CNN’s Connect the World has now broadcast the third and final part of its investigation into child-witch stigmatisation in Nigeria (I blogged parts one and two over the past two days). As before, the segment began with a depressing scene: in this instance, a young widow weeping with fear and distress as she rejects her three children from her home. Apparently, one of their siblings had died, and the woman had been told that her other children had done it through witchcraft. Despite attempts to persuade her otherwise, she remained convinced that unless she cast out her other children, she would die too. Instead, they were taken to Sam Ikpe-Itauma’s hostel for protection; Sam explained that as stigmatised witches, the children were in danger of death.
The programme also featured interviews with Akwa Ibom State spokesman Aniekan Umanah and with Joachim Theis of UNICEF. Umanah, as noted in CNN’s accompanying text article, denied there is a particular problem in Nigeria and he complained that NGOs looking after the abandoned and abused children are misrepresenting the situation to make money. Although he did not go into details, presumably he had in mind Babajide Kolade-Otitoju’s hackwork accusations against Stepping Stones Nigeria, which I dealt with here. Umanah is a reactive figure – the state government only stirred itself to make a few arrests connected to child-witch abuse following the 2008 Channel 4 documentary on the subject amd CNN noted that no convictions have so far taken place. Theis made the point that although the state has good legislation, the justice system is too weak to follow up with prosecutions when the victims are marginal.
Theis also explained that UNICEF had commissioned its own report on the subject, and that the “evidence is pretty clear, and pretty overwhelming”. I wrote about the report here. He also called for leaders to mobilise on the issue, and to work with religious groups.
Following my blog entry on yesterday’s segment, I received a comment from Barrister Victor Ukutt, who represents “Apostle” Helen Ukpabio. You can see it, and my response, here.
CNN’s Connect the World has broadcast the second part of its series on children who are being stigmatised as witches in Africa, focusing on the role of pastors [UPDATE: video here]. The programme drew on the 2008 documentary Saving Africa’s Witch-Children, which I blogged on here, and we saw once again the sad sight of Mary, the terrified young girl who was threatened with death by angry villagers who thought she had poisoned their food by witchcraft.
Helen Ukpabio’s church featured, although she avoided an interview request. I mentioned yesterday that Ukpabio has tried to have the hostel where Mary now lives shut down, accusing its director of being a “wizard”. As I’ve noted before, she differentiates herself from other pastors who claim to be able to diagnose witchcraft, in that she claims that only a simple and mild “deliverance” session is required to cure a child. However, as CNN noted, her teaching, as expressed in films such as End of the Wicked, has spread far beyond her church. The report also had an interview with Lucky Inyang, who works for the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria – he makes the point that children are cast out by their parents after deliverance fails. This means that Ukpabio’s teachings remain toxic: her “deliverance” sessions will have no beneficial effect on adults who have suffered misfortune, and so children will continue to be blamed.
There was also an interview with Mags Gavan, who directed Saving Africa’s Witch-Children. Gavan expressed her annoyance “that churches haven’t spoken out against this”, and urged churches ” to stand up”. She also noted that many pastors are conspicuously wealthy, and called for more pastors to be arrested and convicted. CNN did have a brief quote from Pastor Celestine Effiong, who denounces accusing children as witches as ignorant, but he appears to be a lone figure. I’ve made the point before now that some of these pastors – including Ukpabio – are part of a global neo-Pentecostal movement, and that their counterparts in the West ought to intervene.
The third part is tomorrow, and looks at how local authorities in Akwa Ibom have been dealing with the problem – and it doesn’t look encouraging. According to Aniekan Umanah, the state’s Information Commissioner, as quoted on the CNN website:
“There may be problems yes but it’s been blown out of proportion and people are capitalizing, on what ordinarily may be a social problem, across the globe in painting Akwa Ibom state black — that is the aspect we say no to. We will not allow the image of our state to be smeared.”
CNN’s Connect the World is broadcasting a three-part series on child-witch stigmatisation; as with other reports on the subject (most notably the documentaries for Channel 4 I blogged on here and here), there are depressing and poignant scenes of battered and bewildered homeless children who have been cast out by their families in Nigeria, thanks to pastors who teach that misfortune can be attributed to children who are supposedly witches.
The first part contained input from Sam Ikpe-Itauma, who runs a hostel for stigmatised children, as well as Justin Bahunga of Africans Unite Against Child Abuse (which has dealt with ten cases of witchcraft-related child abuse in the UK so far this year; I blogged on the UK situation here), and Philip Alston, a UN Special rapporteur who has previously highlighted the problem. The segment with Sam can be seen here.
CNN also has a text report on the subject by Christian Purefoy, which notes the significance of Helen Ukpabio:
…One of the most notorious and influential pastors is Helen Ukpabio of Liberty Gospel Church. Her 1999 film, the widely distributed, “End of the Wicked” has been attacked by child rights groups for its depictions of Satan possessing children.
She had agreed to an interview but the meeting was continually postponed for two days.
But in her preaching at Liberty Gospel Church, she heralds success stories of how she has driven out demons through deliverance.
“Witches and wizards, they started getting afraid. I never gave them rest!” she shouted to a cheering congregation.
I’ve written about Ukpabio on numerous occasions, with the result that I have received a number of abusive messages from her followers. She has also tried to have Sam’s hostel shut down, accusing him of being a “wizard”.
Also supporting efforts to end child-witch stigmatisation is the Nigerian sceptic Leo Igwe; Leo’s father recent lost an eye in an assault by gunmen, and one of Ukpabio’s followers left a comment under my blog entry on the subject:
Richard Bartholomew, Leo Igwe, and his father are all useless fools. you people have not seen any thing yet. Bad dogs barking in vain.
Connect the World goes out in the UK at 9.00pm (Freeview channel 84), and part two of the investigation will be broadcast tomorrow.
Click the logo below for information about a charity working in this area.
“Who organized this anti-mosque protest? Sharif El-Gamal?”
Pam Geller is complaining about a “ill-conceived botched mess of a protest” which took place close to Ground Zero yesterday, at which a black man was abused by members of the crowd who mistook him for a Muslim. However, her post leads with her objection to a Tweet by Max Blumenthal on the subject blaming her, and she tells us that the “notorious Jew hater” is “lying, slandering and making up racist propaganda against me again”:
I have no idea who organized this rally. Clearly, whoever organized this was careless, unprepared, shooting from the hip and harmful to the cause of freedom and compassion. I wasn’t even in the state, nor did I know anything about this half-assed effort…
The protest was organised by the “Coalition to Honor Ground Zero”, although this group’s leadership remains unclear – there is a list of some “organizations and individuals” who are opposed to the “Ground Zero Cordoba Initiative Mosque and Islamic Center”, but clearly most of these played no part in organising the event. However, the “Coalition” claims that the protest was endorsed by a number of groups:
The Bravest; 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America; Blue Collar Corner; Women United International; Center for Security Policy; Stop Shariah Now; ACT! For America and ACT! Manhattan; Congress on Racial Equality; Alliance for Interfaith Resistance; Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam; Sudan Freedom Walk; Proclaim Justice to the Nations, Dr. Herbert London of the Hudson Institute; North Country Patriots; Victory Baptist Church of the Bronx; Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Z Street; Florida Security Council; The Peace through Strength Institute; Free the First Amendment Committee; V-USA – Veterans United to Save America; New York City Firefighters Hockey Team; Christians and Jews United for Israel; and many other organizations and leaders, as well as local residents living in the Ground Zero area.
Simon Deng, Frank Gaffney, and James Lafferty are listed among the speakers, as is Tom Trento if the Florida Security Council. There is bad blood between Geller and Trento over the handling of the Rifqa Bary case, and it’s perhaps significant that Geller’s Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) does not get a mention anywhere. One gets the impression that the rally was an attempt to sideline Geller and Robert Spencer, and that she led with Blumenthal’s Tweet because it provided her with the material and the excuse for a counter-attack.
Also involved with yesterday’s rally was the “Hard Hat Pledge”, and the most aggressive abuser of the black man – calling him a “coward” and apparently challenging him to a fight – was wearing a blue hard hat. The “Hard Hat Pledge” exists for construction workers who wish to pledge that they will not assist with the construction of the mosque. According to the group’s founder, Andy Sullivan:
We feel we have been betrayed by our civic leaders and elected officials as they allow the Cordoba Initiative Group build their Mega-Mosque on top of the ashes of the 3,ooo innocents who were slaughtered on 911.
Sullivan is also an activist against Obama and big government, complaining that
I presently am a field super for the biggest union construction outfit on the east coast and doing better than most but what I hear from the cash cows of the city is nobody wants to spend a dime or invest it while this guy is in office. These fears are coming from Bank of America, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase maybe you heard of them.
I’m sure that Sullivan would disapprove of how this particular “Hard Hat Pledge” member conducts himself in the video, although it does raise the obvious issue of whether construction workers who would be willing to work on the project will be subject to intimidation.
Sullivan praises Geller on his blog, although he also identifies some Muslims as “salt of the earth” and explains that he has no problem with the project if it is relocated. The “Coalition”, though, regards mosques as “Trojan Horses”, and there are two so-far blank pages on its site labelled “Boston Mosque” and “London Mosque”.
There was also an ugly moment at a prior rally at the same site in June, when two Copic Christians were misidentified as Muslims. I noted a previous spat between Geller and Blumenthal here.
UPDATE: Charles Johnson notes a neo-confederate presence at the rally.
Geller’s claim that she had “no idea” about the August 22 rally is ridiculous. According to theDaily Caller, “Beth Gilinsky, an organizer for The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero and founder of the Jewish Action Alliance, is coordinating the rally.” And Gilinsky and Geller have worked hand-in-glove for years.
UPDATE 3: Someone on Facebook has claimed that the black man in the video had tried to provoke the crowd with “racist rhetoric”, while Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition has complained that the video was supposedly made by someone working for ABC news, and that this person had asked aggressive questions to members of the crowd. Geller has publicised both claims under the bizarre heading “Blumenthal Busted” (she seems obsessed with him), exulting, semi-coherently, that “That wasn’t a racist, that was ABC News. Evil schmuck.” Whether this means that she no longer considers the rally to have been “half-assed” remains similarly unclear.
UPDATE 4: Geller now writes, in an update to her original post, that
This incident (above) that was blown out of all proportion by Blumenthal was not the Ground Zero rally, but a skirmish outside the Path train entrance.
So it wasn’t the rally itself, just the people who were on their way to the rally. Looks like Geller’s realised she’s insulted all the other right-wing “anti-Islamist” outfits who organised the event and is now trying to dig herself out of a hole with a preposterous bit of hair-splitting.
Lallands Peat Worrier has a scan of the full text of The Bible in Scots Law: A Guide for Legal Practitioners. This is a short pamphlet which the Scottish Bible Society has recently sent out to Scottish courts, along with copies of the Bible itself (even though the Bible is already available in courts anyway, for swearing-in purposes). One page of the pamphlet lists a number of topics with associated Bible verses; Worrier helpfully provides the relevant passages, and observes in marvellous style that
Noteably absent is a favourite passage, from Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, lest ye be judged”... Most of the passages are, predictably enough, from the Pentateuch. To my eye, the selections are sometimes elegant, sometimes obvious but mostly mildly absurd, tendentiously applicable and rather a-historically facile. I particularly appreciated the anachronistic pegging of passages alongside such eccentric categories as strict liability and health and safety law, “racial equality” and “disability rights”. Hardly a boon friend and rod for the jobbing sheriff or procurator fiscal, I fancy. The inclusion of adultery prompted a frisson.
The pamphlet also makes specific mention of a 2008 judgement:
The case of HMN v BL 2008 HCJAC 10 Dec 2008 illustrates how relevant the Bible still is, even in areas of substantive law.
Worrier has a link to the relevant document, which is an Appeal Court opinion concerning the case of a man having sex with his step-daughter some years before, while she was between the ages of 12 and 17; the judges determined that this counted as incest according to the 1567 Incest Act’s interpretation of Leviticus 18. The Bible only came into the discussion because the offenses had occured prior to the commencement of the Incest and Related Offences (Scotland) Act 1986, and the accused had sought to turn the antiquity of the previous law to his advantage by suggesting it had been unclear. The opinion is a difficult read for those of us unversed in legalese; a Scottish law journal has a summary:
…When the 1567 Act was passed, the only version of the Bible then in use was the Geneva Bible. Accordingly, that was where one had to look for the relevant chapter. But if, as in the present case, one was prosecuted in Kilmarnock High Court in 2007/2008 for offences allegedly committed between 1976 and 1982, how would one find out whether one’s alleged incest was criminal under the 1567 Act? The court noted that there is only one copy of the Geneva Bible in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The court rejected the respondent’s arguments that the law was not reasonably accessible and was formulated without sufficient precision. A person such as the respondent would seek legal advice on whether intercourse between stepfather and stepdaughter constituted incest; such advice would be based on the standard criminal law texts, which were unequivocal on the point. The true nature of the offence was foreseeable; and so the case was remitted to the trial judge to proceed as accords. No need to pore over the Geneva Bible; no need for further research in Scotland’s historical archives.
Any step-parent or former step-parent who has sexual intercourse with his or her step-child or former step-child shall be guilty of an offence if that step-child is either under the age of 21 years or has at any time before attaining the age of 18 years lived in the same household and been treated as a child of his or her family…
Obviously, the concern here is that although there is no blood connection, issues of improper influence and informed consent come into play. But this would be alien to the mind of the author of Leviticus; he, rather, is concerned exclusively with how certain sexual unions “violate” God’s kinship categories. This includes adulterous unions between in-laws (e.g. a brother’s wife), which today would be regarded as a private matter, and homosexuality, which has not been a criminal offence in Scotland since 1980.
In other words, the idea that HMN v BL 2008 HCJAC “illustrates how relevant the Bible still is” is clutching at straws: the case dealt with exceptionally old matters, and neither the spirit nor a good chunk of the letter of Leviticus 18 applies to the law today.
At the Guardian, Andrew Brown takes a look at some Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s European links, noting the views of Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe, Geller’s support for the English Defence League, and Spencer’s association with Douglas Murray. Last year’s dinner fiasco is raised:
Spencer was invited to supper by Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion when he visited England last autumn, only for the evening to break up before it had even started when a bunch of EDL skinheads turned up at the restaurant, invited along by a supporter of Spencer who was making a video about him and had been interviewing them, too. The difference between the EDL and the various “Stop Islamisation of [your country here]” on the one hand, and the Centre for Social Cohesion on the other, while obvious to Murray, does not seem to have occurred to the American videomaker.
This was an incident I blogged on at the time. (The videomaker was Martin Mawyer, an anti-gay Christian fundamentalist. Spencer and Geller maintained that Mawyer’s views on homosexuality were his own affair, although they changed their minds and acted shocked when his views reached Dutch media and embarrassed Geert Wilders.)
Further:
Spencer was the subject of a fulsome interview in the Catholic Heraldin 2007, which was, in turn, plugged by Damian Thompson in the Daily Telegraph; Thompson was then the Herald’s editor-in-chief, and now is a leader writer on the Telegraph. “Major bookstores, gutlessly, refuse to stock Spencer’s work,” wrote Thompson then, “so here is a link to his main titles…
Thompson and I quarrelled, terminally, whenI criticised himfor reprinting without checking another Spencer-linked story about a mob of Muslims closing down a hospital in Sydney, which turned out to originate from the imagination of a neo-fascist group there. He hasn’t spoken to me since. Neither, though, has he used anything from Spencer on his blog. It looks as if some of the respectable English right has learned its lesson, but in America, Spencer and Geller are still taken seriously.
In a preliminary report to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Givot Olam Oil estimates there are 1.525 billion barrels of oil at its Rosh Ha’Ayin site, located about 10 miles inland from the Tel Aviv coastline.
…Christian supporters of Israel have long believed the Bible points to vast amounts of petroleum deposits in Israel. And some Bible prophecy teachers believe the final battle of Armageddon will stem from attacks against Israel over its oil resources.
But Givat Olam’s report is a bit of déjà vu. Back in 2004 the UK Observer reported that
In an announcement that could shift the power balance in the Middle East, it claims to have discovered a £3 billion oilfield in the centre of Israel. But Tovia Lushkin says his company,Givat Olam, needs £18 million to develop wells and extract the oil.
And in 1998, a Christian Zionist newsletter had this to say:
Bridges for peace: Clarence H. Wagner, Jr., International Dir. –
Jerusalem: 11 Dec 98 OIL EXPLORATION IN ISRAEL“The Givat Olam Oil Exploration Company redrilled a well near Rosh HaAyin to confirm the presence of oil in the area. A huge gas flame, more than seven meters high, shot from the well, confirming the presence of gas or oil.
“Tests will be done over the next few days to determine the quality of the gas or oil. In addition, Givat Olam is trying to raise NIS 60 million on the Tel Aviv stock market to finance the drilling of another well three kilometers away.”
Looks like a six-year cycle. According to another 2004 report, from the AP:
Israeli oil expert Amit Mor said the company had made claims of oil discoveries in the past that had not born fruit. “They have a credibility problem,” he said.
While Charisma ponders the apocalyptic significance of the most recent announcement, Haaretz focuses on some rather more down-to-earth issues:
…Yesterday’s developments left analysts divided, professionals angry and speculators giddy.
…This is not the first time Givot has issued partial and less than definitive information that has had a major impact on the partnership’s share price. This time, however, the securities authority intervened until more information was provided.
…[An energy sector analyst] said the fact that investors have to turn to details in a 2009 prospectus is an indication of the incompleteness of the report. “The [current] announcement has no significance”.
…A geophysicist in the field… called the most recent announcement “speculative” and said the 1.525 billion figure appeared “exaggerated.”
Incidentally, whatever the oil situation in Israel turns out to be, the idea that the Bible contains special information on the subject is utter rubbish, and reflects obsessions in modern American religion rather than the Bible’s intended meaning or anything in historic Christianity. See my blog post here.
In an August 16 editorial, The Washington Times baselessly claimed that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is leading efforts to build the Islamic community center in New York City, “has supported” Hamas’ “cause.” The Times offered no evidence to support its claim.
Perhaps the Washington Times should give us a full account of Rauf’s questionable religious associations. For instance, the picture below shows Rauf speaking at a “Global Peace Festival” event in Malaysia in 2008; the GPF is an outreach programme of a controversial New Religious Movement whose leader has served time in prison in the USA:
That religious leader, of course, is Rev Sun Myung Moon – who founded the Washington Times to promote his political and cultural views, and whose son Preston Moon chairs both the Washington Times (although he’s currently trying to sell it off) and the GPF. According to a report in Unification News at the time (in a column directly below a picture of Preston Moon):
Speakers at the [GPF] International Leadership Conference called for a greater understanding between Islam and other Abrahamic faiths. “We share the same two commandments,” said Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative. “We are to love God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Today, everyone is my neighbor. But we are not actually living the commandments.” Rauf, a leader of US/Muslim dialogue, heads a mosque near Ground Zero in New York, and is author of the book What’s Right with Islam.
It’s not known whether Rauf has one of Rev Moon’s “Ambassador for Peace” awards, but he appeared on a video that was shown at the Seventh Annual Ambassadors for Peace Awards Banquet. Apparently, his heading “a mosque near Ground Zero” wasn’t particularly controversial at that time.
Former Lusaka Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo will this weekend be installed as a patriarch of Africa in charge of the southern African region.
…Archbishop Milingo told the Times in Lusaka that the ceremony would follow a similar one held in Cameroun which was organised by five churches.
…He said the gathering would be held under the auspices of the Ecumenical Catholic Apostolic Church of Peace and would be witnessed by several married bishops.
…Among the churches which would be represented are the Old Catholic Church, Orthodox, Liberal Catholic of Spain, Charismatic Church of Brazil, Independent Catholic and others from the United States of America and other parts of the world.
…Founder of Imani Temple of America, Augustus Stallings is among the clerics expected from the US.
This is a story I’ve been following for some time; Milingo and Stallings are both close to Rev Sun Myung Moon (Milingo declared that Moon is the Messiah in 2007, while Stallings played a central role in Moon’s 2004 “coronation” in a Senate office building), and the “Church of Peace” is part of the Unifcation Church’s strategy. The word “Peace” looms large in Unification Church branding: the formal name of the religion is “Family Federation for World Peace and Unification“, and groups and events it has established include the Universal Peace Federation, the Global Peace Festival, and a number of “Peace Embassies”. In 2007, the Catholic Apostolic National Church of Zambia was launched at one such “Peace Embassy”, and Moon referenced the creation of a “United Family Church of Peace” in a 2004 speech.
Along with Zambia and Cameroon, Unificationist-linked schismatic Catholic groups have been established in Kenya and Uganda.
The Wall Street Journal reports on developments following the supposed discovery of relics of John the Baptist in Bulgaria:
“I’m not religious but these relics are in the premier league,” says Simeon Djankov, Bulgaria’s finance minister and an avowed atheist. “The revenue potential for Bulgaria is clear.”
Bulgaria’s Orthodox church hierarchy has declared that the bones are authentic. “This is a holy find. It doesn’t matter about the science,” says Metropolitan Bishop Joanikii of Sliven, who oversees church affairs in Sozopol. “The holy relics of St. John radiate miraculous force. I cannot explain it by using words.”
Kazimir Popkonstantinov, the archaeologist responsible for the finding in Sozopol and now hailed as a national hero, insists his discovery is in the same league as the Shroud of Turin. “This kind of discovery happens perhaps once every two hundred years,” he says. “We have very strong proof that this is genuine. I know this is very important for the whole Christian world.”
Meanwhile, Focus Information Agency has a quote from Bozhidar Dimitrov, a historian and Bulgaria’s Minister without Portfolio in charge of the Bulgarian Diaspora:
“After the discovery of the relics of St. John the Baptist, and at the presence of other two precious Christian relics in Sozopol, which turn the city into a ‘Second Jerusalem’ – the piece of the Holy Cross presented by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, and the relics of St. Andrew, given by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew; it became clear that with regard to the preservation, development and millions of pilgrims expected to come here, we should have a worthy feretory for these precious relics,”
Dimitrov claims that an inscription found with the relics proves their authenticity, and Christian reverence for John the Baptist’s earthly remains moved him to a pious rebuke against sceptical archaeologists. The Sofia News Agency has the quote:
“Why, damn it, why, where is all this envy coming from?! This is what I cannot find an explanation with this fucking people, with these fucking colleagues,” the Diaspora Minister and a former Director of the Bulgarian National History Museum, said when expressing his indignation that some of the Bulgarian archaeologists had declared the triumph over the relics of St. John the Baptist premature.
…”I am starting a discussion. Today [Nikolay] Ovcharov came out with his name, and started quarreling with me. The “fuckers” are no longer anonymous. We are now going to be fighting personally, with our names,”
…The conflict betweenBozhidar Dimitrov and Nikolay Ovcharov goesback two years ago when Dimitrov claimed he had established the identity of the mysterious muralist of the 13-th century Renaissance like-images in the Boyana Church near Sofia, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
As an encore for this abusive tirade, Dimitrov attacked Bulgarian women for entering churches with “only their nipples covered”:
“…So this is how they come to see the holy relics. This is no good, damn it,”
“Some people are now angry with me, and they want me to apologize to them. I am not going to apologize. When they put clothes on, then I will apologize. Nobody can say about me that I don’t love the Bulgarian women. I have shown that in past 60 years or so. I am always loved the Bulgarian women, and they have always loved me. But one must know when to take their clothes off and when to put clothes on,”
Prime Minisrer Borisov, meanwhile, has donated a silver reliquary to house the remains.
Meanwhile, CNN points out that:
Several sites already house relics purported to be John, such as the Grand Mosque in Damascus, Syria, and Amiens Cathedral in France, which both claim to have his head…
That needn’t be a problem, though, if we recall Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose. One of the main characters, William of Baskerville, mentions having seen the skull of the twelve-year-old John the Baptist at Cologne Cathedral. When his assistant queries how this could be possible, given that John the Baptist lived for much longer than twelve years, William mock-gravely replies that the skull of John the Baptist at an older age must be somewhere else.
A few years ago, Ovcharov claimed to have found the tomb of Orpheus in Bulgaria, prompting a row with Greece.
