Beyond Belief – Weirdness in Religion

First up, a UK judge has spoken out to say children should be allowed to take knives to school. Not all children mind you, just Sikh children. Justice Mota Singh, a Sikh himself, is talking about the kirpan, a ceremonial three-inch knife worn as a show of faith by devout Sikhs, the wearing of which by one boy was banned by a North London school earlier this year. Singh later supported the boy's family's decision to withdraw him rather than accept their compromise offer that he carry a 'disabled' equivalent claiming the school's refusal was discriminatory (BBC News).

Meanwhile another UK court last week ruled that particularly pious Hindu Davender Kumar Ghai can have the open-air cremation he fervently desires. It's been a long battle for Ghai, who found his proposal to site traditional funeral pyres on land outside Newcastle blocked by the city council in a decision later upheld by England's High Court. Now the UK Court of Appeal has said that the open-air ceremonies can go ahead, and that the requirement that all cremations occur 'within a building' could be met by any reasonable structure and did not dictate that structure have walls or a roof. Davenda Kumar Ghai, who is 76 and in poor health, can now go ahead and build his roofless crematorium, once he gets planning permission to do so, from Newcastle City Council (Times).

And in yet another landmark decision, the councillors in Reading, England have given the local Muslim community permission to carry out their own burials in the borough's cemeteries at weekends, which council gravediggers do not work. Many Islamic traditions favour burial very soon after death, and the delays caused by the weekend closures was cited as a significant cause of stress for relatives. In response, the council have agreed to dig some graves beforehand for later use in a pilot scheme expected to last one year, or until the first Saturday night drunk falls in one and sues (GetReading).

Mind you, even once you're in the ground you're not always safe. A row over the siting of a new museum on a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalen has boiled over this week with families who claim to have relatives buried there petitioning the UN. The cemetery, which dates back several hundred years, is due to be excavated to make was for a new “Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance” being built by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who dispute the families' claims. “The Museum of Tolerance project is not being built on the Mamilla Cemetery. It is being built on Jerusalem’s former municipal car park, where every day for nearly half a century, thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews parked their cars without any protest whatsoever from the Muslim community,” said founder Rabbi Marvin Hier (Telegraph).

With four religions down, let's turn now to Buddhism and Kansho Tagai, a monk at the 400 year-old Tokyo temple has started delivering his message in rap, under the name MC Happiness. Tagai claims to have been inspired by rap in English, which he says he enjoys despite not knowing a word of the language (KSDK).

But if you think that Buddhist rap is just a fad, and you're a Christian, then perhaps you need reminding of the beam in your own eye? Rick Warren seems to think so. In an interview the pastor of 30 years bemoaned the many fads and techniques that he claims diverted churches and ministers from Christ, essentially leaving them “spiritually rootless” (Christianity Today). And he may have a point, in a recent survey one third of Presbyterians said they believed there might be other paths to salvation besides Christ, despite the opposite being a central tenet of that church's beliefs (USA Today).

But whatever god or gods you believe in, the majority of the world's population don't, so it is ever so slightly weird that one of the least acceptable beliefs is to not believe in any god. So when unabashed atheist Cecil Bothwell won a seat on the city council in Asheville, North Carolina, his opponents weren't content to leave the matter with the will of the voters, citing an 1868 provision of the NC constitution that bars unbelievers from office. This despite such religious tests being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1961 (AlterNet). Meanwhile in the UK, atheist politico and favourite of Hillary Clinton, David Miliband, has been getting some stick from the the press for sending his adopted son to a religious school. Miliband, who is married to a Lutheran, was one of only two UK ministers to openly state their lack of belief in the wake of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism on leaving office (Daily Mail).

Finally, some recent scientific results may have brought us a step closer to the source of some people's deepest spiritual beliefs. No not God, brain damage. Dr. Urgesi of Udine University in Italy looked at a personality trait called “self-transcendence” in people about to undergo brain surgery, and by comparing it with measures of the same trait taken afterwards has discovered that selective damage to the posterior parietal regions of the brain dramatically increased a subject's spirituality. Supporters of the work believe it may even lead to new treatments for certain mental illnesses, which is a brave thing to say in a predominantly Catholic country (Science Daily).

Extra: Surely brain damage is the only explanation in the case of the presenter on UK Christian channel "Genesis TV" who was tricked into reading out two successive spoof testimonials. The first was nothing more than a slight rewording of the opening rap from the comedy show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but on realising this the presenter quickly moved on only to later read out another testimonial from a young man who had been inspired by one "Ben Kenobi" and had hence come to know "the force" of spirituality (Telegraph).

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