OBAMA : U.S A COUNTRY OF MUSLIMS AND NON - BELIVERS , WHICH ECHOES U.S NO LONGER A CHRISTIAN NATION

Echoing his previous declaration that the U.S. is "no longer a Christian nation," President Barack Obama today in his inaugural address affirmed America is a nation of many faiths that includes Muslims and "nonbelievers."
"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers," Obama stated during his speech before a crowd estimated by security officials at about 1.8 million.
He continued: "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."
Obama's statements about an inclusive country were strikingly similar to remarks he made twice in 2007 in which he went further and stated the U.S. is "no longer Christian." At that time, some took issue with his pronouncement, fearing the declarations indicated his intention to reorient the U.S. away from its traditional Judeo-Christian values.

During a June 2007 speech available on Youtube, Obama stated, "Whatever we once were, we're no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."
In that speech, Obama took aim at the "Christian Right" for "hijacking" religion and using it to divide the nation:
"Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it's because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who've been all too eager to exploit what divides us," he said.
Asked last year to clarify his remarks, Obama repeated them to the Christian Broadcast Network: "I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism. Whatever we once were, we're no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers," Obama wrote in an e-mail to CBN News senior national correspondent David Brody.
"We should acknowledge this and realize that when we're formulating policies from the statehouse to the Senate floor to the White House, we've got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community," wrote Obama.
Obama clarified his statement about the "Christian Right."
"My intention was to contrast the heated partisan rhetoric of a distinct minority of Christian leaders with the vast majority of evangelical Christians – conservatives included – who believe that hate has no place in our politics.
"When you have pastors and television pundits who appear to explicitly coordinate with one political party; when you're implying that your fellow Americans are traitors, terrorist sympathizers or akin to the devil himself; then I think you're attempting to hijack the faith of those who follow you for your own personal or political ends," wrote Obama.
Obama's speech declaring the U.S. "no longer Christian" was originally met with little fanfare. But it was recirculated this summer during the presidential campaign.
A television commercial that aired in South Dakota by a group calling itself the Coalition Against Anti-Christian Rhetoric juxtaposed the audio of Obama's "no longer Christian" statement over images of the presidential candidate dressed in Somali garb and a picture of him with his hands rested below his waist while other politicians place their hands over their hearts during the Pledge of Allegiance.
"It's time for people to take a stand against Barack Hussein Obama," declares the voiceover on the commercial.
The Gateway Pundit blog took notice of Obama's speech 2007 about the U.S. being a nation also for Muslims and non-believers.
"This won't play well in the Bible Belt," commented the blog in a posting.
Obama's campaign had utilized faith as a central theme. The candidate's Christianity and his former membership in the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ led by Rev. Jeremiah Wright were much scrutinized.
His comment about the "Christian Right" echoed similar statements made by Merrill A. McPeak, Obama's military adviser and national campaign co-chairman. As WND reported, in a 2003 interview with The Oregonian newspaper, McPeak apparently compared evangelical Christians to the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Oregonian interviewer asked McPeak whether "there's an element within Hamas, Hezbollah, that doesn't want Israel to exist at all and always will be there?"
McPeak responded by comparing the two terror groups to "radical" Oregonians.
"There's an element in Oregon, you know, that's always going to be radical in some pernicious way, and likely to clothe it in religious garments, so it makes it harder to attack," he said. "So there's craziness all over the place."

QATAR : FUTURE MUSLIM LEADERS SEEK FRESH PATH

DOHA, Qatar - The question put to the young Muslims gathered here from around the world went to the heart of today's perceived clash between Islam and the West: "Do Muslims and non-Muslims share equal responsibility in taking steps to reduce Muslim extremism?"
The answer, delivered instantly through wireless voting pads, was crystal clear: Seventy-five percent replied "Yes."
The verdict is worth heeding because of where it happened: At a conference of 300 progressive Muslim activists from 75 countries.
The "Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow Conference," was meant to be a catalyst for social change in the Islamic world by inspiring the activists and giving them opportunities to network.
"We're living in challenging times, and the plot for Muslims has been written by others," said Daisy Khan, of the New York-based American Society for Muslim Advancement, which worked with the Cordoba Initiative and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations to organize the event. "The time has come for Muslims to write their own plot, and to define themselves around the core values they believe in: pluralism, freedom, justice, creativity, and intellectual development."
Participants included a Saudi businesswoman, a New York filmmaker, an Indian teacher, an Italian imam, a Dutch lawyer, an Egyptian writer, and Osama Saeed Butta, who informed his peers in a fine Scottish brogue that he will be running for a seat in Britain's Parliament come the next election.
While some activists hold more conservative views than others, all are committed to pluralism as an Islamic value, Ms. Khan said.
Some were in a hurry to exert their influence. "I came because I wanted to know why it's 'Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow' and not 'Today,'" said Maha al-Khalifa, a student from Qatar.
The discussion sessions, which included the instant polling, tackled some of the thorniest questions facing Muslim intellectuals today, including: "Is there a crisis of religious authority in Islam?" Eighty-six percent said "Yes." And "are there Islamic values that are in conflict with Western values?" Sixty-one percent said "Yes."
Panelist Madiha Younas, of Pakistan's International Islamic University, said she often encounters anxiety over clashing values. "Our people are worried about what will happen if our youth will start to live like the West."
She added, to general approval from the floor, that "it's not an Islamic value to have absolute freedom. Islam puts boundaries on you."
Saudi-born attorney and Harvard University graduate Malik Dahlan led the conversation to a more theoretical level, stating: "It's freedom that is the absolute value in Islam.... It is freedom not to submit [to God's will] that gives value to submission itself."
In smaller discussion groups, participants covered such topics as why Europe has more Islamist radicalism than the United States, Islam's position on homosexuality, and the meaning of secularism.
When discussing who has responsibility for fighting Muslim extremism, the panelists steered clear of the polarization this subject normally provokes. Instead, they argued that both extremist interpretations of Islam and foreign policies of Western countries contribute to the radicalization of Muslim youth.
In fact, the impact of US policies in the Middle East was evident at the conference, where many participants were deeply upset, at times in tears, over the civilian death toll from Israel's three-week military siege of Gaza.
"I get a sense of helplessness with this latest crisis," said conference attendee Shaukat Warraich, director of London-based Right Start Foundation International, a community development nonprofit.
ASMA's Khan said that after 9/11, Americans wanted to know why Muslims' denunciations of the terrorist attacks were so muted. Although hundreds of Islamic religious leaders did condemn the attacks, they were not heard clearly because Islam has no central leadership, like Roman Catholicism's Vatican.
Khan, then an architectural designer, gave up her career to promote a new generation of Muslim leadership, holding the first conference in New York in 2004 with 125 participants from North America. The second conference, held in Copenhagen in 2006, included Europeans. Doha, the third one, was global.
Participants had to be between 20 and 45 years old, committed to pluralism, and involved in some type of community advancement work, Khan said.
At its conclusion, the conference issued "An Open Letter to the World Leaders of Today From the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow." Noting that "with Barack Obama as the new US president, there is no better time for ... positive change," the letter demanded that leaders start implementing policies that promote development and human rights rather than war.
For now, the Muslim leaders who will receive copies of the Open Letter do not know much about Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow (MLT), as the project is known. The conference drew little international or regional media attention. But organizers said they are committed to building a global network of progressive activists in the Muslim world, an effort they say will take time.

A CHURCH IN CONGO ATTACKED: UGANDAN REBELS BLAMED, PLEASE DO PRAY FOR THE PEACE TO BE MAINTAINED

KAMPALA, Uganda – The Ugandan army accused the country's rebels of torching a Catholic church crowded with worshippers in eastern Congo, killing some of them.
Army spokesman Capt. Ronald Kakurungo said Ugandan troops in neighboring Congo reported the Lord's Resistance Army rebels set fire to a church Saturday night in the village of Tora. The Ugandan soldiers are part of a multinational force set up last December to stop the brutal rebel group.
Kakurungo said it was unclear how many people had been killed. The U.N.-run Radio Okapi, which broadcasts in eastern Congo, also reported the attack on the church and further attacks on civilian homes in the nearby village of Libombi.
Come Mbolingaba, the head of Catholic organization Caritas Congo, said employees had spoken to villagers who had confirmed there had been an attack but had no information on the number of casualties.
"They burned people who were praying in a church," he said.
U.N. officials did not return calls seeking comment.
Rebel spokesman David Matsanga disputed the claim, saying the rebels were not in the area and have not committed any atrocities.
The villages are 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the town of Dungu, where the multinational force is based.
Human Rights Watch said last week that the rebels have killed at least 620 people in the Congo in past month. The New-York based rights group collected testimonies in which survivors told how rebels attacked their homes, raped women and murdered men with bats and axes.
The rebels, who have been fighting for two decades, also have a history of abducting children to serve as sex slaves and fighters.
Uganda's army, backed by Congolese and Sudanese soldiers, launched an operation Dec. 14 aimed at routing the rebels from Congo, attacking the insurgents' headquarters in Garamba National Park. That broke the rebels into several groups, which have been attacking villages in their path as they fled.
Hunting the rebels is further complicated by Congo's own civil war. There are 18,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Congo mandated to protect civilians, but the troops are mostly posted further south around cities like Goma where separate fighting with Congo rebels has taken place.

BIG TURNOUT FOR FORMER OBAMA'S PASTOR

A year after then-candidate Barack Obama distanced himself from his controversial longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright thrilled thousands of churchgoers yesterday morning in Washington, giving a sermon holding up Obama as a spiritual symbol of possibility.

People waited two hours to hear Wright preach the Sunday service at Howard University's Cramton Auditorium, a high-profile platform for clergy, and black clergy in particular. Wright has preached the service, run by clergy at the school's Rankin Chapel, on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day for the past five years and was booked months before the election, school officials said.
Howard students, alumni and notables such as opera singer Jessye Norman and Morehouse College President Robert Michael Franklin Jr. attended the service, which overflowed into two other buildings. About 2,500 people came to see a man whose relationship with Obama became explosive, both among those who considered his words racist and anti-American and those livid with Obama for distancing himself from someone they saw as simply speaking truths about racism and war.
Wright was nothing but positive and conciliatory yesterday, rousing churchgoers again and again to their feet with a sermon about what he called the Bible's message of self-reliance and encouragement.
Wright went back and forth from Obama to a passage from the Gospel of John about people who overcome sickness and challenges. "No more seeing ourselves through the eyes of people who don't look like us!" he said. "How does God see us?"
In the impassioned oratory for which he is known, Wright said Obama was able, "as the Lord stepped into his story," to envision himself doing anything -- heading the Harvard Law Review, taking a U.S. Senate seat, even winning the presidency.

People who envision themselves as victims, he said, are like the sick and paralyzed in the Gospel of John.
"Stand up, downsized -- start your own business! Stand up, dropout -- go back to school! Stop wallowing in quicksand and stand up, black man -- and take care of your own family!"
But Wright's message wasn't all self-help. He told churchgoers that racism, capitalism and militarism remain strong negative forces and that people who don't recognize these forces at work in such things as the government's response to Sudan and Hurricane Katrina as well as the civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip are "blind." They, too, are like the crippled in John's Gospel, he said.
Outside the auditorium, communists handed out newspapers challenging the idea that Obama is a serious change agent. Vendors sold Obama souvenirs, including a T-shirt that depicts Obama outfitted like a member of hip-hop band Run-D.M.C. -- chunky glasses and gold chain -- with the words "Run DC." American flags were displayed everywhere, and people in coffee shops around Howard said to one another, "God bless America."
Wright saved his most provocative comments for another day. Kwandrick Sumler and Eddie Holiday, communications students at Howard, said they were drawn to the service out of curiosity about the controversial Wright and found him "neutral."
"He gave everyone what they wanted to hear," Holiday said. "The biggest thing African Americans need is solidarity, and he did that. He said, 'Do what you need to do.' "
Sumler agreed. "He was Obama's pastor, and Reverend Wright played on that: Only in America is Barack Obama's story possible."
Three alumnae from Spelman College, in town for the inauguration, went to Howard partly to be in church on Sunday and partly to hear Wright for themselves.
"He's still the minister he always was. I think he has a great ministry, but his time in the media wasn't very positive," said Michelle Bradley, 24, who came from Chicago. "And I feel today my constitutional rights have been lived out -- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- by being here for the inauguration and Reverend Wright's sermon."

FAHEEM GETS PAID ONLY 10 PAISE PER SHOES !!!!! CAN SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE CHANGE HIS LIFE ?

Slumdog Millionaire has received tremendous international recognition and highlighted Mumbai's underbelly. While some hail it as a grand endorsement for the city, others think of it as a sorry stereotype.
One of the correspondents met children in Mumbai's slums to find out what life really means for them.
Faheem Khan, Dharavi
Faheem and his family, natives of Bijnore, Uttar Pradesh , have lived in Mumbai for 15 years. Faheem came to the city when he was just one year old.
The family of eight lives in Dharavi, often described as Asia's largest slum.
Faheem is 16, he is in Class X at the R C Mahim School. He also sews soles for shoes at one of the slum's many leather businesses.
His father works as a carpenter on daily wages. "He works if someone comes with work. He is jobless and has nothing to do if there is no carpentry work," says Faheem.
"I go to school in the morning and work in the evening. My brother fixes television cables and that again is on a daily wage. I get a very small amount from what I do. I put wooden heels on sandals and for every pair I get paid only 10 paise. I have another brother who studies in Class VIII and two sisters in Class X and IV," continues Faheem.
Amidst this financial constraint, Faheem forgets to mention his mother. "She is immobile," he says when this correspondent probes him. "She has calcium deficiency and cannot move. We cannot afford medication for her. We are just counting her days."
The government doctors provide free consultancy, but the family has to pay for the medication. "She needs to be medicated with an injection that costs us Rs 1,500 per injection. She needs this continuously for a month. That is going to cost us Rs 45,000. Where do we get this kind of money? We have left things to fate," he says with moist eyes.
"There have been days when none of us get money. We live in rented kholis (huts). We have to pay a rent of Rs 1,500. With no money coming in, we have starved for days. It happens quite often that we starve for more than 10 days a month. My father hasn't got any work for the past six months now."
Faheem goes to school from 7 am to 1 pm, he then goes for tuition after school and works from 4 pm to 11 pm. "I love to play like other kids, but I can't because of my schedule," he says.
"I want to study further and become a computer engineer," he says, confiding his dreams. "I know it is very difficult, but I will study hard. My brother has promised me that he will make me study as much as I want come what may. My sister wants to become a teacher and my dream is to be able to help my brother support my family."