Federation Entertainment Boards 'Vatican,' 'The Sect' (Exclusive)

Elsa Keslassy
Variety

February 9, 2021

Federation Entertainment, Pascal Breton and Lionel Uzan’s independent production and distribution group, is ramping up its premium documentary output with a slate of new acquisitions, including “The Vatican” and “The Sect.”

“The Vatican” is a six-part investigative documentary series exploring the pinnacle of Catholicism, and how incessant scandals and an ever changing society have weakened its foundations. “The Vatican” is directed by Kat Steppe, co-written by Rik Torfs and Jo Badisco, and produced by Kato Maes and Kristoffel Mertens at Belgian outfit Paneka for the broadcaster VRT. Now filming, the series has already been pre-sold to French SVOD service Salto.

“The Sect,” meanwhile, delivers an in-depth look into the Order of the Solar Temple. The five-part docuseries sheds light on what led 74 members of the cult to commit mass suicide across France, Switzerland and Canada, between 1994 and 1997. “The Sect” is produced by Matthieu Belghiti and Jean-Xavier De Lestrade, the Oscar-winning director of “Murder of a Sunday Morning” and “The Staircase,” and produced by What’s Up Films (“Trial 4”). “The Sect” is the first original documentary series commissioned by Salto.

Federation has also secured worldwide distribution rights to Mai Hua’s documentary “Make Me a Man: Meetings with Incredible Men,” which follows a charismatic therapist, Jerry Hyde, interviewing his male patients about the different definitions of masculinity in today’s world.

The company’s recent acquisitions also include “Lil’ Buck: Real Swan,” a multi-award winning documentary that charts the journey of a hip-hop dance prodigy from the streets of Memphis who also becomes a standout ballet dancer. The movie, directed by Louis Wallecan, was part of Tribeca’s selection in 2019 and won best film at San Francisco in the dance category.

Federation’s previous documentary pickups include “Paris: a Wild Story,” “First Man,” “The Secret Journey of Migratory Birds,” “Homo Sapiens,” as well as docu-dramas “The Assassination of Henry IV,” “The Escape of Louis XVI” and “The Appeal of 1940.”

Federation’s push into premium documentary is being spearheaded by Myriam Weil, the company’s head of documentaries. The company’s current documentary slate includes “Wenger, Invincible.”

https://variety.com/2021/film/global/federation-entertainment-boards-vatican-the-sect-exclusive-1234903836/

Backstory: Australia's foremost religion journalist Rachael Kohn on why faith still matters

YOUTUBE: The Spirit of Things: Rachael Kohn interviews the Dalai Lama during a visit to Chenrezig in Queensland in 2011.

Rachael Kohn
ABC News`
December 1, 2018

It was 1993 and I was in Chicago to cover the Parliament of the World's Religions, where 8,000 people from every imaginable religion and country pledged to live in harmony.

It was exactly 100 years since the original Parliament was held at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair when swamis, gurus and spiritual leaders came to America for the first time.

It was my first overseas assignment and I was alone.

The BBC team outnumbered me by three, but I had an advantage.

Being an academic in religious studies, I knew the works and reputations of many of the speakers, and with unbridled confidence I invited a litany of them to my hotel suite for interviews.

From Hans Kung, who drafted the Parliament's key document, to Richard Rubinstein, the "death of God" theologian who had controversially defended Sun Myung Moon — convicted leader of South Korea's controversial Unification Church (known as the 'Moonies') — I interviewed over 20 participants with my bulky cassette recorder.

But not everyone was welcome at the world's largest religion jamboree.

Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the black nationalist group Nation of Islam, who was known for his racist and anti-Semitic statements, gate-crashed the event.

He held his own media conference at the Palmer House Hotel, where the conference was based.

Farrakhan's bouncers tried to keep me out, perhaps because my name clearly identified me as Jewish.

But I persisted and when I asked him about his targeting of Jews, he exploded.

The other journalists were stunned to see his charming demeanour abruptly turn to ferocious attack.

But the message of Hans Kung, that "there will be no peace among nations until there is peace among religions", won the day.

At the closing event, the Dalai Lama's address on the importance of demonstrating personal compassion drew upwards of 20,000 attendees.

I returned to Australia with a profound understanding of what I needed to do.
Dangerous cults and disgraced sheiks

My programs on religion would provide an unparalleled opportunity to hear the best and the brightest people articulate their religious traditions in a way that might foster the peace that Kung and others dreamt of.

But the 1990s were anything but peaceful.

Terrorism fuelled by Islamist extremism had already taken a toll at the World Trade Centre in 1993, resulting in over 1,000 injuries and six deaths.

It would continue around the world.

The 9/11 disaster killed almost 3,000 American civilians, and the Bali bombing, in 2002, killed 202 people — 88 of them Australians.

A rising fear of the Muslim community needed to be addressed, and the programs that I created — such as Religion Today (1994-1997), with producer Stephen Godley, and The Spirit of Things, with producer Geoff Wood (1997-present) — regularly addressed interfaith relations with a specific focus on Islam.

But who was to speak on behalf of the ethnically and religiously divided Muslim community?

The Egyptian-born, Lakemba-based Grand Mufti Sheik Taj el-Din Al-Hilaly was a go-to authority.

That was until he aroused controversy in 1998 with a speech, in Arabic, at a public function at the University of Sydney.

In it, he accused Jews of using sex and deviancy to control the world.

Sheik Al-Hilaly's standing worsened in 2006, when he responded to the conviction of rape by Muslim men of non-Muslim women by comparing the victims to "uncovered meat".

I was relieved that in the week of the rape story, an urbane visiting Imam from Brighton, UK, talked to me about his extensive interfaith work.

He revealed his "bible" was To Heal a Fractured World, by Chief Rabbi of the UK, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

In fact, interfaith initiatives in Australia between the Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities gathered pace.

But no-one was addressing the trouble makers, like the self-appointed sheik, Man Haron Monis.

He claimed to be a refugee from Iran, and was becoming radicalised.

He had sent me, and others in the media, a DVD with a woman dressed in a burka recruiting fighters for jihad.

It prompted me to write an article for The Drum in 2009 in which I warned that if the renegade sheik was not reigned in, then he would be a danger to both the wider community and the Muslim community.

Then, on December 15, 2014, Man Haron Monis walked into the Lindt Cafe armed with an assault rifle and took hostages.

Two of the detainees were killed during the 17-hour ordeal.

The desire to preserve the peace should never mean turning a blind eye to the dark side of religion.

That lesson was forever etched in my mind 40 years ago when Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple, led his largely African-American flock to the jungles of Guyana.

More than 900 followers, including 304 children, died in a mass murder-suicide pact.

It was the worst cult disaster in modern American history.

Having specialised in cults as an academic, I was familiar with their destructive practices, which hit an all-time high in the 1990s.

The Solar Temple, in Switzerland and Quebec, Heaven's Gate in California, and the Branch Davidians in Waco Texas, collectively left 200 dead and many seriously injured.

Meanwhile, the Buddhist doomsday cult, Aum Shin Rikyo, killed 13 and injured thousands in poisonous sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo Metro of Japan.

The leader, Shoko Asahara, and his minions, were executed in July this year.
 

Survivors and stories of rebirth

In 26 years at the ABC, I have interviewed many survivors and leaders of cults (sometimes termed "new religious movements").

They range from the second-in-command at Waco, Marc Breault, to the jailed Australian exile and follower of Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, Jane Stork, who was part of a plot to murder a doctor and a judge (you may know her from the Netflix series, Wild, Wild Country).

Then there was the high-level member of Peoples Temple, Deborah Layton, who described herself as a true believer and a victim of Jim Jones; and Nan Sook Hong, the daughter-in-law of Sun Myung Moon (from the aforementioned "Moonies") who told me how she escaped the high-security compound in New York State.

There were plenty of home-grown cults that made the news, too, including William Kamm, known as "The Little Pebble", in Nowra, New South Wales.

He acquired underage wives, called Queens and Princesses, in order to produce a master race.

In a similar cult fantasy, Anne Hamilton-Byrne claimed to be the reborn Christ.

Her Victorian group, known as "The Family", adopted babies from unsuspecting mothers and turned them into drug-induced identical children with the help of peroxide and bowl haircuts.

That story is soon to be an ABC documentary.

Dire stories make good copy and even better drama, but the immensely positive role that religion plays in the lives of individuals, in communities, and in society has been the mainstay of The Spirit of Things.

It is more than the social welfare ethos that religious communities consistently demonstrate and the spiritual practices, like yoga and meditation, that benefit one's body and mind.

It is the profoundly transformative effect of faith in people's lives that is deeply impressive.

These stories of lives redeemed, like the former drug dealer and gang leader, Tony Hoang, who turned his life around and now encourages high school students to do the same, is the real business of religion.

In fact, when people ask me who are the most impressive people I've interviewed in my career as a religion journalist, it is rarely the highly esteemed religious leaders.

On the contrary, it is the ordinary people whose lives were headed for ruin and were turned around by their faith.

It is this record of religion as a positive force for good that journalists also need to cover if a fair and accurate understanding is to be had.

Toward that end, in 2009, I was invited, along with 100 journalists from around the world, to establish the (non-profit) International Association of Religion Journalists.

It is a global network of journalists promoting "accurate, balanced and ethical religion coverage", which is what I've strived for above all in my work at the ABC.

Achieving that has also meant that I have enabled discussions, rather than dominated them with my own opinions.

But I just might get a chance to air a few of them on my last Spirit of Things episode on December 23, when religion journalist for The Age, Barney Zwartz, will turn the tables and interview me.

Listen to The Spirit of Things on RN on Sundays at 6pm or via the ABC Listen app.



https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/radio/2018-12-01/backstory-rachael-kohn-reflection/10568468

How Much Would You Pay for a Prayer?

In India, thousands are embracing apps that allow them to pay for a ritual to be performed on their behalf.


SIGAL SAMUEL
THE ATLANTIC
NOVEMBER 2018 ISSUE

How can i get a divine intervention for my career? That’s the question Ravi Ganne, a young investment banker in Bangalore, typed into Google seven years ago. His search results led him to the website of a new company called ePuja. For about $15, the start-up would have a puja, a Hindu devotional-prayer ritual, performed on his behalf at one of its many in-network temples.

A few clicks later, Ganne had arranged for a ritual at his favorite temple, dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu and located in Tamil Nadu. “It worked out for me,” he says. “I got a better job offer. So I started doing this on a regular basis.”

In recent years, tens of thousands of Indians have turned to ePuja and other prayer-by-proxy companies, whose smartphone apps and websites make summoning a godly intercession as easy as ordering a pizza. Another such company, Shubhpuja, has marketed itself as a way to “connect to God in one click.” The offer appeals to Hindus—both in India and abroad—who don’t have the time, money, or physical ability to travel to the temple with the best reputation for resolving their particular problem. Just select a puja and temple, pay a fee, and the company gets a priest to perform the ritual. Shubhpuja even allows customers to Skype into rituals as they’re being performed.


ePuja’s network now includes 3,600 temples, according to the company’s founder, Shiva Kumar, who spent four years driving around India persuading priests to partner with him. Explaining the concept was a challenge, he says: “They don’t understand what the internet is. ‘Where is this internet? Can I touch it, feel it?’ ” But once they grasped it, most priests were willing to perform pujas for anyone who wanted them.

The company has since facilitated about 50,000 pujas for customers in 65 countries, according to Kumar, who says one of the most common requests is for help securing a marriage. Once, however, a customer in Brazil asked for a puja that would guarantee a speedy divorce; Kumar suspects he wasn’t Hindu. Although he’s surprised to see an “unbelievable number” of non-Hindus arranging pujas—he estimates that they account for 20 percent of his business—he doesn’t find their use of the service offensive.

The convenience offered by sites like ePuja and Shubhpuja may be their biggest selling point, but it also risks making a ritual feel less meaningful: What’s a devotional experience without some effort, inconvenience, and, well, devotion? Kumar acknowledges that an in-person temple visit is better but says, “We are the second-best way.”

Hinduism’s emphasis on astrology helps explain why many people gladly resort to this suboptimal system, according to Vasudha Narayanan, a religion professor at the University of Florida. Solving a given problem, she explains, requires propitiating the right planet with the right ritual at the right temple. “If the roof caves in, it’s because Saturn is not in the right position. So what do I do about it? Go to this temple, do this puja. But here I am in Gainesville, Florida—what am I going to do? The easiest thing is to do it by ePuja.”

Although paying for a prayer might seem crass to some non-Hindus, it’s common in India, Narayanan says. Even in-person temple visits tend to involve giving a donation to the temple or an offering to the priest who performs a ritual. Nor does it strike most Hindus as strange for the supplicant to be absent. One of Narayanan’s earliest memories of growing up in India is of her grandmother filling out mail-order forms to have priests perform rituals at distant temples.

“I think there’s a fairly significant difference between, say, a generic Protestant idea of prayer and a generic Hindu idea,” Narayanan adds. “In the theology in India, there’s much more value given to the ritual itself.” It doesn’t matter if someone is saying a prayer for you because you paid him $15 to do so. It matters that the prayer is being said, because the words themselves are believed to have the power to transform the universe.

Or, as Kumar says, “I am just a postman carrying your request to God.”

This article appears in the November 2018 print edition with the headline “Big In … India: Apps That Answer Your Prayers.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/apps-that-answer-your-prayers/570805/

On the adulteration of Japan’s oldest religion

MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Japan Times
January 20, 2018

Primitive Shinto is one of the loveliest religions in the world. It’s beautiful in its simplicity — defenseless too, as it proved, against the nativists and nationalists who warped it into 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century xenophobia.

Rudimentary, vague, undefined, undefinable, Shinto for centuries didn’t even have a name. It didn’t need one; there was nothing to distinguish it from, nothing it was not. One good sentence can say everything there is to say about it — this one, for example, by historian Takeshi Matsumae: “In some rural areas even today (1993), elderly villagers face the rising sun each morning, clap their hands together, and hail the appearance of the sun over the peaks of the nearby mountain as ‘the coming of the kami.'”

That’s Shinto — the way (“to”) of the kami (“shin”). As to the kami — who might they be? “Gods,” we say in English, the language offering nothing better, but it’s too freighted a word, too suggestive of power rather than innocence, of something specific as opposed to anything, one knows not what.

“I do not yet understand the meaning of the word ‘kami'” wrote Motoori Norinaga in 1771. If he didn’t, who did? Norinaga was the foremost scholar of his age; he devoted his life to studying the native literature from its ancient beginnings. “It is hardly necessary to say,” he continued, “that it includes human beings. It also includes such objects as birds, beasts, trees, plants, seas, mountains and so forth. In ancient usage, anything whatsoever that was outside the ordinary, which possessed superior power or which was awe-inspiring, was called kami. … Evil and mysterious things, if they are extraordinary and dreadful, are called kami.”

Shinto teaches nothing, enjoins nothing, demands no submission, works no miracles, effaces evil by cleansing it, transmutes dread into joy. There is no heaven, no hell, no nirvana — just “the rising sun each morning,” “the coming of the kami.”

Troubled times such as ours evoke many longings, not least the one known as primitivism. Why couldn’t things have remained in their pristine state? It’s a mood as old as progress “Take away our baneful progress …” wrote the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762, “and all is well.”

A Japanese variant of that mood is traceable back to the sixth century. A civil war fought in 587, says historian Ivan Morris, was “one of the decisive clashes in Japanese history,” though the fighting was on so small a scale that “the battle has not even received an official name.”

At issue was the advent of a strange, foreign religion — Buddhism. Some years earlier a Korean ambassador had come bearing images, books and news of “a wonderful doctrine … of all doctrines the most excellent … hard to explain and hard to comprehend,” but through it “every prayer is fulfilled.”

Emperor Bidatsu (reigned circa 572-585) “leaped for joy” to hear it, says the eighth-century chronicle “Nihon Shoki.” “Never,” said Bidatsu, “from former days until now have we had the opportunity of listening to so wonderful a doctrine.” Wonderful, but unsettling. What would the native gods — the kami — think? What might they do, what havoc unleash, in their anger?

Powerful clans ranged on both sides of the ensuing controversy. The Nakatomi and Mononobe, hereditary ritualists and hereditary warriors respectively, both claiming descent from gods, joined forces in defense of the kami against the upstart Soga, who, on behalf of Buddhism, pleaded, “All the Western frontier lands (China and Korea), without exception, worship it. Shall Yamato (Japan) alone refuse to do so?”

Why not? countered Nakatomi and Mononobe: “Those who have ruled the Empire in this our state have always made it their care to worship … the 180 kami of heaven and earth, the kami of the land and of grain. (If) we were to worship in their stead foreign deities, it may be feared that we should incur the wrath of our national kami.”

Bidatsu leaned toward Soga. A pagoda was built, Buddhist images were worshipped — and pestilence broke out. The kami had spoken. A Buddhist statue was flung into a canal, three foreign child-nuns were publicly whipped in the market-place, and the new faith went underground — only to resurface when, shortly afterward, a recurrence of plague gave it a second chance. Bidatsu’s successor, Yomei, “believed in the law of Buddha and (simultaneously) reverenced Shinto” — seeing nothing mutually irreconcilable in them, worlds apart though they are in spirit. This “Nihon Shoki” passage gives Shinto its name.

Yomei died. A quarrel among would-be successors flared into the war of 587. Soga triumphed. Buddhism was in. Japan’s childhood was over.

Through Buddhism, Japan — primitive, almost prehistoric — entered the dazzling orbit of Chinese civilization. The pivotal figure was Crown Prince Shotoku Taishi (574-622), whose famous “constitution” of 604, fusing Buddhist and Confucian moral precepts, marks Japan’s coming of age.

Harmony, hierarchy and willing obedience from those below to the wise commands of those above became the main themes. On the kami, the document is mute. No wonder, perhaps; the kami had no moral precepts, no morality at all. “All things in heaven and earth are in accordance with the august will of the kami,” said Norinaga 11 centuries later. Good or bad, good or evil, is beside the point: “Among the kami there are good ones and bad ones. Their actions are in accordance with their different natures, so they cannot be understood by ordinary human reason.”

Norinaga’s work contains passages of great beauty. The heart, not the mind, emotion, not reason, lead man to wisdom, he taught. It’s a concept known as mono no aware(the pathos of things). There’s an appealing innocence in his writing. But eschewing “ordinary human reason” is a dangerous business. How he would have felt about the later xenophobic militarists who drew much of their inspiration from him is an open question.

Michael Hoffman is the author of “In the Land of the Kami: A Journey into the Hearts of Japan” and “Other Worlds.”

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/20/national/history/adulteration-japans-oldest-religion/#.WmODo3VOm7M

International Religious Freedom Report for 2016

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
Switzerland

Download PDF: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?year=2016&dlid=268874

Executive Summary

The constitution guarantees freedom of faith and conscience, and it and the penal code prohibit discrimination against any religion or religious adherents. The constitution delegates regulation of the relationship between government and religious groups to the 26 cantons. The canton of Ticino’s ban on face coverings in public places entered into force on July 1. On the same day police in the canton detained a woman for wearing a niqab and a man for protesting the ban. Two localities established Islamic gravesites or authorized their separate allocation in municipal cemeteries. A court upheld a decision to deny permission to establish a private Islamic nursery school in Zurich. The city of Basel denied citizenship to two Muslim girls because of their refusal to participate in swimming classes for religious reasons. The high school council in Basel-Land Canton rejected a complaint by the family of two Muslim brothers whom a school penalized for refusing to shake their female teacher’s hand for religious reasons, and the city of Basel suspended the family’s citizenship application. A court in St. Gallen Canton fined a Muslim man for forbidding his daughters, for religious reasons, from participating in swimming lessons at school. The Swiss Federal Council stated it would ban neither local mosques nor imams from accepting foreign financing.

Islamic organizations reported an increase in anti-Muslim sentiment, which they attributed to the rise of ISIS and terror attacks in Brussels and Nice. Media surveys also exposed growing social unease towards Islam. According to the Coordinated Islamic Organizations of Switzerland (KIOS), one of the principal Muslim groups in the country, Muslim women wearing headscarves felt increasingly isolated and excluded from society, non-Muslim children shunned Muslim classmates in school, and Muslims frequently felt discrimination when seeking employment. A court ruled a private company’s 2015 dismissal of a Muslim woman for wearing a headscarf to work was illegal. A Sikh representative said Sikh children who did not cut their hair for religious reasons had trouble being accepted at school or in vocational traineeships, and that Sikh youth experienced difficulties finding apprenticeships. Jewish groups reported fewer anti-Semitic statements and acts in 2015, but said the number of incidents remained high.

The U.S. embassy discussed religious freedom with the government, focusing on access to religious education and religious services. The Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues met with government officials to discuss Nazi-looted art and the country’s 2017 chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Embassy officials met with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civil society officials, and religious leaders from the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities as well as representatives of other religious minorities, eliciting their views on the extent of religious discrimination. The embassy hosted an interfaith Passover dinner, an iftar, and an interfaith Rosh Hashanah dinner, all of which included discussions on religious tolerance and religious diversity.

Section I. Religious Demography

The U.S. government estimates the total population at 8.2 million (July 2016 estimate). According to the Federal Statistics Office, as of 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, 38 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, 26.2 percent Reformed Evangelical, 5.7 percent other Christian groups, 5 percent Muslim, and 0.2 percent Jewish. Among the other Christian groups, 2.2 percent of the population is Orthodox Christian or Old-Oriental Christian, 2.2 percent belongs to other Protestant groups, including evangelicals, Pentecostals, and charismatic Christians; the remaining 1.3 percent includes Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), and Christian Catholics (also known as Old Catholics). Religious groups together constituting 1.3 percent of the population include Buddhists, Hindus, Bahais, and Sikhs. Persons identifying with no religious group constitute 22.2 percent, and the religious affiliation of 1.3 percent of the population is unknown.

Approximately 95 percent of Muslims are of foreign origin, with over 30 countries represented. Media reports state most come from countries of the former Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Muslims also come from Albania, Turkey, North Africa, and Somalia. According to the 2014 Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, 80 percent of the Muslim community is Sunni; the minority includes 9.5 percent Shia, 7 percent Alevis, and 3.5 percent Ahmadis and others. More than 50 percent of the Muslim population lives in the cities of Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, Bern, Aarau, and St. Gallen; the highest Muslim population density is in the cantons Basel City, Glarus, St. Gallen, Thurgau, and Schaffhausen. More than 75 percent of Jewish households are located in Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, and Bern.

Section II. Status of Government Respect for Religious Freedom

Legal/Framework

In its preamble, the constitution states it is adopted in the name of “Almighty God.” It guarantees freedom of faith and conscience, states each person has the right to choose his or her religion, and prohibits religious discrimination. It states the confederation and cantons may, within the scope of their powers, act to preserve peace between members of different religious communities. The federal penal code prohibits any form of “debasement,” which is not specifically defined, or discrimination against any religion or religious adherents.

Inciting hatred or discrimination, including by electronic means and on the basis of religion, is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine. The law also penalizes anyone who refuses to provide a service because of someone’s religion, organizes, promotes, or participates in propaganda aimed at degrading and defaming adherents of a religion, or “denies, justifies, or plays down genocide or other crimes against humanity.”

The constitution delegates regulation of relations between the government and religious groups to the 26 cantons, including the issuance of licenses and property permits. The cantons offer legal recognition as public entities to religious communities that fulfill a number of prerequisites and whose applications for recognition are approved in a popular referendum. The necessary prerequisites include a statement acknowledging the right of religious freedom; the democratic organization of the religious community; respect for the cantonal and federal constitutions and rule of law; and financial transparency.

The cantons of Basel, Zurich, and Vaud also offer religious communities legal recognition as private entities. This gives them the right to teach their religions in public schools. Procedures for obtaining private legal recognition vary; for example, in Basel the approval of the canton’s Grand Council is required.

There is no law requiring the registration of a religious group in the cantonal commercial registry. New regulations, which entered into force on January 1, require religious foundations, characterized as institutions with a religious purpose that receive financial donations and maintain connections to a religious community, to be registered in the commercial registry. To register as a religious foundation in the commercial registry, the foundation must submit an official letter of application to the respective authorities and include the organization’s name, purpose, board members, and head office location as well as a memorandum of association based on local law, a trademark certification, and a copy of the organization’s statutes. The granting of tax-exempt status to a religious group varies from canton to canton. Most cantons automatically grant tax-exempt status to those religious communities that receive cantonal financial support, while all other religious communities must generally establish they are organized as non-profit associations and submit an application for tax-exempt status to the cantonal government.

All of the cantons, with the exception of Geneva, Neuchatel, Ticino, and Vaud, financially support at least one of four religious communities that the cantons have recognized as public entities – Roman Catholic, Christian Catholic, Reformed Evangelical, or Jewish – with funds collected through a mandatory church tax for registered church members and, in some cantons, businesses. Only religious groups recognized as public entities are eligible to receive funds collected through the church tax, and no canton has recognized any other religious groups as public entities. The church tax is voluntary in the cantons of Ticino, Neuchatel, and Geneva, while in all others an individual who chooses not to pay the church tax may have to leave the religious institution formally. The canton of Vaud is the only canton that does not collect a church tax; however, the Reformed Evangelical and Roman Catholic denominations are subsidized directly through the cantonal budget.

The construction of minarets is banned in accord with a national referendum. The ban does not apply to the four existing mosques with minarets. New mosques may be built without minarets.

The constitution sets education policy at the cantonal level, but municipal school authorities have some discretion in implementing cantonal guidelines. Most public cantonal schools offer religious education, with the exception of schools in Geneva and Neuchatel. Public schools normally offer classes in Catholic and/or Protestant doctrines with the precise details varying from canton to canton and sometimes from school to school; a few schools provide instruction on other religions. The municipality of Ebikon in the Canton of Lucerne offers religious classes in Islamic doctrine, as does the municipality of Kreuzlingen in the Canton of Thurgau. In some cantons, religious classes are voluntary, while in others, such as in Zurich and Fribourg, they form part of the mandatory curriculum at the secondary school level; however, waivers are routinely granted for children whose parents request them. Children from minority religious groups may attend classes for their own faith during the religious class period; these classes must be organized and financed by the minority religious groups and are held outside of the public schools. Parents may also send their children to private religious schools at their expense or homeschool their children.

Most cantons complement traditional classes in Christian doctrines with more general classes about religion and culture. There are no national guidelines for waivers on religious grounds from classes other than religious instruction, and practices vary.

A federal animal welfare law prevents ritual slaughter of animals without prior anesthetization. The ban applies to kosher and halal slaughter practices. Importation of traditionally slaughtered kosher and halal meat is legal and such products are available.

Religious groups of foreign origin are free to proselytize, but foreign missionaries from countries not members of the European Union or the European Free Trade Association must obtain a religious worker visa to work in the country. Visa requirements include proof the foreigner does not displace a citizen from a job; that he/she has completed formal theological training; and that he/she will be financially supported by the host organization. Non-recognized religious groups must also demonstrate to cantonal governments that the number of its foreign religious workers is not out of proportion to the size of the community when compared to the relative number of religious workers of cantonally-recognized religious communities.

Foreign missionaries must also have sufficient knowledge of, respect for, and understanding of national customs and culture; be conversant in at least one of the three main national languages; and hold a degree in theology. The law requires immigrant clerics with insufficient language skills and knowledge of local culture and customs, regardless of religious affiliation, to attend mandatory language courses as well as related specialist training to facilitate their integration into society.

In some instances, the cantons may approve an applicant lacking this proficiency by devising an “integration agreement” that contains certain goals the applicant must try to meet. The host organization must also “recognize the country’s legal norms” and pledge it will not tolerate abuse of the law by its members. If an applicant is unable to meet these requirements, the government may deny the residency and work permits.

The law also allows the government to refuse residency and work permits if a background check reveals an individual has ties to religious groups deemed “radicalized” or has engaged in “hate preaching,” defined as publicly inciting hatred against a religious group, disseminating ideologies intended to defame members of a religious group, organizing defamatory propaganda campaigns, public discrimination, denying or trivializing genocide and other crimes against humanity, or refusing to provide service based on religion. The law authorizes immigration authorities to refuse residency permits to clerics considered “fundamentalists” by the government if the authorities deem internal security or public order is at risk.

The country is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.


Government Practices

The canton of Ticino’s ban on facial coverings in public places entered into force on July 1, and on the same day authorities detained a woman for violating the ban and a man for protesting it. A municipality in Lausanne established 250 Muslim gravesites, and a city in St. Gallen Canton revised its regulations to allow the separate allocation of Islamic gravesites in municipal burial grounds. The country’s highest court upheld a decision to deny a permit for a private Islamic nursery school in Zurich. Basel denied citizenship to two Muslim schoolgirls because they refused to take part in required swimming classes, and a court in St. Gallen Canton fined a father for forbidding his Muslim daughters from taking mandatory swimming classes. The city of Basel suspended a Muslim family’s citizenship application after two members of the family, students at a high school, refused to shake a teacher’s hand for religious reasons. The school punished the students and rejected an appeal of the decision by the family. A regional court in Bern Canton ruled a private company’s dismissal of a Muslim woman for wearing a headscarf to work was illegal.

According to local media reports, the Department of Defense and Civil Protection founded a working group for devising adequate protection measures for Jewish institutions, due to the concerns of Jewish communities about an increased terror threat against Jews. On November 1, the Ministry of Interior’s Service for the Fight against Racism issued a report titled “Measures taken by the federal state to combat anti-Semitism in Switzerland.” According to the report, while the state was required to protect Jews if they were at risk of attacks, it had no responsibility to provide security for Jewish institutions. The report suggested Jewish organizations could create a foundation to finance the costs of providing security to Jewish institutions. Herbert Winter, the president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG), wrote in a statement, “This type of proposal is unacceptable to us,” because protection “is the state’s duty.”

On July 1, the canton of Ticino’s ban on burqas, niqabs, and other face coverings in public, approved in a 2013 referendum and approved by parliament in 2015, entered into force. The law banned facial coverings for religious reasons, or facial coverings aimed at maintaining anonymity while perpetrating violent acts in public places, including in shops, restaurants, or public buildings. Penalties for violations entailed fines of up to 10,000 Swiss francs ($9,812). On July 1, police in Locarno, Ticino Canton, detained a Swiss Muslim woman for wearing a niqab and a French-Algerian man accompanying her for inciting violation of the ban. According to press reports, the man was immediately fined 230 Swiss francs ($226), including court costs, and was potentially subject to additional fines. The woman had not been fined by year’s end.

In June voters of the city of Adliswil in the canton of Zurich approved revisions to the city’s personnel regulations that allow the cantonal government to ban public officials, in the context of enforcing neutral behavior, from wearing or expressing political, ideological, or religious views and symbols, including headscarves and crucifixes, at work.

According to unconfirmed reports from an individual working at an NGO involved with interreligious dialogue and migrant integration, authorities in Basel, Lucerne, and Bern denied recognition applications by Hindu communities on the grounds that the Hindu community had not been established in the country for a sufficiently long time. Authorities reportedly told the Bosnian communities in Basel and Aargau they should not submit an application as they would stand no chance of winning approval in a popular vote. In Lucerne, authorities reportedly told the Muslim community they were not processing recognition applications.

The city of Wil in the canton of St. Gallen revised its cemetery and burial regulations to allow the separate allocation of Islamic gravesites in municipal burial grounds. In February the canton of Bern called on municipalities to designate a special section in their cemeteries as Islamic burial grounds. In April the municipality of Bois-de-Vaux in Lausanne established 250 Muslim gravesites at its cemetery. Muslim representatives continued to report to local media the need for more Islamic burial grounds in municipalities to reduce the financial costs of expatriating deceased family members to their country of origin. The representatives added that second-generation migrant Muslims increasingly wanted to be buried in the country.

In November the Federal Court, the country’s highest court, dismissed the al Huda Islamic Association’s complaint regarding the Zurich educational authority’s 2015 rejection of the association’s application to establish a private Islamic nursery school to educate children in Arabic and on the Quran. The Federal Court ruled the intended school’s operational concept failed to comply with the legal requirements of a religiously-oriented private school. According to the Federal Court, al Huda’s concept lacked the separation of religious and secular content and overemphasized the association’s viewpoint of religion forming the basis of all acquired knowledge, thereby exceeding the extent to which a faith-based school was allowed to give weight to religion in its teachings.

In March SIG stated increasing exemption requests by Muslims resulted in public schools granting fewer allowances regarding religious attire and dispensations from classes for religious reasons. SIG added stricter school policies not only constrained Muslim students’ religious practices, but also had the potential to increasingly restrict Jewish students’ religious expressions, such as wearing the Jewish skullcap (kippah).

In June the city of Basel denied Swiss citizenship to two Muslim sisters aged 12 and 14 years, due to the girls’ refusal to participate in mandatory school swimming classes and school camps for religious reasons. Basel’s naturalization committee based its decision on a 2013 Federal Court ruling that declared school swimming lessons part of compulsory education. The committee said citizenship applicants must fulfill all the requirements of compulsory education to qualify for naturalization. There was no legal mechanism for appealing the decision.

In June the district court of Rheintal in St. Gallen Canton sentenced a Muslim father to a suspended fine of 3,000 Swiss francs ($2,944) and an additional, unsuspended fine of 1,000 Swiss francs ($981) for neglecting his welfare and educational duties towards his children, as well as for breaching the cantonal education law and failing to respect official orders after he forbade his daughters, for religious reasons, from participating in compulsory school swimming lessons and a school camp. The judge stated the man’s behavior was hindering the integration of his children.

In April Basel’s migration office suspended the citizenship application of a Muslim family, according to media reports. The suspension followed a refusal, for religious reasons, by two brothers, aged 14 and 16, who were members of the family and students at a high school in Therwil, Basel-Land Canton, to shake a teacher’s hand in October 2015. The brothers said their behavior was intended to “protect a woman’s dignity.” The school penalized the brothers with community service duties. In September the high school council in Therwil rejected the family’s complaint about the punishment. The high school had initially granted the brothers an exemption from shaking hands with their teacher, but following a legal assessment by the cantonal education authorities, the school reversed its decision and obligated the brothers to greet their teacher by shaking hands. The family’s appeal against the school’s community service penalty imposed on their sons remained pending with the cantonal government. The case generated widespread local and international media attention.

Reportedly in reaction to this incident, the Basel education directorate informed schools in the Basel region they could fine parents up to 5,000 Swiss francs ($4,907) if their children repeatedly refused to adhere to a school’s code of conduct, which may include an obligation to shake hands with teachers. In June members of the Jewish community spoke out against the ruling.

In March Freiburg Canton declared a proposed referendum by the anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which collected signatures for a cantonal vote against the establishment of an Islamic Center in the University of Fribourg, was invalid. The cantonal parliament said the referendum would have violated the federal constitution’s prohibition against religious discrimination.

In April the city of Bern rejected the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland’s (ICCS) application for hosting a public event aimed at promoting peace and the denunciation of ISIS after police authorities said they could not guarantee the safety of the demonstrators because of the “international political situation of recent months.”

On June 30, the Federal Council, the federal government’s cabinet, stated it would ban neither local mosques nor imams from accepting foreign financing nor require imams to hold sermons in one of the country’s national languages. The government’s statement came after a parliamentary motion was submitted by a lower house of parliament representative, who raised concerns over foreign funds potentially propagating radical Islam. The Federal Council said any ban on foreign financial flows for Islamic institutions would discriminate against the Muslim community, and that existing laws were sufficient to mitigate the risks of radical preachers.

In July the public prosecutor’s office of Valais Canton initiated criminal proceedings against a lower house parliamentarian from the SVP for violating the antiracism law after the man publicly condoned the killing of a Muslim man by another Muslim in a St. Gallen mosque in 2015 with a tweet that read “We want more!” The case was pending at year’s end.

In January the Young Socialists Switzerland (JUSO), the youth branch of the Social Democratic Party, posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on its Facebook page depicting President Johann Schneider-Ammann feeding a Jewish man, while declining to feed the child next to him, and saying “… and a spoon for... the international financial lobby.” JUSO removed the cartoon and published an apology, stating it had not had any anti-Semitic intentions.

The government granted visas primarily to religious workers who intended to replace individuals serving in similar functions in the same religious community. Applicants were required to prove they had sufficient financial means to support their stay in the country during their assignment. Although there was no fixed number of residence permits allocated to Turkish imams, Turkish nationals applying for short- and long-term religious worker visas needed to show they were associated with the Turkish Central Authority for Religious Affairs. In 2015, the latest year for which figures were available, the government granted residence permits to 19 imams, 17 of whom were from Turkey and two from Macedonia.

According to the courts, missionaries of certain denominations, such as Mormons, were ineligible for religious visas because they did not possess a theology degree. Mormon missionaries from Schengen Area countries were allowed to work, however, because they did not require visas to enter the country.

The Federal Service for Combating Racism provided 36,000 Swiss francs ($35,329) to fund three projects focusing on religious freedom, including religious discrimination and prejudice, and the Holocaust. The first project was an international conference that examined “Islamophobia;” the second project was a seminar on how to reduce societal prejudices towards people of different cultures and religions; and the third project was on the remaining Swiss Holocaust survivors.

Although not a requirement, schools continued to include Holocaust education as part of their curriculum and to participate in the Holocaust Day of Remembrance on January 27.

The government is a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and will assume the chair in 2017.

Section III. Status of Societal Respect for Religious Freedom

In June the Consulting Network for Racism Victims, a collaboration between the NGO humanrights.ch and the Federal Commission Against Racism, consisting of a network providing consulting and counseling services related to racism, released its report for 2015, documenting an increase in anti-Islamic incidents. The report cited migration, the crisis in Syria, and terror attacks by Islamic extremists as driving society’s negative sentiments towards Muslims. According to the report, anti-Islamic incidents were predominantly verbal and occurred mainly at work and in neighborhoods.

The SIG recorded fewer anti-Semitic statements and acts in 2015, the latest year for which data were available, which it attributed to the de-escalation of the Gaza conflict and greater social awareness from the widespread media coverage of the many anti-Semitic incidents and subsequent criminal investigations that occurred in 2014. SIG also noted less anti-Semitic activity online in 2015. The 2015 Anti-Semitism Report, produced jointly by SIG and the NGO Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism, cited 16 anti-Semitic incidents (excluding anti-Semitic hate speech online) in the German-speaking part of the country in 2015, compared to 66 incidents in 2014. The report documented two incidents of physical assaults against Jews, one of which involved several men attacking an Orthodox Jew in Zurich. The Geneva-based Intercommunity Center for Coordination against Anti-Semitism and Defamation (CICAD) reported 164 anti-Semitic incidents in the French-speaking region of the country in 2015, the latest year for which data were available, 11 of which it deemed serious, characterized by “violent anti-Semitic insults in public places, including anti-Semitic letters, verbal abuse, and graffiti. Although CICAD also recorded a decrease in anti-Semitic incidents (down from 270 incidents in 2014), the report stressed the number of documented incidents in 2015 was among the highest during its 12-year existence. The report also noted most anti-Semitic incidents occurred during January and February, following the terror attacks in Paris and Copenhagen.

On December 19, a gunman opened fire on worshippers at an Islamic center in Zurich, injuring three. The gunman fled the center and killed himself near the scene, according to police. The motive behind the shooting was still unknown by year’s end.

In October the regional court of Bern-Mittelland in Bern Canton ruled a private company’s 2015 dismissal of a Serbian Muslim woman for wearing a headscarf to work was illegal and ordered the business to award her financial compensation. The court said the company’s actions violated the right to religious freedom under the federal constitution.

A Sikh representative, Jowawar Singh, told local media that Sikh children who did not cut their hair for religious reasons had trouble being accepted at school or in vocational traineeships, and that numerous Sikh youth experienced difficulties finding apprenticeships.

Authorities expressed concern that police were not able to provide participants at ICCS rallies and public events with adequate protection because of the increasing public hostility towards the ICCS, after the ICCS publicly defended two Muslim boys for refusing to shake their teacher’s hand.

A representative of the Reformed Evangelical Church in Zurich reported asylum seekers wanting to convert from Islam to Christianity were at risk of being intimidated and threatened by fellow Muslim asylum seekers for changing their faith. Ahmadi leaders reported many Muslim groups refused to recognize Ahmadi Muslims as followers of Islam and attempted to exclude them from opportunities to engage in joint dialogue with the government.

Islamic organizations, such as the Coordinated Islamic Organizations of Switzerland (KIOS), reported an increase in anti-Muslim sentiment, which they attributed to the rise of political Islamism, ISIS, and the attacks in Brussels and Nice. According to KIOS, Muslim women wearing headscarves felt increasingly isolated and excluded from society and non-Muslim children shunned Muslim classmates in school.

Muslims told local media that anti-Muslim sentiment had noticeably increased since the rise and growing media presence of ISIS and the terror attacks in Brussels and Nice. Many Muslims said they felt pressured to defend Islam and their religious practices, and that Muslims were frequently discriminated against when seeking employment. While Muslim representatives stated societal discrimination against Muslims was a reflection of broader intolerance toward foreigners, many Muslims continued to say they suffered discrimination to a greater degree due to their religion.

In November SIG launched a police complaint against a neo-Nazi group, “Murder Command” (Mordkommando) for song lyrics calling for the death of Jews. The group had also issued death threats against leading Jews, including SIG President Herbert Winter, targeted politicians, and other public personalities.

The Consulting Network for Racism cited several instances of verbal abuse directed against Muslims. In one incident a man yelled “Dirty Arab!” to a woman wearing a headscarf and told her to return to her own country. In another incident, students harassed a Muslim teacher, telling her to “Put on the burqa, so that we don’t have to see your ugly face!” The students also taunted the teacher about her husband having a second wife. The report did not indicate whether the school punished the students or provide details on the incidents.

A survey by a national newspaper, 20 Minuten, reported 41 percent of respondents viewed conservative Muslims more negatively following terrorist attacks in Europe and 73 percent of respondents were bothered by Muslim women wearing veils. Another subsequent survey by the same newspaper revealed only 38 percent of respondents believed Islam was consistent with national culture and identity, and 39 percent were against recognizing Islam as one of the country’s official religions.

According to media and NGO reports, during the year the main groups responsible for engaging in anti-Semitic rhetoric were Geneva Noncompliant, European Action, the League of the Ticino People, the Party of Nationally Oriented Swiss (PNOS), and the Swiss Nationalist Party, the French-speaking branch of PNOS. In October the Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism filed a complaint against Swiss neo-Nazi band Amok and German neo-Nazi bands Stahlgewitter, Confident of Victory, Excess, and Frontalkraft for breaching the anti-racism law after they performed what they said were racist and anti-Semitic songs at what was widely described as a right-wing extremist concert attended by 6,000 people in the canton of St. Gallen earlier in October. In late October the PNOS celebrated the establishment of five new PNOS regional sections with a concert attended by 100 people in the canton of St. Gallen.

Many NGOs and representatives of the religious community coordinated interfaith events to promote tolerance locally and nationwide. The Week of Religions in November featured more than 100 interfaith events nationwide, including exhibitions, music and dance concerts, film screenings, roundtables, panel discussions, and communal dinners. The SIG, the Institute of Dialogue and Intercultural Cooperation, and other NGOs continued to support a project to address and eliminate misconceptions between Muslims and Jews. The Dialogue Institute also organized interfaith events ranging from lunches and dinners to movie nights, panel discussions, student exchanges, educational seminars, and lectures.

Section IV. U.S. Government Policy

U.S. embassy officers discussed with the government’s Office for Racism Prevention, which is responsible for matters related to religious discrimination, issues of access to non-Christian religious education in the cantons. In June the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues met with government officials to discuss Nazi-looted art, the importance of transparency with respect to art provenance, and the country’s 2017 chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Embassy officers met with NGOs including Katharina Werk, the Dialog Institute, and the House of Religions, representatives from civil society, and leaders from the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities as well as representatives of other religious minorities, including the Bahai, Alevi Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and Mormon communities, to discuss discrimination against religious groups as well as availability of religious education for religious minorities.

U.S. embassy staff participated in events promoting religious tolerance, such as an iftar, an Interreligious Women’s Parliament hosted at Bern’s House of Religions, and an interfaith prayer organized by the canton of St. Gallen’s Interreligious Roundtable. The Ambassador spoke about the importance of religious freedom and tolerance at these events. U.S. embassy staff organized an interfaith Passover dinner, an iftar, and an interfaith Rosh Hashanah dinner to discuss religious tolerance and diversity with representatives of the Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Bahai, Alevi, and Buddhist communities.

https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?year=2016&dlid=268874#wrapper

Child Marriage and Religion in the United States

No major religion “actually promotes child marriage," experts say.

ASHLEY BELANGER 
Teen Vogue
September 7, 2017

Wedlocked is a Teen Vogue series about child marriage in the United States that examines the history of the practice and its modern reality, as all 50 states have laws with provisions that that allow people under 18 to marry.

It's likely that some Americans assume child marriage happens only in developing nations, where one in three girls are married before 18. But it happens around the world, among people of different faiths, and in secular homes. It happens across the United States, where religion can play a unique role in preserving the practice of child marriage — it’s at once a reason some minors are forced to marry early, and also why some lawmakers insist the law must not be changed to end the coercion.

In May, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have ended legal child marriage in his state, in part because he said that he believed it would violate religious customs. “I agree that protecting the well-being, dignity, and freedom of minors is vital, but the severe bar this bill creates is not necessary to address the concerns voiced by the bill’s proponents and does not comport with the sensibilities and, in some cases, the religious customs, of the people of this State,” he said. In New Jersey, the law remains that minors can marry with parental consent at 16, and anyone younger can marry with consent of both parents and a judge’s approval.

Between 2000 and 2015, there were at least 207,468 marriages involving minors in the United States, according to figures from PBS's Frontline. Marriage involving minors — which most often involves young girls and older men — doesn’t always occur due to strict interpretations of religious custom. Jeanne Smoot, Senior Counsel for Policy and Strategy with the national organization Tahirih Justice Center, said the non-profit has examined more than 500 child and adult forced marriage cases in the U.S., and she tells Teen Vogue that no major religion “actually promotes child marriage.”

A National Marriage Survey conducted by Tahirih in 2011 recorded responses from girls involved in child marriages from Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, and other faiths. Advocacy organization Unchained At Last, which helps victims of forced marriage, has suggested that the practice is pervasive across faiths. Perhaps that's why lawmakers continue to bow to certain traditions.

Amanda Norejko is Matrimonial and Economic Justice Project Director with Sanctuary for Families, a legal organization that works with Tahirih and provides legal counsel and advocacy for diverse communities dealing with gender violence in New York, and she agrees with Smoot’s assessment. “We’ve actually seen this phenomenon across a number of different religions,” she tells Teen Vogue. “We’ve worked with Orthodox Jewish clients, with Christian clients, clients from a lot of different religious backgrounds for whom their communities and their families have a tradition of early marriage.”

“It isn’t exclusive to the Muslim population,” she says, negating the notion that child marriage is only an issue among those who practice Islam.

Norejko worked on a coalition that recently revised the language used for New York’s updated marriage law, raising the minimum age to marry to 17 with written judicial and parental consent. “New York has a very diverse population. We have some communities where child marriage is common, and we were really trying to make sure that we addressed their needs,” she says. Their goal was to “be culturally competent and respectful of different cultures while at the same time, not using those cultures as an excuse to allow people to be victimized, particularly minors.”

In New Jersey, the bill struck down by Christie would set 18 as the minimum age to marry in the state, with no exceptions. “It was a really strong bill that would’ve ended all marriage before 18,” Fraidy Reiss, Founder and Executive Director of Unchained At Last, tells Teen Vogue. Her organization advocates on behalf of victims of forced marriage, and she was directly involved in introducing the legislation in New Jersey, even providing testimony that influenced the judicial committee that ultimately helped the bill advance through the New Jersey Senate. Her bill passed both houses, and she says it had the support of religious groups in the state. “It would’ve made New Jersey the first state to do so,” she says.

So when Christie vetoed the bill, saying its protections created a “severe bar,” Reiss challenged the governor to name the religious groups whose customs the bill violated. She did not receive a response. As of this writing, a request by Teen Vogue for comment from Christie’s office was also unreturned.

According to Smoot, it’s not necessarily religious institutions that condone or promote child marriage, but parents working to safeguard a moral standard. “In some cases, we’ve seen families use religious guilt-tripping to pressure a girl to marry – for example, threats that God will condemn them or that the congregation or community will shun them if they do not marry,” she says.

“While marriage before a certain age is not a religious requirement, some religious sects do promote marrying earlier rather than later, in order to pre-empt and prevent sexual relations outside of marriage,” she explains. This may be true in many faiths, including Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities.

Unchained At Last, Sanctuary for Families, and Tahirih Justice Center work together to provide services to victims of forced marriages in all communities. They also partner to change laws, and Reiss plans to continue pushing for stricter laws in her home state of New Jersey despite the recent defeat. She says the bill's sponsors have already promised to reintroduce it in January. “Even if Governor Christie found some weird religious cult somewhere that insists on marrying off children when they’re 12 and sacrificing virgins every Wednesday, even if he found that religion, this bill still is Constitutional,” Reiss says. “And Governor Christie had absolutely no reason to veto it.”

If you are facing or fleeing a forced marriage or know someone who is, contact the Tahirih Justice Center’s Forced Marriage Initiative to get help at fmi@tahirih.org. Visit preventforcedmarriage.org to find out more.

Related: Child Marriage in the United States, Explained

I Was Married at 14

http://www.teenvogue.com/story/child-marriage-and-religion-in-the-united-states

Arab feminists fear Israel’s anti-polygamy plan is opening volley in a war of wombs

Bedouins from the town of Umm al-Hiran
 in the Negev, southern Israel, seen in
 the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, November 20, 2013. 

While condemning polygamy, some activists claim justice minister’s seemingly benign steps represent an attempt to curtail birthrates among Israel’s Bedouin

BY MARISSA NEWMAN
Times of Israel
February 17, 2017



A broader Israel-Arab deal — rare opportunity or diversion?PM: I’m speaking up about Iran threat on behalf of Arabs tooJewish Home leaders vow new settlement will be builtHamas rejects Liberman’s offer of aid in return for disarmamentIsrael’s Miami consulate evacuated after bomb threatCo-ed battalions to get new home in Border Defense ForceGermany says settlement construction could lead to war8 families evacuated as heavy rains flood Gaza
Amal Abu Sa’ad is the second Bedouin Israeli woman to obtain a doctorate. Married twice — to two brothers in a shanty town in Israel’s southern Negev desert — and widowed twice, she is a university lecturer who specializes in genetic diseases resulting from inbreeding. The latter of her husbands, Yaqoub Mousa Abu al-Qia’an, 47, was shot dead by police during the demolition of the Umm-al Hiran last month, in an incident that also claimed the life of an officer, and whose circumstances are still murky.

The first time she decided to become a second wife, when she married her first husband Mohammed Abu al-Qia’an, it was in order to retain the freedom to pursue her academic goals, she told the HaMakom independent news website late last month.

“I was afraid to marry someone I don’t know really know anything about. After the wedding, he could tell me, ‘Now you are my wife, sit at home…’ The only one who told me that he was interested in my studying and completing my doctorate was Mohammed,” her first husband. “He promised me freedom. That was the most important [thing].”

After Mohammed’s death, Abu Sa’ad became his brother’s second wife (he later took a third) for social security and due to fears the extended family would take her children away should she leave. “The children belong to the father’s family. That’s how it is,” she said.

‘He promised me freedom. That was the most important [thing]’
Less than two weeks after the razing of the town and violence that surrounded it, in which an Israeli policeman was also killed, the cabinet approved a welfare, health, and education plan to “eradicate” polygamy. The program largely targets the estimated one-third of Bedouin men who have more than one wife, which is illegal under an Israeli law — carrying a five-year jail sentence — that is rarely enforced. Joint (Arab) List MK Taleb Abu Arar, a sitting lawmaker in Israel’s Knesset, has two wives.

(The cabinet on Sunday also approved a separate, multi-billion-shekel five-year plan to improve the socioeconomic status of the country’s Bedouin community by bolstering housing, providing employment training and improving public transportation.)

The seemingly innocuous anti-polygamy proposal has been met with resistance from Arab Israeli women’s rights activists, who despite their proclaimed opposition to the practice, say the plan has “racist” undertones. Some have gone as far as accusing the right-wing government of attempting to drive down Bedouin birthrates. The timing of the plan and the figures driving it are “suspicious,” the activists say, specifically questioning the motives of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

“The sudden awakening, from a right-wing government, specifically from the Jewish Home party, in my view, stems from racist motives. The Bedouin woman doesn’t really interest Minister Shaked, but rather the demographic threat. And I think this program is a way to camouflage the demographic threat,” said Dr. Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, a Ben-Gurion University of the Negev expert on Bedouin women who was the first female in the community to obtain a PhD.

“The goal of the program is to reduce Arab fertility,” she charged.

Shaked dismissed the allegations out of hand as “unfounded,” insisting her sole consideration was the well-being of the women.

‘Patronizing, racist’
With the government poised to take action against polygamy for the first time, the plan would create both a task force of local authorities, government officials, activists and other professionals to hammer out a plan within six months, and a ministerial committee that would implement it. Headed by Shaked, the ministerial committee is composed of the education, interior, welfare, health, social equality and agriculture ministers.

The proposal gives the Education Ministry and Health Ministry a four-month deadline to build educational curricula on polygamy and design special health services for women and children in polygamous families. It also tasks the Welfare Ministry with creating a program to integrate Bedouin women in the workforce, as well as offering other social services for their families.

Joint (Arab) List MK Aida Touma-Sliman, who heads the Knesset’s Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality — the first Arab to hold such a position in the Israeli parliament — was among the first to express reservations about the plan.

“The timing of the plan to reduce polygamy raises serious concerns that it stems from a patronizing, racist approach and without any honest concern for the well-being of the Bedouin and Arab citizens,” she wrote on Twitter earlier this month.

Palestinian feminist groups and women’s rights activists chimed in to condemn the proposal, while stressing their rejection of polygamy.

“We oppose the worrisome trend of polygamy, which must be eradicated, since it infringes the rights of women, discriminates against them, and causes psychological harm to the women and children,” the Kayan Feminist Organization said in a statement. “At the same time, this current program is part of the right-wing government’s plan, which includes destroying houses, seizing land, and evicting the residents of the unrecognized villages in the Negev from their homes. What motivates Shaked is not the interests of the women, but the demographic balance — and this we reject unequivocally.”

Lamia Naamnih Cimanuka is the general coordinator of the Welfare Ministry-funded Assiwar organization, which runs a hotline for sexual violence victims and offers educational programs against violence. She maintained the motives for the plan were “very suspicious.”

“Law enforcement against polygamy is something that should have been done a long time ago, and I’m in favor, but everything that is proposed here is, in my view, at its core very, very racist… Personally, and as a feminist organization, we have no confidence that the people sitting [on the committees] are really thinking about the well-being of the women and children,” she said.

She also noted that the proposal mentioned the large number of children born to polygamous families.

“I think that from the state’s perspective and from a Zionist perspective, there is much encouragement for ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ and to have more and more children. That is, among one population it is very, very necessary to have children, and suddenly here, it’s something of a danger,” she said.

In a statement to The Times of Israel, Shaked said she was “surprised to hear these sources think they have access to my intentions and thoughts.

“Obviously, these speculations that were raised are unfounded,” she said. “The well-being of the women and children living in polygamous families is the central issue guiding me.”

These women and children need state assistance, she said, beckoning the groups to take an active role in the program.

Will reduced welfare help or harm?

One of the specific criticisms of the plan was proposed cuts to child welfare benefits to men with more than one wife. Such sanctions, the activists argued, would ultimately hurt the women and children depending on them for financial support in a community where poverty rates are high.

Insaf Abu Shareb, a Bedouin woman who is an attorney and the director of the Beersheba branch of Itach-Maaki, the Women Lawyers for Social Justice organization, described it as “not a good plan, a plan of enforcement and economic punishment.

“Enforcement is part of the solution, but it’s not the initial step,” she said. “The Bedouin society is a poor one. There is so much poverty and so much unemployment, you can’t discuss cuts as a penalty.”

If a husband is put in jail or fined, said Abu-Rabia-Queder, the Ben-Gurion University lecturer, “who will take care of the women, who will take care of the children? It’s a problem.”

Cimanuka, of the Assiwar organization, similarly noted that “in the end, any money they don’t give will harm the women and children.”

But all were in favor of education and advocacy to reduce the phenomenon, and both Abu Shareb and Cimanuka cautiously said they would work with the government program, if asked. Proponents of the plan, still in its preliminary stages, said it would be implemented in coordination with organizations and local municipalities linked to the Bedouin population.

Abu Shareb said she would work with the government “under my terms, my demands, without crossing any of my lines.

“Because at the end of the day, it serves my community, serves the women — and that’s my job,” she said.

Polygamy, she added, is “bad, it’s something that destroys the women from inside. And it’s something that harms the whole society, it isn’t just the women.”

Abu Shareb said she was optimistic about the prospects of change.

“We are looking toward the future. Women whom I’ve met say, ‘Okay, we got screwed over, we were hurt, but come on, for the next generation, for our daughters and granddaughters, I want it to be different. I don’t want them to endure what I’ve endured,'” she added.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-feminists-fear-israels-anti-polygamy-plan-is-opening-volley-in-a-war-of-wombs/

LDS doctrine leaves potential for 'eternal polygamy'

Brian Passey
St. George Daily Spectrum
February 16, 2017

Will there be polygamy in heaven?

The official doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today still teaches that the principle of plural marriage has the potential to be acceptable when ordained by God, using examples like Abraham and King David in the Old Testament as evidence. These teachings are based on LDS scripture found in the book of Doctrine and Covenants, Section 132, which Joseph Smith claimed was a revelation from God to once again institute the practice of plural marriage.

Smith, the church’s founding president and prophet, incrementally established the practice in the 1830s and 1840s, according to an essay at lds.org. However, its practice was not widely known until after Brigham Young assumed leadership following Smith's death in 1844. It soon became a fundamental aspect of early Mormonism. But the practice also put the church at odds with the law. A series of moves by church leaders, beginning with President Wilford Woodruff’s 1890 “Manifesto,” eventually led to the end of church-sanctioned plural marriage.

Some separatists still practice polygamy in fundamentalist offshoot of the mainstream church. But members of the mainstream church are excommunicated if they choose to practice plural marriage, even in countries where polygamy is legal.

Decades have passed since male members of the mainstream LDS Church were allowed to marry more than one wife at a time, but the church still allows a man to be “sealed” to another woman in the temple if he remarries following the death of a first wife, according to an essay at lds.org. However, a woman whose husband has died cannot be sealed in the temple to a second man after remarrying.

Because Latter-day Saints believe the sealing ordinance binds mortal relationships in the afterlife, many also believe situations like this will result in eternal polygamy — the implication of plural marriage relationships in heaven. It’s an idea that causes confusion and heartache among some church members. Other Latter-day Saints, who look at the unknown nature of relationships in the afterlife, do not view it as a subject of concern.

In a 2007 interview on PBS, Elder Dallin H. Oaks addressed this topic. He is a member of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest governing body in the church. and is also among the LDS men who have remarried after the death of a first wife. During the interview, Oaks attempted to answer the question: “What will life be like in the next life when you are married to more than one wife for eternity?”

“I have to say I don’t know,” Oaks said in the interview. “But I know that I’ve made those covenants, and I believe if I am true to the covenants that the blessing that’s anticipated here will be realized in the next life.”

When contacted for comment on this story, a representative from LDS Public Affairs referred The Spectrum & Daily News to the following passage from an essay at lds.org: “The precise nature of these relationships in the next life is not known, and many family relationships will be sorted out in the life to come. Latter-day Saints are encouraged to trust in our wise Heavenly Father, who loves His children and does all things for their growth and salvation.”

Mindy Deschamps, a St. George resident and active member of the LDS Church, said she is following the path of hope.

A few years ago, her mother was killed in a car accident. A couple of years after her mother’s death, Deschamps’ father remarried in an LDS Temple and was sealed to his second wife. That meant he was now eternally sealed to two women. Some family members had a difficult time with her father’s decision, but Deschamps said she chooses to look at the situation with faith.

“My take on it is that all will be made well," she said. "God is a fair God. All will be made right in the next life.”

At the time, Deschamps was not actively attending church. Yet she felt at peace with her father’s decision and put her faith in the belief that God would sort it all out to the happiness of all involved.

“I felt like this was a good thing, a progression,” she said. “My dad needs companionship. It was his choice, not mine.”

But Deschamps admitted it is still a complicated issue. She descends from Mormon polygamists and has read about the hardships endured by some of the women who were forced to share their husbands with other wives. Deschamps is single, but she said if she were married she might be more concerned about the prospect of a husband being sealed to someone else in addition to her.
‘The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy’

Author and LDS Church member Carol Lynn Pearson wrote about the topic extensively in her new book, “The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy.”

“Any member of the LDS Church today that enters the practice of polygamy is immediately excommunicated,” Pearson writes in the introduction. “But polygamy itself has never been excommunicated. … ‘Polygamy delayed’ is still polygamy.”

Pearson describes this doctrine of eternal polygamy as “inflicting profound pain and fear, assuring women that we are still objects, damaging or destroying marriages, bringing chaos to family relationships, leading many to lose faith in our church and in God.”

While researching the book, Pearson conducted an informal survey that spread mostly via social media. About 8,000 current and former Latter-day Saints responded to her with their concerns about the doctrine of eternal polygamy, including about 2,500 stories of the emotional and spiritual pain it has caused them and their loved ones. The LDS Church has more than 15 million members worldwide.

The Spectrum & Daily News spoke with Pearson, who lives in California, by phone. Pearson, who is the author of more than 40 books and plays, said she felt compelled to write “The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy” because her advocacy was needed to bring attention to the place of women within her religion.

“I don’t want to go to my deathbed without doing something important for Mormon women,” she said.

The book looks at the church’s early practice of polygamy, its legacy in terms of eternal polygamy, and how it is all connected within a church built on a patriarchal form of leadership. Pearson said her goal is to help her fellow Latter-day Saints move from patriarchy to partnership. In order for that to happen, the stories of heartache caused by that patriarchy must be told.

“This particular thing drags us down,” she said. “Nobody should have to weep in the night because God is promising a polygamous heaven.”

From the 2,500 stories Pearson received in response to her survey, she kept dozens to reprint in the book. Shared anonymously, they offer a wide variety of viewpoints that illustrate the hurt and heartbreak caused by this doctrine.

One story from her book begins: “Polygamy in heaven has caused me pain that cannot be quantified. It is the only reason that I fear death.” In another story, a former church member said she had a habit of praying that her husband would die before her so he couldn’t be sealed to another woman and force her to live in polygamy for eternity. “What a way to conduct a marriage!” she writes.

One 15-year-old writes about the conflicting feelings that come from the implications of eternal polygamy.

“The thought is disgusting and outrageous, and I refuse to believe that a loving Heavenly Father would have anything to do with something so unjust, so sexist, so unequal and objectifying as polygamy,” the teen writes.

Even some lower-level church leaders shared stories with Pearson. A former bishop writes that he sees the damage that polygamy still inflicts as it destroys marriages and causes many to leave the church.

“I am disappointed that none of our church leaders have been willing to officially change the practice and policy to be in harmony with equality and agency,” he writes. “Sadly, we continue to give preferential privilege to men while perpetuating suffering upon women.”
Spiritual self-worth

The stories from Pearson’s book are echoed by Southern Utahns who have also faced concerns about eternal polygamy. Ivins City resident Kerry Perry said she first learned about the possibility of polygamy in heaven when she was 17.

“I was really depressed at the thought for many years,” Perry said. “It certainly did not help to think that if I fell madly in love and did the very best I could on this Earth that my eternal reward for obedience would be to just be one of many in a harem.”

Yet as she studied the issue, Perry said her thoughts on the subject began to change. An active member of the LDS Church, Perry said she does not believe that polygamy will necessarily be the norm in the next life. She views it now as a form of faithful sacrifice for certain people at a certain time.

“We are all here on this Earth to learn and grow and love and, for the really righteous, to see if we will submit our will to God above all else,” she said.

The doctrine has been harder for others to accept. St. George resident Aubrey McBride said it was one of the factors that contributed to her decision to no longer attend the LDS Church.

McBride, who has not attended church for about five years, said she feels as if polygamy is connected to a general misogynistic attitude toward women that comes from church leaders and the doctrine they espouse.

“The daunting idea of eternal polygamy caused me to question my spiritual self-worth, even though I had a powerful witness that God loves me,” she said. “The LDS Church leaders talk frequently about the different roles of men and women and praise women on their gentility and service as wives and mothers. Women are acclaimed for supporting their husbands. But I feel this only divides partners and narrows women’s expectations of their mortal and eternal role. It placates women’s gnawing self-doubt and continues to promote a subservient view of womanhood.”

McBride said she looks to her own family for evidence of the damage caused by the possibility of eternal polygamy. Like Deschamps’ step-mother, McBride’s step-grandmother was a second wife, sealed to her grandfather in the temple following the death of his first wife, McBride’s grandmother.

McBride’s step-grandmother married her husband when he still had five small children, all under the age of 10. She raised the children as her own alongside her biological child from her first marriage.

A few years ago, about a decade after her grandfather died, McBride said her step-grandmother opened up about her feelings of being a second wife “eternally.”

“She said, ‘I really don’t know if your grandfather thought I was pretty,’” McBride said. “She wanted to know how it would work in the eternities. Would he have to pick one of them? Would she always be a servant to the first wife? She was a devout woman. She would do anything for God. She just kind of wanted to know what to expect, and there really was no comfort in the doctrine for women who have been deemed the second or third wife.”

McBride said she could tell that the unknowns created by this doctrine really worried her step-grandmother, who had selflessly raised the children of her husband’s first wife. McBride said she can understand why any woman would not want to be placed second in line or get the “leftovers of love.”
Will it ever change?

Recent decades have brought slight changes to church policy on marriage sealings, which can also be performed by proxy for deceased ancestors. In 1998 the church changed its policy to also allow women to be sealed to all of the spouses to whom they were legally married, but only by proxy after they have died. The church statement about the unknown nature of these relationships in the next life also applied here.

In “The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy,” Pearson takes the point of view that the practice of polygamy was never ordained by God. Although she continues to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, she argues that he was wrong about this particular part of God’s will. As a result, she writes that the idea of eternal polygamy “exists today from error” and was never “ordained of God.”

Pearson doesn’t just leave it there. She writes that Latter-day Saints have an obligation to put things right by viewing polygamy as an error and working to correct the problems and confusion it has caused. She also argues that there is precedent for this type of “correction,” referencing past church controversies, such as the prohibition of black men from the LDS priesthood, which ended in 1978.

“The ending of the priesthood ban on black men offers a ready example for a possible ending of the teachings on polygamy,” she writes. “The first is highly charged with racism, and the second is highly charged with sexism. Both take a class of people and place them in a lesser position. Both make the error of assuming that God gives special standing to white males.”

Pearson notes that even the way in which the church addresses the past priesthood ban has changed in recent years. An essay published on the church’s official website in 2013 acknowledges that church leaders and members advanced various theories about why the priesthood was restricted. Now, however, it says church leaders “unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”

Perhaps more importantly, the essay indicates that the priesthood ban was a product of its time, described as a “highly contentious racial culture in which whites were afforded great privilege.” Pearson argues the essay seems to suggest that the priesthood ban was the result of church leaders reacting to that culture with a church policy rather than basing doctrine on God’s will. And that gives her hope that someday a similar logic might be applied to polygamy and its legacy.

Near the end of her book Pearson writes of this hopeful future: “The writings and folklore around polygamy, the old stories and the statements even of prophets, will have been put away in the drawer marked ‘expired,’ and will generate no more fear than ghost stories told around the campfire.”

Email reporter Brian Passey at brian@thespectrum.com or call him at 435-674-6296. Follow him on social media at Facebook.com/PasseyBrian or on Twitter and Instagram, @BrianPassey.

http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2017/02/16/lds-doctrine-leaves-potential-eternal-polygamy/97953900/

Religion Ministry to hold wedding rituals seminar

Lay Samean
The Phnompenh Post
January 18, 2016

A wedding in Tuol Kork in 2008. 

In an effort to standardise wedding rituals, Cambodia’s achars, or laymen who carry out Buddhist rites of passage, have been invited to a 10-day training course next month in the capital, the Ministry of Cults and Religion announced last week.

Seng Somony, the ministry’s spokesman, said yesterday the course was intended to guarantee that cultural practices are carried out in a similar manner across the country as a way to preserve them for future generations.

Referring to practices in some parts of the country in which the bride washes the feet of the groom, while in other areas “the bride is supposed to place the wedding garland on the groom”, Somony said that one practice will be formally agreed upon, although there will be no punishment for achars who do not follow the prescribed ritual.

Sambo Manara, a professor of Khmer Studies and Cambodian History at Pannasastra University, however, said that traditions are important because of their differences across regions.

“Each clergyman in different villages or provinces has their own unique habit,” he said.

However, the Venerable But Buntenh, founder of the Independent Monk Network, said the government has no place controlling the clergy’s rituals and views the training courses as politically motivated.

“At the end of the training course they have a representative from the Ministry of Cults and Religion saying, ‘We have only one party, it is the CPP party, and only Samdech … Hun Sen is Prime Minister.”

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/religion-ministry-hold-wedding-rituals-seminar