2017
September
11
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 11, 2017
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

This week, Australians will begin voting on whether to legalize same-sex marriage. The vote is peculiar – it’s by mail and won’t be binding. But it’s intended to show what Australians want. Polls suggest it will pass, though the vote-by-mail element adds unpredictability.

Basically, no one likes this solution. Opponents of same-sex marriage worry that the vote might succeed, while supporters note that parliament could settle the issue on its own – and meanwhile, the campaign is disparaging lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. What’s the point? they ask.

That becomes clearer in a television ad by the “no” campaign. At one point, a mother says, “School told my son he could wear a dress next year if he felt like it.” The claim has nothing to do with same-sex marriage. But it speaks to a deep sense of cultural insecurity. Advocates for same-sex marriage will wonder what is taking Australia so long, but attitudes toward marriage and homosexuality there, as in the United States, have reversed astonishingly fast – in little more than a decade. In that way, a vote no one likes represents a country still struggling to find its footing amid seismic change. 

Here is our take today on stories that examine perseverance, moral leadership, and innovation.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Mike Blake/Reuters
Students arrive for the first day of school at Wharton Dual Language Academy in Houston on Sept. 11. Houston Independent School District postponed the first day for its 215,000 students because of hurricane Harvey and is reopening schools on a rolling basis throughout the month, with most starting on Sept. 11.

In the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, one need is to keep kids from feeling like spare parts as they're passed from place to place as cities repair damaged schools. That means protecting them from a sense of upheaval, experts say. 

China is increasingly talking as if it wants to be a world leader – but what kind? To much of the world, China's permissive approach to North Korea represents a failure of leadership. China has a different view

Just as hurricane Harvey showed Americans’ incredible capacity to help, hurricane Irma showed their capacity to cope, with millions of people fleeing south Florida for hotels, makeshift camping sites, and Alabama peanut festivals.

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SSI/REUTERS
An image of Saturn captured by the Cassini spacecraft, launched Oct. 15, 1997, and scheduled to burn up as it is pulled into that planet later this month. A joint project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency, the $3.3 billion mission to Saturn has shown how scientists from a diverse group of 17 nations can work together to explore the heavens.

In its 13 years, the Cassini spacecraft tasted the salty geysers of one frozen moon, sent a small probe splatting into the methane-soaked surface of another, and brushed its fingertips through the clouds of Saturn itself. This is its ecstatic epitaph. 

Breakthroughs

Ideas that drive change

Technology is bridging the seeing and visually impaired worlds. New apps are giving blind users a boost while also revealing to sighted people just how capable the visually impaired are.  


The Monitor's View

AP Photo
A protester and Buddhist monk holding roses attend a Sept. 3 protest in Yangon, Myanmar, praying for victims killed during conflict and condemning the attacks carried out in Rakhine state, western Myanmar.

According to a global ranking, Myanmar (Burma) is one of the most generous countries in terms of donating and volunteering, a result of a type of Buddhism practiced by a majority of Burmese. Yet this expression of outsize giving is not the image of Myanmar lately portrayed by its military’s harsh treatment of the minority Muslims. Is there a way that Buddhists in Myanmar can extend their compassion to the people of another faith?

The simple answer is yes, at least according to the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet’s Buddhists. On Sept. 8, he said those persecuting Muslims in Myanmar “should remember Buddha,” who “would definitely give help to those poor Muslims.”

Yet such advice is still not being widely heeded in Myanmar. On Sept. 11, the United Nations accused the military, which controls key parts of the civilian-led government, of carrying out “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against Muslims, who call themselves Rohingya. Since late August, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled the country. The latest exodus is the result of an assault by the armed forces after a new militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, attacked government outposts, killing more than 100.

Many of Myanmar’s Buddhists, who have long feared that their faith is in jeopardy, consider Muslims to be “terrorists” or a social threat. They make little distinction between the vast majority of Rohingya who espouse peace and the violent few who have lately turned to fighting discrimination and oppression. A few monks as well as the military have fed off this prejudice to create a brand of “Buddhist nationalism” that mixes the country’s religious and civic identities.

The solution, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group, is for Myanmar’s civilian government to reframe the place of Buddhism in a democratic society and to set forth a “positive vision.” This means that the civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and her National League for Democracy party, must offer a higher moral alternative to young people than that promoted by Buddhist nationalists. These radicals gain support by providing youth with “a sense of belonging and direction in a context of rapid societal change and few jobs or other opportunities...,” the ICG report states.

Many Buddhists in Myanmar see their faith as inherently peaceful and non-proselytising. But they also then see it as susceptible to oppression by more aggressive faiths, the ICG points out. This feeling is compounded by Myanmar’s colonial history and the rise of militant Islam around the world.

While Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi commands respect and support, she is widely seen as backing liberal ideas promoting minority rights without doing enough to protect the Buddhist faith. Dealing with the historical fears of Buddhists – even though they are more than 80 percent of the population – might help reduce their fears of Muslims.

“In Myanmar’s new, more democratic era, the debate over the proper place of Buddhism, and the role of political leadership in protecting it, is being recast,” the report states.

The more the government can give people control over their economic destiny, in other words, the less they will look to Buddhist nationalists or cheer military suppression of the Rohingya.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

People have to make decisions with far-reaching consequences when facing storms like hurricanes Irma and Jose. To many, the vivid Bible accounts of turning to God for direction in storms and turmoil have helped them seek and find the guidance they require. For one contributor the inspiration that God protects all proved practical when after praying, she felt led to move out of her building earlier than planned. Not long after, a tree destroyed the property during a hurricane and no one was injured. She saw that a humble willingness to rely on God brought protection and is a help today for those in need.  


A message of love

Brendan McDermid/Reuters
An officer of the New York City Police Department pauses at the edge of the south reflecting pool at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum during ceremonies marking the 16th anniversary of the attacks in New York.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for reading. Tomorrow, we’ll be looking at what it takes to rehabilitate gang members in a country like El Salvador, where gang violence is endemic and deeply rooted. Along the way, evangelical churches have become one of the main actors.

More issues

2017
September
11
Monday

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