‘Stop Islam’ campaign on social media
Shortly after the attacks in Brussels were carried out, a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment began hitting social media, with people using the hashtag #StopIslam. Hundreds of thousands of messages with that hashtag have been posted across the world on Twitter, according to Dataminr, a monitoring service. By Wednesday morning Twitter users were using the social media platform in a war of words, and some believed that comments on the #StopIslam hashtag platform were beginning to be censored due to its trending so powerfully. Initially users tweeted with the tag to express their frustration with another terrorist attack as well as the politicians who refuse to link the extremism with Islam. As the tag spawned a huge wave of tweets from around the world, people began using it to argue against condemning an entire religious group for the attacks. Other messages posted were ‘Christianity must be disempowered and demonised’, ‘Islam must be empowered and promoted’, and ‘#StopIslam is trending worldwide. There will never be peace in the Western world until Islam is gone’. See also:
Brussels bombs
A series of deadly explosions rocked Brussels on Tuesday, targeting the Belgian capital's main airport and metro system. Christians across Brussels have called for prayer. The coordinated attacks came as the city was on a high level of alert following the arrest of Paris atrocity suspect Salah Abdeslam last week. The Archbishop of Canterbury said: ‘In the great Holy Week of Christian prayer and mercy, the Brussels attacks shock all those who seek peace and justice through the terrible cruelty and utter separation from all that is of God. Once again we see the contrast between the vain efforts to terrify through indiscriminate murder and the call of God to us to show mercy, seek peace and pursue it. Let us at every service this week pray for those caught up in the traumatic events at the airport and in the city of Brussels.’
Good Friday BBC reappraisal of Judas
Some clerics, including a Church of England bishop, have joined the call for a reappraisal of the disciple who betrayed Jesus, leading to his crucifixion. The Rt Rev Nick Baines, the Bishop of Leeds, said Judas has had a ‘lousy press’ for the last two thousand years; while he is reviled as the ultimate traitor, the truth behind his decision to hand Jesus over to the religious authorities may have been decidedly more complicated. His comments come in an article in this week’s Radio Times ahead of a new BBC documentary by the Church of England vicar and reality television star Rev Kate Bottley. In the programme ‘In the Footsteps of Judas’, to be shown on BBC One on Good Friday morning, she examines theories about what led him to betray Jesus for pieces of silver and later to hang himself.
Martin McGuinness and Christianity
Comments made by Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister that he is a ‘very broad-minded Christian’ and a ‘practising Catholic’ have been slammed by a victim of the Troubles. Ann Travers, whose sister Mary was murdered by the Provos, said she was ‘flabbergasted’ to hear Mr McGuinness, a former IRA commander, call himself a practising Catholic. The Sinn Fein man said he was a very young man when the conflict began and he was very much involved in participating in the civil rights protests. He then went on to describe how his family were devout and he prayed every night. Mr McGuinness said his faith was important in finding common ground with Mr Paisley during the peace process.
