Traditional Healer And Follower Feared Drowned (News24.com; April 18)

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa: Two people were swept out to sea while conducting a baptism ritual on a Wilderness beach, the National Sea Rescue Institute said on Sunday.

The incident unfolded 100m from where a 35-year-old fisherman was swept off the rocks and into the sea a few hours earlier.

“At 08:54 on Saturday, NSRI Wilderness, the SA Police Services and the Metro Ambulance and Rescue Services were activated following a reported drowning in progress 3km West of Ballots Bay,” NSRI Wilderness station commander, Hennie Niehaus said in a statement.

Despite an extensive search, the fisherman could not be found.

They were called back at 17:30 after reports that a 56-year-old woman sangoma [a traditional healer] and a man were both swept out to sea while conducting a ritual, Niehaus said. “An extensive search has revealed no sign of the pair. Both are missing and are presumed to have drowned.”

The NSRI and a police dive unit were continuing their search for the three.

Ghanaian Christians Arrested After Baptism Drowning (Erik Tryggestad/The Christian Chronicle; July 22)

Christians in Africa and the U.S. seek prayers for three members of a Church of Christ in Ghana who were arrested in connection with a July 4 drowning following a baptism there.

The following information comes from Gary Heath, deacon of missions for the Mesa, Ariz., Church of Christ, and Joel Coppinger, of World Bible School of Tulare County in Visalia, Calif. Both men make regular trips to the region for Gospel campaigns.

The drowning happened July 4, said Christopher Arthur, minister for a Church of Christ in Swedru, a city west of the capital, Accra.

Derick Ayensu, a church member in Swedru, was visiting a congregation in the nearby village of Mensakrom. After the worship service, two men asked to be baptized.

Church members took them to the edge of a river. High rainfall in late June caused flooding in Swedru and knocked out bridges in the city. It also made the rivers that flow through the region dangerous.

Ayensu baptized the two men and left the river without incident. Then Ayensu returned to the river to rinse off his feet. He slipped and was washed downstream. His body was found six days later.

“Police came and arrested the two new converts with the brother in charge of the village church,” Arthur said, “and the police wanted to charge them with negligence of duty leading to death.” Other charges include operating an unlicensed church, Heath said.

Arthur also was arrested and held in jail overnight before he was released.

The three church members in prison are scheduled to be in court tomorrow (July 23). Ghanaian church members will appeal to the judges to have the charges dismissed.

Heath and Coppinger are collecting funds to help with the church members’ legal defense….

To learn more about the dangerous nature of holy water rituals, see the entries I posted on March 21 and Jan 9.

To learn about the continuing dangerous nature of religious rituals in India, keep reading….

3 Drown In River During Hindu Festival (The Associated Press; April 14)

HARIDWAR, India: At least three people drowned as hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims took dips in the waters of the Ganges River on Wednesday during a festival in northern India, an official said.

The three fell from a bridge that crosses the river as authorities tried to control the surge of devotees following the procession of a Hindu religious sect leader, said Amit Chandola, a spokesman for the government of Uttrakhand state. The victims’ bodies were later recovered from the river.

Nearly 8 million people converged on the banks of the river Wednesday for one of the most auspicious bathing days of the festival that ends April 28, said Chandola. Devout Hindus believe bathing in the Ganges will cleanse them of their sins and free them from the cycle of life and rebirth….

Related posts:

1. Quest For Eternal Life Leads To Early Death …
2. The Quest For Eternal Life Kills AGAIN
3. AGAIN!

I suppose many theists can be.

Given the many stories I’ve come across over the years detailing the horrendous suffering that children have experienced at the hands of those who believe in gOd and other supernatural forces, however, I’d personally have to think long and hard before entrusting my own children to the care of any of them.

Here are a few of the most recent stories I’ve come across that have left me deeply troubled and sadly shaking my head:

Amish Man Accused Of Sex Crimes With Children (Jim Salter/The Associated Press; June 8)

ST. LOUIS: A 26-year-old Amish man has been charged with sexually assaulting five underage girls in Missouri and Wisconsin, including a cousin of his, authorities said Tuesday.

Chester Mast, of Curryville, Mo., was arrested in late May after authorities were contacted by members of Pike County, Mo., Amish community, an “Old Order Amish” community that shuns such amenities as electricity, phones and cars.

Pike County Sheriff Stephen Korte said Tuesday that Mast sexually assaulted four girls in Missouri and one in Wisconsin who ranged in age from 5 to 15 years old. Two of the Missouri girls were Amish and two weren’t, and the Wisconsin victim was his cousin, who is Amish, authorities said.

“It is unfortunate that nowhere in society is anybody immune from being a victim,” Korte said Tuesday. “No matter where you go there are people who may violate other people’s liberties and freedoms and peace of mind.”

Korte and Scott Blader, the district attorney for Waushara County, Wis., said they worried that there may be other victims.

“It looks as though there are other matters out there and we’re looking at them actively,” Blader said.

Mast is charged in Missouri with two counts of statutory rape, two counts of statutory sodomy and one count of sexual misconduct involving a child. Korte said he is not related to any of those girls. Mast has not entered a plea, and was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.

In Wisconsin, Mast is charged with sexual assault and incest. Blader said the victim there is Mast’s cousin. He declined to give her exact age at the time of the alleged assault, only saying that she was from 13 to 16 years old.

Mast is jailed on $100,000 bond in Pike County, but if he posts bail, he’ll be extradited to Wisconsin and held without bond, Blader said….

Taleban Hang 7-Year-Old Boy To Punish Family (Jerome Starkey/The Times; June 11)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: A seven-year-old boy was murdered by the Taleban in an apparent act of retribution this week. Afghan officials said that the child was accused of spying for US and Nato forces and hanged from a tree in southern Afghanistan.

Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the provincial governor of Helmand, said that the killing happened days after the boy’s grandfather, Abdul Woodod Alokozai, spoke out against militants in their home village.

Mr Ahmadi said: “His grandfather is a tribal elder in the village and the village is under the control of the Taleban. His grandfather said some good things about the Government and he formed a small group of people to stand against the Taleban. That’s why the Taleban killed his grandson in revenge.”

The attack happened in Heratiyan, in Sangin, near where insurgents shot down an American Pave Hawk helicopter on Wednesday, killing all four crew. The helicopter was swooping over the town to suppress attacks on a grounded air ambulance, which was picking up British casualties.

Shamsuddin Khan Faryie, an elder in Heratiyan, said that the boy, identified as the son of Abul Qudooz, was seized as he played in his garden. He was found hanged from a nearby tree….

Malawi: Christian Sect In Measles Vaccine Standoff (The Malta Independent; June 18)

BLANTYRE, Malawi: More than 100 members of a Christian religious sect have barricaded themselves in an abandoned building in southern Malawi over their refusal to give their children the measles vaccine, a regional health official said.

Members of the Seventh Day Apostolic Church, who remained barricaded on Wednesday, say their doctrine forbids them from taking medication when they fall sick, as they believe prayer will bring divine healing.

The week-long standoff in the district of Mulanje follows an outbreak of the highly contagious disease which has killed 48 people in the southern African country this year. Another 9,600 cases have been registered, the government said.

Malawi’s government says at least six million children in Malawi under the age of 15 require vaccination against measles. But when it came to vaccinating the children of members of the Apostolic Church, the government hit a brick wall.

Church leaders say they believe only God – not medicine – can cure people.

“Our church doctrine forbids us from taking any medication because medicines are manufactured by man,” Apostle Hosea Biniwasi, a senior elder of the church, told The Associated Press. “It is God’s will for man to get sick from time to time. By taking medicines are you trying to challenge God?”

Africa: Child Witchcraft Or Autism Symptoms? (Konye Obaji Ori/Afrik-News; July 9)

Across Sub-Sahara Africa, children from underprivileged backgrounds who sometimes exhibit symptoms of Autism, are often labeled as witches or wizards, and victimized – poisoned, drowned, hacked to death with machetes or buried alive in an attempt to deliver their soul from the snare of the ‘devil’.

Autism, according to the U.S. autism science and advocacy organization Autism Speaks, is a “complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others”. But in countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda, many churches organize fellowships and revival meetings to cast out the demons of witchcraft in children who exhibit such characteristics.

While witch hunting is considered a thing of the past in the entire western world, the practice remains a reality in Africa. A lack of scientific analysis or understanding of certain anomalies in children has perpetuated the belief in such superstitions as child-witchcraft.

The children, often accused of witchcraft or wizardry and victimized, exhibit uncommon physical, mental, social and behavioral characteristics which may include acting up with intense tantrums, showing aggression to others or themselves, stubborn, preferring solitary or ritualistic play, do not startle at loud noises, and often refer to themselves in third person. In some cases even children who exhibit signs of physical ailments like allergies, asthma, epilepsy, digestive disorders, persistent viral infections, feeding disorders, sensory integration dysfunction, sleeping disorders, etc, tend to find themselves doubly penalized by a society they helplessly depend upon for their existence.

But these characteristics, medically considered as symptoms of autism, are traditionally seen as unusual by some rural communities across Africa. Usually, illiterate parents, guardians and sometimes neighbors readily accept witchcraft as an explanation for extraordinary events. An act that shapes the future of autistic and underprivileged African children. And responsibility, more often than not, may be leveled at the whimsical pronouncements of powerful religious leaders at extremist churches where Christianity and traditional beliefs have usually combined to produce an entrenched belief in witchcraft.

The belief in witchcraft is predominant amongst the underprivileged rural class, and it holds that child-witches bring destruction, waste, hardship, disease and death to their families. Other identified symptoms that worsen the plight of the so-called child-witches are crying and screaming in the night, hallucinations which sometimes arise from a high fever or other illness involving a fever, and worsening health – symptoms that can be found among many children in an impoverished region with poor health care.

In November 28, 2008, the telegraph.co.uk reported the story of Mary, a five-year-old girl who was driven into the streets by her father, after the local priest denounced her as a witch and blamed her “evil powers” for causing her mother’s death.

Ostracized, vulnerable and frightened, Mary wandered the streets in south-eastern Nigeria, struggling to stay alive. According to the report, Mary was found by a British charity worker and today lives at a refuge in Akwa Ibom province with 150 other children who have been accused of being withdrawn, hardly responding to eye contact or smiles, treating others as if they were objects, preferring to spend time alone, rather than with others, and showing a lack of empathy.

Although attitudes are changing across Africa, many still believe that children like Mary who are often branded child-witches organize nocturnal meetings in the seas, oceans and forests where they feast on human blood, flesh or fetuses, and inflict harm or undermine the progress of people especially their family members.

Malaysian Man Sentenced To Gallows For Exorcism Killing (MonstersAndCritics.com; June 29)

KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian man was sentenced to hang after he caused the death of a 3-year-old girl during an exorcism ritual gone wrong, news reports said Tuesday.

Nur Farah Adila Ridzuan was strangled, had her head slammed against the wall and was thrown around violently by her mother’s lover, 49-year-old Davender Singh, the New Straits Times daily said.

Singh had claimed that Nur Farah had been placed under a spell by her father, who was divorced from her mother. He took it upon himself to exorcise the spirit.

The girl suffered multiple internal injuries including a torn liver, broken ribs and a bleeding pancreas. She died in June 2005, the report said.

The victim’s mother testified that Singh forbade her to be near the toddler during his exorcism, to keep the supposed spirit from passing into her.

Girl Beaten And Burnt In Exorcism Ritual (New Straits Times; July 21)

JOHOR BARU, Malaysia: A 10-year-old girl who was bound, beaten and burnt for a month as part of an exorcism ritual escaped on Monday after picking the lock on the chain around her ankle.

The girl, who had burn marks on both hands, bruises on her face believed to be from being punched, swollen wrists and also fractured ribs, was rushed to the hospital by a neighbour.

Police were later called in and a relative was arrested 24 hours later when he surrendered at the Permas Jaya police station.

Johor police chief Datuk Mokhtar Shariff confirmed that a roti canai seller was arrested and remanded for four days to facilitate investigations.

Police learnt that the girl was left in the care of a relative in Taman Permas Jaya after her father passed away.

The relative started performing the exorcism rituals on her shortly after a medium told him that she was an unlucky omen for the family.

Initially, she was deprived of food, given only rice laced with turmeric powder and chilli.

Then, she was chained and beaten up. This allegedly went on for a month until Monday morning when she managed to pick the lock and freed herself.

She is currently at Sultanah Aminah Hospital for a full medical check-up.

Mokhtar said that police were still awaiting the full medical report. He also said that the girl was in stable condition.

The girl, when met at the hospital later, said she now wanted to stay in a welfare home, rather than returning to a life of hell at her relative’s home.

The girl alleged that the relative, and his wife, would tell her that the punishment was for her own good.

Permas Jaya state assemblyman M. M. Samy visited her at the hospital yesterday where the girl pleaded with him not to send her back to the relative’s house.

Related posts:

1. MORE Special Rights For Theists?
2. And Still The Madness Goes On….
3. Which Christians Should Children Trust?

Rome Fiddles, We Burn (Maureen Dowd/The New York Times; July 16)

If the Vatican is trying to restore the impression that its moral sense is intact, issuing a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women doesn’t really do that.

The Catholic Church continued to heap insult upon injury when it revealed its long-awaited new rules on clergy sex abuse, rules that the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said signaled a commitment to grasp the nettle with “rigor and transparency.”

The church still believes in its own intrinsic holiness despite all evidence to the contrary. It thinks it’s making huge concessions on the unstoppable abuse scandal when it’s taking baby steps.

The casuistic document did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia; it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police; it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug; it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children; it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened.

There is no moral awakening here. The cruelty and indecency of child abuse once more inspires tactical contrition. All the penitence of the church is grudging and reactive. Church leaders are merely as penitent as they need to be to protect the institution.

Can you imagine such a scene in the confessional?

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am as sorry as my job or school requires me to be.”

“But my daughter, that is not true penitence. That’s situational penitence.”

After the Belgian police bracingly conducted raids on the church hierarchy, inspired in part by the horrifying case of a boy molested for years by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges, a case that the church ignored and covered up for 25 years, the pope did not applaud the more aggressive tack. He condemned it.

In a remarkable Times story recently, Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger debunked the spin that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been one of the more alert officials on the issue of sexual abuse:

“The future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of nonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright obstruction. More than any top Vatican official other than John Paul, it was Cardinal Ratzinger who might have taken decisive action in the 1990s to prevent the scandal from metastasizing in country after country, growing to such proportions that it now threatens to consume his own papacy.”

If Roman Polanski were a priest, he’d still be working here.

Stupefyingly, the new Vatican document also links raping children with ordaining women as priests, deeming both “graviora delicta,” or grave offenses. Clerics who attempt to ordain women can now be defrocked.

On Beliefnet, Mark Silk, a professor of religion at Connecticut’s Trinity College, suggested that the stronger threat against women’s ordination is not “a maladroit add-on” but the medieval Vatican’s “main business.”

After the Vatican launched two inquisitions of American nuns, it didn’t seem possible that the archconservative Il Papa and his paternalistic redoubt could get more unenlightened, but they have somehow managed it.

Letting women be priests — which should be seen as a way to help cleanse the church and move it beyond its infantilized and defensive state — is now on the list of awful sins right next to pedophilia, heresy, apostasy and schism.

Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, the chairman of the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, asserted, “The Catholic Church, through its long and constant teaching, holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”

But if it was reserved to celibate men centuries ago simply as a way for the church to keep land, why can’t it be changed? If a society makes strides in not subordinating women, why can’t the church reflect that? If men prove that all-male hierarchies can get shamefully warped, why can’t they embrace the normality of equality? The Vatican’s insistence on male prerogative is misogynistic poppycock — enhancing American Catholics’ disenchantment with Rome.

In The New Republic, Garry Wills [author of Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit] wrote about his struggle to come to terms with the sins of his church: Jesus “is the one who said, ‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the ‘our own’ we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.”

To learn more about the Vatican’s swift action against would-be female priests and its simultaneous reluctance to crack down on child-abusing male priests, see the entries I posted on Oct 26, 2002 and Jan 29, 2003.

Related posts:

1. The Scandal That Never Ends….
2. Catholic Morality In Action
3. On The Other Hand…

Jesus! Our PM’s An Atheist (Matt Akersten/SameSame; June 29)

Australia’s new Prime Minister has revealed she does not believe in God, and will not try to court the Christian vote by pretending to have faith.

“I am not going to pretend a faith I don’t feel,” Julia Gillard confirmed in media interviews this morning, reports ABC News.

“For people of faith, I think the greatest compliment I could pay to them is to respect their genuinely held beliefs and not to engage in some pretence about mine,” she added, noting that she grew up in a Christian family, but “I’ve made decisions in my adult life about my own views.”

Gillard did not place her hand on the Bible as she was sworn in as Prime Minister last week. Instead, she chose to take an affirmation.

A Nielsen Poll last year found three-quarters of Australians do not care whether political leaders believe in God or not.

Court Rules Christian Group Can’t Bar Gays, Get Funding (Jesse J. Holland/The Associated Press; June 28)

WASHINGTON: An ideologically split Supreme Court ruled Monday that a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won’t let gays join, with one justice saying that the First Amendment does not require a public university to validate or support the group’s “discriminatory practices.”

The court turned away an appeal from the Christian Legal Society, which sued to get funding and recognition from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. The CLS requires that voting members sign a statement of faith and regards “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle” as being inconsistent with that faith.

But Hastings, which is in San Francisco, said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.

The court on a 5-4 judgment upheld the lower court rulings saying the Christian group’s First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college’s nondiscrimination policy.

“In requiring CLS – in common with all other student organizations – to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion for the court’s liberals and moderate Anthony Kennedy. “CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings’ policy.”

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a strong dissent for the court’s conservatives, saying the opinion was “a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country.”

“Our proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate,’” Alito said, quoting a previous court decision. “Today’s decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.”

Leo Martinez, Hastings College of the Law’s acting chancellor and dean, said the ruling “validates our policy, which is rooted in equity and fairness.”

But the decision is a large setback for the Christian Legal Society, which has chapters at universities nationwide and has won similar lawsuits in other courts.

“All college students, including religious students, should have the right to form groups around shared beliefs without being banished from campus,” said Kim Colby, senior counsel at the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom.

The 30-member Hastings group was told in 2004 that it was being denied recognition because of its policy of exclusion.

According to a society news release, it invites all students to its meetings.

“However, CLS voting members and officers must affirm its Statement of Faith,” the statement said. “CLS interprets the Statement of Faith to include the belief that Christians should not engage in sexual conduct outside of a marriage between a man and a woman.”

Kennedy said “the era of loyalty oaths is behind us.”

“A school quite properly may conclude that allowing an oath or belief-affirming requirement, or an outside conduct requirement, could be divisive for student relations and inconsistent with the basic concept that a view’s validity should be tested through free and open discussion,” Kennedy said.

Justice John Paul Stevens was even harsher, saying while the Constitution “may protect CLS’s discriminatory practices off campus, it does not require a public university to validate or support them.”

Stevens, who plans to retire this summer, added that “other groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks and women – or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks and women. A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not subsidize them, give them its official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities.”

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the decision a “huge step forward for fundamental fairness and equal treatment.”

“Religious discrimination is wrong, and a public school should be able to take steps to eradicate it,” Lynn said. “Today’s court ruling makes it easier for colleges and universities to do that.”

In another case, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from some Texas parents who wanted to stop their school district from regulating when students can pass out religious-themed material to their classmates.

The court refused to hear an appeal from some parents from the Plano Independent School District.

The district in 2005 told elementary students religious-themed material could only be passed out before and after school, at recess, at three school parties or at designated tables. Middle and secondary students could add in lunchtime or between classes.

Parents say the policy dilutes students’ free speech rights. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the school district and the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.

The case is Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 08-1371.

Supreme Court To Allow Sex-Abuse Suit Against Vatican To Proceed (Jerry Markon/The Washington Post; June 29)

WASHINGTON: In announcing which cases it would take during its next term, the Supreme Court said Monday that it would let stand a lower-court ruling allowing the Vatican to be sued over the church sex-abuse scandal….

In declining to stop a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of conspiring with U.S. church officials to cover up sex abuse, the court took a rare step toward bringing the Holy See into a U.S. courtroom.

The justices, without comment, declined the Vatican’s appeal of a lower-court ruling that said it could be sued in a U.S. court on certain grounds. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by a man who said he was sexually abused as a teenager in 1965 by a priest in Portland, Ore. His attorneys said the church moved the priest among different assignments to cover up the abuse.

The Vatican argued that its status as a foreign country exempts it from being sued in a U.S. court, a longtime position that has helped shield it from such lawsuits.

In partially rejecting that argument, the Supreme Court allowed pretrial discovery in the case to go forward, and attorneys for the plaintiff said they would seek to subpoena church documents and call Vatican officials under oath. But attorneys for both sides said they doubted that the decision would trigger a flood of additional lawsuits from victims.

“We are not foreseeing that. You really have to have specific facts and a pattern that implicates direct Vatican involvement to bring these cases,” said Jeff Anderson, an attorney for the plaintiff and for hundreds of other people who say they were sexually abused by priests….

Vatican Posts Financial Loss For Third Year In A Row (AFP; July 10)

VATICAN CITY: The effects of the global financial crisis put the Holy See’s budget in the red for the third consecutive year, the Vatican said in a statement on Saturday.

The Holy See ended the year 2009 with a loss of 4.1 million euros (5.2 million dollars), compared to its loss of 911,514 euros in 2008. In 2007 it had lost nine million euros.

Over the course of the year, the Vatican spent 254.2 million and had income of 250.1 million euros.

In 2009, the Vatican absorbed “the negative fluctuations that had been suspended in 2008,” the statement said.

Vatican Radio said that the Holy See would have posted a profit, had it not been for the absorption of 2008 losses….

Argentina Legalizes Gay Marriage In Historic Vote (Juan Forero/The Associated Press; July 15)

BUENOS AIRES: With advocates for gay rights watching worldwide, Argentina early Thursday legalized same-sex marriages to become the first country in an overwhelmingly Catholic region, Latin America, to grant same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples.

After 14 hours of sometimes heated debate that lasted nearly until dawn, the Senate voted 33 to 27 to approve the Marriage for People of the Same Sex bill, which had been approved by the lower house in May and was strongly supported by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Argentina becomes the second country in the Americas, after Canada, to approve marriages for gays and lesbians.

Gay rights activists from the United States to Europe who had been following the debate said the approval would help hasten similar measures in other countries.

“I think people will look to it as very important,” Dan Hawes, who oversees organizing nationwide for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said by phone from Washington on Wednesday. “Every win we have gives momentum and hope to people everywhere, including activists in the United States working for the right to marry.”

Tens of thousands of activists — supportive and opposed to same-sex unions — had marched on the country’s 104-year-old Congress building in Buenos Aires. One man, an opponent, quietly held a statue of the Virgin Mary and prayed. Others shouted slogans, demanding that gay couples receive the same privileges and rights as straight couples.

When the final tally was announced, supporters of the measure erupted in cheers.

Fernandez de Kirchner, speaking from China where she was on a state visit, said she was “very satisfied with the vote.”

“This has been a positive step in defending minority rights,” she said.

The approval is a blow to the Catholic Church, which has strongly opposed gay marriages here and in other countries where the Vatican has influence.

In Latin America, which is uniformly Catholic and where the church hierarchy is often consulted on major decisions, only Mexico City had approved same-sex marriages. But gay activists say they have made progress. In Colombia, the highest court last year gave same-sex partners nearly all the rights found in common-law unions. Uruguay’s Congress also recognized same-sex unions.

“In some northern countries, they said these advances could never happen in our region,” said Marcela Sanchez, of Colombia Diversa, an advocacy group on gay issues in the Colombian capital, Bogota. “But now we are seeing movement forward in a number of places.”

For American gay rights advocates, the vote in Argentina puts that country of 41 million people ahead of the United States, where voters in California and other states have approved propositions blocking gay unions. Only the District and five states, four of them in New England, have legalized gay marriages.

In some ways, Argentina seemed a logical choice for the approval of gay marriage.

Though influential, the Catholic church is not omnipresent, as Argentina has long been a magnet for immigrants from around the world, including Jews, Muslims and, a century ago, anarchists who rejected the Vatican. It is also a country with a strong human rights tradition that sprouted up during a brutal dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983.

The Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, is also among the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, with numerous bars and hotels catering to gays. Indeed, the city legalized same-sex unions in 2002, but gays have faced legal obstacles to getting married. Nearly 70 percent of Argentines believed it was time to legalize gay marriage, according to a recent poll by the Analogías polling firm.

Related posts:

1. MORE Good News You Might Have Missed
2. More Good News You Might Have Missed
3. Good News You Might Have Missed

If you’re not careful you’re liable to learn something new every day.

Here’s some of what I learned today:

A Look Into Witchcraft, Churches (Sowetan; July 20)

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa: Can a four-month-old baby talk and walk at night and lead a horde of tokoloshes to drink water?

In a look at the topic of witchcraft in Limpopo, Special Assignment’s Busisiwe Ntuli discovered that churches in villages near Groblersdal promote this belief.

In an exclusive episode titled Troubled Souls, which will be screened tonight at 8.31pm on SABC1, the investigative programme exposes these churches for widely distributing recorded confessions on witchcraft made by children.

Over the years, many people have been killed and driven out of their villages after being accused of witchcraft.

At the New Generation Church in Lenting village, the church provides shelter to adults and children, many of whom are ill.

The founder and leader of the church, Pastor Bertha Mphahlele, says she wants to deliver people, including children, who are bound by evil spirits.

That popped up in my email newsbox today.

Having never heard of tokoloshes before, I did a web search.

Here’s one article that I found:

Tikoloshe (Wikipedia)

In Zulu mythology, Tikoloshe, Tokoloshe or Hili (from the Xhosa word utyreeci ukujamaal) is a dwarf-like water sprite or zombie. They are considered a mischievous and evil spirit. They can become invisible by swallowing a pebble. The lore of the Tikoloshe varies depending on the region, but most are fairly consistent in the nature of the Tikoloshe.

The Tokoloshe is stated to be “a cross between a zombie, poltergeist, and a gremlin” that “lives in South Africa.” It [apparently Chris McNab's book, Mythological Monsters] goes on to say Tokoloshes are “created from dead bodies by shamans… if the shaman has been offended by someone.” According to the book, the creatures are “only the size of small children… (but) can create terrible destruction,” and “only the person who is cursed will be able to see the tokoloshe.” In addition, the book says the tokoloshe may also choose to wander, causing mischief, particularly to schoolchildren. Other details include its gremlin-like appearance; a skull hole created “by a red hot metal rod… heat plays a vital role in Zulu magic;” and gouged out eyes.

“Some Zulu people are still superstitious when it comes to things like the supposedly fictional tokoloshe – a hairy creature created by a wizard to harm his enemies (also been known to rape women and bite off sleeping people’s toes).” Another similar being is the Ogo. Although many Zulu villagers claim not to have seen the creature, it is thought that they really DID see one (for according to legend, those who see a Tokoloshe must never tell a soul, or the creature will return seeking retribution).

The Tokoloshe, according to the Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa, has been known to take on many forms. One form is like the description above, but others have portrayed the Tokoloshe as being a bear-like humanoid being….

On the west coast of Africa the Tokoloshe, or Teikolosha as it is known there, is a worm like creature which has a head of a dog like creature and a sharp tongue made of gold. It is said that the Teikolosha will burrow through the sand and eat the crops of villages that have a resident that has done wrong. Once all the crops have been consumed the Teikolosha will lay eggs in place of where the crops were but what will grow will be more crops but these crops will be poisonous and bleed when cut. Anyone who attempts to fight the Teikolosha will be banished to the African underworld and it is thought that their children will age rapidly and crumble to dust.

The Tokoloshe is sometimes called upon by people to cause trouble for others, and a witch doctor… may be called to banish him.

The Tokoloshe myth is well known and feared in most especially by southern African countries. Many people place their beds on gallon paint tins or bricks (some tales state that they are wrapped in paper) in order to lift them higher off the ground so that the Tokoloshe cannot hide underneath and attack them.

The song Moleko on the 2006 Vusi Mahlasela album Guiding Star (Naledi Ya Tsela) mentions the tokoloshe in the main refrain.

Running gags about Tokoloshes are common in the South African daily comic strip Madam and Eve.

Tokoloshe Man was a pop hit by John Kongos, later covered by Happy Mondays and released on the Elektra compilation album Rubáiyát.

The External Links section of that article then led me to this news story from 2005:

(Nicky Blatch/The South African Herald Online)

Shortly before stabbing two-year-old Masixole Sotenjwa 38 times, believing him to be an evil spirit, the house of the KwaZakhele man was visited by a number of bats, which he had taken to be a bad omen.

“He went to a herbalist to get muti to chase the evil spirits,” said Eastern Cape division of judges head Cecil Somyalo, who last month handed down Monwabisi Nkathu’s seven-year jail sentence for culpable homicide.

Although originally charged with the murder of the toddler, Somyalo decided on the lesser charge after taking Nkathu’s beliefs into account.

While the government seeks to promote cultural diversity by respecting traditional beliefs, dilemmas are posed when these beliefs start having implications on human life, said Theodore Petrus, anthropology researcher and lecturer at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

In most cases communities preferred to deal with the matter themselves in informal “kangaroo courts”, feeling the state lacked understanding of their beliefs.

“People set up kangaroo courts because these courts will understand the difference in the perception of evidence. People testify on what they might have seen and the court will understand. They don’t have to look for physical evidence (required in mainstream law courts).”

But, said Petrus, some individuals also used their beliefs as a scapegoat to avoid punishment for their crimes.

In the Nkathu case, however, Somyalo based his decision on two similar cases, the 1933 Mbombela case and the 1992 Ngema case, in which the defendants were convicted of culpable homicide for “tokoloshe” killings, rather than murder.

In the 1933 case, an initial death sentence was changed by the appellate division.

“This person (Nkathu) genuinely believed he was killing a tokoloshe or impundulu,” said Somyalo. “When the police arrived at the scene, Nkathu was still covered in blood and said to police: ‘I killed the impundulu’.”

So convinced was the court that Nkathu, 49, had no intention of killing a human being, that no expert witnesses were called in to testify.

Belief in the impundulu or tokoloshe (two separate agents of witchcraft), or similar variants, is widespread throughout Africa, said Petrus. In destroying a witch’s agent, it is believed that the witch who sent it could be destroyed as well, or at least have its power broken.

“Impundulu, translated as the ‘lightning bird’, is an invisible agent believed to be sent by a witch to an intended victim and can cause several unpleasant physiological symptoms.”

In her book Myths and Legends of Southern Africa, Penny Miller describes the impundulu as a black or white bird the size of a man, with a large beak, powerful wings and red feet.

Petrus said: “Tokoloshe is believed to be a dwarf-like male creature with pronounced sexual characteristics also sent by a witch to harm an intended victim.”

In an interview with America’s Spectrum newspaper published on the internet, wellknown Zulu sangoma Credo Mutwa said the tokoloshe has a “thick, sharp, bony ridge on top its head” with which it can “knock down an ox, by butting it with its head”.

“This tokoloshe likes to play with children, and has been seen hundreds of times by school children in various parts of South Africa, even in recent times. Sometimes it will terrorize children by scratching them as they sleep, leaving long, parallel scratches on a child’s back and upon a child’s thigh, scratches that become infected and itch terribly.”

Miller said the tokoloshe, able to render himself invisible, will only allow himself to be seen by children, whom he befriends and trusts.

Petrus said a belief in witchcraft, perpetuated through myths and stories passed on from one generation to the next, was widespread among most African communities. Those in rural areas “with less access to technology and a modernised lifestyle” focused more on supernatural explanations for illnesses and misfortunes.

While practised worldwide, witchcraft in Europe and America, which was “based more on the worship of nature and the relationship of human beings to nature”, differed markedly from the African context, where witchcraft was a “core part of the social organisation of the community”, said Petrus.

Kara Heritage Institute director Dr Mathole Motshekga said witchcraft was also related to socio-economic conditions, where people become jealous if others succeed or are suspicious others will bewitch them.

“These issues should be addressed through education,” he said.

“But magic has existed from time immemorial and is not peculiar to Africa. It is a universal phenomenon.”

Petrus said many African and third-world communities, where changes were imposed upon them through colonisation and other factors, sought supernatural explanations for the resulting anxiety and uncertainty and crises they experienced.

“Circumstances beyond their control were attributed to the work of witchcraft.”

He said exposure to education and modernisation, while not eradicating a belief in witchcraft, often led to changes within the belief system.

Petrus, who is researching law enforcement with muti-related crimes, is hoping his research will be able to generate certain recommendations to assist the police to be more effective in dealing with these crimes.

Wow….

Makes me wonder what other varieties of religious and quasi-religious madness remain as yet undiscovered by me despite many years of research.

Related posts:

1. West Virginia Newspaper Goes Out On A Limb…
2. The Other Faith-Based Terrorism
3. Update On The Never-Ending Witch Hunts

Who knew?

Mexico’s Meth Warriors (Tim Padgett and Ioan Grillo/Time; June 28)

The city of Zitácuaro sits on the edge of Mexico’s Tierra Caliente, an oven-like expanse of lime orchards and agave spikes beneath the sierras in western Michoacán state. The hellish setting seems apt for the violence raging across the region. The latest spasm grabbed headlines worldwide: on June 14, two dozen gunmen ambushed a convoy ferrying 40 federal police officers on the highway outside Zitácuaro. The firefight lasted half an hour and left 12 federales dead and 15 wounded; some of the attackers were also killed, their bodies whisked away by comrades. Even in a country where drug gangs routinely massacre policemen and soldiers, the assault was brazen.

Few in Mexico doubt who was responsible: a bizarre gang of Christian-fundamentalist narcotraffickers known as La Familia Michoacana, which is busting out of its Tierra Caliente base. Its leader, Nazario Moreno — a.k.a. El Más Loco (the Craziest One) — has written a bible, and his 1,500 minions hold prayer meetings before going to work. Their grisly calling card is the severed head of an enemy. There have been at least 20 decapitations this year in their stronghold of Apatzingán, a colonial city of 100,000 inhabitants who live in perpetual fear of the gang. Recently, four severed, blindfolded heads — one belonging to a federal cop — were left on its main monument with a sign warning folks to “take a good look” at what happens to those who cross the Michoacán mob. “It’s gotten to the point,” says Andrés Larios, a local Roman Catholic priest, “that we’ve had to consult our bishop about whether there’s a proper way to say funeral Masses for heads without bodies.”

La Familia poses more than theological problems for Mexican President Felipe Calderón, a Michoacán native. Calderón’s 3½-year-long offensive against drug traffickers, a period that has seen 23,000 gangland-style murders in Mexico, looks increasingly on the ropes. The meteoric rise of La Familia, which specializes in the production and trafficking of methamphetamine, reflects an alarming proliferation of Mexican drug cartels. Five years ago, there were a few major narco-groups, and La Familia was just a minor gang for hire; today there are seven strong cartels, one of them La Familia, making a combined $40 billion a year or thereabouts as they compete for turf.

And El Más Loco is no longer just a local lunatic: Moreno’s handiwork has put him on Washington’s radar. President Obama last year designated La Familia a “significant foreign narcotics trafficker,” and Attorney General Eric Holder calls its violent “depravity” among the worst of Mexico’s gangs….

Ironically, La Familia was formed in the 1980s as an anticrime vigilante group….

Calderón’s government is offering a $2.5 million reward for the capture of Moreno, 40. The son of a poor Tierra Caliente rancher, he started as a small-time marijuana dealer and narco-hitman with a flair for disguises. (He once posed as a supermarket bag boy and carried his intended victim’s groceries to the parking lot. That way, he could get close enough to shoot him in the head.) In the 1990s, Moreno ferried cocaine to the U.S., where he became a fan of Latino Evangelicals, the masculine religiosity of Christian author John Eldredge and the romanticization of the Mafia in the Godfather films. Investigators say the head injuries he suffered in a 1998 car accident (he has a plate in his skull) made him even more “loco.” But to many of Michoacán’s poorest residents, the mustached Moreno is a Robin Hood, lavishing food and money on Tierra Caliente barrios. On Apatzingán’s torrid central plaza, you can buy CDs full of narcocorridos, or drug ballads, praising La Familia’s exploits.

Judging by his bible, titled Pensamientos (Thoughts), Moreno sees himself as an Old Testament warrior on a narco-mission from God: heading a criminal group of “valiant men” to “protect our land, Michoacán.” Not for him such Christian notions as turning the other cheek. In the fall of 2006, La Familia announced itself as a player alongside major drug groups by lopping off the heads of five Zeta operatives and rolling them onto the dance floor of a crowded disco. The audacity didn’t end there. Last summer, after the arrest of one of Moreno’s top lieutenants, La Familia tortured and murdered a dozen federal police officers, dumping their bodies in a pile beside a Michoacán highway….

Brutality is good for business. Officials say La Familia controls as much as 30% of the state’s formal commerce and usually owns the businesses — from gas stations to cattle ranches — where it launders its billions of dollars….

[M]any in Apatzingán are pessimistic about any campaign against La Familia: El Más Loco and his family, they fear, are already too deeply entrenched in Michoacán. Hotelier Infante recently watched his little girl and her friends kicking around a coconut, pretending it was a human head. “People here,” he says, “are getting very dehumanized.”

To learn a bit more about religion in Mexico and the often bizarre behavior it’s been associated with over the centuries, see the entries I posted on Dec 12, 2005; Dec 13, 2005; Jan 5, 2006; May 27, 2008; and Nov 29, 2008 (among others).

Related posts:

1. Meet Joey Lo: One More Christian On A Mission
2. Mark Souder: Christian Hypocrite Of The Week?
3. Onward, Christian Soldiers

So-Called Demons Prompt Brooklyn Man To Destroy Trees (Stephanie Barish/WPIX; July 15)

BROOKLYN, New York: A man in Brooklyn took it upon himself to do a little landscaping around the borough free of charge. However, police say it wasn’t kindness that prompted his actions but his belief that the trees were possessed by demons.

According to police, Steve Maynard, 35, spent the past few weeks ripping limbs off trees around Brooklyn ultimately causing nearly $200,000 in extensive damage to those along the Eastern Parkway.

Maynard reportedly told police he was on the hunt for the body of a girl named “Amy,” whom he believed had been killed by demons in the trees.

Maynard was charged with criminal mischief and arraigned in Brooklyn court Thursday. In addition, he was ordered held for a psychological evaluation.

Oddly enough, before authorities closed in on the suspect, the community went to great lengths to protect the remaining trees that weren’t yet destroyed. Residents posted “Certificates of Exorcism” on the trees, in hopes that the suspect would move along and spare the tree.

According to reports, Maynard was a former construction worker who suffered a severe hand injury, ultimately ending his career. He is now collecting disability.

Silly man.

Everyone knows that the Keebler elves live in trees.

It’s those New York cab drivers who are *really* possessed by demons!

Related posts:

1. Pity The Poor Priests….
2. Judgment Day Down South
3. Catholic Love & Understanding (New York Version)

Atheists Break Out New Ritual Tool: The Blow-Dryer (Dan Harris, Eric Johnson, and Mary Flynn/ABC News Nightline; July 16)

Nonbelievers Adopt Provocative Ceremony to Make a Point About Baptism

Wielding a blow-dryer, a leading atheist conducted a mass “de-baptism” of fellow non-believers and symbolically dried up the offending waters that were sprinkled on their foreheads as young children.

At the annual American Atheists Convention, one of atheism’s premier provocateurs, Edwin Kagin, faced the crowd and raised high a hairdryer labeled “Reason and Truth.”

Said one woman who travelled from Cincinnati to undergo the de-baptism, “I was baptized Catholic. I don’t remember any of it at all.” The woman, Cambridge Boxterman, 24, added, “According to my mother I screamed like a banshee, and those are her words, so you can see that even as a young child I didn’t want to be baptized. It’s not fair. I was born atheist and they were forcing me to become Catholic.”

Kagin, who is American Atheists’ national legal director, firmly believes that regardless of one’s religious beliefs, each person has the right to say or do what he or she wants, provided it is within the law. In the past, he has reportedly called out parents who subject their children to strict fundamentalist religious education, referring to it as child abuse.

“It is teaching children that the world works in other ways than it does,” he said. “This can be extremely dangerous.”

“They are practicing child abuse in teaching that the world operates in ways other than it does,” he told the convention crowd. “And in my opinion, they are engaged in terrorism by weakening our nation and our understanding of science and things with which we can defend ourselves and progress. If it had not been for these fools we could have been at the stars 2,000 years ago.”

Kagin, author of Baubles of Blasphemy, has a history of behaving in ways that elicit a rise from God-fearing people. He’s known to have asked female atheists to dress in burqas and perform a song, “Back in their Burquas Again,” he’s referred to Mary Magdalene as a deranged hooker and he’s called the Holy Eucharist “Swallow the Leader.”

Kagin said religion should not be used to determine how people ought to live their lives. “They’re doing harm to women who want to control their own bodies and their own reproductive rights,” he said. “They’re doing harm to a great number of people and they’re saying that ‘what we’re doing is sacred and inviolate. We can do whatever we want to your rights, and you can not react.’ That’s what they’re doing.”

It is in this same spirit that Kagin performs the de-baptism.

Standing at a podium wearing a long brown monk’s robe, Kagin read with the oratorical skill of a preacher from a set of pages in his hand and invited participants to come forward to be de-baptized.

He recited a few mock-Latin syllables, to the audience’s amusement. An assistant produced a large hairdryer, labeled “Reason and Truth,” and handed it to Kagin. The man who’d elected himself to be de-baptized stood before him. Kagin turned on the hairdryer, blowing the hot air in his face in an attempt to symbolically dry up his baptismal waters.

“Come forward now and receive the spirit of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the stain of baptismal water,” Kagin shouts.

Atheists poke fun at baptisms in this ceremony, saying they believe their waving around a hairdryer holds the same level of magical and spiritual powers as does the baptismal ceremony.

Kagin said that many people have undergone de-baptism.”Many have taken it as somewhat of a joke, but some have found it truly, if you will, a spiritually cleansing experience,” he said.

Kagin has said he doesn’t particularly care who he’s offending with his actions, and that he is acting completely within his rights. “You can mock anything you want because you have the right to,” he said. “Humor is humor and what types of humor are you going to outlaw?” he said.

He conceded that although it may not be good manners to continually take a mocking stance toward religion, “in many cases, it is the only real response.”

Kagin said he thought some people might get overly offended by his poking fun at religion. “If someone is so secure in their faith, why are they the least bit concerned about some little atheist mocking them?” he asked. “I think the reason they are worried and concerned is the very deep fear that if everyone doesn’t believe it, maybe it isn’t so.”

For Kagin, this struggle between godless and god-fearing hits very close to home: his son, Steve Kagin, is a fundamentalist minister in Kansas.

He founded Camp Quest, a secular summer camp for young nonbelievers, many of whom, he says, have been harrassed or hounded for their lack of faith.

And then there’s this interesting twist. His own son, Steve Kagin, is a fundamentalist minister in Kansas.

Kagin said that his son claims to have a personal revelation in Jesus Christ. “I am totally unable to say that’s not true,” he said. “There are examples all through history of quite sane people who have had such experiences. I don’t think it is but I’m not going to say it isn’t.”

When asked if he is pained by their opposing views on this issue, Kagin chuckled. “Oh, one wonders where they went wrong,” he said. He and his son, Steven, have an excellent relationship, Kagin said, but they do have their limits.

“We just understand there are certain things we really can’t, at this point, talk about,” he said.

“I don’t lose much sleep over (it) because everyone has the right to do what they want to do within the law,” he said. “That’s what I believe in.”

As Cambridge completed her de-baptism, she expressed no qualms about how it might be perceived. “Sometimes you’ve got to have shock value,” she said. “There’s some times where you just have to shock people into getting attention and from there, they ask questions… And maybe they learn a bit.”

Kagin said that he saw the conflict between atheists and believers as America’s religious civil war. He said bad manners are a reasonable weapon in that war, but he said it was unlikely that atheists would emerge as the victors.

“Atheists have no chance whatsoever of prevailing in a direct confrontation with believers,” he said. “There are far too many (believers).”

Comments?

There’s a lot I could say, but – for now, at least – I’ll just share this:

It seems that a lot of this story was written with an “How dare they!” attitude in mind (which might be more obvious if you watch the video version). I think Kagin and the others did a good job responding to that attitude and the questions it prompted, but… a straight news piece that just laid out the facts would have been preferable.

As usual, I found a great deal of irony in the way that the reporter (in this case, Dan Harris) seemed shocked by Kagin’s “rudeness” and the very idea of hair dryer-driven de-baptisms while no where acknowledging the fact that these are the sorts of things atheists usually have to resort to in order to attract media attention. There are, after all, many, many atheists who have been quietly writing impressive critiques of theism and religion for many, many years, but how often do you see ABC News going out and interviewing them?

In some ways, atheism today seems to me to be somewhat like what homosexuality was in the early 1970s. It’s a subject that the mass media generally refuses to cover until an especially flamboyant representative stands up and does something the average person perceives to be outrageous. Only after some time has passed and it becomes clear that that flamboyant representative is not only harmless but actually supported by millions of people do reporters get around to asking if it’s the average person who is deserving of more examination and perhaps even criticism.

Alas, it seems that it’s still a rare member of the mainstream media who is willing to subject the basic beliefs of theists to the scrutiny that they deserve. In the meantime, I suppose any coverage of atheists like Kagan represents something of a step forward, however snide and shallow that coverage may be….

What do you think?

(Or are you still laughing too hard over “Swallow the Leader” to type?)

Related posts:

1. Are Atheists Second-Class Citizens?
2. Why a Mormon Likes Atheists
3. Is Obama “Bad News” for Atheists?

Santeria Healer Charged In Ritual Burning Accident (The Associated Press; July 14)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: A spiritual healer who allegedly dropped a candle into an alcohol bath where a woman was undergoing a Santeria ritual has been charged with negligent homicide in her death.

Police consider 28-year-old Stephanie Rodriguez Pizarro’s death in July 2009 in a San Juan housing project to be an accident, and say she sought the treatment to help with marital and financial troubles. She died of second-degree burns over half her body.

The healer, 46-year-old Jose Cadiz Tapia, was charged Tuesday following an investigation that took about a year to complete, police said. He faces six months to three years in prison if convicted.

A lawyer could not immediately be located for Cadiz, who was released on $20,000 bond without entering a plea. A court hearing is scheduled for Aug. 11.

Santeria, which mixes Roman Catholicism with the traditional African Yoruba faith, is a widely practiced faith in the Caribbean.

4-Year-Old Russian Boy Dies After Shaman Performs Exorcism To Remove “Evil Spirits” From His Body (Joe Tacopino/The New York Daily News; July 14)

Maybe they should have taken him to the doctor instead.

A four-year-old boy with pneumonia died during an exorcism after his parents told a Korean Shaman to remove “evil spirits” from his body.

The child stopped breathing during the so-called healing ritual with So Dyavor, and her husband Kim Sende, according to The Moscow Times….

The boy, Dmitry Kazachuk, was left alone with the shaman by his parents after they were hypnotized. They had come to seek help for an ailing grandparent but were told Dmitry was jinxed and had put a curse on the entire family, according to the Russian tabloid Tvoi Den.

The ancient practice of shaman healing has been prevalent in Siberia for centuries but the rituals have seen resurgence with the break up of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Communism.

Related posts:

1. The Unkindest Kut Of All…
2. Don’t Drink The Snail Mucus!
3. Exorcism Down Under

Maldives Atheist Who Felt Persecuted Hangs Himself (Charles Haviland/The BBC; July 15)

A man in the Indian Ocean island state of the Maldives has died, apparently by suicide, after complaining of being victimised for not being a Muslim.

Ismail Mohamed Didi, 25, had admitted being an atheist and had sought political asylum abroad.

He was found on Tuesday hanging at his workplace – the air traffic control tower at the international airport in the capital, Male.

It is compulsory for citizens of the Maldives to be Sunni Muslims.

Despite the rigidity of its religious laws, the Maldives was recently elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

A Maldivian website, Minivan News, printed what it said was a recent e-mail from Didi in which he said he was an atheist.

He asked a foreign charity to help him seek asylum in Britain because, he said, “there is no place for non-Muslim Maldivians in this society”.

He said his colleagues had spread word of his apostasy and that his closest friends would no longer meet him.

He was afraid for his life and knew no-one in the country who could help him, he added.

The website said his employer at the airport had launched an investigation into his lack of belief and referred him to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

It quoted one colleague as alleging that Didi had “openly insulted God”.

The Maldives’ constitution demands that all its citizens be Muslim, and religious office-holders regularly stress the unacceptability of other faiths being accepted or propagated.

In May, a 37-year-old Maldivian man professed to be non-Muslim at a public meeting with a visiting Indian preacher, Zakir Naik.

An NGO, the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives, declared that if he did not repent he should be sentenced to death.

Three days later the man went on television, recanted and asked for forgiveness.

Sources in the country say a small but growing number of its people do question their faith, but rarely in a public way.

*Sigh*

Maybe it’s time to revive the Underground Railroad and lay fresh tracks to all the areas of the world where atheists like Didi face persecution and even death the moment they stop being good slaves to religion….

Related posts:

1. Mohamed Nazim Speaks Out!
2. Another Death for Apostasy
3. Does God Want Us To Stone A Whale To Death?