February 19, 2008
Iran
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AP, Iran Says God Protects Nuclear Program - washingtonpost.com, Feb. 17, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday that God would punish Iranians if they do not support the country’s disputed nuclear program, state radio reported.
“The Iranian people openly announce that they will defend their rights… God will reprimand them if they do not do so,” state radio quoted Khamenei as saying.
The 68-year-old ayatollah, who has final say on all state matters, said Washington’s claim that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon is false. The Iranian government has long insisted its nuclear activities are only for peaceful generation of fuel.
February 19, 2008
Catholic traditionalism
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AP, Vatican Toughens Sainthood Procedure - washingtonpost.com, Feb. 18, 2008
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is making it tougher to become a saint.New procedures were announced Monday calling for more “rigor” and “sobriety” by bishops when deciding to begin the process of beatification and in determining the required miracles.
Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Vatican’s sainthood office, recently suggested that the Vatican was overwhelmed by causes following the pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II, who elevated more people to sainthood than all his predecessors combined.
Saraiva Martins said there are more than 2,200 beatification and sainthood causes pending.
February 19, 2008
Turkey
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Carolyn Drake for the New York Times
In Turkey, Is Tension About Religion? Class Rivalry? Or Both? - New York Times, Feb. 19, 2008
ISTANBUL — When two women in Islamic head scarves were spotted in an Italian restaurant in this citys posh new shopping mall this month, Gulbin Simitcioglu did a double take.Covered women, long seen as backward peasants from the countryside, “have started to be everywhere,” said Ms. Simitcioglu, a sales clerk in an Italian clothing store, and it is making women like her more than a little uncomfortable. “We are Turkeys image. They are ruining it.”
As Turkey lurches toward a repeal of a ban on head scarves at universities, the countrys secular upper middle class is feeling increasingly threatened.
Religious Turks, once the underclass of society here, have become educated and middle class, and are moving into urban spaces that were once the exclusive domain of the elite. Now the repeal of the scarf ban — pressed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, passed by Parliament and now just awaiting an official signature — is again setting the two groups against each other, unleashing fears that have as much to do with class rivalry as with the growing influence of Islam.
