Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 21, 2013
My note: Great story, amazing pictures (excluding ‘Manchester’! Perhaps, the European Union could take some notice of the place, in case it needs some assistance from Prester John in the near future.
Alastair Sooke finds inspiration in the extraordinary churches of Ethiopia and scales a cliff to visit one of the oldest buildings in the world still in use – which his grandfather restored in the Forties.
“Are you going to climb barefoot or wearing boots?”
In front of me was a wall of creamy-brown rock, mottled with footholds worn through centuries of use. My destination was situated nearly 60ft above my head: the threshold to the ancient monastery of Debra Damo, which occupies the summit of a rocky outcrop, entirely surrounded by cliffs, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, a few miles south of the border with Eritrea. The only way to enter it is to haul yourself up a plaited-leather rope that hangs from a ledge adjoining the monastery’s gatehouse.
Thankfully, for outsiders like me, there is an additional strap that functions as a rudimentary safety harness, held taut by one or two monks above. After considering the question of my gung-ho guide, I unlaced my boots, in the hope that unshod feet would yield better grip, and began to heave. A few minutes later, my biceps burning, I clambered into the arms of the middle-aged monk who had been helping to pull me up. The hard part was behind me: the rest of the climb could be undertaken using steps.
Although this was my first visit to Debra Damo, I already felt some acquaintance with the monastery. This is because my maternal grandfather, Derek Matthews, who was an architect, lived among the monks here for several months while he restored the larger of the religious community’s two churches in the late 1940s. This crumbling structure has been used continuously for Christian worship since it was built, probably during the sixth century AD. My grandfather, who died in 2009, described it as “one of the oldest buildings in the world still in use”. As a child, I often heard about his time there, and imagined him as a nimble 28 year-old, hurtling up and down the leather rope with the sure-footed alacrity of a vervet monkey. At the end of last year, I decided to visit it for myself.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 21, 2013
The Arab Spring, at least when it comes to religious freedom, isn’t yielding the bastion of free-thought and democracy that many world leaders once predicted. Just a few years ago, politicians and pundits were heralding disturbances in the Middle East as a potential first-step to improving human rights. But new information from the Pew Research Center is calling these claims into question.
In a study released on Thursday, the polling and research firm announced its findings, which show an increase in religion-based crackdowns, even in light of the Arab Spring and its promised ideological and legislative reforms. It’s likely that critics of the Obama administration will seize upon the research organization’s findings as proof that, despite positive predictions, the Middle East may be headed in an even more restrictive direction.
In a study released on Thursday, the polling and research firm announced its findings, which show an increase in religion-based crackdowns, even in light of the Arab Spring and its promised ideological and legislative reforms. It’s likely that critics of the Obama administration will seize upon the research organization’s findings as proof that, despite positive predictions, the Middle East may be headed in an even more restrictive direction.
“A new study by the Pew Research Center finds that the already high level of restrictions on religion in the Middle Eas
t and North Africa – whether resulting from government policies or from social hostilities – continued to increase in 2011, when most of the political uprisings known as the Arab Spring occurred,” reads the first line of a Pew press release.
To be clear, though, the religious freedom situation has always been a contentious one in the region. But instead of bringing important reforms and freedoms to the forefront, the study seems to show that, at least in 2011, the situation in the Middle East actually worsened.
According to the findings, the number of nations in the region that reported sectarian violence between religious groups doubled in size from five to 10 — and that’s only one of the findings.
Among countries where Arab Spring uprisings occurred, government restrictions took various forms. In Egypt, for instance, the government continued to permit people to convert to Islam but prohibited them from abandoning Islam for another faith. In Bahrain, the Sunni-dominated government used high levels of force against Arab Spring demonstrators, most of whom were Shia Muslims. And in Libya, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, then chairman of the National Transitional Council, declared in October 2011 that Libya in the post-Moammar Gadhafi era would be run as an Islamic state with sharia law forming the basis of legislation.
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