Spainards Balk at Political Correctness
Jan. 2 — Citizens of the predominantly Catholic city of Granada in Spain are not happy with changes made to a centuries-old fiesta commemorating the final victory over the Moors.
The Jan. 2 celebration, dating to 1516, commemorates the capture of the city in 1492 by the Catholic monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand. The fall of the city eliminated the last stronghold of the Muslim sultans who held power for close to 800 years in Spain.
Since the mid-1990s, the small but fast-growing Muslim community in Spain has been pushing for changes in the “Day of the Taking of Granada,” according to the New York business daily. The military presence in the parade was scaled back, and a proclamation on cultural tolerance has been read in public. And some government officials are referring to the holiday by a new name, the “Day of the City of Granada.”
But the changes have been unpopular. Reading of the tolerance proclamation has prompted catcalls and epithets like “Moors go home.” The Journal quoted a student in Granada as calling it a form of terrorism for a “foreign minority” to change traditions accepted and loved by most people.
Orthodox Celebrate Epiphany In Turkey
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 7 — Orthodox in Turkey, though a minority in a Muslim country, celebrated the feast of the Epiphany with the traditional retrieval of a cross thrown into Istanbul's Bosporus, the news service reported.
After a three-hour Divine Liturgy, Metropolitan Irineos Gioannides led a procession into a small motorboat. He then threw a gold-painted wooden cross into the icy waters, and a 17-year-old theology student from Greece dove in after it amid swirling snow. About 100 worshipers on the shore cheered as George Kasapoglu held the cross above his head.
The Greek Orthodox celebrate Epiphany with the ceremony of the blessing of the waters, symbolizing the baptism of Jesus.
Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I also celebrated Epiphany in a liturgy in the Cathedral of St. George. Though Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, today's Istanbul, in 1453, the Patriarchate, dating from the 1,110-year Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, remains there.
Bush Said to Take Interest in China Bible Case
Jan. 9 — President Bush has asked the State Department to look into China's prosecution of a Hong Kong businessman accused of carrying thousands of Bibles into mainland China for distribution to a banned Christian group, the Los Angeles daily reported.
The president is “deeply concerned” about reports that China will prosecute 38-year-old Li Guangqiang, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. “Reports of a crackdown on religious practitioners in China are deeply troubling,” Boucher said.
China warned foreign governments not to meddle in its internal affairs as it vowed to press ahead with the prosecution. The law under which Li has been charged carries a maximum penalty of death, according to the Times.
Li, a member of the Hong Kong branch of the Anaheim, Calif.-based Local Church, transported more than 30,000 Bibles into China's Fujian Province last spring, according to information from the official indictment obtained by the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
The head of the rights institute said the Bibles apparently were headed for an underground Protestant sect known as Shouters, which China banned in 1995 as a cult.