CLEVELAND (RNS) A pair of scissors transported across state lines has emerged as a controversial element in Ohio’s first case under a landmark 2009 federal law that expanded government powers to prosecute hate crimes.

The case involves a dozen members of an Amish sect in central Ohio who are charged with using the shears — made in New York and brought to Ohio — to forcibly cut the hair and beards of fellow Amish to avenge a religious dispute.

The travel history of the shears may seem like a peculiar point in the peculiar case that has focused national attention on Ohio’s Amish community. But the hate crimes law — like many other federal statutes, including health-care reform legislation — is rooted in Congress’ far-reaching power to regulate interstate commerce.

Enacted in 2009, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was named for a gay University of Wyoming student who was beaten and tortured to death by two men in 1998, and a black man who was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to death in Texas that same year.

The act is a historic expansion of a 1968 law that federalized hate crimes directed at people due to their religion, race or nationality. The new law extends protections to people victimized because of sexual orientation, gender or disability.

In the 2009 law, Congress gave prosecutors greater latitude to bring charges in bias-motivated attacks in general, by invoking the commerce connection. The earlier law only protected victims engaged in a federally protected activity, such as going to school.

Some legal observers at the time took issue with the Congress buttressing the law with the commerce connection. To make the connection, the government must prove the crime involved interstate commerce or affected it. The commerce element allows the federal government to prosecute local crimes where it would otherwise have no jurisdiction.

“Interstate commerce has been interpreted broadly enough to make any garden-variety criminal activity a federal offense,” said Milwaukee defense lawyer David Ziemer, who wrote a critical review of the hate crimes law in 2009 in the Wisconsin Law Journal.

Regarding the interstate travel of the shears in the Amish attacks, Ziemer said, “You can make any barroom brawl into a federal crime if that’s all it takes.”

Though hate crime attackers can face any number of state charges — most states have some version of a hate crimes law — the federal statute generally carries far harsher sentences.

The Amish defendants, including sect leader Samuel Mullet, could have been charged locally with assault and other crimes, but local officials are leaving the prosecution to federal officials. The federal law carries a possible life sentence if prosecutors prove kidnapping was an element of the crime.

Prosecutors contend the attacks were motivated by revenge after a group of Amish bishops rebuffed Mullet’s excommunication of eight families. The Amish believe men should grow their beards and women should let their hair grow after marriage.

Steven Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio who previously worked at the Department of Justice, said enforcement of the hate crimes law would be a priority for his office.

Dettelbach’s Amish case is only the seventh brought nationally under the 2009 law.

Asked last week about the commerce connection to the scissors, Dettelbach said federal prosecutors use the same argument in firearms cases. In order to claim federal jurisdiction, they show that guns crossed state lines.

Lawyers for the Amish defendants have filed a motion to have the case dismissed, arguing Congress overreached, and that interstate commerce is not relevant to the case or the law.

Cleveland State University provost Geoffrey Mearns, a former federal prosecutor, said the interstate travel of the shears is a stretch, and the case could be difficult to prove under the federal hate crime law.

Defense lawyers are also challenging whether the law applies to actions between people of the same religion.

Cleveland State law professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich, a former federal public defender, said the case may not fit what is ordinarily considered a hate crime. But the point, he said, is not whether the victims and attackers are of the same religion, or whether the scissors’ travels justify federal prosecution.

The importance of the interstate commerce provision is that Congress believed hate crimes instill profound fear, causing people to alter their lives — their activities, travels and even where they live, he said.

Case Western Reserve University law professor Lewis Katz said he also thinks the interstate travel of the scissors is a tenuous argument. But he said the law does not distinguish between a religious-based attack made by someone from outside or within the religion.

Added Michael Lieberman, a lawyer with the Anti-Defamation League who tracks hate crimes: “It fits squarely into the definition of the statute. The idea that because it’s a co-religion it’s knocked out of the box is not correct.”

(Harlan Spector writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

NEW DELHI, March 20 (CDN) — A young woman was thrown out of her home this month for daring to give thanks for healing in Christ’s name in a predominantly Muslim village in India’s West Bengal state, and then her parents helped Islamic extremists to beat her nearly unconscious.

The attack on Rekha Khatoon, 22, took place on March 9 in Nutangram, Murshidabad.

“I boldly told those who beat me up that I may leave my parents, but that I will not leave Jesus,” Khatoon said. “Jesus has healed me, and I cannot forget Him.”

In a village where hard-line Muslims have threatened to kill the 25 families who initially showed interest in Christ, leaving only five frightened Christian families, Khatoon was returning from worship with Believers Church at Al Hamdulillah Hall when her parents and Muslim extremists attacked her, she said. They called her a pagan, among other verbal abuse.

The mob also harassed the Christian woman who encouraged Khatoon to trust Christ as Lord, Aimazan Bibi, said Bashir Pal, pastor and founder of the village Believers Church.

“On the same night, Rekha Khatoon’s father, Nistar Shaike, and about 20 Muslim radicals surrounded Aimazan’s house, shouted anti-Christian slogans, threatened to harm her and her family and falsely accused her of ‘luring’ Rekha to convert to Christianity,” Pastor Pal told Compass.

After finding herself alone on a road after the beating, Khatoon had taken refuge in Aimazan Bibi’s home.

Khatoon had met Amaizan Bibi last year and told her about a reproductive ailment that caused her to bleed heavily, and the older woman had shared both the gospel of Christ and His healing power with her, Pastor Pal said.

“After Rekha Khatoon came to know about her ailment, she met one of our church members, Aimazan Bibi, and she shared her physical problem with her and told her that her illness was getting worse as she was not able to purchase medicines anymore,” he said.

Aimazan Bibi also invited Khatoon to attend church. On Dec. 23, Khatoon came to the worship center, where Christian women laid hands on her, he said. The pastor and congregation prayed for God’s healing touch in Jesus’ name.

“She received healing from Christ, and thereafter she attended the worship services whenever she could,” Pastor Pal said. “On Jan. 17, Khatoon attended one house church meeting in her village and once again testified that Jesus has healed her, and that she had not taken any medicine since Dec. 23.”

He said the Muslim extremists warned Khatoon not to have contact with Christians. West Bengal is 25.2 percent Muslim, with Hindus in the predominantly Hindu country making up 72.5 percent of the population in the state, according to Operation World. The state, which borders Muslim-majority Bangladesh, is only 0.6 percent Christian.

Upon learning that she was attending Christian worship meetings, her parents had strictly warned her not to have any relationships with Christians and not to attend their fellowship, Aimazan Bibi said.

“However, she told them that she cannot forget Jesus and His love for her,” she said.

Pastor Pal’s wife, nurse Anasea Pal, added that at another house church meeting, Khatoon brought her sister and talked about the healing she had received from Christ.

Khatoon has since relocated to another area, where she lives largely confined for her own protection.

Khatoon and her mother had attended worship services at the church previously; they began there in 2009 until area Muslims, furious to hear that several women were attending worship services, warned them to cease all contact with Christians or else they would face harm. The local mosque then offered Khatoon’s mother a job carrying food for the local Islamic leader to ensure she stopped all contact with Christians.

She also stopped Khatoon from attending Christian meetings.

Tensions prevail in the area, with enraged Muslim radicals threatening to hurt the five Christian families on the slightest pretext. In addition to harassing Aimazan Bibi, Islamic extremists have ruined her son Sirajul Shaike’s business, throwing away all his vegetables and chasing him out of the village market.

“It is very difficult for them now, since selling vegetables was the main source of income for the family,” Pastor Pal said.

Christians in the village have endured all manner of physical torture and social boycotts at the hand of Muslim extremists, Pastor Pal said. He added that the extremists are not allowing Christians to enter the village.

ST. LOUIS (RNS) Wading into sensitive church-state territory, a Missouri judge has ruled in favor of an independent-minded Catholic church that claims ownership of its property and autonomy from the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

Judge Bryan Hettenbach's 50-page ruling in favor of St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church is unusual for the strong interjection of a civil court into internal church matters.

In a statement, St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson promised to appeal the judge's opinion “all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Hettenbach was careful to point out in his ruling that civil courts have no business wading into theological or ecclesiastical issues, or interpreting church law.

But he also acknowledged that the case brought by the archdiocese had given him no choice but to grapple with the Catholic Church's internal canon laws.

St. Stanislaus' lawyers believe Hettenbach succeeded. On Thursday (March 15), Richard Scherrer, one of the church's attorneys called the judge's opinion “unassailable,” and a “correct finding of law.”

“I don't see any way that a court of appeals is going to disturb this brilliant job by a fine jurist,” Scherrer said.

The ruling upholds St. Stanislaus' ownership of its property and its right to craft bylaws that limit the authority of the Roman Catholic Church over its governance.

Hettenbach relied on so-called “neutral principles of law” — secular documents like deeds, constitutions and bylaws that govern individual churches as organizations. In using the neutral principles approach, Hettenbach rejected the traditional approach of civil courts deferring to the internal legal mechanisms of a church.

In 1891, the members of St. Stanislaus formed a corporation under Missouri law in order to secure a loan for a new church building. The civil corporation, called Polish Roman Catholic St. Stanislaus Parish, existed alongside the parish itself. The lay board overseeing the corporation would be allowed to control the property and assets while the archbishop would appoint the board members and pastor.

The corporation's original articles of agreement, signed by the pastor and five parishioners, said the “purpose” of the corporation was, in part, “to maintain a Polish Roman Catholic Church.”

Hettenbach's decision rested on his interpretation of whether St. Stanislaus has remained true to that purpose. Specifically, the judge needed to decide if the church's original mission had been undermined by recent revisions to its bylaws.

Those changes stemmed largely from a request in 2003 by then-Archbishop Justin Rigali that the church undergo a legal restructuring. When Rigali sent a vicar general to carry that message, his methods served only to deepen the church's resolve to be independent.

The next year, the board rewrote its bylaws, eliminating the archbishop's authority. Then-Archbishop Raymond Burke responded by pulling the parish pastors, declaring several board members excommunicated and announcing that the church was no longer Roman Catholic.

Ignoring the archbishop's authority, the board hired its own pastor, who was, in turn, suspended, excommunicated and eventually defrocked. In the archdiocese's view, St. Stanislaus was no longer a Catholic church.

That position was central to its argument before Hettenbach. Using the neutral principles of law approach, the archdiocese argued that the St. Stanislaus corporation had cast away the church's Catholic status, ignoring Vatican directives, and had broken its original agreement to “maintain a Polish Roman Catholic Church.”

Or as the archbishop said in a press conference after the ruling, the corporation had “transformed St. Stanislaus into an entity which has no resemblance to a Roman Catholic parish.”

Hettenbach, however, interpreted things differently.

In his ruling, the judge proceeded methodically through each bylaw change that the archdiocese argued violated canon law. If those bylaw changes didn't “expressly contradict the 'purpose' of maintaining a Roman Catholic Church,” Hettenbach determined it was not in conflict with the corporation's originating documents.

But he steered clear of determining whether St. Stanislaus has actually fulfilled its chartered mission of maintaining a Catholic church to the satisfaction of higher church authorities. To do so, he said, would inappropriately insert the court into church disputes over which it has no jurisdiction.

“Whether or not Defendants are adhering to the standards required by the Catholic Church is clearly a theological controversy,” the judge wrote.

In the end, Carlson said, the judge “has substituted his own analysis of church law.”

Frank Ravitch, law professor at Michigan State University, said Hettenbach's ruling “might be the unique, rare case” that shows that even in the face of voluminous canon law, an individual church may have sufficient legal documentation to exert its independence.

And that should put centralized religious organizations like the Catholic Church on notice. “If you're a hierarchical church, make sure your titles are clear,” Ravitch said.

(Tim Townsend writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis.)

The billboard is down, but the issue’s not gone.

A billboard erected in one of the city’s most racially diverse neighborhoods featured an African slave with the biblical quote, “Slaves, obey your masters.” It lasted less than a day before someone tore it down.

Now, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission is investigating and is meeting with both the atheists who sponsored it as well as leaders of the NAACP who found it offensive and racially charged.

The atheists behind the sign said they were trying to draw attention to the state House’s recent designation of 2012 as “The Year of the Bible” — an action by lawmakers that the atheists have called offensive.

But there were concerns that erecting such a billboard is playing with fire.

“If this had been Detroit, there would have been a riot,” said Aaron Selvey of Harrisburg, who visited the billboard site last Wednesday (March 7), the day after the sign was put up and later torn down.

“We don’t want things to escalate into violence or community tension, so we try to address situations like that right away,” added Shannon Powers, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. “We would not recommend tearing down because it could lead to escalation. It hasn’t, and we’re tremendously thankful for that.”

The billboard was quickly replaced with an ad for the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra.

Ernest Perce V, the Pennsylvania state director of American Atheists, said he won’t press charges against whoever damaged the billboard he designed, and said he, too, is a victim after receiving death threats.

“We hope people can see just a little bit of discrimination we get,” said Perce, who offended local Muslims last year when he dressed as a “Zombie Muhammad” in a Halloween parade.

Perce and the atheist sponsors of the billboard said they are dismayed that people were offended by the image instead of what he called injustices in the Bible and legislators naming 2012 “The Year of the Bible.”

Perce said he will proceed with a 25-billboard statewide campaign against the Bible and the legislation.

“We ask that you turn your anger toward the (state) House of Representatives,” he said, adding that his group does not support or condone slavery while the Bible, which he called “evil,” does.

Brian Fields, president of the Pennsylvania Nonbelievers, understands the image was provocative.

“I want to say that I’m truly sorry that many people have misunderstood this billboard. It was never our intention to use race as our message itself,” Fields said.

“I don’t know if that would have had the impact, the same meaning if it wasn’t tied into something visceral. The picture shows the consequences of the statement that the Bible makes.”

Andrew Rebuck, general manager of the Lemar Advertising office in Lemoyne, Pa., said his firm will review all images from the atheists before posting any new billboards.

“We don’t endorse the message,” he said. “That is not my intent to have the community upset.”

Stanley Lawson, president of the Greater Harrisburg Branch of the NAACP, said his group didn’t advocate taking the sign down, “but, boy, was I pleased it was done.”

“It caused a lot of hurt and a lot of pain in the community. I’ve gotten more phone calls about this than I have about any issues in the past three or four years. It wasn’t just elderly people, it was young people, across the board.”

Selvey, the man who visited the billboard site and made the comparison to Detroit, called the billboard a hit to his soul.

“That image, that was my ancestors. That represents their struggle and all the pain they went through,” he said. “I don’t think a lot of people understood how offensive that is. Schoolchildren will just see that black face and the words. They don’t understand the context.”

(Diana Fishlock writes for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Staff writer Matthew Kemeny contributed to this report.)

You might think a candidate’s ouster from the post he is seeking to regain would play a central role in a statewide election.

Yet Republican Roy Moore’s forced exit, almost a decade ago, as Alabama’s chief justice over a Ten Commandments monument seems only a murmur on the campaign trail.

Voters don’t often ask about it, and the other two candidates in the March GOP primary hardly ever talk about it.

Moore plunged Alabama into a showdown in 2003 when he erected a 5,280-pound granite monument to the Ten Commandments in the Alabama judicial building in Montgomery. A federal judge declared the monument to be a violation of the separation of church and state and ordered Moore to remove it.

When Moore refused, a special panel of retired state judges voted unanimously to remove him from office for violating a higher-court order.

But now, the episode hardly comes up. University of Alabama political scientist William Stewart said Moore’s two opponents, incumbent Chuck Malone and Presiding Mobile County Circuit Judge Charles Graddick, must play a careful balancing game.

“They don’t want to alienate people who like Moore and his stand,” Stewart said. “I think they hope people would factor that into their deliberations.”

Moore said many people misunderstood his position at the time. It was not about the monument, he said, but his right to acknowledge God. He said he refused to comply with the federal order because doing so would have required him to violate his oath to the Constitution.

The federal judge could have ordered the building manager to remove the monument, Moore said, and he would not have stood in his way.

“They would still have been wrong constitutionally, but they would have had their order carried out in the proper manner,” he said.

Moore’s two opponents have said they would comply with orders from a higher court, but they shied away from overt criticism of Moore.

“The public’s going to determine that,” Graddick said when asked. Said Malone: “I think that’s up to each voter.”

Moore went on to run for governor in 2006 and 2010 and lost. His name was also floated as a presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008 for the Constitution Party but he never ran.

Even now, Moore said he has no second thoughts about the stand he took.

“You always regret getting removed from office. But I don’t regret the fact that I stood up for the Constitution of the United States and the First Amendment,” he said.

If returned to his old job, Moore said he has no plans to reinstall the monument.

“I have said repeatedly that I would not,” he said, “not because it’s illegal to do so, but because it would confuse the issue. And most people don’t understand what the issue was.”

Stewart, the political scientist, said it is fair to wonder if Moore would defy the court on a different issue. But Moore said that is unlikely.

“I can’t envision a set of circumstances or an order that would cause me to be in conflict with a higher court,” he said. “This is the only conflict I’ve had with a higher court, and I can’t envision another conflict.”

Ultimately, Moore’s position may boil down to simple politics, Stewart said, noting the state’s high number of evangelical voters who believe in the literal truth of the Bible.

“The candidates just don’t want to appear on the liberal side of anything,” he said, “in politics or religion.”

(Brendan Kirby writes for The Press-Register in Mobile, Ala.)

A federal court on Wednesday struck down a Washington state rule that requires pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill even if it violates their religious beliefs.

Religious liberty advocates cheered the decision. They have decried the 2007 state regulation as a violation of pharmacists’ First Amendment rights, which guarantee freedom of religion.

“Today’s decision sends a very clear message: No individual can be forced out of her profession solely because of her religious beliefs,” said Luke Goodrich, deputy national litigation director at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The Becket Fund was co-counsel for two pharmacists who believe that life begins at the fertilization of a human egg, and can be destroyed by the pills.

Many advocates for women’s health had applauded the state’s Board of Pharmacy rule of as a way to guarantee greater access to the drugs within the short time frame — between three and five days after intercourse — when they are effective. When taken soon after unprotected sexual intercourse, the drugs (known as Plan B and ella) are between 75 to 90 percent effective at preventing pregnancy.

The decision comes in the midst of a firestorm over the Obama administration’s Jan. 20 decision to require nearly all employers to cover free birth control through their insurance plans. That decision has outraged religious conservatives who consider it a directive to ignore their religious convictions.

Belarus’ Novopolotsk Financial Investigation Committee is examining the activities of Fr. Vyacheslav Barok, a priest with the Catholic Parish of St. Josaphat Kuncewicz in Rassony in the northern Vitebsk Region.

Committee officials have told him that he is suspected of evading tax on alleged earnings of about 1,000,000 Euros (10,930,000,000 Belarusian Rubles, 7,497,000 Norwegian Kroner, or 1,322,000 US Dollars) from pilgrimages he and a number of volunteers organize to religious sites in Belarus, other European countries and Israel.

Fr. Barok strongly denies the allegations, and officials have refused to state to Fr. Barok in writing, or to Forum 18, what exactly he is being accused of and on what precise basis the claims are made.

Under the supervision of the Vitebsk Catholic Diocese, Fr. Vyacheslav Barok, together with his brother and fellow-priest Fr Yuri Barok, has been since 2007 organising and leading pilgrim tours within Belarus and abroad.

The pilgrimages gained popularity, his supporters say, due to affordable prices, the high quality of information and the possibility for participants to pray together. Thousands of people – mostly Catholic and Orthodox as well as Baptists and atheists from Minsk, Svetlogorsk, Polotsk, Vitebsk and other cities – have taken part in the pilgrimages, he told Forum 18 recently.

Bishop Wladyslaw Blin of Vitebsk Diocese told Forum 18 on 17 February that Fr. Barok organises pilgrimages with his permission, and that Fr Barok does not receive any payment from the diocese either for his work as a priest or for the pilgrimages. “Every priest lives on donations,” Bishop Blin told Forum 18 from Vitebsk.

The state tightly limits freedom of religion or belief in Belarus. For example, the launch of a CD in a Catholic church was stopped due to state pressure.

Political prisoners who are religious believers – such as Catholic journalist Andrzej Poczobut- have been denied the possibility to receive clergy visits in jail.
Raids on people meeting to exercise their religious freedom without state permission also continue.

Anonymous letter?

On 29 December 2011 Fr. Barok was summoned to the Financial Investigation Committee. There he was told that he was being investigated on the basis of an anonymous letter, accusing him of “illegal tourist activities and earning up to 1,000,000 Euros from this”. In this context he understands that he is being accused of evading Belarusian tax.

Fr. Barok told Forum 18 that he was not allowed to see the letter, but that it was read out loud to him. He said he had “serious doubts” that the anonymous letter was even written by a person who participated in pilgrimages with him, as all the facts were “confused.”

Committee officials would not state to Forum 18 what precisely they are claiming in relation to Fr Barok. Committee officials who would not identify themselves told Forum 18 from Vitebsk on 3 February that, while the investigation is in process, no comments would be made.

Fr. Barok commented that he “can’t say how the situation will develop, but the authorities had better get interested not in me but in finding the provocateur who sent the anonymous letter. Otherwise I’ll consider that no real person stands behind it.”

He insisted to Forum 18 that he violated no laws, there were no grounds for any suspicions, and that he was working as a priest getting no financial benefit from the pilgrimages.

Speaking of the Pilgrimage Centre he runs, he stated that “our Statute provides the right to organize pilgrimages, including those abroad.” Fr. Barok noted that “conducting religious activities doesn’t imply any income, that’s why it’s not tax-deductible, and the Diocese fully supports me.”

“Intimidated by the state for making a pilgrimage”

The Financial Investigation Committee has also been questioning some of the pilgrims. Fr. Barok complained to Forum 18 that people were scared and bewildered after this questioning. “It’s unacceptable when people who travelled with me get intimidated by the state for making a pilgrimage.”

One pilgrim questioned – who had been on two foreign pilgrimages – complained to Forum 18 that the meeting with the Financial Investigation Committee left her feeling uneasy.

The pilgrim said the interview lasted about an hour, and she was asked if Fr. Barok made her donate money for the church or demanded extra money during the trips. “It was silly to assume such things, they are not true,” the pilgrim indignantly told Forum 18 on 15 February.

Asked by Forum 18 if she was deterred from future pilgrimages, she answered that she had already signed up for another pilgrimage to Portugal and Spain in October.

Another pilgrim, Vadim Bolbas, who described himself as an atheist, told Forum 18 on 11 February that he was aware of the interrogations and prepared to face the Financial Investigation Committee. “I think the letter was written by a person who was mentally ill,” he told Forum 18 on 11 February. “I’ll tell the truth to the Financial Investigation Committee and I don’t fear them.” Bolbas has participated in four pilgrimages with Fr. Barok.

Fr. Barok told Forum 18 that the work was continuing. In 2012 there are about 13 tours to Western European countries planned (including to Germany, Lithuania, the Vatican, Italy, Greece, and Austria), and three to Israel.

It isn’t anywhere on the official agenda, but as Roman Catholic leaders meet in Rome this weekend, looming in the background will be a recent string of Vatican leaks that reveal a bitter power struggle among the hierarchy.

In recent weeks, several confidential memos and documents by senior Vatican officials have appeared in the Italian media. The leak is “unprecedented in recent history,” says Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.

The scandal started in late January when an Italian television program showed letters written to Pope Benedict XVI by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s U.S. ambassador, asserting widespread corruption and waste in the Vatican procurement process. Vigano, who at the time was secretary general of the office that oversees Vatican City, begged Benedict not to send him to the United States. His removal would cause “disarray and discouragement” in those who shared his anti-corruption struggle, Vigano said.

Later, an Italian newspaper published a series of documents relating to the Vatican bank. The documents showed that a recent push by the Vatican to bring its financial laws in line with international standards had met with internal resistance.

For decades, the Vatican bank has been accused of shady dealings, and its management is currently under investigation by the Italian judiciary for alleged money laundering.

Under Benedict, the Vatican has started internal reforms aimed at including the Holy See in a European list of financially transparent countries.

In one of the leaked documents, Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who heads the newly established Vatican financial watchdog, worried that proposed amendments to the laws could be seen as a “step back” from reform.

The Vatican leak that has garnered most international attention involved an alleged conspiracy to kill Benedict “within 12 months.” An Italian newspaper published a confidential letter to the pope, describing how an Italian cardinal had spoken about the plot during a visit to China.

The Vatican chief spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, dismissed the claim as “nonsense” but confirmed that the document, as well as others leaked recently, was authentic.

The Vatican has tried to present the leaks as an effort to stymie Benedict’s drive to reform the church. “If someone thinks they can discourage the pope and his collaborators,” Lombardi said on Vatican Radio on Tuesday  (Feb. 14), “they’re deluding themselves.”

The next day, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote that Benedict pursues his “innovation and purification” of the church despite “the knowledge that the enemy comes in the night to sow weeds.”

But this interpretation isn’t shared by all Vatican observers. Andrea Tornielli, Vatican analyst at the Italian daily La Stampa, says that the string of document leaks are the consequence of a power struggle inside the Vatican. The real target of the document leaks, says Tornielli, is Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state.

According to Tornielli, recent reports are being used to “settle the scores” inside the Vatican.

For others, though, identifying the target of the leaks isn’t so easy. “It’s a tempest in a teapot,” says Rev. John Wauck, a professor of communications at the Santa Croce University in Rome.

“The documents’ contents are not earth-shattering,” Wauck said. “There is an Italian faction interested in evoking changes at the Secretariat of State,” but the leaks will not have any effect on future church developments, according to Wauck.

A court has ordered the Jammu and Kashmir state government to temporarily halt criminal proceedings against a pastor accused of bribing Muslim youths to convert to Christianity.

The state’s High Court on Saturday (Feb. 11) halted proceedings in the police complaint of “promotion of religious enmity by conversions” against the Rev. Chander Mani Khanna of the Church of North India denomination. Responding to a petition by the pastor to quash the complaint, the court issued notices to top officials of the state’s police department and interior ministry because investigators have not been able to formulate charges even though the case was registered last Oct. 29, Pastor Khanna told Compass by phone.

Pastor Khanna, who retired on Jan. 16 from All Saints Church in Kashmir Valley’s Srinagar city, seemed relieved.

“After I was released on bail, the court had asked me not to leave the state, but with this stay order I can at least travel out,” he said.

The pastor, who remained in jail for more than 40 days until he was released on bail last Dec. 1, added that the court asked the government to file its response by March 14, and then it will set the date for the next hearing. Police have not been able to gather evidence of “conversion by allurement” against Pastor Khanna.

The pastor added that real victory will be achieved when he is allowed to return to Kashmir, in the Muslim-majority region of the state.

“We do not want to retaliate,” he said. “We want to promote the spirit of acceptance, accommodation and tolerance and be salt to the community in Kashmir for the betterment of the whole country.”

Kashmir’s sharia (Islamic law) court, which has no legal authority in India, in December found Pastor Khanna, the Rev. Jim Borst, a Dutch Catholic missionary and Gayoor Messah, a Christian worker, guilty of “luring the valley Muslims to Christianity” and ordered them to leave the state. The court, headed by Kashmir Grand Mufti Bashir-ud-din Ahmad, also “directed” the state government to take over the management of all Christian schools in the region.

Muslim leaders had been rallying against Christians after a video posted on YouTube last October showed the baptism of formerly Muslim youths at All Saints Church. The sharia court summoned Pastor Khanna and held a hearing before announcing its verdict against the three pastors.

Reconversions

Life has been extremely difficult for Kashmir’s Christians since the sharia court’s verdict, said a Christian worker who fled the region last month along with 15 others.

Muslim clergy, he told Compass, claim to have converted 155 Christians back to Islam.

“But I don’t believe that,” added the source, who said he fled fearing police would force him to speak against Pastor Khanna. “I have spoken to some of them, and they said they neither denounced their faith, and nor did they embrace Islam. Out of fear, they listened to the ‘advice’ while remaining non-committal.”

Local online news portal Kashmirwatch.com late last month reported that an Islamic seminary in north Kashmir was working with 115 converts to bring them back to Islam.

“We are collecting details,” it quoted a seminary official as saying. “We would try to catch them all and persuade them to revert to Islam.”

Local Christians say the sharia court has formed area committees to prevent conversions and reconvert Christians. Committee members are visiting Christians’ homes and allegedly pressuring them and their families to return to Islam.

Kashmirwatch.com reported that over 20,000 Kashmiri Muslims had converted to Christianity since separatist militancy erupted in Kashmir in the 1990s. According to a September 2002 report in Christian media in the United States, it reported, the number of “neo-Christians” was 15,000.

“The conversions are likely to have surged past 20,000, with over a dozen Christian missions and churches based in the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland operating in the state,” the news portal stated.

Local Christians said the report in the U.S. media was not accurate.

Support from Separatists

While most Muslim leaders have turned against Christians and the state government is apparently unconcerned about their safety, a highly influential separatist group has spoken out for Christians.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, head of a faction of the Hurriyat Conference separatist political front, has reportedly said his group does not support the sharia court’s fatwa calling for the expulsion of a few Christian workers from the state.

“Banishing someone is no solution,” the Kashmir Times quoted him as saying. “As Muslims, it is our responsibility to ensure that we reach out to our youth and create awareness about Islam.”

The 82-year-old leader also acknowledged the contribution Christians have made to Kashmir.

“They are part and parcel of the society,” he reportedly said. “It is our duty to protect them. Kashmiris cannot ignore the contributions of Christian missionary schools towards the educational system in the Valley. Unfortunately, Kashmiri Muslims have not been able to build an educational institution like those by the Christian missionary schools despite all available resources.”

A fact-finding team, which included a senior official of the National Commission for Minorities, visited Kashmir from Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 last year. It learned that some extremist groups and other vested interests had been trying to use the issue of conversion in their confrontation with the state government, political parties and moderate Islamic groups. They were “looking to score political points against each other, and any excuse was good enough to foment trouble,” the fact-finding team reported.

The state government apparently sided with the extremists to preempt any unrest, local residents told the fact-finding team.