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BYU Law and Religion Symposium promotes religious freedom

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BYU Law and Religion Symposium promotes religious freedom
Screen Shot 2020 10 05 at 3.27.47 PM BYU Law and Religion Symposium promotes religious freedom
Brett G. Scharffs, BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies director, speaks at the Law and Religion Symposium on Oct. 4. (BYU Law)

The BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies broadcasted the 27th Annual International Law and Religion Symposium from Oct. 4-6.

The theme of the symposium was Religious Freedom: Rights and Responsibilities. Sessions of the symposium were broadcast online, unlike previous years when speakers and students gathered on campus. Translation of the symposium was provided in five languages.

Center director Brett G. Scharffs started the event with an online presentation. He noted that the center celebrates 20 years since its founding this year.

“The crown jewel of everything we do is our students,” Scharffs said. “Perhaps our greatest regret in not being able to gather in person this year is that you who are participating with us online will not have an opportunity to meet these students.”

President Henry B. Eyring, the second counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke in the Sunday afternoon plenary session. He introduced the topic of religious freedom.

“We have a deep commitment to the brotherhood and sisterhood of all and feel an obligation as followers of Jesus Christ to serve and bless those in all countries, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof. In the spirit of our Master, who went about doing good, we seek to help lift the burdens of those in need, in any faith, throughout the world,” President Eyring said.

In the beginning session, Secretary General of Religions for Peace International Azza Karam spoke on the responsibility to speak in behalf of those who have lost their freedom of religion.

“Religious communities are persecuted today more than ever before. This is the time to be able to speak for your brother and your sister in the other part of the world whose right to thought, whose right to conscience, whose right to belief is being actively taken away. This is the time to speak out,” Karam said.

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Elizabeth Clark, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, Viva Bartkus, Sharon Eubank and Suzanne Akhras Sahloul speak during the Tuesday plenary session. (BYU Law)

Addressing the audience from Nigeria, Ayodele Atsenuwa was part of the Monday breakout session panel. Atsenuwa is a professor of public law and dean of the faculty of law at the University of Lagos, and the director of the West African Regional Centre for Law and Religion Studies. Some of her insights dealt with the effect COVID-19 has had on religion, as many religious groups have been restricted from their places of worship.

“What people initially thought were limitations of fundamental freedoms, over time they came to accept that it wasn’t a government clamp down on religious freedom, but it was just an exigency,” Atsenuwa said.

Sharon Eubank, president of Latter-day Saint Charities and first counselor in the Relief Society presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, shared stories on her involvement providing humanitarian relief after natural disasters. Religious groups worldwide have joined together to serve affected communities. Their tolerance of other beliefs have allowed for occasions to worship together.

“Our principle of, ‘People deserve to express their faith safely and securely, whatever it is,’ allows for those kinds of opportunities,” Sister Eubank said.

Among other speakers during the three day event were Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service; and Suzanne Akhras Sahloul, founder and executive director of the Syrian Community Network.

In regard to minority and majority religions, speakers shared thoughts on how to help all religions feel welcome to worship wherever they are located.

Faizan Mustafa, vice chancellor of NALSAR University of Law in India shared his experiences. He said there is no harm in giving religious freedom to all groups because it will benefit everyone.

“If we do not give this freedom to them, people will feel suffocated and they will not have harmony and peace in the society,” Mustafa said. He went on to discuss that if India, being a multi-religious society is to survive, “we must celebrate our diversity.”

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It’s not about Barrett’s religion: It’s about the cover-up of how extreme and unqualified she is

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It's not about Barrett's religion: It's about the cover-up of how extreme and unqualified she is

That goes along with Barrett’s failure in 2017 and again this year to disclose that she had signed on to a newspaper ad in 2006 taking the most extreme position on abortion possible, advocating for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and going further, saying she  opposed “abortion on demand” and defended “the right to life from fertilization to the end of natural life.” That’s leaving the door open for banning types of birth control and for investigation and potential prosecution of women who’ve had miscarriages, the furthest forced birth extremists tend to go. Of course she doesn’t want that information in front of the Judiciary Committee or the American public, which supports abortion rights.

So who’s covering it up for her? Is the White House advising her to withhold information? Is the Republican-majority Senate  Judiciary Committee staff helping her pick and choose the information senators and the American public get to weigh when considering the nomination? Because it sure seems like a concerted effort, and the kind of thing that raises eyebrows for investigators. What else might she be failing to disclose—and why? This should at least require more time for a more thorough investigation and Democrats should demand that. It’s not about her religion: It’s about why she is trying to cover up her religion!

Clearly the investigation into Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t thorough enough because McConnell and Sen. Chuck Grassley, who was then chair of the committee, wouldn’t let it be. They didn’t give enough time. That means there are still outstanding questions about Kavanaugh, and big ones. Like who paid his $92,000 country club fees, his $10,500-a-year private school for his kids, his $60,000 to $200,000 credit card debt, and his $1.2 million mortgage before his confirmation hearings. Which is a question for another time and potentially an impeachment investigation when there’s a Democratic-controlled Senate. Potentially.

But on this nominee, there needs to be an investigation. The FBI needs to figure out why there was a coordinated effort to cover this information up, why the People of Praise group has been erasing her from existence in their organization, and what else she could be withholding from the committee. It’s not about the organization itself: It’s about the effort to prevent the Senate and public from knowing. She, and the Republicans, demean the process by hiding things.

There are already serious questions about her fitness to serve. First and foremost, Barrett accepted the nomination in the first place, in these extraordinary circumstances and mere weeks before a presidential election. Then she participated willingly and knowingly in what turned out to be a coronavirus superspreader event that violated the rules the District of Columbia has in place for public gatherings. Yes, the White House is federal land and not governed by D.C.’s ordinances, but it shows an appalling lack of judgement on the part of this would-be justice to participate in the whole fiasco.

But there are also questions about her actual ability to judge. She actually authored a Seventh Circuit opinion last year “that threatened to hurl corporate insurance policies into chaos” and was quickly and quietly withdrawn to allow the lower court judgement she had initially overturned stand. It was an “episode that stunned attorneys and raised questions about her judgment.” Because she made an extremely basic and big mistake. She ignored state law, in this case Indiana’s, in her initial ruling. “Her opinion, absolutely, 100 percent, ignored Indiana law with respect to how those things would be decided,” one lawyer involved said. “It was the only time in my career where I had to file a brief that raised this point.”

It’s a given, even among conservatives, that Barrett got this nomination not for her legal qualifications but because of her ideological ones. That’s not even debatable in 2020, after the Trump administration and the kinds of judges—even those rated unqualified—he’s promoted. What’s remarkable is the extent to which Republicans are still committed to covering up her background. That’s a problem, and one that gives Democrats absolutely every reason to fight this nomination. Not on religious grounds: on the cover up.

Stillbirths: An unnecessary, unspeakable tragedy – UN report

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Stillbirths: An unnecessary, unspeakable tragedy – UN report

A Neglected Tragedy: The Global Burden of Stillbirths, released by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), reveals that 84 per cent of these grievous episodes occur in low and lower-middle income countries.

The first-ever joint global estimates also point out that stillbirths remain a challenge for high income countries, where a mother’s level of education is one of the greatest drivers of inequity, and ethnic minorities may lack access to sufficient quality health care.

“Losing a child at birth or during pregnancy is a devastating tragedy for a family, one that is often endured quietly, yet all too frequently, around the world”, lamented UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.  

A majority of stillbirths could have been prevented — UNICEF chief

COVID factor

And the report attests that the COVID-19 pandemic will likely lead a further rise. 

A pandemic-induced 50 per cent reduction in health services, could cause nearly 200,000 additional stillbirths over a 12-month period in 117 low and middle income countries, according to modeling done for the report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Muhammad Ali Pate, Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank, and Director of the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents, spelled out: “COVID-19 has triggered a devastating secondary health crisis for women, children and adolescents due to disruptions in life-saving health services”.

Poor quality of pregnancy and delivery care; a lack of antenatal and intrapartum services and weak nursing and midwifery workforces are responsible for most of these occurrences, says A Neglected Tragedy. 

“Beyond the loss of life, the psychological and financial costs for women, families and societies are severe and long lasting”, Ms. Fore affirmed, adding that “a majority of stillbirths could have been prevented with high quality monitoring, proper antenatal care and a skilled birth attendant”.

Socioeconomic link

But even before the pandemic, few women in low and middle income countries received timely, high-quality care to prevent stillbirths, the report shows – with coverage ranging from less than two per cent to a high of only 50 per cent in eight important maternal health interventions, including C-sections, malaria prevention and pregnancy hypertension management.

“Welcoming a baby into the world should be a time of great joy, but everyday thousands of parents experience unbearable sadness because their babies are still born”, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

Sound investment needed

Despite advances in health services from 2000 to 2019, the annual stillbirth reduction rate was just 2.3 per cent, compared to a 2.9 per cent reduction in neonatal mortality, and 4.3 per cent in mortality among children aged one to 59 months, according to the report.

However, the study maintains that with sound policy, programmes and investment, progress is possible.

“The tragedy of stillbirth shows how vital it is to reinforce and maintain essential health services, and how critical it is to increase investment in nurses and midwives”, the WHO chief upheld.

Because pregnant women need continued access to quality care, throughout their pregnancy and during childbirth, Dr. Pate stressed, “we are supporting countries in strengthening their health systems to prevent stillbirths and ensure that every pregnant woman can access quality health care services”.

© UNICEF/Loulou d’Aki

A woman who gave birth to a stillborn baby girl recovers in the maternity ward of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. (file)

Bulgaria: MEPs call for EU values to be fully and unconditionally respected | News | European Parliament

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Bulgaria: MEPs call for EU values to be fully and unconditionally respected | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88445/

Human rights breaches in Eritrea, Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia | News | European Parliament

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Human rights breaches in Eritrea, Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88448/

Parliament calls on member states to fully exploit the European Youth Guarantee | News | European Parliament

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Bulgaria: MEPs call for EU values to be fully and unconditionally respected | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88443/

EU-UK relations: MEPs approve rules to ensure Eurotunnel safety and cooperation | News | European Parliament

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EU-UK relations: MEPs approve rules to ensure Eurotunnel safety and cooperation | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88446/

Communists Warn Citizens: ‘Christianity Does Not Belong in China’

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Communists Warn Citizens: 'Christianity Does Not Belong in China'

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues its frantic campaign to erase crosses from even Party-controlled churches, the human rights magazine Bitter Winter reported on Tuesday, explaining to Christian residents the crosses must go because “Christianity does not belong in China.”

Christianity has arguably a much older presence in much of China than it does in Western Europe and arrived there over a millennium before it did in the Americas.

Despite this, dictator Xi Jinping has launched a campaign against the faith — as well as other challenges to CCP ideology like Islam and Tibetan Buddhism — branded “Sinicization.” Party officials insist that Christianity may only exist in China when it is reconciled with Chinese culture, which it defines as the doctrine of the CCP.

Communism is an ideology founded out of the writings of European agitators. Karl Marx, its intellectual father, was born about 5,000 miles from Beijing.

The Bitter Winter report this week focused on a town in Shandong province, northeast China, where locals say CCP officials began taking down the crosses from all legal “Three-Self Patriotic” churches. The “patriotic” church is the Party-approved version of Protestantism in the country; only four other religions — Chinese Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Islam — are legal in the country. The campaign to remove the crosses in the town, identified as Dazhongcun, reportedly began in July.

“Amid the demolition, one of the town officials told onlookers that, ‘crosses must be removed from all churches because Christianity does not belong in China,’” the magazine reported.

In Linyi, a city in the province, officials reportedly began erasing public signs of Christianity in 2019, arguing that the faith was growing too popular too quickly for the Party to control.

“On April 11, the municipal United Front Work Department convened an emergency meeting for the city’s Three-Self Church pastors, informing them,” Bitter Winter reported, “that because ‘there were too many Christians in Linyi,’ the provincial government had issued a red-headed document ordering to control the matter by cracking down [on] places of worship.”

Reports of similar moves targeting the few Chinese Christians who actually use CCP-approved churches have surfaced nationwide. In some parts of the country, the churches have now become nondescript buildings. In others, the Party has adorned churches with the communist red star and other Marxist imagery.

The Three-Self Church is highly unpopular among Chinese Christians, according to aid groups helping them continue to practice their faith in the country, because all sermons, Bibles, and other materials must be first approved by the Party, meaning that most has been diluted into communist propaganda incompatible with real Christian teachings. Instead, many Christians risk their lives by attending illegal “house” church services, in which the Christians of a given neighborhood gather secretly to worship without government supervision.

Since many worship in secret, there are no reliable official statistics on the Christian population of China. Estimates suggest that China may have one of the largest Christian populations in the world. According to the Christian aid group Open Doors, China is home to over 97 million Christians. That number is 5 million larger than the official count of members of the Communist Party in the country.

Christianity is believed to have arrived in China first through missionaries related to the Assyrian Church of the East, or more commonly known as the Nestorian Church. The history of its arrival is in part written on a stone tablet known as the Nestorian Stele, or the Xi’an Stele, found in the eponymous city. According to the tablet, Christians arrived in China in 635 AD. By the turn of the millennium, however, Chinese emperors had worked to curtail its influence.

While its status as a Christian movement has caused significant controversy, the single most significant movement caused in part by Christian missionaries is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, founded in the mid-1800s by a man named Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus of Nazareth. Taiping followers attempted to secede from the Chinese empire, causing the war known as the Taiping Rebellion, which claimed about 20 million lives between 1851 and 1864.

Since Mao Zedong’s conquest of China over 70 years ago, communists have persecuted Christians and other faithful, forcing them to conform to Marxist atheism. That persecution has worsened under current dictator Xi Jinping following a period in which the “patriotic” church was allowed to appear at least nominally as a Christian organization in public. Xi has outlawed children attending church services, or any religious gathering, and targeted for closure Christian children’s camps and orphanages. Poorer Christians also face threats of losing government aid if found to be openly worshipping and reports have surfaced of Party members pressuring rural Christian to remove crosses displayed publicly and replace them with photos of Xi Jinping.

“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to rewrite the Bible itself to ‘sinicize’ the Christian doctrine,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech last month. “That’s unacceptable. That will diminish the Chinese people. We want good things for them.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

Intensive farming worldwide threatens Paris climate accord, report says

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The spread of intensive farming is threatening to jeopardize the world’s chances of meeting the terms of the Paris agreement on the climate crisis, as the increasing use of artificial fertilizer and growing populations of livestock are raising the concentration of a key greenhouse gas to levels far beyond those seen naturally.

Nitrous oxide is given off by the overuse of artificial fertilizers, and by organic sources such as animal manure, and has a heating effect 300 times that of carbon dioxide. Levels of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are 20% higher than in pre-industrial times, with most of that increase coming from farming.

Emissions of nitrous oxide are growing at a rate of 1.4% a year, outstripping the forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and left untrammeled would put the world on track to exceed the 2C warming limit set under the Paris agreement, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

Hanqin Tian, a professor at Auburn University in the US and lead author of the study, said: “The dominant driver of the increase comes from agriculture and the growing demand for food and feed for animals will further increase global nitrous oxide emissions. There is a conflict between the way we are feeding people, and stabilizing the climate.”

Current rates of nitrous oxide emissions were consistent with 3C of global heating above pre-industrial levels, the researchers found.

Artificial fertilizers make up about two-thirds of the emissions of nitrous oxide from farming. The gas is released when microbes in the soil break down the excess fertilizer, particularly in the boggy or over-wet ground where there is less oxygen.

Farmers can reduce the amount of nitrous oxide produced by simple measures such as targeting their fertilizer use more carefully, avoiding excess, and using fertilizer only in the right weather conditions.

“We have the tools to reduce this problem,” said Parvadha Suntharalingam of the University of East Anglia, the co-author of the paper. “This is not insurmountable. But these practices need to be adopted more widely. We don’t have to sacrifice production, just make sure it is managed more carefully.”

Brazil, China, and India are showing the highest growth in nitrous oxide emissions, owing to their rapid adoption of intensive livestock and grain farming, according to the Nature study. Emissions from the US have remained relatively stable, despite farm output growing.

Europe is the only region to have reduced nitrous oxide emissions, but most of these falls have come from requirements on industry, such as nylon factories. Emissions from farming have fallen more slowly, but measures to reduce the harm from fertilizers have now been adopted in some EU countries.

The gas also poses a threat to the ozone layer, which has been recovering in the last 30 years since the gases mainly responsible for its depletion – chlorofluorocarbons – were phased out under the 1987 Montreal protocol. Nitrous oxide breaks down in the stratosphere to react with ozone and is now the leading source of ozone depletion.

Nitrogen fertilizers have been a boon to farmers, as nitrogen in the soil is essential for plant growth. However, synthetic fertilisers are now cheap and are easily misused and overused, and there are few restrictions on their deployment around the world.

About a third of the nitrous oxide emissions from farming is from livestock manure. These can also be reduced by the management of slurry in large facilities and by changes to how manure is used as a fertilizer, such as injecting slurry into the soil instead of spraying it.

Nitrogen run-off from farming also harms rivers and lakes, and ammonia – from fertilizers and manure – is a leading cause of air pollution.

Although nitrous oxide is one of the six greenhouse gases covered by the 1997 Kyoto protocol, it has received less attention in recent years as the focus has been on carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Nitrous oxide is better known as laughing gas, after its experimental use by Humphry Davy at the turn of the 19th century. It has therapeutic uses but is sometimes misused. It also has some industrial uses as a propellant and is a byproduct of nylon manufacture, but can be extracted from flue gases at the factory.

EU removes Cayman Islands from Non-Cooperative countries on taxes

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Alternative Investment Management Association Welcomes The Decision Of The European Union To Remove The Cayman Islands From Its List Of Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions For Tax Purposes

AIMA welcomes the decision of the Council of the European Union to remove the Cayman Islands from the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.

The full review process carried out by the Council’s Code of Conduct Group (CoCG) since 2018  determined that, by enacting economic substance legislation in line with OECD requirements, the Cayman Islands satisfied the Council’s criteria in line with international tax standards in all respects. However, in extending the concept of economic substance to the regulation of collective investment vehicles, the CoCG required further modifications to limited regulatory measures. Although these were in the course of being implemented, the Cayman Islands were included on the EU list on 18 February 2020. The removal of the Cayman Islands from the EU list has been made at the first subsequent opportunity.

AIMA Cayman members, as part of the Cayman financial services industry, worked with the Cayman Islands government to address the requirements of the EU while protecting the interests of the Cayman Islands as a leading investment fund domicile.

The Cayman Islands fully support the work of the EU and the OECD under the BEPS Project and other initiatives to promote tax good governance. They have, for many years, participated actively in the Global Forum for Transparency and Exchange of Information, as well as international and regional task forces addressing corruption, money laundering, and terrorist financing. The Cayman Islands were among the first jurisdictions to conclude a FATCA intergovernmental agreement with the US and they operate the OECD Common Reporting Standard. The Cayman Islands maintains a registry of beneficial ownership information that is provided to the governmental agencies of participating jurisdictions on demand.

The Cayman Islands have developed their position as a leading international financial center by establishing an effective and appropriate regulatory regime, and AIMA supports the policy of the Cayman Islands to work with international bodies to address developing global initiatives.

Ronan Guilfoyle, AIMA Cayman Chairman, commented: “This action by the EU acknowledges that the regimes established by the Cayman Islands for fund regulation and the wider  economic substance requirement, as well as those for the exchange of tax and financial information, anti-money laundering and related measures are fully in line with international standards.”

Jack Inglis, AIMA CEO commented: “The Cayman Islands have been at the forefront of tax transparency in the asset management industry and the EU’s decision is a recognition of the jurisdiction meeting the most stringent conditions. This is good news for the alternatives industry, given the importance of the Cayman Islands as a fund and services center globally.”

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