{"id":4103,"date":"2006-12-11T09:17:44","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T09:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html"},"modified":"2006-12-11T09:17:44","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T09:17:44","slug":"looking-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html","title":{"rendered":"Looking East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cardinal Zen with more to say:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The diocese of Hong Kong<\/span> is preparing to appeal against the <\/span>dismissal by the Court of First Instance of a judicial review of the government’s school management reforms.<\/p>\n

This was revealed yesterday by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun who described the government as \u201cheartless\u201d and \u201cdisrespectful\u201d of the long-term contribution of the Catholic Church to education. Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, head of the department of education, replied by describing the cardinal \u201can<\/span> old man, who should not grumble so much."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pakistani Christians sentenced for blasphemy<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n

Both men worked as groundskeepers at a private factory and for friends and neighbors in <\/p>\n

Munir<\/p>\n

Park<\/p>\n

, a rural area of <\/p>\n

Faisalabad<\/p>\n

, 260 kilometers south of <\/p>\n

Islamabad<\/p>\n

. According to Father Yaqoob Yousaf, the local parish priest, more than 80 Christian families live in the area, part of <\/p>\n

Punjab<\/p>\n

province.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n
\n
\n

James and Buta were arrested Oct. 8 for allegedly burning pages from an Islamic studies book. Since then Bishop Joseph Coutts of <\/p>\n

Faisalabad<\/p>\n

has held a press conference, while <\/p>\n

Faisalabad<\/p>\n

diocesan officials, the parish priest and catechists have held meetings with Muslim clerics and influential persons to explain that the accused did not knowingly insult Islam. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n
\n
\n

Father Yousaf told UCA News that James burned the pages with other discarded papers in a sack on the street in front of his home. The sack was given to his daughter Nargis by a Muslim family for whom she worked as a maid.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n
\n
\n

Local people said they discovered partially burned pages containing Qur’anic<\/span> verses in the sack, and a mob of about 500 gathered outside James’ house chanting slogans. Police arrested James and Buta and tried to pacify the mob, which protested outside the police station all that night. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n
\n
\n

As news of the arrest spread, Father Aftab James, director of <\/p>\n

Faisalabad<\/p>\n

diocese’s commission for interfaith dialogue, Father Yousaf and catechists met with local Muslims.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n
\n
\n

"Pacifying them was a hectic job since they were not ready to listen and demanded public hanging of the ‘gustakh<\/span>‘ (insolent)," Father Yousaf recalled.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

The sentence: 15 years in prison, plus a fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cardinal Zen with more to say: The diocese of Hong Kong is preparing to appeal against the dismissal by the Court of First Instance of a judicial review of the government’s school management reforms. This was revealed yesterday by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun who described the government as \u201cheartless\u201d and \u201cdisrespectful\u201d of the long-term contribution…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLooking East - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking East - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cardinal Zen with more to say: The diocese of Hong Kong is preparing to appeal against the dismissal by the Court of First Instance of a judicial review of the government’s school management reforms. This was revealed yesterday by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun who described the government as \u201cheartless\u201d and \u201cdisrespectful\u201d of the long-term contribution…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-11T09:17:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Looking East - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Looking East - Via Media","og_description":"Cardinal Zen with more to say: The diocese of Hong Kong is preparing to appeal against the dismissal by the Court of First Instance of a judicial review of the government’s school management reforms. This was revealed yesterday by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun who described the government as \u201cheartless\u201d and \u201cdisrespectful\u201d of the long-term contribution…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-12-11T09:17:44+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html","name":"Looking East - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-12-11T09:17:44+00:00","dateModified":"2006-12-11T09:17:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-east.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Looking East"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}