossed the threshold of a Catholic Church to participate in a Eucharistic Celebration. “I found the experience intoxicating, and for the remainder of our trip I went to as many Masses as I could. I’d lived in Paris for four years as a PhD student and walked by all these churches countless times without ever going in. It was a new world for me, a new discovery.”
Parishioners working at St Joseph’s Church
Fires in Australia
The devastating fires that hit Australia last year pushed him to become active in the safeguarding of creation. Vast fires burned uninterruptedly for 240 days, devouring the forests in the south-east of the country in particular, destroying millions of hectars of wooded areas, causing more than 400 death, as well as the loss of livestock, homes and businesses. The Global Catholic Climate Movement points out that forest fires have been occurring in Australia for decades, but that climate change increases both their likelihood and intensity. The fact that this is happening in the United States and regions in the Amazon is also testimony of a planet in flames.
The fires in Australia
“The fires were horrifying”, the historian from Canberra recalls: “days of smoke that had us wearing masks well before the pandemic arrived” of Covid-19.
A social-environmental crisis
When he discovered Laudato si’, he felt a “shock of recognition”, he explains, recognizing himself in the critique the Pope made regarding modernity and the current crisis. He is referring to Pope Francis’s exhortation regarding the environment as well as the relationship between nature and the society that inhabits it, because, as the Pope writes in the Encyclical, “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental” (Par 139). The climate crisis, Peden confirms, “is part of a more general crisis stemming from our comportment to the world and to ourselves. Even if the planet were not ravaged by storms and fires, our commitment to consumption and waste – what Pope Francis calls ‘throwaway culture’ – would be self-destructive” anyway.
Ecological conversion and evangelization
Based on his experience, the University of Queensland professor reads Laudato si’ as a means of ecological conversion as well as a resource for evangelization. “Ecological conversion is a matter of opening and expanding our sense of dependency. Spiritual conversion tells us we depend on God; ecological conversion extends the idea to tell us we depend on creation, what God has made.” Today, “having everything at hand gives us an illusion of self-sufficiency. But,” he emphasizes, “it’s still just that: an illusion. We do depend on others, even if we don’t realize it.”
Dedicated to creation in O’Connor
The Covid-19 crisis
As has been said a few times, the world-wide coronavirus crisis has highlighted how, in our exposure to vulnerability, we are more interdependent, connected. “The stratifications of our society have only become more apparent as the pandemic has worn on,” Peden observes. He defines the virus as an “equal-opportunity offender”. Therefore, he adds, “if it’s the more vulnerable who are suffering – and it is – we are forced to confront our failures to protect” those in need. The coronavirus, he points out, has basically shown, “our capacity to change our behaviours actually quite quickly when we’re faced with a crisis and when there is the political will to do so.”
“When we’re faced with the challenge that confronts the whole community we see that the community really can act together to take care of each other.” To put it in the words of the Encyclical, this is so, “because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another.”
NEW DELHI: India’s restrictions on imports of air-conditioners, tyres and TV sets have drawn the ire of Thailand and the European Union, which raised the issue at a meeting in the World Trade Organization.At the meeting held last week, Thailand said its tyre exports to India fell 31% in July and 43% in August, while some of its AC consignments were returned.The EU wanted details on the procedures and the scope of the import restriction on tyres.
The National Book Awards’ first undocumented finalist has said that the 2016 election put a “fire in [her] belly” and spurred her to write about her experience as an immigrant in America.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, one of the first undocumented students to be accepted into Harvard University, was shortlisted in October in the non-fiction category for her book The Undocumented Americans, which was published in March.
In the book, Ms Cornejo Villavicencio details her own family’s story and profiles the lives of different undocumented immigrants across the United States.
She writes that the work is “for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration, the talking heads, the kids in graduation caps and gowns, and read about the people underground.”
“Not heroes. Randoms. People. Characters.”
Speaking to CNN about why she decided to write the book, the 31-year-old said the 2016 election ignited “a fire in [her] belly.”
“I had read a lot of books that I felt did not do a good job of representing migrants in an interesting way. It was mostly bad writing. It relied a lot on caricatures and cliches,” she said.
“And I always thought I could do better, but I just never felt like I had a fire in my belly until the night of the election.”
Those profiled for the book range from labourers on Staten Island to people who were on the front lines cleaning up wreckage after 9/11, families facing the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and women who are forced to turn to herbalists and healers in Miami.
Ms Cornejo Villavicencio explained to the broadcaster that it was important for her to give a “full picture” of those she talked to for the book because she did not choose “to write for a White audience.”
“I chose to write for children of immigrants. I chose to write for immigrants. I chose to write for people of colour. And, you know, that’s why it’s a book that has base notes in it. It’s not a simple fragrance,” she said.
She added: “I chose to not talk about reasons why people chose to come here, because that enables the readers to judge for themselves whether the reasons are worthy or not. And it’s none of their f****** business.
“If people cross deserts or oceans and risk their lives and then have a hell of a time here, who are you to say that this is a worthy enough decision to come here? We just don’t owe that to each other.”
She said she was “offended” that literary agents suddenly began showing intertest after she published an anonymous essay for The Daily Beastabout life as an undocumented harvard student.
“It wasn’t about my writing. I knew that’s not why they were reaching out,” she said.
The book finalist told CNN that she would be taking a break from writing about immigration following the book’s publication as it took an “extreme toll on [her] mental health” and said that her next work will be a novel.
“I feel like I did what I set out to, and I stopped thinking that it’s a requirement of good writing to end the day shaken and to be immobilised by trauma the day after,” she said.
Ms Cornejo Villavicencio is no longer undocumented as she recently received her green card and became a legal permanent resident, according to CNN, but she told the outlet that this doesn’t simply fix everything.
“It gives me some amount of safety,” she told the broadcaster.
“But like people who understand the system know, it’s complicated. And it’s not like everything is OK now. My parents, my family, people I love are still undocumented and I could literally be deported for any small thing.”
Speaking of releasing her experiences and such intimate stories into the world Ms Cornejo Villavicencio said: “I hope people love them. I hope immigrants and children of immigrants are inspired by them to create their own art.”
“Eliminating any cancer would have once seemed an impossible dream, but we now have the cost-effective, evidence-based tools to make that dream a reality”, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
The strategy, backed by WHO Member States at the World Health Assembly last week, involves vaccinating 90 per cent of girls by the age of 15, screening 70 per cent of women by the age of 35 and again by the age of 45, and treating 90 per cent of women identified with cervical disease.
“This is a big milestone in global health, because for the first time the world has agreed to eliminate the only cancer we can prevent with a vaccine and the only cancer which is curable if detected early”, WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Princess Nothemba Simelela told a news conference. “We have an opportunity, as the global health community, to end the suffering from this cancer.”
In latest figures, from 2018, 570,000 women acquired cervical cancer and 311,000 died. Without action to stop it, annual case numbers are projected to reach 700,000, with 400,000 associated deaths, by 2030.
Tackling the disease is expected to bring huge economic dividends because of the improved prospects for women’s participation in the workforce, with $3.20 returned to the economy for every dollar invested – or $26 once the benefits for families, communities and societies are factored in.
Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women globally. Death rates are three times higher in in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries.
The disease is caused by two types of human papilloma virus (HPV), a sexually-transmitted infection that exists in more than 100 different forms, with symptoms that can be painful and stigmatising.
There are already three vaccines available to combat HPV and several more in the pipeline, but currently their availability is skewed towards richer countries, and the world needs to come together to help poorer countries get access to vaccines, said Dr. Simelela.
Diagnoses using AI, within minutes
“There is also new technology that is based on artificial intelligence, which can be used to screen women for cervical cancer. And if these technologies are used, we would be able to get a diagnosis of cervical cancer within 15 to 20 minutes”, she said.
That would be a huge advance from the current timeframes which can be a month or longer, especially if women live far from their nearest health facilities, she said.
(Photo: REUTERS / Stefan Wermuth)Muslims attend Friday prayers in the courtyard of a housing estate next to the small BBC community center and mosque in east London March 28, 2014
Prejudice around religion, rather than on race or xenophobia, is the “final frontier” for diversity, where individuals are prepared to express negative attitudes, a new study in England and Wales has found.
“How We Get Along: The Diversity Study of England and Wales 2020,” was published Nov. 16 by the UK-based Woolf Institute.
The institute says it combines teaching, scholarship, and outreach, focusing on Jews, Christians, and Muslims, to encourage tolerance and foster understanding between people of all beliefs.
“Attitudes between faith groups are more negative than between ethnic and national groups,” the study found.
“The strongest negative attitudes towards marrying someone from another background are observed when we group the survey respondents by religion.”
Attitudes between faith groups are more harmful than between ethnic and national groups, the study found.
And the most assertive negative attitudes towards marrying someone from another background are observed when we group the survey respondents by religion.
RELIGOUS PREJUDICE TRUMPS RACISM
“Religious prejudice, rather than racism or xenophobia, is the ‘final frontier’ for diversity, a place where individuals are willing to express negative attitudes,” said the study.
About 75 percent of people in England and Wales are comfortable with a close relative marrying an Asian or Black person (70 percent and 74 percent).
At the same time, fewer than half (44 percent) are comfortable with the idea of a close relative marrying a Muslim.
“The word ‘Muslim’ appears to trigger more negative sentiment than the word ‘Pakistani'” the report found.
The great majority of British Pakistani people are Muslim, so the researchers would expect feelings towards both groups to be broadly similar.
“However, feelings towards a close relative marrying a Muslim person appear to be more negative than those towards a Pakistani person,” it said.
The survey sought to find out what people think of their neighbors.
It sought to find out what they think of others.
It looked at race, religion, and immigration, what divides people and
what brings them together.
It examined if they share the same experiences of the diverse everyday world around them.
“Or is diversity something other people do? These are some of the questions that motivated the Woolf Institute to produce How We Get Along: The Diversity Study of England and Wales 2020,” the institute said.
It surveyed 11,701 people across England and Wales and asked questions concerning their attitudes towards ethnic, national, and religious diversity and their experiences,
The study is the largest known study of diversity undertaken in the United Kingdom said the institute.
It says that despite public concern and media narratives that the country is increasingly polarised, there is an emerging national consensus that diversity is good for Britain, but that the pace of change has been too fast for many.
The survey’s findings suggest that ‘prodiversity’ and ‘pro-immigration control’ positions are neither contradictory nor irreconcilable.
“The existence of an emerging consensus on both diversity and change offers policymakers opportunities for coalitions and broader appeal. They should seek to build on this finding when considering issues such as equality and immigration,” says the Woolf Institute.
Good news is in short supply these days as Europe battles Covid-19, but there is something to celebrate: breeding millions of egg-laying hens in cages will be banned in the Czech Republic, from 2027, writes Michaela Šojdrová.
Michaela Šojdrová is a Czech Member of European Parliament for the European People’s Party. She is a substitute member of the Agriculture Committee.
The next step must be to move swiftly to ban such cages throughout the EU. Cages are not only cruel — they are also unnecessary as more welfare-friendly alternatives are already in widespread use.
A vote in the upper house of the Czech Parliament, the Senate, taken on Friday (13 November) confirmed the cage ban approved by the lower house in September. The legislation will become law once signed by the Czech President.
Farmers and businesses have seven years to prepare for the ban and adapt, so any financial impact will be minimised.
My party, the Christian Democrats, fully supports the ban. The conditions in which some farmed animals are kept today are simply unacceptable: caged hens have about the same amount of space as an A4 sheet of paper and cannot even flap their wings.
We strongly believe that all animals should be treated with respect to their natural needs. That is why we want to see hen cages banned as soon as possible across the whole of the EU. I warmly welcome the Czech government’s commitment to press for this.
Getting rid of cages is feasible as viable alternatives such as barns, aviaries and outdoor free-range or organic systems are already used widely.
Indeed, Czechia’s ban is not the first. Luxembourg and Austria have already ended the use of hen cages, and Germany and Slovakia plan to do so by 2025 and 2030, respectively.
Increasing numbers of consumers, appalled at the cruelty of caging hens, are refusing to buy battery eggs. The good news is that just over half of the hens on commercial egg farms in the EU today are kept in cage-free systems.
But that still means the other half of commercial hens are caged, and they make up 182 million of the 300 million or more farmed animals confined in cages each year across the EU.
The Czech ban will free from cages around 4.5 million hens a year. Now we must do the same for the millions other caged hens elsewhere in Europe.
It is clear that there is strong public support for this across the EU.
A ‘Eurobarometer’ survey of EU public opinion conducted for the European Commission found that 94% of people believe protecting the welfare of farmed animals is important, and 82% want farmed animals to be better protected.
And last month a European Citizens’ Initiative calling for an end to the use of all cages in animal farming was handed to the Commission, signed by 1.4 million citizens from every member state.
The Commission has already made a welcome commitment to improving animal welfare legislation and making agriculture more sustainable with its recently published ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy to reform the way the EU produces and consumes food.
However, Commission officials have since indicated that their proposals for improving the legislation will not be ready until the end of 2023. This is much too late, and not only in terms of animal welfare.
It may mean there will not be enough time for the European Parliament to consider the proposals before Parliament is dissolved for the next elections in spring 2024. That will delay the final adoption of the legislation even longer.
If we can end the use of cages in Czechia from 2027, I see no reason why the EU cannot work to a similar timetable.
I urge the European Commission to make revising the legislation a priority and to present its proposals as soon as possible, to ban the use of cages at least from 2027.
