At Mosque, Brazil Celebrates First Place in Religious Freedom
Brazil ahead of the United States in religious freedom, according to Pew Research Center
By Julio
Severo
Brazil
lost the world soccer cup last year, but at least it is being celebrated for
achieving the first place in religious freedom in late April, according to a
recent study by the Pew Research Center, in a report by the Religious News
Service.
 |
| Ecumenical meeting in Mesquita Brasil (Brazilian Mosque) |
Among
the 25 most populous countries, Brazil is in the first place in religious
freedom, even ahead of the United States, according to a study by the Pew
Research Center.
Sheikh
Abdel Hammed Metwally, religious leader of Mesquita Brasil, said, “This will be
the first of many meetings.” He highlighted this event will show “the world how
Brazil stands out in leading position, by tolerating and peacefully
accommodating the most diverse creeds.”
Among
the speakers was Elder D. Todd Christofferson, a member of the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said, “I
encourage you to hold fast to the freedoms you have forged at home and to lead
courageously in promoting religious freedom on the world stage.”
About
the first place of Brazil in religious freedom, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation
(TBFF) said:
“The
high level of religious freedom in Brazil is notable as the country arguably
undergoes one of the most dynamic religious shifts in the world today, with no
religious or sectarian conflict. In light of recent research showing that
religion is on the rise worldwide, the Brazilian example is worth highlighting
and understanding, particularly when day to day we witness stories from across
the world on the role of religion in conflict situations. Brazil is exceptional
in terms of religious freedom. Among the 26 most populous countries, Brazil has
the lowest restrictions on religious freedom of them all. Brazil has lower
restrictions, in fact, than the United Kingdom and the United States, where
restrictions have been rising.”
TBFF
also said on Brazil, “there have been no reported incidents of hostility over
conversions or proselytism.”
Brazil
has the world’s largest Catholic population, but religious freedom was not a
Brazilian tradition for a long time. While in the U.S., the largest Protestant
nation in the world, Catholics enjoyed significant freedom in the 1700s and
1800s, in Brazil Protestants enjoyed minimal or no freedom at all. Even in the
1900s, Protestants were persecuted in Brazil, and this persecution was not
merely criticism, but physical and economical persecution.
The
fact that Brazil has been congratulated for a supposed distinction of peaceful
tolerance and religious freedom is very strange, and stranger when such distinction
is celebrated in a mosque.
In
the 1990s, under Marxist President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the Ministry of
Education instructed Brazilian schools to address witchcraft, or Brazilian
voodoo, as mere and unharmful “culture.”
In
the past decade, under the socialist Lula administration, the Brazilian
government advanced this conception, by treating witchcraft adherents as
“oppressed minorities” and by treating Christian preaching against witchcraft
as “hate crime.” The witchcraft religions are mostly from Umbanda and
Candomblé, very similar to Santeria and voodoo.
The
traditional Christian preaching against witchcraft began to be labeled as
“persecution” against “oppressed minorities,” and witchcraft leaders were
allowed to accompany the Brazilian delegation in the United Nations to voice
their denunciations against “oppression” by Brazilian evangelicals against
Umbanda and Candomblé adherents.
The denunciations
were made especially by Ivanir dos Santos, a pai-de-santo from Rio de Janeiro. According
to the Michaelis Dictionary, “pai-de-santo is a priest of an Afro-Brazilian
voodoo cult,” including Macumba and Candomblé. Ivanir denounced at UN “a new
kind of religious persecution in Brazil, which has aimed at temples of
Candomble and the followers of African religions, in acts provoked by modern
Pentecostals.” Brazil, said he, “is the only country preserving religions
brought by slaves and these religions should be defended.”
The
“oppression” denounced by him consists mostly of evangelicals TV shows where
former Umbanda and Candomblé adherents testified about their past experiences
in witchcraft and how Jesus Christ had delivered them, especially from demonic
spirits.
They
were not testimonies of Umbanda and Candomblé adherents being murdered by
evangelicals, especially from the charismatic, Pentecostal neo-Pentecostal
persuasion, but testimonies of them being transformed by Jesus Christ.
These
TV shows have suffered censorship. Last year, YouTube videos containing
testimonies of former adherents of Afro-Brazilian religions who are
Pentecostals today were removed by judicial order, incited by Ivanir dos
Santos. In his ruling, the judge stated that their testimonies were not against
a religion, but against a “culture.”
These
judicial persecutions are not against Pentecostals only.
In
1998, a judge in the state of Bahia, Brazil, had ordered the confiscation of a
book written by Catholic priest Jonas Abib, in which he condemns witchcraft as
immoral, as reported by LifeSiteNews,
which said:
“The
book, ‘Yes, Yes! No, No! Reflections on Healing and Liberation,’ warns
readers against the dangers of the occult, which includes the ‘Afro-Brazilian’
religions known as ‘spiritualism.’ According to Fr. Abib's website, the
book has gone through 81 printings and has sold over 400,000 copies. ‘Father
Jonas, like Paul, dares to denounce works of darkness, making the reader aware
of mind control, yoga, astrology, magic, and the invocation of the dead,
revealing the truth about works of darkness, with which it is urgently
necessary to separate,’ says a summary of the book posted on the same site.
Public prosecutor Almiro Sena, however, has accused Abib of ‘making false
and prejudiced statements about the spiritualist religion as well as religions
from Africa, like Umbanda and Candomble, as well as a flagrant incitement to
destruction and disrespect for their objects of worship.’ He added that the
violation was more serious because ‘the State Constitution (of Bahia) says that
it is the obligation of the state to preserve and guarantee the integrity,
respectability, and permanence of the values of Afro-Brazilian religion.’”
Former
Lula administration and the current Dilma Rousseff administration (both the
most socialist governments in the Brazilian history) had and have active
policies to protect Afro-Brazilian religions as a “culture” inherited from
African slaves. While Catholic and Protestant traditions have increasingly been
banned from schools and other government places because the State is “secular,”
Afro-Brazilian religions and their practices are making inroads, with state
assistance, into schools and other places, in a privileged way. Because
Christianity is religion, and Afro-Brazilian religions are “culture.”
With
such state protections, even Brazilian Blacks are banned from criticizing
Afro-Brazilian gods, as reported by me in WND:
“In
Rio, a Pentecostal [Black] minister led a criminal to Jesus and convinced him
to deliver himself to police. Rev. Isaías da Silva Andrade accompanied the
former criminal to police and when they asked how his life had been changed,
the minister answered that the former criminal lived under the influence of
demons from Afro-Brazilian religions which inspired him to criminal conduct,
but now he found salvation in Jesus. Because of this innocent account, Rev.
Andrade is now being prosecuted for discrimination against the Afro-Brazilian
‘culture’! If condemned, he will serve between two and five years in jail.”
As a
son of a former Umbanda leader who accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I see
no problem in speaking the truth about the witchcraft derived from Africa. In
fact, Brazilians remember, when there was no threat of politically-correct racial
censorship, the regular scandals reported by media of pai-de-santos
(Afro-Brazilian priests) involved in a number of child sacrifices.
In
the past, newspapers were free to report and denounce child sacrifices in the
Afro-Brazilian religions. You can find a lot of old reports on these crimes
involving child rapes and murders by Afro-Brazilian priests. But nowadays,
under the watchful state eye, only flattering reports are allowed, such as
“oppressed” religion, “threatened” religion, etc.
Today,
the Brazilian media no longer reports pai-de-santos sacrificing children. And
they are unwilling to talk about other related crimes.
When
Pentecostal minister Francisco de Paula Cunha de Miranda was stabbed to death
by an Afro-Brazilian priest in 2008, the Brazilian media remained silent.
Miranda,
47, was murdered in Rio Grande do Sul. He was Black (and cannot, even after his
death, be accused of “racism”) and was on his 33rd day of fasting and prayer
when pai-de-santo Júlio César Bonato, possessed by exu caveira (demon of death
in the Afro-Brazilian “culture”), left his temple during a ritual to go to the
minister.
The
pai-de-santo returned to his ritual with his ritualistic knife bloody.
The
minister, who was very weak because of the long fasting, was stabbed to death.
The
Brazilian media remains silent about this horrific murder even today.
Last
year, a group of Umbanda adherents stabbed to death another evangelical, Nilton
Rodrigues, 34, and wounded others, including an evangelical minister, João
Carlos de Oliveira. The Brazilian Media remained silent again.
I am
worried that the special protection afforded to Afro-Brazilian religions may
have been reinforced by Condoleezza Rice, a famous
daughter of an American Presbyterian minister. In 2008, she came to
Brazil to strengthen the roots of the Afro-Brazilian religions. Her example
shows that the Afro-Brazilian religions are now an international interest.
As in
the case of homosexuality, a mere criticism of Brazilian voodoo is treated as
“prejudice, bias, discrimination, intolerance,” etc. Now, even Catholic
books criticizing them are banned.
Afro-Brazilian
practices that have always been seen as witchcraft by the Brazilian society
have increasingly been protected by the Brazilian government and media. And
Christianity and its values have increasingly lost protection and even been
attacked by them.
Sodomy,
which has been extoled and afforded the status of a special human right by the Brazilian
socialist government, is largely practiced by Afro-Brazilian religions, where
their gods and spirits entice and lead their adherents, especially their
priests, into prostitution, including homosexuality.
What
has been termed “religious freedom” in Brazil is merely the socialist elites
following politically correct trends, especially from the U.S., where
homosexuality is now culturally sanctified and Christian rights are
subordinated to homosexualist whims. Brazil is following this trend. Now homosexuality
cannot be criticized in the Brazilian government and media.
Along
homosexuality, now Islam cannot also be criticized trend in Brazil.
The celebration
in a mosque of Brazil as a champion of “religious freedom” shows that Brazil is
following with complete submission U.S. leftist trends. And if the U.S. is not
in the first place of such “religious freedom,” why is Brazil? Can a disciple
be above his master?
Try
to criticize Islam in Brazil. In 2009, four Muslim journalists filed complaints
against me with federal prosecutors because of texts in my blog criticizing
Islam.
Complaints
were also made by homosexual militants and witchcraft adherents against my
blog.
This
is religious freedom in Brazil.
The
event at a Brazilian mosque celebrating the alleged first place of Brazil in
religious freedom is good for Islam and it is good for Brazilian voodoo.
But
it is not good for Christians who are former adherents of these religions, who
suffer discrimination, repression and censorship for telling the truth about
their suffering in these religions.
Brazil
is being catapulted into a first place of a religious freedom at the expense of
these silent victims of voodoo oppression.
Even
so, Sheikh Abdel Hammed Metwally, religious leader of the Mesquita Brasil,
assured, “This will be the first of many meetings.”
Will
mosques now be politically correct platforms for presenting the world a Brazil
champion on a religious freedom at the expense of Christians and their free
speech?
Portuguese
version of this article: Em mesquita, Brasil celebra primeiro
lugar em liberdade religiosa
Source: Last Days Watchman
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