WINDHOEK – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a contribution of €2million (N$40 million) from the European Union (EU), which will help WFP deliver critical food assistance to 30,000 vulnerable people in Namibia affected by COVID-19 and drought.
The EU funding will support severely food insecure communities living in informal settlements in the Khomas, Omusati and Erongo regions through September 2021. WFP will help them through food distributions, cash transfers and vouchers. The new contribution will also tackle malnutrition among children.
“The EU, as one of the largest humanitarian and development donors in the world, is supporting humanitarian partners throughout the region to address the needs caused by recurrent natural disasters affecting the most vulnerable communities,” said Alexandre Castellano, who leads the EU’s humanitarian response in the Southern Africa and Indian Ocean region.
The onset of Covid-19 early this year and the implementation of measures to curb its spread worsened the food security situation in Namibia. People in informal urban and peri-urban settlements – which have expanded in recent years – are most affected. This includes marginalized communities dependent on government relief programs and casual work on commercial farms.
“Stringent measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 have strongly affected the livelihoods of vulnerable people, especially those in the informal sector,” said George Fedha, WFP’s Country Director and Representative in Namibia. “This contribution comes at a crucial time, allowing WFP to better address their precarious food security and nutrition situation.”
WFP will be implementing this contribution in partnership with UNICEF and the Government of Namibia, allowing for complementarity of efforts to address food and nutrition security in a holistic manner.
Rabat – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at French President Emmanuel Macron over his remarks on Islam. Macron had used an October 2 speech to claim Islam was “in crisis” worldwide, prompting a global backlash. Erdogan joined the outrage at Macron’s statements in a speech to Turkish religious workers on Tuesday, accusing Macron of disrespect and ignorance.
Erdogan called Macron’s remarks on Islam an “open provocation,” according to state-sponsored Anadolu News Agency. The Turkish president said the remarks were especially tone-deaf as Macron spoke from a Muslim-majority neigborhood in Paris. Approximately 10-15% of Parisians are adherents of Islam and Muslims make up a majority of Paris’ immigrant population.
President Erdogan called Macron’s statements against Islam worldwide a “clear provocation.” He stated that Macron was “rude” and had no business demanding reforms in a religion that is not his own.
Erdogan’s analysis
Erdogan pointed to growing xenophobia and Islamophobia in Europe as the motivation behind Macron’s speech. “Attacking Muslims has become one of the most important tools for European politicians to hide their failure,” Erdogan told the crowd. Demonizing Islam to avoid an introspective dialogue in Europe is part of “cheap” tactics employed by “fascist groups,” he said.
While many in the Islamic world disagree with Erdogan’s governing style and foreign policy ambitions, his analysis of and push-back on Macron’s remarks will likely garner some support. Erdogan considered the speech to be a part of domestic politics, an effort to appease increasingly Islamophobic voters who are likely to support parties opposing Macron.
“European leaders who are stuck in domestic politics and failed in foreign policy try to cover up their inadequacy by targeting Islam,” Erdogan stated. He accused Macron of trying to “hide the crisis that France and French society face” and saw the move as a push to “settle accounts with Islam and Muslims.”
Erdogan directly accused Macron of fueling tensions by stigmatizing the French Muslim population while protecting Islamophobes and racists. Macron, he said, is harming French society more by encouraging racism and Islamophobia and should not “pretend to be a colonial governor.”
Islam in crisis
Macron’s October 2 remarks singled out Islam as a perceived threat to French secularism. “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country,” the French president said. His speech mixed references to Islamic radicalism, islamic seperatism, and Islam as a whole in a problematic fashion.
Macron fed on national angst following the stabbing of several people by two Muslim immigrants near the former office of controversial satirical publication Charlie Hebdo. The stabbings followed the reprint of images of the Islamic prophet, which Muslims see as a grave offense. Amid national fear of extremism, Macron appears to make an effort to not lose xenophobic voters to the openly Islamophobic National Front.
The National Front narrowly beat Macron’s party in the 2019 European Parliamentary election and has gained in approval polls since March. The French president appeared eager to reverse this trend by promoting his own brand of anti-Islam policies that are popular among Europe’s growing segment of xenophobic and racist voters.
Crisis in Europe
Macron’s focus on Islam appears to gloss over, and further mainstream, the growing extremism among Europe’s far-right. As Erdogan pointed out, Macron’s remarks only further fuel the growing acceptance of racism in European society.
Europe experienced a slowly growing internal awareness of its historically destructive and predatory colonialism in its museums and textbooks over the last decade. However, economic hardship and shrinking opportunities appear to again reharden opinions on the continent. Macron and other mainstream neoliberal politicians are increasingly reaching for xenophobia as a scapegoat.
After nearly four decades of center-right neoliberal economics in Europe, the continent is left more unequal and with ever-shrinking public services. The blame for this growing crisis is the politicians who instituted those changes, not the relatively powerless Muslim minorities.
While Erdogan receives little praise in the Islamic world, the Turkish president’s analysis of Macron’s remarks is likely to garner temporary sympathy.
The European Union has expressed support for Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s candidate for the position of Director-General of the World Trade Organisation as the race enters its final month.
According to Bloomberg, the EU also agreed in Brussels to select the South Korean candidate, Yoo Myung-hee, who is the country’s Trade Minister, as the second candidate for the job.
The WTO’s General Council is expected to meet today to reduce the five candidates still in the race for DG to two.
Hungary swung behind the planned recommendation after being the only EU country to withhold support at a lower-level meeting last Friday of officials representing the 27-nation bloc.
It plans to announce two finalists after October 6 and name a winner by November 7.
Brazilian Roberto Azevedo had stepped down from the job at the end of August – a year before his term ended.
By PTI
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has decided to file its opposition in the European Union in response to India’s application for an exclusive Geographical Indications (GI) tag to Basmati rice in the 27-member bloc, a media report said on Tuesday.
This was decided during a meeting chaired by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce Razak Dawood on Monday.
The meeting was attended by Secretary Commerce, Chairman, Intellectual Property Organisation (IPO-Pakistan), representatives of Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP), and the legal fraternity, the Dawn newspaper reported.
It said that during the meeting, REAP representatives were of the view that Pakistan was a major grower and producer of Basmati rice and India’s application for exclusivity is unjustified. India has said that it is an Indian-origin product in its application, published in the EU‘s official journal on September 11.
Dawood said that Pakistan will vehemently oppose India’s application in the European Union and restrain New Delhi from obtaining an exclusive GI tag of Basmati rice. He supported the concerns of REAP and relevant stakeholders and ensured that their claim for Basmati rice as GI will be protected, the report said.
Pakistan enacted the Geographical Indications (Registration and Protection) Act in March this year, which gives it the right to oppose Indian application for registration of Basmati rice’s exclusive rights.
Turkey today condemned French President Emmanuel Macron’s bid to rid France of ‘Islamic separatism’, saying his statements ‘encourage Islamophobia’.
Eighteen months before a French presidential election in which he is expected to face a challenge from the right, Macron described Islam as a religion ‘in crisis’ worldwide on Friday.
Turkish President Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Macron’s ‘dangerous and provocative’ vision ‘encourages Islamophobia and anti-Muslim populism’.
The ruling AKP party’s spokesman Omer Celik added Macron‘s ‘talk about a “French Islam” is a dictatorial approach and utter ignorance’.
He said: ‘Macron’s point of view only provides ideological munitions to terror groups like the Islamic State.’
On Sunday, the Turkish foreign ministry said Macron’s initiative would have ‘grave consequences rather than solve France’s problems’.
Macron’s plan to ‘liberate Islam in France from foreign influences’ adds to a growing list of disputes between the French leader and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkish officials frequently attack Macron, who last year said NATO was showing signs of ‘brain death’ by failing to stand up to Turkey’s unilateral military intervention in Syria.
Macron and Erdogan are currently feuding over maritime rights in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and, most recently, the escalating conflict in Azerbaijan’s Armenian separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Emmanuel Macron described Islam as ‘a religion that is in crisis all over the world’ as he unveiled his proposal to battle Islamic radicalism, saying it had created a ‘parallel society’ living outside of French values.
In a keynote speech lasting more than an hour, France’s head of state said on Friday that Islam was in crisis due to ‘an extreme hardening’ of positions in recent years.
He said the government would this year present a draft law aimed at strengthening secularism in France against what Macron described as ‘Islamist separatism’ in the country.
Macron insisted ‘no concessions’ would be made in a new drive to push religion out of education and the public sector across the country.
He coined the term ‘separatism’ to describe the underworld that thrives in some neighborhoods around France where Muslims with a radical vision of their religion take control of the local population to inculcate their beliefs.
But members of the nation’s six-million-strong Muslim community — the largest in Western Europe — immediately accused him of stirring up Islamophobic and racist feeling so as to appeal to far-Right voters ahead of the presidential elections.
In a speech broadcast live from Les Mureaux, north of Paris, Mr Macron said ‘we must tackle Islamist separatism’ while not ‘stigmatising all Muslims’.
A new law will allow the dissolution of religious groups that ‘attack the dignity of people, using psychological or physical pressure, and break the values of France’.
There will also be an end to the system of ‘seconded Imams’ which allows extremist clerics and other preachers to be trained abroad before moving to France.
‘We ourselves are going to train our Imams and Chanters in France, and therefore we must detach this link which is what is called consular Islam,’ said Macron.
He said all French Imams would have to be certified from now on and could be shut down at any time.
The equivalent of more than £9.7million will be spent to work France’s Islam Foundation – a moderate organisation which promotes traditional Muslim study in culture, history and science.
Macron said this would help to ensure the dominance of a religion ‘respects the values of the Republic’.
The head of state added that there would also be closer scrutiny of the curriculum at private schools and stricter limits on home-schooling for reasons other than a child’s health problems.
Some 1,700 private Muslim school and colleges currently teach around 85,000 children in France.
Community associations that receive state subsidies will have to sign a contract avowing their commitment to secularism and the values of France.
The new measures will also include a ban on the wearing of religious symbols for employees of subcontractors providing public services, such as transport operators.
The rule already applies to public servants.
Macron said there had been increased reports of abuses by sub-contracting staff, including bus drivers refusing women entry for wearing clothing considered too revealing.
He emphasised that it was necessary to ‘liberate Islam in France from foreign influences,’ naming countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
Macron stressed that the measures did not seek to stigmatise or alienate France’s Muslims but to bolster ‘our ability to live together’.
He urged better understanding of Islam and said the problem of radicalisation was partly a product of the ‘ghettoisation’ of French cities and towns where ‘we constructed our own separatism’.
‘We have concentrated populations based on their origins, we have not sufficiently created diversity, or ensured economic and social mobility in segregated areas,’ he said.
Radical Islamists have swooped in, taking advantage of ‘our withdrawal, our cowardice,’ he added.
But Macron was immediately criticised for stirring up Islamophobic and racist feeling to appeal to far-Right voters ahead of the presidential elections.
Yassar Louati, a prominent civil liberties activist based in Paris, has said: ‘The repression of Muslims has been a threat, now it is a promise.
‘In a one-hour speech #Macron burried #laicite, emboldened the far right, anti-Muslim leftists and threatened the lives of Muslim students by calling for drastic limits on home schooling despite a global pandemic.’
Rim-Sarah Alaoune, a French academic, also took to social media to say: ‘President Macron described Islam as “a religion that is in crisis all over the world today”. I don’t even know what to say.
‘This remark is so dumb (sorry it is) that it does not need any further analysis… I won’t hide that I am concerned.
‘No mention of white supremacy even though we are the country that exported the racist and white supremacist theory of the “great replacement”, used by the terrorist who committed the horrific massacre in #Christchurch.’
Friday’s speech came as a trial was underway in Paris over the deadly January 2015 attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket by French-born Islamic extremists.
Last week, a man from Pakistan stabbed two people near Charlie Hebdo’s former offices in anger over its publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Earlier this month, divisions were highlighted when MPs walked out when a university student entered parliament in a headscarf.
And in January, a renewed debate about freedom of expression erupted when a teenager received death threats for attacking Islam in an expletive-laden Instagram rant.
Macron’s long-awaited address came 18 months before presidential elections where he is set to face a challenge from the right, as public concern grows over security in France.
The proposed law is expected to go before parliament for debate in the first part of next year.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
Vatican News English Africa Service – Vatican City
“They bring bloodshed; they kill. Instead of freedom, they bring prison. They bring violence and imprison all those who oppose them. The only thing they know is violence,” This is the unflinching assessment of the Bishop of Chinhoyi on the government’s way of dealing with citizens.
In a sign of widespread disenchantment, especially among church leaders, with the Zimbabwe Government’s policies, the Bishop of Chinhoyi, Raymond Tapiwa Mupandasekwa, C.Ss.R., has criticised the government’s heavy-handedness in dealing with protests. The Bishop also deplored the way the government has gone about managing the COVID-19 emergency. In particular, he condemned the Government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa for prolonged arrests and the denial of bail to political activists and journalists accused of ‘lotting the unconstitutional removal of the government.’
Vice President’s decree to recruit doctors into military
The Bishop further criticised a recent decree by the country’s Vice President to enlist junior doctors in the army. Labour Unions say the move is aimed at stopping doctors from going on regular strikes due to unresolved pay disputes. Zim.Live Online reports that the country’s Health Minister and Vice President, Constantino Chiwenga, a former army general, has decreed that junior doctors be recruited as military doctors, or they would not be allowed to work in government hospitals. About 230 medical students completed their final examinations recently. They were due to be sent to public hospitals as Junior Resident Medical Officers (JRMOs) for three years of on-the-job-training. The three years is required before one can be allowed to practice in the private sector.
The decree is unconstitutional
Bishop Mupandasekwa said the Government has failed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and was resorting to measures that are causing “great distress” to doctors with this “unconstitutional proposal. The freedom party (ZANU-PF) has refused to give freedom of choice to young doctors,” said the Bishop. The prelate cautioned that if the decree is not reversed, the country would find itself with insufficient doctors.
Strikes and demands for better conditions
Medical personnel in Zimbabwe regularly stage strikes due to low wages, poor conditions of service and to seek improvement to the inadequately resourced public health facilities.
Zimbabwe’s public hospitals face constant shortages of medicines and vital equipment. With the onset of COVI-19, essential PPEs (Personal Protective Equipment) were also said to be in short supply. Senior government officials, including Vice President Chiwenga, often seek medical assistance outside the country.
The country’s 2,000 junior doctors have gone on strike twice in the past 12 months, denouncing wages of up to Z$ 9,450 (About US$ 115) per month. Many are ready to leave if they find better-paid jobs in the region or elsewhere.
Bishops’ Pastoral Letter
The message of the Bishop of Chinhoyi comes in the wake of a Pastoral Letter released on 14 August 2020 by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference (ZCBC) entitled, “The march is not over”.
Pastoral Letter asked Government to stop suppression of citizens
Following the Zimbabwe Government’s 31 July crackdown on national protests, the country’s Catholic Bishops criticised the constant unleashing of the police and military on the people. In reaction to the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Senator Monica Mutsvangwa issued a strong and personal statement attacking the Catholic Church leadership.
Personal attack on Archbishop Ndlovu
Although all Catholic Bishops in Zimbabwe had signed the Pastoral Letter, the Information Minister chose to isolate and target Archbishop Robert Christopher Ndlovu for a personal attack in the Statement she released. Archbishop Ndlovu is the current President of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference.
Senator Mutsvangwa’s criticism on Archbishop Ndlovu met with an unprecedented backlash from citizens, various local Church leaders who all expressed solidarity with Archbishop Ndlovu and the all the country’s Bishops. The Holy See’s Apostolic Nuncio to Zimbabwe, Archbishop Paolo Rudelli, was among the first to offer his solidarity to the Archbishop of Harare. Later, several regional and international Catholic Bishops’ bodies and rights groups also joined with messages of solidarity for Zimbabwe’s Catholic leadership.
The humanitarian, development and advocacy arm of the Catholic Church in India is among several entities and personalities who have been honoured for their services and battle against the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.
Caritas India, the official charity arm of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) was among those felicitated at the Healthgiri Awards 2020 ceremony held virtually on 2 October, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of India’s independence movement.
“Caritas India is happy to receive this award as this is a recognition of our humble efforts to mitigate the sufferings of humanity in the wake of this COVID Pandemic,” said Executive Director of Caritas India, Father Paul Moonjely, in his speech on receiving the Healthgiri Award 2020 for best NGO for Healthcare Services.
The award was presented by Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare to Fr. Paul Moonjely.
Healthgiri Award
Every year since 2014, the India Today Group, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the country, has been organizing the Safaigiri Award, after the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated a country-wide cleanliness campaign called the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA), or the “Clean India Mission”.
This year, the Safaigiri Award took the form of Healthgiri Awards 2020, to pay homage to the invincible spirit of corona warriors who have led the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.
In his acceptance speech, Father Moonjely dedicated the award to Caritas’ “health warriors and volunteers, both in the community and institutional levels”. “It gives us added courage and heightened motivation to march forward with our mission of love and care even amid new challenges,” he said, adding, “We are honoured and humbled by this award”.
The priest said, “There was a lot of fear of pandemic and hopelessness amplified with the exodus of migrants.” “But the institutional strength of the Church as a humanitarian collective helped us together to team up and reach out to the last mile with the amazing support of the Church leadership.”
The award ceremony on 2 October assumed an added significance for Caritas India, as it was on that day in 1962 that it was founded.
Caritas’ action plan
Father Moonjely explained that during the pandemic, Caritas pitched in with a 5-point strategic orientation: be trained, be informed, be cautioned and be compassionate. They reached out to almost 6.4 million people through their partner networks. They serve the community, institutions, first-level treatment centres, Covid warriors, government institutions, including the police force.
Caritas India partners and religious congregations joined hands to focus on four key areas – food support; health, hygiene and sanitation; psychosocial support and creating awareness.
“Our medical colleges, tertiary hospitals and community workers,” Father Moonjely said, “did a commendable job in reaching out to the peripheries and serving the poor, all out of love and humanitarian concern,” because, he said, they believe service to humanity is service to God.
Re-committed
In conclusion, Father Moonjely reiterated Caritas’ “continued commitment and service to humanity.”
The nation of 1.3 billion people is among the worst hit by Covid-19. With over 103,500 deaths, India ranks after the United States and Brazil in fatalities. However, its caseload of over 6.6 million is the second highest after the US.
Drawing attention to the “the unparalleled challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic to maritime workers globally”, three United Nations entities have appealed to those related to the shipping and maritime industry, especially businesses, to help address the crisis faced by the workers.
“The situation of workers of the international shipping industry stranded at sea because of the pandemic, which UN agencies have recently qualified as a ‘humanitarian crisis’, requires an urgent and concrete response from all actors involved – including the business sector,” said the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), the UN Global Compact, and the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, in a joint statement on Tuesday.
The group underscored the indispensable service that the maritime shipping industry renders in sustaining the global supply chains. The workers’ role has become even “more vital during the pandemic, as they work to ensure the continuous flow of medical equipment, food and other essential goods”.
Yet, they have become the “collateral victims of the anti-Covid-19 measures imposed by governments. Measures such as travel bans, embarkation and disembarkation restrictions or suspension in the issuance of travel documents, the UN group said, have severely strained the working conditions in the global shipping sector.
As a result, the group lamented, some 800,000 seafarers are currently stranded on vessels, or are prevented from returning to ships, either to earn their living or to return home. Those trapped on ships are often forced to extend their 11-month maximum period on board, according to international labour standards. The UN group said similar conditions exist in the fishing industry and on off-shore platforms.
Human rights
OHCHR, UN Global Compact and the UN Working Group said the “situation has severe impacts over the basic human rights of seafarers and other marine personnel, including the right to physical and mental health, the right to freedom of movement, and the right to family life”.
“It also increases dramatically the risks of security and environmental hazards.”
UN Secretary-General has appealed that seafarers and other marine personnel be designated as “key workers,” to ensure regular and safe crew changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN group said the response to the crisis will require concerted efforts from relevant actors, such as international organizations, trade unions, but most importantly the business sector.
Especially businesses
The responsibility of defending the rights of maritime workers extends to the thousands of business enterprises that use the services of maritime freight transport – which accounts for almost 90 per cent of world trade.
OHCHR, UN Global Compact and the UN Working Group encouraged a meaningful dialogue and consultation with seafarers’ and other worker’s organizations, trade unions, civil society, and other stakeholders in the design of relevant measures and actions.
Fratelli tutti is “a devastating challenge to our ecological, political, economic and social life”, but above all, it is the “proclamation of an ineradicable, joyful truth, presented as a well-spring for a fatigued world.”
This is according to Professor Anna Rowlands, a renowned political theologian and member of the panel that presented Pope Francis’ third Encyclical in the Vatican’s new Synod Hall on Sunday.
Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Christopher Wells, Professor Rowlands said Fratelli tutti, with its powerful social meditation on the Good Samaritan, who recognises love and attention as the preeminent law and model for creative social friendship, Is a call to everyone to take action.
Listen to the interview with Professor Anna Rowlands
“I think that the core of this document is a call for us to stop and find a way to look at the world in a different way,” Prof. Rowlands said, noting that Pope Francis is asking us to stop looking at the world with the eyes of indifference or cynicism.
He is asking us, she explained, “to stop and to begin to look again.”
Rowlands said the document contains a list of social actions, the first being the command that we “pay attention to the world around us, to what truly is.”
Pope Francis, she continued sees reality and tells us that the only true perception of that reality is through encounter with “the reality of all the people and of the created order.”
“His first call to us is simply to pay attention, to be with what is, and what is both the suffering and the difficulty of the world, but also its beauty and its grace,“ she said.
She noted that he finds a contemplative starting point for his social teaching in his deep association with Saint Francis of Assisi, and that this is imbued in a political mysticism.
Church’s social teaching rooted in reality
Rowlands recalled that all the social teaching documents from 1891 onwards stem from a meditation by the respective Pope on the world, and on the action of the world.
“Rerum Novarum was inspired by the action of local bishops in Germany and in the UK involved in the dockworkers strike and in industrial relations. Later documents were also inspired by movements on the ground, often ecclesial movements,” she explained.
Pope Francis, she added, is very clear that this encyclical was inspired by an interfaith dialogue and by visits and encounters he has had all over the world.
So, she continued, it begins with his engagement with a world of action and then moves into a reflective phase in which “the Pope gathers, reflects, prays, discerns and then presents this reflective response to reality.” He does this in the hope of impelling a kind of revolution, a change of dynamics that will lead to action towards the common good.
“I think that what he imagines really is this world which is based on a cycle of constant meditation and action, contemplation and action,” she said. This vision is at the heart of monastic life, it is what Bishops in the wider episcopal community are meant to do, and most certainly, it is at the heart of the task of the Bishop of Rome.
The call for a concrete response
In Fratelli tutti, Rowlands said, Pope Francis calls for a concrete response from all people of goodwill, regardless of their religious belonging. He does so using the parable of the Good Samaritan, because it is “utterly concrete, utterly practical, utterly immediate and utterly devastating in terms of what it means for an individual.”
He’s asking us, she explained, “to be interrupted in the flow of our everyday lives; to stop and pay attention to those whom he describes as ‘foreign in our own neighbourhoods’, and he doesn’t just literally mean coming from a foreign place, he means the divisions of wealth and poverty in a street, in a neighbourhood, in a city.”
He wants us, she continued, to think about the roles that we occupy in our professional lives “and he has a lot to say about the vocation of those in politics, of those in business etc.”
Rowlands noted that the Pope also talks about the role of grass-root movements and of the importance of building a new world together with those who are most marginalized and excluded, not “for them or on their behalf.”
This is an action, she said, that requires us to build relationships in every stratum of our everyday lives.
He, Pope Francis, believes that the transformation of the world will stem from that basis, but it is essential that we let ourselves be disrupted and disturbed in our normal routines, “to learn that pattern of attention and the gifts it brings.”
Social friendship
Finally, Rowlands reflected on the meaning for Pope Francis of social friendship.
She expressed her belief that according to his conception of universal fraternity that envisages a world in which we are all interconnected, brothers and sisters and children of the same God, and said that ‘social friendship’ is the concrete response to that realisation.
It’s a vision, she concluded, that leads to a structural commitment, “to forms of action together in the world”. So, “social friendship is the set of practices that allow us to realise universal friendship as a way of life, as a habit.”
Emmanuel Macron has been sharply criticised by the Deputy General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ibrahim Munir, after the French president announced a law against religious “separatism” aimed at freeing Islam in France from “foreign influences”. The 42-year-old, who faces a tough bid for re-election against stiff opposition from the far-right, sparked controversy with remarks that appeared to condemn Islam and Muslims in general.
“Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country,” the French president said over the weekend in a speech introducing a new bill to strengthen France’s state ideology of militant secularism, known as Laicite.
With the French Republic struggling to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, Macron’s comments were widely condemned over their timing and divisive message. In his condemnation of Macron, Munir, who expressed dismay that “such utterances would come from the lips of a President of France,” accused Macron of mischaracterising the Muslim Brotherhood and turning his back on the values and principals of the French Revolution.
“The French Revolution has not served the inheritors of the Revolution” said Munir in his letter to Macron, a copy of which was obtained by MEMO, pointing out that the president’s remark had “blatantly contradicted the thought of its philosophers” who had “ignited the passion of people and their longing for humanity’s freedom, equality and their right to articulate their beliefs.”
Dismissing Macron’s comments, which appeared to single out the Muslim Brotherhood for condemnation, Munir added: “They [the Brotherhood] resist the excesses of regimes that deliberately seek to force them to abandon their faith and distort their image through illegal and inhuman acts.”
“We affirm the truth which the whole world knows; that the Muslim Brotherhood sincerely adhere to their Islamic thought and covenants,” insisted Munir. “They uphold the social responsibilities and rights of the countries of their abode. They respect their laws; knowing that this is the basis of their presence therein. They fulfil their duties and protect the security of their countries.”
Critics of the anti-separatism bill, particularly members of France’s roughly six-million-strong Muslim community — Western Europe’s largest— worry it will deepen anti-Muslim sentiment they say has been on the rise in recent years.
It has also been suggested that the bill is politically motivated ahead of France’s 2022 elections, while others — notably the leading opposition far-right National Rally party — have complained that the bill does not go far enough.
