Pew poll on religious differences

In a new poll released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public life, it is shown that for Americans, the best predictor of anti-Semitic sentiment is a person's level of anti-Islamic sentiment. That's probably not too surprising...they're just different manifestations of the same root phenomena.

Haiti earthquake

All our thoughts and prayers are with the survivors of the horrific earthquake in Haiti this week. Anyone who wishes to contribute to the relief effort should consider Partners in Development, an NGO based in Ipswich, MA, which works directly in Haiti. Their website is http://www.pidonline.org/Home.html.

Meditation on College Campuses

The article below describes how more colleges are offering meditation to reduce students' stress levels, and focuses on Transcendental Meditation in particular, a technique which was also popular at my undergrad college (AU). Though I haven't tried it, I know a few people who have and said it played a transformative role in their lives. For myself, meditation has become an important part of my daily schedule, helping me unwind after busy days and refocusing my sights on what's truly important in life. The GSA Spirituality Committee will be conducting a 'meditation week' next February, with traditions from various faiths and spiritual practices. More info on that to come.

Colleges use meditation to cut rising stress among students

By Jenna Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 20, 2009; C04

Amid the stress-inducing madness of finals, two Georgetown University seniors kick off their shoes and settle into wooden chairs. A soft gong fills the room. They close their eyes and clear their minds of everything but a four-syllable mantra.

The session, held in a tiny brick building nestled between dormitories, is part of a movement to provide college students more opportunities to relax and reflect through meditation. A study of D.C. college students published this month found the benefits can include lower blood pressure and reduced anxiety and depression.

"Stress is definitely on the rise at college campuses," said Sanford I. Nidich, the lead author of the study and a professor at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, which was founded by the yogi who popularized Transcendental Meditation. "It's a major problem, and it's getting worse. . . . More and more we are seeing students with elevated blood pressure."

At Georgetown, students and others can attend general meditation sessions twice a day at the John Main Center for Meditation and InterReligious Dialogue. On Wednesday afternoon, the two students sat quietly along with two university employees and tried to put aside what they needed to accomplish before Christmas break.

Then a buzzer went off. The gong sounded again. Everyone opened their eyes and stretched their arms.

"It has taught me the skill of stepping back," said Bradley Pollina, 21, a senior history major from Long Island, N.Y., who started meditating a year ago. "You teach yourself to slow down."

Still, it's difficult to persuade agenda-packed, competition-driven students to take time to slow down, said Marco Svoboda, the volunteer director of the center, who quit his accounting job in California five years ago to focus on meditation. Of the half-dozen people who typically show up to the sessions, only one or two are students.

"These students have been conditioned since kindergarten to evaluate their performance. Anything they do, they're comparing to their friends and even competing with their friends," Svoboda said. "When you come in here, you don't have to do that."

Georgetown isn't the only college to offer meditation: The University of Maryland at College Park offers sessions one night a week at its recreation center. At U-Md.'s campus in Baltimore County, the women's center has a meditation room stocked with tapes and guides. George Washington University's Mindfulness Meditation group meets weekly in the counseling center.

In most cases, leaders of these groups follow common meditation techniques -- sitting quietly, clearing the mind, focusing on a mantra, breathing slowly and deeply. The style of meditation used in the study was Transcendental Meditation, a trademarked technique taught through a series of lectures and meetings with a certified teacher who presents each student with a secret, personalized mantra.

Although the 298 students in the study attended these classes for free, they typically cost $750 for college students and $1,500 for everyone else. The Maharishi University and a foundation dedicated to Transcendental Meditation have done hundreds of studies on the technique's benefits.

To recruit test subjects for this study, the researchers decided to look in the District instead of on their campus, where everyone meditates twice a day. With the help of David A.F. Haaga, a psychology professor at American University who had never meditated, they recruited nearly 300 undergraduate and graduate students.

The students were split into two groups, one that was immediately taught Transcendental Meditation and another that was taught the techniques later. After three months of practicing on their own, the students were reevaluated.

Many students reported that they enjoyed the experience and felt better, but the most substantial finding was that students who were at risk for developing hypertension often saw their blood pressure drop significantly, Haaga said.

Josh Goulding, 24, participated in the study during his junior year at Georgetown. After three months of meditating daily, Goulding said his high blood pressure dropped significantly and he was able to focus better in class.

"There's no question that it helped me," said Goulding, who continues to meditate. "It's almost like cleaning and dusting your mind on a daily basis."

Atheist Wave

Atheist student groups flower on college campuses

By ERIC GORSKI
The Associated Press
Sunday, November 22, 2009 1:12 AM

AMES, Iowa -- The sign sits propped on a wooden chair, inviting all comers: "Ask an Atheist."

Whenever a student gets within a few feet, Anastasia Bodnar waves and smiles, trying to make a good first impression before eyes drift down to a word many Americans rank down there with "socialist."

Bodnar is the happy face of atheism at Iowa State University. Once a week at this booth at a campus community center, the PhD student who spends most of her time researching the nutritional traits of corn takes questions and occasional abuse while trying to raise the profile of religious skepticism.

"A lot of people on campus either don't know we exist or are afraid of us or hate us," says Bodnar, president of the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society. "People assume we're rabble-rousing, when we're one of the gentlest groups on campus."

As the stigma of atheism has diminished, campus atheists and agnostics are coming out of the closet, fueling a sharp rise in the number of clubs like the 10-year-old group at Iowa State.

Campus affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance, a sort of Godless Campus Crusade for Christ, have multiplied from 80 in 2007 to 100 in 2008 and 174 this fall, providing the atheist movement new training grounds for future leaders. In another sign of growing acceptance, at least three universities, including Harvard, now have humanist chaplains meeting the needs of the not-so-spiritual.

With the growth has come soul-searching - or the atheist equivalent - about what secular campus groups should look like. It's part of a broader self-examination in the atheist movement triggered by the rise of the so-called "new atheists," best-selling authors who denigrate religion and blame it for the world's ills.

Should student atheist groups go it alone or build bridges with Christian groups? Organize political protests or quiet discussion groups? Adopt the militant posture of the new atheists? Or wave and smile?

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As teenagers move into young adulthood, some leave God behind. But not in huge numbers.

More than three-quarters of young adults taking part in the National Study of Youth and Religion profess a belief in God. But almost 7 percent fewer believe in God as young adults (ages 18 to 23) than did as teenagers, according to the study, which is tracking the same group of young people as they mature.

What young adults are less likely to believe in is religion. The number of those who describe themselves as "not religious" nearly doubled, to 27 percent, in young adulthood.

Growing hostility toward religion was found, too. About 1 in 10 young adults are "irreligious" - or actively against religion - after virtually none of them fit that description as teenagers.

At Iowa State, most of the club's roughly 30 members are "former" somethings, mostly Christians. Many stress that their lives are guided not by anti-religiousness, but belief in science, logic and reason.

"The goal," said Andrew Severin, a post-doctoral researcher in bioinformatics, "should be to obtain inner peace for yourself and do random acts of kindness for strangers."

Severin calls himself a "spiritual atheist." He doesn't believe in God or the supernatural but thinks experiences like meditation or brushes with nature can produce biochemical reactions that feel spiritual.

When the ISU club began in 1999, it was mostly a discussion group. But it soon became clear that young people who leave organized religion miss something: a sense of community. So the group added movie and board-game nights and, more recently, twice-monthly Sunday brunches to the calendar.

"It's nice to be around people who aren't going to bash me for believing in nothing," said Bricelyn Rector, a freshman from Sioux City who, like others, described community as the club's greatest asset.

Members also seek to engage their peers at Iowa State, a 28,000-student science and technology school where the student body leans conservative. There's a "Brews and Views" night at a local coffee house and talks by visiting speakers common to any college campus.

"This is not a group of angry atheists. It's a group of very exuberant atheists," said faculty sponsor Hector Avalos, a secular humanist and well-known Biblical scholar who used to be a Pentecostal preacher. "Their primary aim is not to destroy the faith of Christians on campus. It's more live and let live."

The "Ask an Atheist" booth is the club's most visible outreach. On a recent Friday, a handful of members stand ready to intercept students on their way to eat lunch or withdraw money from a nearby ATM.

Traffic is slow. Scott Moseley, a Bettendorf, Iowa, senior, stops for a polite conversation.

He explains that he was raised Methodist, has a Buddhist friend and dates a Wiccan.

"My entire concept of one religion is kind of out the window," Moseley says.

Bodnar, an ex-Catholic married to a Buddhist, recommends the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, a haven for a grab bag of religious backgrounds and a few members of the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society.

The closest thing to a confrontation comes when another student, a baseball cap pulled tight to his brow, talks briefly about heaven before he mutters, "I can't listen to you guys," and walks away.

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On most college campuses, secular groups take shape when non-believing students arrive and find a couple-dozen Christian groups but no home for them. It isn't that atheism is necessarily growing among students - surveys show no uptick in the number of atheist and agnostic young adults over the last 20 years.

But the greater willingness to speak out, paired with the diversity within the movement, has resulted is a patchwork of clubs across the country united in disbelief but different in mission.

At Texas State University in San Marcos, a group of freethinkers led by a former Lutheran organizes rock-climbing outings and has co-sponsored a debate with a campus Christian group.

The University of South Florida is home to two active clubs: a freethinkers group that held a back-to-school barbecue and an atheist group that protested an anti-abortion group's campus visit.

Still other clubs embrace rituals. At the University of Southern Maine, a secular humanist organization has celebrated HumanLight, a secular alternative to Christmas and Hanukkah.

Just in the past year, the Iowa State club has evolved in new directions. Some are things churches have traditionally done - like the club's first foray into volunteerism, sleeping outside in cardboard boxes to raise money for homeless youth.

Others get at the heart of tensions within the atheist movement. The club worked with a Methodist church on a gay rights candlelight vigil, a gesture that would make some atheists cringe.

"The trouble is, any time you start working with other groups, religion starts coming in," said Victor Stenger, an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and author of "The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason."

"People bring up Jesus, they're trying to proselytize, trying to get people to go to church," Stenger said. "The atheist groups just can't put up with it. They have to argue against it."

More recently, the ISU club's non-confrontational philosophy has been tested by a debate over the fate of a small chapel at Memorial Union on campus.

The club has avoided taking a position because members are divided. Some want the chapel's religious symbols - including an eight-foot wooden cross - removed on First Amendment grounds. Others fear repercussions and don't think a fight is worth it.

"The point of the club is not to make waves or controversy," said Bodnar, adding that she is uncomfortable with "calling out religion as wrong."

Some club members would like to be more confrontational when circumstances merit. Junior Brian Gress was interested in participating this fall in a nationwide "Blasphemy Day," a stick in the eye to religion. But the club passed and the idea fizzled.

"You should always try to make friends, but there are certain things about religion that can't be tolerated," Gress said. "Basically, the intolerance of religion can't be tolerated."

Most affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance fall somewhere between militant and why-can't-we-all-just-get-along, said Lyz Liddell, senior campus organizer for the Columbus, Ohio-based group.

"College students can be a little more susceptible to the more reactionary anti-religion voices, partly because it's so new to them," she said. "My impression is after a couple of years, they mellow out."

Christian Smith, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame and a principal investigator on the youth and religion study, said campus atheist groups are better off without militancy. Young adults are taught their entire lives to be nonjudgmental, that different points of views are OK and that there is no one truth, he said.

"Emerging adults are just not into trying to make other people be or do something," Smith said. "If I were advising atheists and humanists, I would say their long-term prospects are much better if they can successfully create this space where people view them as happy, OK, cooperative, nice people."

At Iowa State, what one club member describes as a band of misfits and outcasts is trying to carve out a space where atheists who raise a fist and atheists who wave and smile can coexist peacefully.

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Eric Gorski can be reached at egorski(at)ap.org or viahttp://twitter.com/egorski

© 2009 The Associated Press

Savage Religion

The congressman in the article below has nothing to apologize for. Why would any religion want to claim terrorists as one of their own?

Ill congressman defends 'savage religion' comment

By SOPHIA TAREEN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 8:32 PM

CHICAGO -- An Illinois congressman says his comment that suspected terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay follow a "savage religion" has been misinterpreted.

U.S. Rep. Donald Manzullo told WREX-TV in Rockford, Ill., that alleged terrorists imprisoned at the Navy base are "really really mean people whose job it is to kill people, driven by some savage religion."

The Republican lawmaker confirmed Tuesday those words were his. He said he never specified Islam and apologized for any misunderstanding.

Manzullo's remarks come as federal officials consider buying an Illinois prison to house Guantanamo detainees.

Most prisoners at the base in Cuba come from Muslim countries.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations says Manzullo's comments were an attack on Islam.

© 2009 The Associated Press

Peace Poetry in the Plaza!

Peace Poetry in the Plaza!
December 8th, 2009, 12-3PM, O'Neill Plaza

What is peace? Is it simply submission, or the absence of conflict? Can peace be a means for war, or vice-versa? What is the relationship between peace, morality, and duty? And how does our search for individual peace relate to society as a whole?

On Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 the GSA Spirituality Committee will host an open-mic event to be held in O'Neill Plaza, from noon to 3PM, to explore these themes and other related issues through creative media. We are looking for writers, artists, singers, dancers, poets, and any other creative-minded individuals to showcase their work related to these topics on the 8th. If you have work you'd like to share, or if you'd like to participate in other ways, please contact the Spirituality Committee at gsaspiritualitycommitte@gmail.com.

Please join us on December 8th for refreshments and thought-provoking exhibits on peace: one of the most important and timeless themes of humanity's spiritual journey.

Fort Hood Shootings

Yesterday there was a horrific massacre at Fort Hood, TX, in which a Muslim-American soldier, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, killed 13 and left 30 wounded. His religion wouldn't have anything to do with it, had he not been shouting out "Allahu akbar! (God is great!)" as he killed all these people. The NY Times article below attempts to illustrate the chain of events that drove this man to these actions. What he did is not excusable, but they reveal yet another tragedy about what happened, and it's that this war is still perceived as a war on Islam, both by Muslims like Hasan, and non-Muslims, like those in the military who harrassed Hasan for being Muslim. I don't know if this can ever be changed. We're fighting an enemy so different from us (Americans), an enemy whose actions are always bound up in a mask of Muslim devotion, that when we think of a war against terrorism, we already have a picture in mind of what terrorists look like, and what religion they will say they profess.

Because of this, when we ask Muslim-Americans to serve our country by going to war, it's like asking them to choose between their nationality and their faith, a division that shouldn't exist in America. When you challenge a man's very own sense of self, he can lash out in unpredictable and violent ways. I'm afraid of what implications this shooting might have on the average American's view of Islam and Muslims. And I'm also afraid of what continuing our war on terrorism will do to our country, and what it stands for.

NYT, November 7, 2009

Suspect Objected to Deployment, Cousin Says

By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan.

“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier became aware of Internet postings by a man calling himself Nidal Hasan, a law enforcement official said. The postings discussed suicide bombings favorably, but the investigators were not clear whether the writer was Major Hasan.

In one posting on the Web site Scribd, a man named Nidal Hasan compared the heroism of a soldier who throws himself on a grenade to protect fellow soldiers to suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves to protect Muslims.

“If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory,” the man wrote. It could not be confirmed, however, that the writer was Major Hasan.

Major Hasan was wounded and taken into custody by the Fort Hood police after the shooting rampage, in which 12 people were killed and at least 31 others were wounded.

Though Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas reported that Major Hasan was to be deployed this month, that could not be confirmed with the Army on Thursday night.

Nader Hasan said his cousin never mentioned in recent phone calls to Virginia that he was going to be deployed, and he said the family was shocked when it heard the news on television on Thursday afternoon.

“He was doing everything he could to avoid that,” Mr. Hasan said. “He wanted to do whatever he could within the rules to make sure he wouldn’t go over.”

Some years ago, that included retaining a lawyer and asking if he could get out of the Army before his contract was up, because of the harassment he had received as a Muslim. But Nader Hasan said the lawyer had told his cousin that even if he paid the Army back for his education, it would not allow him to leave before his commitment was up.

“I think he gave up that fight and was just doing his time,” Mr. Hasan said.

Nader Hasan said his cousin’s parents had both been American citizens who owned businesses, including restaurants and a store, in Roanoke, Va. He declined to confirm reports that they were Jordanian but said the parents, who are both dead, had immigrated from a small town near Jerusalem many years ago.

His mother’s obituary, in The Roanoke Times in 2001, said she was born in Palestine in 1952. It described her as a restaurant owner “known for her ability to keep sometimes rowdy customers out of trouble and always had a warm meal for someone who otherwise would not have anything to eat that evening.”

Records show that Major Hasan received an undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and a medical degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He did a residency at Walter Reed Medical Center and worked there for years before a transfer to the Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood this year.

Major Hasan had two brothers, one in Virginia and another in Jerusalem, his cousin said. The family, by and large, prospered in the United States, Mr. Hasan said.

The former imam at a Silver Spring, Md., mosque where Major Hasan worshiped for about 10 years described him as proud of his work in the Army and “very serious about his religion.” The former imam, Faizul Khan, said that Major Hasan had wanted to marry an equally religious woman but that his efforts to find one had failed.

“He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab, and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things,” the former imam said.

Mr. Hasan, 40, a lawyer in Virginia, described his cousin as a respectful, hard-working man who had devoted himself to his parents and his career.

Mr. Hasan said his cousin became more devout after his parents died in 1998 and 2001.

“His parents didn’t want him to go into the military,” Mr. Hasan said. “He said, ‘No, I was born and raised here, I’m going to do my duty to the country.’ ”

David Johnston contributed from Washington.