Hippocrates In San Diego

Europe leads on human rights, exposes US shortcomings

November 27, 2009 at 10:18 am | In Opinion, Politics, Religion

I came across this post on Thich Nhat Hanh’s site for the Bat Nha Monastery in Báo Lôc, Vietnam. This appears to be the second statement to come out of the EP concerning the events at Bat Nha over the last several months, covered early on by Matt Steinglass of GlobalPost. In its resolution, the EP unequivocally lays blame for the violence (and the failure to stop it) on the government of Vietnam, and links support for human rights to current negotiations meant to reestablish ties between Vietnam and Europe.

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Minnesota’s Muslim MP

November 8, 2006 at 4:15 pm | In Politics, Religion

I heard about the newly elected rep from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, yesterday while wading through the election results online. Apparently there’s been a big dirty campaign to discredit Ellison, who converted to Islam at age 19 (originally Nation of Islam, which is Louis Farrakhan’s group, then converted to Sunni Islam later in life). While he was loosely affiliated with the NOI (he denies ever having been an enrolled member), he apparently helped organize Minnesota’s contingent for the Million Man March, and wrote some incendiary pieces in his college paper trying to defend Farrakhan (who at the time was under scrutiny for an anti-Semitic comment). He later disavowed his NOI involvement as youthful indiscretions (he was in college through most of this) and has done well to distance himself from a brand of Islam that is considered by most Muslims to be heretical because of their belief that their founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad, was the “Mahdi,” or Messiah.

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