Politics of ‘religion-based vote bank’ has no relevance, BJP’s only religion is development: Jitendra Singh

GUWAHATI: Union minister Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said that “politics of religion-based vote bank” has no relevance in the country, and the only religion for the BJP is “development and development alone”.
Accusing the Congress of spreading false propaganda among the minority communities, particularly Muslims, “to poison their minds” against the BJP, he said that the opposition party always exploited the minorities as a vulnerable vote bank and played with their sentiments, but was never sincere to them.
Singh, who is a Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, said that in this Assembly election, those from the minority communities who were misled by the Congress party and AIUDF last time in Assam will vote for the BJP dispensation.
“A message is destined to go out loud and clear across the country that under Prime Minister Modi, the politics of religion-based vote bank has no relevance and the only religion for the BJP is development and development alone,” he told PTI.
A total of 39 and 40 constituencies will go to polls on April 1 and 6, respectively. Voting for the first phase of polls in 47 of the 126 seats in Assam was held on March 27.
The minister held a series of public rallies in minority community-dominated Assembly constituencies of Baghbor and Jania.
He alleged that right from the time of independence, the Congress developed its strategy of exploiting the sentiments of minority communities in a bid to secure the maximum share of their vote.
“However, with time, this strategy was meeting the fate of diminishing returns because now the people are much more awakened and the majority of the voters comprised the third generation of post-independence youths who reason out their preference before casting their votes,” said Singh, the BJP’s co-in-charge for Assam.
He asked why the Congress party, in 65 years of rule both at the Centre and the state, did not think of bringing about reforms like the law against triple talaq “for the benefit of Muslim sisters”.
“Had the gas cylinder sent by Prime Minister Narendra Modi under Ujjawala scheme ever discriminated on the basis of religion or caste and was it ever enquired whether the household where the free gas cylinder was being delivered was a Muslim household or a Hindu household?” Singh asked.
Some of the largest bridges of the country had been launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the state of Assam “but was there ever any condition laid down that the bridge can be used only by a particular community and not by other communities”, he said.
“It is Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has sought to introduce a new political culture based on justice and requirements of the last man in the last queue, regardless of his religion or faith. The BJP is following the mantra of ‘justice for all, appeasement of none,” Singh said.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: How relevant is religion?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

“It’s a sin!”

How relevant is religion in the third millennium?



For centuries, millions of Catholics have been previously guided in every aspect of their lives by their popes.



However currently, religion has ceased to be the driving force for nominal Catholics, as well as its role diminished in Protestant lives.



Rather, social media has been a greater influence in everyday life for the majority.



Today, religion largely doesn't play a great part in belief or opinion, because it is believed to relate insignificantly to modern life.



With fluctuating changes in social norms, values and morals post-twentieth century, is the role of the Pope obsolete?



Can Pope Francis and Catholicism continue to dictate what Catholics should believe in their personal lives today?



Has the Church moved with the times?



When the Pope determines same-sex marriage cannot be blessed by God, yet embraces the communities which it represents, is this ambivalence hypocritical?



Margaret Court and Israel Folau are vilified vehemently for the same view, yet there is no public condemnation of the Pope's stance.

– Eloise Rowe, Tannum Sands

HARRY’S VIEW ON ROCKYNATS GOING AHEAD

SMS TO THE EDITOR

ANON. Panic buying hits Rocky – did everybody survive last time? Didn’t hear of anybody not having any food or water. These panic-buying clowns would not have survived WWI and WWII. Thanks for your service and common sense in hard times in Australian history.

ANON. Shut the state down, who gives a stuff about Easter? Health, health, health and more. Think about our elderly who might not see another Christmas, Easter or New Year you bunch of selfish inbreeds. You would not know what it was like to go to war and leave your country to fight for it for what you have today.

LPMC. I’ve said it before, Qld Health is a disgraceful mess and with no plans to fix it. Nursing staff say they have no direction due to no workforce plan. Why do Ministers with no idea control massive departments? Qld taxpayers deserve better, not what Palaszczuk is dishing up to us.

YOUR SAY

Send in your letters to the editor and texts to be featured online.



Email: morningbulletin@capnews.com.au

SMS the editor on 0428 634 025 with the word ROCK and a space in front of your message.

Al-Hilu hails al-Burhan courage for accepting state impartiality towards religion

March 28, 2021 (KHARTOUM) – The leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) praised the courage of the head of the Sovereign Council after the signing of the Declaration of Principles (DoP) separating religion and state.

The DoP was signed by Adel Fattah al-Burhan and Abdel Aziz al-Hilu Juba, Sunday, in a ceremony attended by President Salva Kiir and WFP Executive Director David Beasley who become a de facto facilitator for negotiations to end the conflict in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states.

The framework agreement provides that the state should be neutral and impartial in religious matters. Also, it provides that the SPLA combatants would be absorbed in the Sudanese army by the end of the transitional period after “resolution of the relationship between religion and state by the constitution”.

The deal satisfies the aspiration of the SPLM-N for a secular state and responds to al-Burhan’s demand to integrate the SPLA fighters during the transition not after as it had been proposed by the armed group.

In a speech at the signing ceremony, the SPLM-N leader said that the Declaration of Principles paves the way for broader negotiations to translate the agreed principles into provisions that ensure achieving change in the country and implementing democratic reforms in Sudan.

He expressed hope that the negotiators would avoid “competing and duelling in useless matters” and keep the national interests in mind.

Al-Hilu’s cautious optimism refers to the difficult relationship between the SPLM-N al-Hilu negotiating team and the head of the government negotiating delegation Chems al-Din Kabbashi who is also from the Nuba Mountains.

In return, al-Hilu praised al-Burhan’s “bold step” that led to the signing of this Declaration, which is described as an “important breakthrough” that “may lead to the achievement of lasting peace and just unity”.

For his part, al-Burhan stressed that the signing of the Declaration of Principles represents the beginning of the efforts of the transitional government to reach real change in Sudan to “create the state of citizenship, freedom and justice, and translates slogans raised by the revolutionaries”.

He thanked South Sudan for the great effort it has been making to achieve peace in his country.

The head of the Sovereign Council stressed that the transitional government is determined to “achieve the change that everyone will accept and the Sudanese people have made sacrifices for” including the armed groups.

He pledged to establish a Sudan of justice and equality for the Sudanese people and future generations, where there is no distinction between North or South, religion or ethnicity, as he said.

Last November, Kabbashi objected to Hamdok’s agreement with al-Hilu on the separation of religion and state on 3 September 2020.

Also, the Sudanese military rejected the recommendation of a workshop held in Juba on the relationship between state and religion in November 2020. He said that the workshop did not discuss other issues, in reference to the military arrangements.

Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok welcomed the signing of the declaration as a courageous gesture and evidence of the solid will of all Sudanese – civilians and military – to complete the second phase of peace in Sudan, following the Juba Agreement and the Addis Ababa Agreement.”

The SPLM-N led by Malik Agar also welcomed the signing of the declaration of principle adding it will consolidate peace in Sudan.

“Juba Declaration between General Burhan and Comrade Abdel-Aziz is a step forward towards peace. It strengthens the Juba Peace Agreement and it is fully welcome from our side,” said Yasir Arman in a tweet posted after the signing of the framework agreement.

(ST)

Teens, Parents, and Religion

American teenagers and their parents have a lot in common when it comes to religion, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center—“though not quite as much as the parents may think.”

The report analyzes the responses of more than 1,800 U.S. teens and one of their parents, each of whom took separate online questionnaires exploring such topics as their concepts of God, ways of praying, religious beliefs and doubts, and notions of morality. 

“Pew Research Center gets so many questions nowadays from people wanting to know what Generation Z thinks,” says Elizabeth Sciupac, a senior researcher on the Center’s domestic religion team and co-author of the report, referring to the moniker for those born after 1996. “This survey doesn’t begin to answer all of that, but it does start to flesh out a picture of what they look like religiously.”

Among the findings:

• Parents are more likely than teens to say that religion is very important in their lives—and to overestimate rather than underestimate how important religion is to their teen. For instance, far fewer teens (24%) than parents (43%) say that religion is very important in their lives.
• Teenagers attend religious services about as often as their parents, but 38% say they attend mainly because mom or dad want them to. Thirty-five percent say they attend because they want to.
• Most U.S. teens ages 13-17 share the religious affiliation of one or both parents.
• Eight in 10 parents who identify as evangelical Protestants have a teen who identifies as such. But little more than half the teenage children of mainline Protestants identify the same way their parents do, and about one-quarter of mainline Protestant parents have a teen who is religiously unaffiliated.

The report marked some new territory for the Center’s religion research, says Sciupac, “in part because the religion team doesn’t do a lot with teens.” Asking respondents to speculate on how another respondent might answer certain questions was also a novel approach for the team, she says.

“Some of what I loved most about this survey were the answers we got to open-ended questions, where people had a chance to write in their own responses,” Sciupac says. “We see teens grappling with big questions, like `Why does God let people die?’ And they have these really well-thought-out answers.”  

“It was wonderful how much came up in our conversation,” says Lilace Guignard of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, after she and son Gabe, 16, took a short version of the original Pew questionnaire modified for this article. “He’s much more thoughtful about all this than I knew to expect.”

Like the original survey, the short version queried Lilace and Gabe on such topics as their frequency of prayer, belief in God, and denominational identity. It, too, asked what each thought the other’s answer to certain questions might be.     

Gabe answered that religion is “very important” to him and supposed his mom would say the same. To his surprise, she ranked it “fairly important” because, she explained, religious identities “have a tendency to divide people.” 

Both Lilace and Gabe identify as Presbyterian, and they attended church services together nearly every week before the pandemic. But neither knew until they took the questionnaire that the other prays once a day, or that they both favor conversational, informal prayer over formal recitation. “I said I pray at night,” says Lilace, a part-time teacher of creative writing, outdoor recreation leadership, and women’s studies at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania.  “And he said, `Yeah, me, too.’”

As they talked further they discovered each feels a special devotion to God—whom Lilace conceives as God the Creator, and Gabe as God the Father. “The talk he and I had focused on how we experienced God firsthand through the natural world, and how this was the foundation for our absolute certainty about God,” says Lilace. “It was a wonderful thing to discover we shared this.”

The survey’s findings “give us an up-to-date view of how teens are not only experiencing religion for themselves but also with their families,” says Sciupac, as well as “how much they feel obligated, how much they feel engaged, what is shaping their religious lives. I think that can bring a lot to the table for a variety of groups who are interested in these things.”

The report’s data analysis mined a larger religious attitudes survey that the Center conducted in 2019. “This report tried to capture how teenagers and one parent interact when it comes to religion,” says Sciupac, and “how they align and don’t align.” 

The analysis examined the results of a self-administered web survey conducted in March and April 2019 among 1,811 adolescents ages 13-17 and one parent per child, in both English and Spanish. Released in September 2020, the report’s full title is “U.S. Teens Take After Their Parents Religiously, Attend Services Together and Enjoy Family Rituals.”

About two-thirds of adolescents taking the survey say they identify with a religion, with about one-quarter identifying as Catholic and 21% as evangelical Christian. The evangelical teens say religion is “very important” in their lives nearly twice as often as those of other Christian groups and are also far likelier to believe in God “with absolute certainty,” attend religious services weekly, and pray daily.

If the major Christian traditions are counted separately, however, those who identify as “nones” (that is, agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular”) make up the single largest religious category among teens, at 32%.

The survey’s sample size was not large enough to allow for analysis of the views of some religious groups, including Black Protestant denominations, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Christian churches, and non-Christian faiths.

Among the parents who took the survey, 57% were mothers. Although mothers are typically involved when one parent is more engaged in the religious upbringing of children, the survey found that teens identified about equally with their father’s religious beliefs (50%) and their mother’s (47%).

Among the report’s other findings:

• About 70% of teens and parents accurately estimated how important religion was to the other. But when they estimated incorrectly, parents overestimated its importance 69% of the time, while teens underestimated its importance for mom or dad 55% of the time.
• Less religious parents are likely to have teens who are also less religious. Eighty percent of parents who say that religion is “not too important” or “not at all important” in their lives have a teen who feels the same way.
• Half of teens say they hold all the same religious beliefs as their parents, but among those who say their beliefs differ, a third say the parent is unaware.

What do these findings say about the future of religion in America, whose young adult population has grown markedly less religious in recent decades? Sciupac and her colleagues urge a cautious reading.

“While it is possible that these adolescents will ultimately be equally or more religious than current young adults,” they write in the report, “this survey neither supports nor contradicts such a hypothesis.

In fact, previous research has suggested that much of the movement away from religion among adults occurs after they come of age, move out of their childhood homes, or otherwise gain a measure of independence from their parents.”

What’s more, the researchers note, “religion varies across the life course, often declining in late adolescence and early adulthood, and then increasing as people age, form new relationships, start their own families, and mature into later adulthood.”

David O’Reilly was the longtime religion reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Less than half the country says religion is very important

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Big Tech Censors Religion, Too

It’s not only politics. So far this year, religious groups and figures have been silenced by tech companies at a rate of about one a week, according to a new report from the Napa Legal Institute.
Consider LifeSiteNews, a popular religious news website. In February its YouTube channel was permanently banned by Google, which deleted all its videos. Google claimed its action was a response to Covid-19 misinformation but wouldn’t tell LSN which video had offended its standards. The tech giant had flagged LSN for a video of an American Catholic bishop criticizing vaccines developed with fetal cells. The website’s editor in chief said “our best guess is that the channel was taken down for our frank and factual discussion of the controversy around abortion-tainted medicines and vaccines.”
In January, Bishop Kevin Doran, an Irish Catholic, tweeted: “There is dignity in dying. As a priest, I am privileged to witness it often. Assisted suicide, where it is practiced, is not an expression of freedom or dignity.” Twitter removed this message and banned Bishop Doran from posting further. While the company reversed its decision after public opposition, others haven’t been so lucky.
The previous month, Twitter blocked a post from the Daily Citizen, which is run by Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian nonprofit, and suspended its account. The reason: a tweet that respectfully challenged the underlying premise of transgenderism. Twitter made a similar move against Catholic World Report, though the company later said it had acted in error. Ryan T. Anderson of the Ethics and Public Policy Center saw Amazon ban his book criticizing transgenderism, “When Harry Became Sally.” Amazon shows no signs of changing course.
Books from specific publishers are often targeted, such as Catholic TAN Books. One of its authors is Paul Kengor, who wrote an anticommunist tract called “The Devil and Karl Marx.” TAN Books can’t advertise his work on Facebook , or that of Carrie Gress, who wrote a book on “rescuing the culture from toxic femininity.” Facebook has also banned ads for Kimberly Cook’s book, “Motherhood Redeemed.” The offending ad called it “a book that challenges feminism in the modern world.”