Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was “deeply sorry” about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn't reflect his personal opinion. “These [words] were in fact a quotation from a medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought,” Benedict told pilgrims at his summer palace of Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome, according to a report by The Associated Press.
“A clash ensues only when Islam or Christianity is misconstrued or manipulated for political or ideological ends.”
“And given that Islam and Christianity worship the one God, Creator of heaven and earth, there is ample room for agreement and cooperation between them,”
the tradition most ruthlessly excluded in the first few centuries of the faith was one devoted to extreme violence, the Kharijites.
“Truth and Tolerance,” in which he wrote that “religion demands the making of distinctions, distinctions between different forms of religion and distinctions within a religion itself, so as to find the way to its higher points.” One of the pities of Regensburg is that he made no such distinctions about Islam.
“Historically, there is no more basis for arguing that Islam is irrational than there is for arguing the same about Christianity or Judaism. In all three you can find tremendous discussion about revelation and reason, and there are people in all three who have landed outside the rational. Islam has bloody borders right now, but Christianity has certainly been bloody, as has Judaism in its more extreme forms.”
by speaking of jihad without alluding to Christianity’s dark history of violence in the name of God—the Crusades, forced conversions, pogroms, the Inquisition—Benedict seemed to be denouncing Islam while failing to acknowledge that any religion, including his own, can be manipulated and perverted to evil ends.
“We must seek paths of reconciliation and learn to live with respect for each other’s identity,”
“a hard-headed conversation”
“A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures,” Benedict said, “is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.”
In the stormy aftermath of the address—on Saturday two churches in the West Bank were bombed
“It’s a very different direction for the papacy, and reflects Benedict XVI’s worries about secularism, Islam and a declining Christian vigor in Europe.”
an early Qu’ranic “surah” (chapter), which says “there is no compulsion in religion”
If the goal, in Lombardi’s words, had been to articulate “a clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence,” then Benedict failed.
Roughly put, his argument was this: to Benedict, Islam’s conception of God so stresses God’s will that God can be understood to command the irrational.

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Pope Benedict XVI, Islam and 'Holy War' - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com

Tags: christianity, controversy, dialogue, islam, religion on 2006-09-19 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Much Ado About A Song- The Times of India

Tags: controversy, hindu, india, islam, muslim, nationalsong, religion on 2006-09-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

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The discussions in the
Congress in 1937 about the status of the song turned around the way what begins
in the first two stanzas with an unexceptionable evocation of the beauty of the
motherland then collapses the country into Durga.
Muslims have
objections to the deification of any entity except Allah, but what has vastly
enhanced the problem is the way that the song ultimately becomes an evocation of
a particular Hindu divinity.
Vande
Mataram was certainly often used as a slogan or song in the freedom struggle.
I spent 10 years of my life researching nationalism in
Bengal during 1903-08,
The surprising
thing is that nothing relevant to the song happened on September 7, 1906 (or
1905).
The Benaras session of
December 1905 did hear the song
Vande Mataram was written in
1875, and published for the first time as part of Bankimchandra's novel Ananda
Math in 1882.
There
is something mysterious about the current furore around the compulsory singing
of Vande Mataram in schools.

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Arjun bungles on Vande Mataram date- The Times of India

Tags: controversy, hindu, history, india, islam, muslim, nationalsong, patriotism, religion on 2006-09-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

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For 2 Giants of Soft Drinks, a Crisis in a Crucial Market - New York Times

Tags: ban, business, coca-cola, cola, controversy, india, industry, mnc, pepsi, public on 2006-08-23 -All Annotations (0) -About

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BBC NEWS | South Asia | Profile: Environmentalist group in cola storm

Tags: business, coca-cola, cola, controversy, cse, india, industry, pepsi, pesticide on 2006-08-23 -All Annotations (0) -About

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DNA - India - Environmentalists, MPs call for ban on Colas - Daily News & Analysis

Tags: business, coca-cola, cola, controversy, india, industry, pepsi, pesticide on 2006-08-23 -All Annotations (0) -About

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They said that these soft drinks contain hazardous chemicals like phosphoric acid, ethylene Gycol, caffeine, high fructose corn syrup, and carbon dioxide.
Banwari Lal Sharma of the "Azadi Bachao Andolan", Supreme Court Advocate Prashant Bhushan, Dunu Roy of the Hazards Centre, and Mira Shiva, Chairperson of Ministry of Health Task Force on Food Safety.
The movement has also filed a public interest litigation against Coke and Pepsi, which has been pending for the last two years.
Member of Parliament Veerender Kumar brought forth the issue as how the Parliament was not allowed to debate the issue.
The protests are being organised under the banner "Coke Pepsi Quit India".
The programme also includes a week-long complete blockade of all transport facilities for the cola products in November.
Shiva, along with various other citizen movement groups, has charted a three-month protest programme throughout the country wherein they will go to schools and colleges in both villages and cities to educate them about the hazardous effects of consuming colas.
"To ban or not ban Coke and Pepsi cannot depend on one Minister under the influence of the US Government. It cannot depend only on the standards set by corrupt and manipulated Government agencies,"

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Coke and Pepsi stumble in India - Business - International Herald Tribune

Tags: business, coca-cola, cola, controversy, india, industry, pepsi, pesticide on 2006-08-22 -All Annotations (0) -About

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two of the world's biggest brand names failed to do what they do best: pitch the virtues of their products directly to their customers
The unfolding battle offers a cautionary tale for multinational corporations doing business in the developing countries, especially one like India where the political sensitivity to foreign influences is potentially fatal.
"They got behind the curve and now they are chasing the crisis,"
The same environment group said it found pesticide residues in their products in 2003, and lessons from that episode still linger.
Indian employees sensitivities to local priorities came into conflict with corporate hierarchies and the need to get approval from headquarters on the other side of the world.
But Coke and Pepsi should have known better,
Sunita Narain, who heads the group, "has serious concerns about pesticides in the food chain,"
"By focusing her attention on the soft drinks industry, she gets a lot of attention," Bjorhus said.
"We are living in a new, very aware India," said Amit Agnihotri, a public relations analyst in Delhi. "We have 36 news channels. People are interested in what is happening around them. Coke and Pepsi haven't understood the power of this new India. They tried to wish this problem away, by ignoring it, by not responding to it. That won't work any more."
The companies also failed to realize how fast news travels in modern India,
Coca-Cola also decided to go on the attack, though indirectly.
"I have tried my level best to communicate this information," he said. "But even terminology like PPB - parts per billion - is difficult to comprehend. This makes our job very challenging."
Standards for safe pesticide levels in drinks have been agreed on in India but never made a legal requirement. The industry continues to argue over whether tests are needed for the final product or the water that goes into the drinks. There is also debate over how to cleanse sugar of its pesticide traces and a recognition that India's groundwater is so badly contaminated that most food products contain some pesticide residue.

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US warns India of investment fallout from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo row - Forbes.com

Tags: business, cola, controversy, india, industry, investment on 2006-08-22 -All Annotations (0) -About

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India's total inflow of US direct investment topped one bln usd last year,
The United States is India's largest investment partner, with a 17 pct share.
Both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo were forced out of India in 1977
India's Supreme Court has given the companies' Indian arms six weeks to reveal the ingredients of their soft drinks.
'The Coke you drink in India would be as clean as the Coke you get in Paris,' Coca-Cola Asia group communications director Kenth Kaerhoeg said.
I'm hoping that (US) companies don't use this as a measure to decide whether to invest in India,' said Kiran Pasricha, the US head of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
'In a time when India is working hard to attract and retain foreign investment, it would be unfortunate if the discussion were dominated by those who did not want to treat foreign companies fairly,'
This kind of action is a setback for the Indian economy,' Undersecretary for International Trade Franklin Lavin told Agence France-Presse.

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