All Videos Tagged christianity (Atheist Nexus) - Atheist Nexus

The Dis-United Kingdom

2013-05-23T02:30:45.218Z

The Cafe travels to Bradford to discuss race riots, poverty and polarised communities in the UK.

Bradford is at the heart of the UK and it was once the wealthiest city in Britain, riding the wave of the industrial revolution, its mills churning out textiles that dressed the world. But Great Britain is no longer the great empire that it once was, and today, the city of Bradford is not defined by industrial or political power but by poverty, inequality and social decline.

Another thing that has changed is the make-up of the residents themselves. White Christian Anglo-Saxons used to be the only racial and religious denomination in Bradford. But then the children of the empire started migrating to the UK in search of better lives - and stayed. British society became multi-racial and multi-cultural.

Britain embraced multiculturalism, mosques jostled with church spires on some city skylines and Chicken Tikka Masala became the nation's favourite dish.

The problems started when the once colourful minority became, in places like Bradford, the majority. Native Britons felt left behind, especially as times got tougher. There were race riots in Bradford in 2001.

The so-called white working class is angry and alienated and the divide between communities seems to be growing. Add the threat of home-grown terrorism and religious extremism and it becomes a volatile cocktail.

The Cafe discusses multiculturalism, race riots, poverty and Islamophobia and what it really means to be British in the 21st century.

Joining our conversation in The Cafe at Bradford are guests:

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, was the UK's first Muslim cabinet minister and the co-chair of the ruling Conservative Party who recently warned that Islamophobia has become socially acceptable in Britain. She is now the Minister of State for Faith and Communities;
George Galloway, a British member of the parliament who took a stand against the war in Iraq and was expelled from the Labour Party, then went on to found the Respect Party, which in a dramatic by-election here in Bradford, overturned the massive Labour majority;
David Goodhart, the director of influential British think tank Demos who mantains that mass, unregulated immigration has led to segregation and is undermining the UK’s welfare state;
Ratna Lachman, the director of Just West Yorkshire and a human rights campaigner who warns that politicians use loose talk of segregation for their own political gain;
Jason Smith, the Bradford district chairman of UKIP, the UK Independence Party, who argues that multiculturalism has split British society, and who advocates freezing immigration;
Arfan Naseer, a former drug dealer who now leads Consequence, an organisation that works with young people locally to help them stay out of crime and who recently won the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Dawkins on religion

2013-05-23T02:25:39.171Z

An interview with renowned atheist Richard Dawkins on whether religion is a force for good or evil.

Fanaticism, fundamentalism, superstition and ignorance. Religion is getting a bad press these days. Much of the conflict in the world, from the Middle East to Nigeria and Myanmar, is often blamed on religion.

But how are things from a different perspective? Defenders of religion claim Adolf Hitler was an atheist. Communism under Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao Zedong banned religion, but also massacred millions. And science brought incredible and amazing advances, but also pollution and the atomic bomb.

A critic of religious dogmatism, Professor Richard Dawkins revolutionised genetics in 1976 with the publication of The Selfish Gene, which explained how evolution takes place at the genetic level. He has since written 12 more bestsellers, including The God Delusion which sold millions of copies, was translated into more than 30 languages, and catapulted him to the position of the world's foremost atheist.

Mehdi Hasan interviews evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at the Oxford Union and asks: Is religion a force for good or evil? Can it co-exist with science? Is science the new religion? And why if god does not exist, is religion so persistent?

Sweden Muslim riots continue after police shooting

2013-05-23T02:13:15.308Z

Around 200 people hurled rocks at police and set cars ablaze in a Stockholm suburb during a third night of rioting, which residents said was triggered by the fatal police shooting of a man wielding a knife.

Dozens of windows were smashed, 10 cars and several containers were set on fire, and seven police officers were injured on Tuesday.

Police said five people were being held over the rioting, and six others had been released after questioning.

Cars and containers were also set ablaze in Fittja, another Stockholm suburb, although police said it was not clear whether the two events were linked.

The unrest began on Sunday night. A May 13 incident in which police killed a 69-year-old man who had locked himself in an apartment in Husby, west of Stockholm, has been cited by some residents as the trigger of the riots, but bigger frustration among youth has also been cited as the reason.

Around 80 percent of the roughly 11,000 residents of the suburbs are first- or second-generation immigrants.

Police have refused to give the nationality of the victim of the shooting.

Many local residents see the shooting as an example of police brutality, and the violence has stirred debate in Sweden.

Tense atmosphere

The country, known for its strong welfare state and egalitarian society, has had the biggest surge in inequality of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country over the past 25 years, according to a recent publication by the global economic watchdog.

Commenting on the violence, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said: "This is not OK. We will not give in to violence.

"We must all help out to regain calm. The residents of Husby need to get their neighbourhood back."

Reinfeldt added that Husby has been going in the right direction during his seven-year tenure, with employment increasing and crime falling.

Al Jazeera's Rory Challands, reporting from Husby, said that local authorities are doing their best to assimilate new immigrant arrivals.

"Husby is not some slum that the state has abandoned," he said.

The atmosphere was tense on Tuesday, with residents expressing both anger at police and sadness about the destruction. City workers were seen clearing the debris of a burnt-out container and documenting fire damage.

Reza Al Bazi, 14, and his friend Sebastian Horniak, 15, said they witnessed the violence throughout the night.

Horniak claimed he saw police firing warning shots in the air and calling a woman a "monkey."

"I got upset yesterday because I saw police attack innocent people, they beat a woman with a baton," he said.

Horniak's claims of racist remarks were backed up by the organisation Megafonen, which represents citizens in Stockholm's suburbs.

Prosecutors have launched an internal probe into the shooting. Police say they shot the man in self-defence because he attacked them with a knife when they broke down the door to an apartment where he had locked himself up with a woman.

Al-Nakba (Episode 3)

2013-05-23T02:04:08.537Z

Few Palestinians, if any, could have imagined they were to become victims of what would later be called ‘ethnic cleansing’.

After 30 years of British rule, the question of Palestine was referred to the United Nations, which had become the forum for conflict.

On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly met to devise a plan for the partition of Palestine. UN Resolution 181 divided Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem as an internationalised city.

The Jewish state was granted 56 percent of the land; the city of Jaffa was included as an enclave of the Arab state; and the land known today as the Gaza Strip was split from its surrounding agricultural regions.

But making the proposed Arab state all but proved impractical in the eyes of many Palestinians.

When the draft resolution was presented for voting, Arab newspapers ran a ‘name and shame’ list of the countries that voted for the UN partition plan, and Arab protesters took to the streets.

Following the partition resolution, Britain announced it would end its mandate in Palestine on 14 May 1948.

Al-Nakba (Episode 2)

2013-05-19T23:25:29.745Z

On 19 April 1936, the Palestinians launched a national strike to protest against mass Jewish immigration and what they saw as Britain’s alliance with the Zionist movement.

The British responded with force. During the six months of the strike, over 190 Palestinians were killed and more than 800 wounded.

Wary of popular revolt, Arab leaders advised the Palestinians to end the strike.

Palestinian leaders bowed to pressure from the Arab heads of state and agreed to meet the British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by Lord Peel.

In its report of July 1937, the Peel Commission recommended the partition of Palestine. Its report drew the frontiers of a Jewish state in one-third of Palestine, and an Arab state in the remaining two-thirds, to be merged with Transjordan.

A corridor of land from Jerusalem to Jaffa would remain under British mandate. The Commission also recommended transferring where necessary Palestinians from the lands allocated to the new Jewish state.

The Commission’s proposals were widely published and provoked heated debate.

As the Palestinian revolt continued, Britain’s response hardened. Between 1936 and 1937, the British killed over 1,000 Palestinians; 37 British military police and 69 Jews also died.