B2P – From Boston To Palestine
 

Tolerance for people of other beliefs

July 28, 2011

Tolerance is one of those hot buzz words frequently used in our cultural debates of the day. Tolerance is generally regarded as a virtue. The meaning of tolerance is to allow putting up with, especially, with regard to ideas or moral issues. In America tolerance is particularly treated as virtue because our country was built on the principle of granting a certain freedom of dissent. Tolerance is regarded as a great virtue. The scriptures even speak of God as exercising tolerance.

Tolerance does not mean to embrace or to even accept. In fact, it is impossible to tolerate something you like or embrace. To tolerate means that you put up with something you don’t particularly like or that may even be most disgusting to you. Therefore, if I do not like a certain behavior or if I speak out against a certain lifestyle it is not accurate or fair to label me intolerant. In certain quarters today one is labeled quite intolerant if he speaks out against certain behaviors like homosexuality or abortion on demand or porn on the airwaves. But this is not intolerance because tolerance presupposes that one does not like that which he tolerates. Many people today in these various lifestyles are calling on us to embrace their sin in the name of tolerance. Tolerance does not require that we be neutral, accept, condone or embrace the evil around us. Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. In no circumstance can it be used to justify infringements of these fundamental values. Many people are not tolerant of even the simplest things. Like I started the HCG diet weeks ago and was accosted by many health nuts. It’s amazing how many people are so intolerant of such trivial things. Tolerance is to be exercised by individuals, groups and States.

Throughout world history, we have seen cruel acts of hatred and prejudice.  A more recent history of intolerance’s includes intolerance’s of race such as slavery and racism in the United States, and intolerance’s of religion such as the Holocaust of World War II.  Along with these cruel acts, however, also come those individuals ready to help by promoting tolerance.

Societies throughout world history have utilized slave labor.  Many believe the first slaves in the United States appeared in Jamestown in 1619 where they were put to work growing tobacco on plantations.  Black people also helped whites build houses and ships, cobble shoes, bake bread, brew beer, make hats, weave cloth, and sew gowns. They cleaned streets and they hauled heavily laden carts. They waited on planters in Virginia mansions and on lawyers, merchants, and public officials in northern cities. Black men helped turn ore into metal on the “iron plantations” from Virginia to New York. Black women cooked, washed, tended children, and did scullery work in white households everywhere. They also did heavy labor in which no white woman would have been asked.

To foster respect and appreciation among members of different faith groups, young people should receive education that is practical and sensitive to religious beliefs, said some 20 panel members, who represented both Christian and Muslim traditions.


Posted, by in Religious Tolerance

Who was Martin Luther king?

July 28, 2011

Martin Luther King was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston, he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957, he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. Moreover, inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters. He directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, and he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson.


Posted, by in Historical Figures

Non-violent ways of protest

July 28, 2011

Non-violent protest is a protest that does not employ violence as a way of getting the message across. Some means of achieving this could be petitions, lobbying through email, letters or media outlets, or boycotting. Demonstrations, marches and similar can also be a form of non-violent protest, but often become violent as they progress. There are many different ways and methods for non-violent ways of protest. Some of the ways are:

Public speeches can be made; Letters of opposition or support can be done; Declarations by organizations and institutions should make; Signed public statements can help a lot; Declarations of indictment and intention; Group or mass petitions; Slogans, caricatures, and symbols; Banners, posters can also help a lot; displayed communications; Leaflets, pamphlets, and books; Newspapers and journals also facilitate you; Records, radio, and television can also do so; Skywriting and earth writing is another way that can help a lot; Deputations can facilitate you; Mock awards can made contribution in non violent ways to protest;  Group lobbying is a good way for non violent ways to protest;  Picketing is a good way to serve; Mock elections are helpful for non violent ways of protest;

Displays of flags and symbolic colors can also facilitate you;  Wearing of symbols is a good way to protest; Prayer and worship is a best way to protest; Delivering symbolic objects can be helpful; Protest disrobing is a better way for protesting; Destruction of own property is a non violent way of protest;  Symbolic lights can contribute to non violent ways of protest; Displays of portraits is a good way to protest;  Paint as protest can be regarded as helpful;  New signs and names make it easy to protest against some cruelty or any other politician etc.;  Symbolic sounds can be made helpful; Symbolic reclamations; Rude gestures can make a great contribution to non violent ways of protest;  Humorous skits and pranks adds a lot to non violent ways of protest;  Performances of plays and music; Singing can help a bundles; Marches, Parades, Religious processions, Pilgrimages, Motorcades, Political mourning are good ways for non violent ways of protest.

Mock funerals, Demonstrative funerals, Homage at burial places, Assemblies of protest or support, Protest meetings can be regarded as helpful; Collective disappearance can be useful; Protest emigration, Consumers’ boycott, Non-consumption of boycotted goods can facilitate in a best way; Policy of austerity, Rent withholding, Refusal to rent, National consumers’ boycott can effect and help the protest; International consumers’ boycott, Workmen’s boycott, Producers’ boycott can facilitate a lot; Suppliers’ and handlers’ boycott, Traders’ boycott, Refusal to let or sell property, Lockout are effective ways for non violent protest; Refusal of industrial assistance, Merchants’ “general strike”, Withdrawal of bank deposits, Refusal to pay fees, dues and assessments, Refusal to pay debts or interest, Severance of funds and credit, Revenue refusal, Refusal of a government’s money are very effective and helpful ways for non violent protest ; General strike, Economic shutdown, Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance is also a useful way to effect the non violent protest.


Posted, by in Protest

Who was Ghandi?

July 28, 2011

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement. A pioneer of satyagraha, or resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience—a philosophy firmly founded upon ahimsa, or total nonviolence—Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is often referred to as Mahatma or “Great Soul,” an honorific first applied to him by Rabindranath. n India, he is also called Bapu and officially honoured as the Father of the Nation. His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence.

Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community’s struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women’s rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign domination.

Gandhi famously led Indians in protesting the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, on many occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi strove to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar, a coastal town which was then part of the Bombay Presidency, British India. His father, Karamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), who belonged to the Hindu Modh community, served as the diwan (a high official) of Porbander state, a small princely state in the Kathiawar Agency of British India. His grandfather was Uttamchand Gandhi, fondly called Utta Gandhi. His mother, Putlibai, who came from the Hindu Pranami Vaishnava community, was Karamchand’s fourth wife, the first three wives having apparently died in childbirth. Growing up with a devout mother and the Jain traditions of the region, the young Mohandas absorbed early the influences that would play an important role in his adult life; these included compassion for sentient beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance among individuals of different creeds.

On 4 September 1888, Gandhi travelled to London, England, to study law at University College London and to train as a barrister. His time in London, the Imperial capital, was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother in the presence of the Jain monk Becharji, upon leaving India, to observe the Hindu precepts of abstinence from meat, alcohol, and promiscuity.


Posted, by in Religious Figures

All about Palestine

July 28, 2011

Palestine was a conventional name, among others, used between 450 BC and 1948 AD to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands. The boundaries of the region have changed throughout history, and were first defined in modern times by the Franco-British boundary agreement (1920) and the Transjordan memorandum during the British Mandate for Palestine. Today, the region comprises the country of Israel and the Palestinian territories. Today, the term Palestine is also used to refer to either the Palestinian territories or the State of Palestine.

The name “Palestine” is the cognate of an ancient word meaning “Philistines” or “Land of the Philistines”. The Assyrian emperor Sargon II called the same region Palashtu or Pilistu in his Annals. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus wrote in Ancient Greek of a ‘district of Syria, called Palaistine. William Beloe notes that “It should be remembered that Syria is always regarded by Herodotus as synonymous with Assyria. What the Greeks called Palestine the Arabs call Falastin, which is the Philistines of Scripture. According to Moshe Sharon, Palaestina was commonly used to refer to the coastal region and shortly thereafter, the whole of the area inland to the west of the Jordan River.

Situated at a strategic location between Egypt, Syria and Arabia, and the birthplace of the Abrahamic religions, the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region has been controlled by numerous different peoples, including Ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Sunni Arab Caliphate, the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans, the British and modern Israelis and Palestinians. Modern archaeologists and historians of the region refer to their field of study as Syro-Palestinian archaeology.

The region was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. During the Bronze Age, independent Canaanite city-states were established, and were influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550-1400 BCE, the Canaanite cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom who held power until the 1178 BCE Battle of Djahy (Canaan) during the wider Bronze Age collapse.

The Philistines arrived and mingled with the local population, and according to Biblical tradition, the United Kingdom of Israel was established in 1020 BC, and split within a century to form the northern Kingdom of Israel, and the southern Kingdom of Judah. The region became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from c740 BCE, which was itself replaced by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in c.627 BCE. According to the bible, a war with Egypt culminated in 586 BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II and the local leaders of the region of Judea were deported to Babylonia. In 539 BCE, the Babylonian empire was replaced by the Achaemenid Empire. According to the bible and implications from the Cyrus Cylinder, the exiled population of Judea was allowed to return to Jerusalem.


Posted, by in Palestine