This just in from the BBC. Story found here.

Sudan death row woman 'to be freed'

Last updated 36 minutes ago

Meriam Ibrahim has been sentenced to 100 lashes as well as death by hanging

Sudanese authorities are to free a woman who was sentenced to death for having abandoned the Islamic faith, a foreign ministry official says.

Meriam Ibrahim, who gave birth to a daughter in custody, will be freed in a few days, the official told the BBC.

Abdullahi Alzareg, an under-secretary at the foreign ministry, said Sudan guaranteed religious freedom and was committed to protecting the woman.

Khartoum has been facing international condemnation over the death sentence.

In an interview with The Times newspaper, British Prime Minister David Cameron described the ruling as "barbaric" and out of step with today's world.

The UK Foreign Office this week said that it would push for Ms Ibrahim to be released on humanitarian grounds.

Apostasy debate

Ms Ibrahim, 27, was brought up as an Orthodox Christian, but a Sudanese judge ruled earlier this month that she should be regarded as Muslim because that had been her father's faith.

She refused to renounce her Christianity and was sentenced to death by hanging for apostasy.

On Wednesday, she gave birth to a daughter in her prison cell - the second child from her marriage in 2011 to Daniel Wani, a US citizen.

The court said Ms Ibrahim would be allowed to nurse her baby for two years before the sentence was carried out.

The court had earlier annulled her Christian marriage and sentenced her to 100 lashes for adultery because the union was not considered valid under Islamic law.

Sudan has a majority Muslim population and Islamic law has been in force there since the 1980s.

The ruling has revived a debate over apostasy, with liberal and conservative scholars giving different opinions over whether - and how - the act of abandoning the Islamic faith should be punished.

BBC © 2014

Text of statement from the Sudanese Embassy to the United States

The link in my previous post appears not to work consistently--it could be that the Embassy website got inundated with hits. So here is the text:

The Case of Mariam is neither religious nor political, It is Legal

This case remains a legal issue and not a religious or a political one

The Embassy of the Republic of the Sudan in Washington DC has noticed with regret some of the official statements and media coverage on the case of the Sudanese citizen Mariam Ibrahim Yahia; as some of them have mistakenly accused the government of Sudan of violating human rights by depriving Mariam of her civil rights as a Sudanese citizen.  In this regard, the Embassy would like to confirm the following:
The official records of the Government of Sudan indicates that the real name of the lady mentioned in this case as Mariam Ibrahim is actually ' Abrar Elhadi Muhammad Abdallah Abugadeen' and there is no official record shows that her name was changed to Mariam Ibrahim Yahia. Abrar was born in um Shagrah in Algadarif state on Jan. Ist. 1986 to Muslim Sudanese parents and the claim that the mother is an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia is untrue.
There was no Government agency behind the case; rather her immediate family had reported their daughter as missing, later and after she was found and claimed that she is Christian, the family filed a case of apostasy against her.
The ruling of the judge was made at the primary court after hearing all parties involved since February 2014, and it is subject to be implemented in at least two years if confirmed by three levels of courts which are: Appeal Court, Supreme Court and finally the Constitutional Court. The Judiciary System in Sudan is independent, and the Sudanese Judges are qualified and dignified.
This case remains a legal issue and not a religious or a political one. It is unwise and dangerous to politicize the issue at hand to spur religious tension between the two peaceful faiths with similar foundations. Notably, It is important to emphasize that freedom of choice is the cornerstone of both Islam and Christianity.
While reaffirming the commitment of the Government of Sudan to all human rights and freedom of beliefs, the Embassy of Sudan in Washington DC would like to thank all those who have raised their concern and sympathy on this issue.

Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC, issues a statement on Meriam

...which says precisely nothing. Sudan apparently allows "freedom to choose a religion." What it doesn't say is that if you choose the wrong one, you can be executed. Or put another way, you are free to choose a religion, but there is only one choice available. An "incorrect" choice is invalidated, thus your "freedom" is maintained, but so is the court's freedom to nullify your choice. And if you choose to marry someone in the wrong religion, that marriage is not valid. More Orwellian by the minute.

You can read the statement here.

My form letter reply from the Sudanese Embassy

Yesterday I received a letter in the post (at my Oxford college) from the Embassy of the Republic of the Sudan to the United Kingdom and Ireland, in reply to my letter to the Sudanese Ambassador out of concern for the case of Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, sentenced to 100 lashes and death by hanging for 'adultery' (sleeping with her husband) and 'apostasy' (continuing in the Christian faith in which she was raised). Not at all personalized, apart from the handwritten envelope. You'd think they would figure out if I'm male or female at least. But the fact that I got a form letter reply suggests that they have received a lot of mail on behalf of Meriam. "We can't interfere with our judiciary system"--as if the country were not rife with corruption. "Our country has freedom of religion" -- but apparently not the freedom to change religion nor (if a Muslim, or supposedly Muslim, female) to marry outside your religion (no restrictions if you're male). Nice touch to point out that Sudan was Christian before much of Europe was (and before the arrival of Islam)--but they probably didn't realize they were sending this to a scholar of early church history! "Muslims must believe in Moses and Jesus" -- ignoring the importance of what one believes about them. Still, the letter attempts to be conciliatory, reassuring, and (of course) diplomatic. Moreover, the fact that they bothered to reply suggests that perhaps the government is paying attention to the international outcry. One can hope.

Amnesty International - email for Meriam

Amnesty International has made it very easy to send an email--much like the CSW link.

Name, email address, click. And an email goes to government officials in the Sudan.

If you don't wish to send an email via their website, Amnesty International provides the email, fax, and snail mail addresses for several key officials for DIY communication.

I've never been caught in this trap. Nope. Not me. Who me??

Twenty seconds

I blogged about Meriam a couple of days ago. Yesterday the court confirmed its sentence, that she would receive 100 lashes for adultery and hang for apostasy. In all likelihood they will wait until her baby is born and weaned before carrying out the sentence, as it is illegal in Islam to execute a pregnant woman. Local sources suggest she is likely to be allowed to live for two years past delivery. Perhaps the executioners are familiar with the WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines that infants be nursed until at least age two, as described here. How...thoughtful and enlightened. 

Meriam's story reminds me very much of that of Perpetua and Felicity, martyred for their faith in Carthage in AD 203. You can see the ruins of ancient Carthage if you visit Tunisia, just a couple of countries up and over from the Sudan, where Meriam and her 20-month-old son are incarcerated. Perpetua was a noblewoman with a young, breastfeeding son (his need to feed and his sudden weaning are part of the narrative that has been preserved--one of the few texts we have from antiquity to discuss these things from a mother's perspective). Felicity was Perpetua's servant girl, a fellow Christian, and quite pregnant. The two faced their judge calmly, refused to recant their faith and make offerings to the cult of the emperor, suffered in prison together with three other fellow Christians, and were condemned to be torn apart by wild beasts in the arena. The judge similarly postponed Felicity's execution until she could deliver her child. She went into labour prematurely and gave birth in the eighth month; she was therefore executed with her friends. 

The text of their fascinating narrative can be found in English translation here. It is a well-known document in my main field (early church history and doctrine, usually called patristics, although here one probably ought to say matristics, or matrology, as we are talking about mothers of the church).

Twenty seconds. That's about how long it took me to fill in a few details to send an email to the Sudanese ambassador to the UK and Ireland. Twenty seconds. Not much longer than it took Meriam to respond to the judge, when he asked her if she had decided to recant her faith and 'revert' to Islam. According to the BBC and other mainstream news outlets, 'Then she calmly told the judge: "I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy."' This echoes the declaration of the Christians before imperial judges in those first centuries: 'Christianus sum' - I am a Christian. The governor of Pontus-Bithynia (in modern day Turkey), Pliny, back in the 2nd century, a couple of generations before Perpetua and Felicity, wrote to the Emperor Trajan to enquire on precisely this point: Could a Christian be convicted merely for confessing 'Christianus sum'? Was that enough, even if they had committed no other crime? Well, that depends, replied the Emperor, but if, after being asked three times, they don't recant, you can go ahead and execute them. (You can read their correspondence, translated from Latin into English, here.) And so with Meriam, who has joined a long line of believers standing up and saying, 'I am a Christian.'

Twenty seconds. You can send an email to the ambassador through this link here.

My letter to the Ambassador

Today I did something I always think of doing, but rarely do. I ... did something. Rather than just sit there or post about it on Facebook. I picked up the phone and rang an embassy, in this case the Sudanese Embassy in London. I spoke with a consular officer. And, at his suggestion, I sat down and wrote a letter. Rather than just sitting down.

The case involves a young mother and medical doctor, Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, who has been sentenced to death (ironically on the day when much of the world celebrates Mother's Day) for the crimes of 'apostasy' -- for practicing Christianity her entire life, despite her birth father, who abandoned her Christian mother very early, being a Muslim. Under Sharia law, if the child's father is a Muslim, that child is a Muslim. (Rather like the Jewish law which declares someone Jewish if the mother is Jewish.) Under a similar reckoning, one might argue, as no doubt some extremists have done, that President Obama is "guilty" of apostasy to Islam, as his birth father was a Muslim (albeit an atheist, yet in these legal cases, that does not matter), but that is a very unpleasant line of thought. Further, Mrs Ibrahim has been accused of adultery, for (here is where it gets even more twisted) the crime of sleeping with her husband. The problem is that her husband is also a Christian. As the court has declared her (against her will) a Muslim, she therefore would be bound by Islamic law, which forbids a Muslim woman from marrying a non-Muslim man. Therefore, her marriage is void; therefore, the fact that she has one child and another on the way is evidence that she has slept with a man who is not legally her husband, and thus guilty of adultery. Did you follow that? The word I used to describe this kind of convoluted rationalization that arrives at the opposite conclusion is Orwellian. Good is bad. Freedom is Slavery. Marriage is Adultery.

Here are some articles about Mrs Ibrahim and her life-or-death situation. She has been given just a few days to consider whether she wants to be a Muslim (and if so then just guilty of adultery and due 100 lashes, I imagine, rather than apostasy, which carries the death sentence--although 100 lashes can and frequently is a de facto death sentence). Amnesty International has written here, another article here, from the very reliable CSW, another here, and another update here. This article adds the interesting fact that her South Sudanese husband is also an American citizen (my guess is perhaps he was a refugee during the war?). The Tablet (a venerable UK Catholic publication) has written about it here. So far, not much mention in the mainstream press.

If you would like to do something, feel free to pick up the phone, dial the embassy (from the UK the number is  0207 839 8080 and navigate the menus for the Consular Section. (I think it was 'Press 2.') Feel free to sign an online petition here.

So... here is my letter.

His Excellency Abdullahi H A El Azreg

Ambassador of the Republic of the Sudan

  to United Kingdom and Ireland

Embassy of the Republic of the Sudan

3 Cleveland Row

St. James

London  SW1A 1DD

14 May 2014

Dear Ambassador,

Today I phoned your Embassy in London to register my concern over the case of Mrs Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman who was brought on the 4^th of March before a Public Order Court in El Haj Yousif Khartoum, and sentenced to death on the 11th of May. I would ask you respectfully to urge your government to release Mrs Ibrahim and absolve her of all charges.

Mrs Ibrahim was raised as a Christian by her Christian mother, and has only ever practised Christianity. Her father abandoned the family not long after her birth and she has no contact with him. However, because her birth father was at least nominally Muslim, she has been declared by the court guilty of apostasy. How can a court be so callous as to punish a child for being abandoned by her father? Should not the guilt, if there is any, fall on him? Further, she has behaved modestly and married, but has been declared guilty of adultery as she chose to marry a fellow Christian. Should not a person have the right to marry within his or her religious community? As an academic teaching theology at the University of Oxford, and as a mother and wife and believer, I find this situation very concerning.

Further, this judgement violates the Constitution of Sudan, which guarantees religious freedom. This court is thus behaving in a capricious way, contrary to the law of the land. “Sudanese Tolerance” is a title of great significance to your country, and it would not seem that this court is acting in the light of that noble heritage and aspiration.

The gentleman in the Consular Section of the Embassy with whom I spoke over the telephone said that he was not familiar with Mrs Ibrahim’s case, and suggested very kindly and helpfully that I write directly to the Consular Section so that the concern may be forwarded to the Sudanese government by them, so I am also sending a copy of this letter directly to that Section. I am grateful for the help he offered. I was a bit surprised that he had not yet heard of this case, as it came to my attention in the UK press. But his lack of awareness only goes to show how this court has clearly passed sentence in the shadows and in a way not fitting to the kindness and respect of the Sudanese people.

Thank you for your time, and I wish you and your country, and Mrs Ibrahim, all the very best.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Susan Griffith

Cc: Consular Section, Embassy of the Republic of the Sudan

Rowan Williams on the usefulness of universities

In his typically articulate way, Rowan Williams describes the trend that is spreading throughout the world of academia. And not just academia. My husband spoke last night of how at his work, which is now part of a very large multinational, the push is for EVERYONE to be generating revenue. Yes, everyone can save the company money, and thereby contribute to the bottom line, but how does a bookkeeper generate new revenue, rather than merely ensuring that revenue is not lost through faulty systems and sloppy records? How does a cleaner 'upsell' the clientele? Installing pay toilets? Charging for toilet paper? Many of the positions in a large corporation do not, and indeed ought not (as a potential conflict of interest) be pushed to generate revenue. That's why the corporate metaphor exists: you are part of a body, and not everyone gets to be the hand that takes in the cash. As a classroom teacher, I was not allowed (and rightly so) to become a private tutor to my own students in the subject that I taught them during school hours. I did tutor one student in Greek and Latin etymology in preparation for her taking part in the National Spelling Bee (in which she was a runner up--her brother won a couple of years later, as you can see in a theatrically-released documentary). But I could not have tutored her Latin per se. It would have been a conflict of interest, encouraging me to skimp on my teaching during the day, and rake in the dosh from panicked parents in the evening. (I'm exaggerating slightly....) The university is poorly served if a business model is enforced. There are lessons to be learned from business, but business also has lessons to learn from universities. And businesses clearly are in many cases flunking their exam.

Rowan's article can be found here:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.aspx?storyCode=2012699

Blog name explained

You might wonder about the title of this blog--a blog I started a loooong time ago, back BC (Before Child). And have neglected. (Neglected the blog, not the child, I hope!)

The full expression is 'fides quaerens intellectum' - Latin for 'faith seeking understanding.' Nowadays, and particularly in the West, we tend to want to understand things before we believe them. (Although Augustine states flatly that this was also the case even in his 5th century North African context, in his Tractates on the Gospel of John 29.6.) Other places and times and cultures may put primary value on trust and relationships, and have (or had) a sense that true understanding came in the context of a relationship of love and trust. Yes, we need to know a bit about a person before we believe them. It helps to know that they are worthy of trust. But truly knowing and understanding them doesn't happen through aloof assessment. You never really get to know someone until you live with them--and even then it is possible to avoid diving deeper and become just swimmers in their own lanes, never crossing the ropes.

This motto comes from Anselm's original title for his philosophical treatise, the Proslogion. He saturated himself in the writing and thought of Augustine, and consciously based his title on a phrase summarizing the life and work of Augustine. Both Augustine (of Hippo, a North African bishop in the early 5th century) and Anselm (medieval philosopher and theologian, and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109) formulated versions of this Latin phrase, summing up their realization that in order to truly understand God and his 'economy' (i.e. God's way of ordering all things and interacting with the world), they had to start from a position of faith, of trust, of connection, of love. Abstract cogitation could only get them so far. Understanding was very important to them. But so was an awareness of putting things in the correct order. For them, the 'seeking' never stopped. The goal of that search was, as Augustine put it, the summum bonum immutabile et commune - the greatest/highest Good which was unchangeable and which could be shared in common with others. In other words, God. The goal was not the perfection of abstraction. Nor was it something in which no one else could participate. The possibility of intimate connection with God had to be accessible to all and shared in the context of community, in worship, in prayer, in praise, in the Eucharist, in life together. Both men were incredible thinkers. But they started from a position of loving trust.

Augustine put it this way: 'credas, ut intelligas' --'You [his audience/congregation/readers] believe, in order that you may understand.' (In Ioannis evangelium tractatus -- i.e., Tractates/Commentary/Homilies on the Gospel of John -- 29.6) Several hundred years later, Anselm rephrased this into the first person: 'credo ut intelligam' -- 'I believe in order that I may understand' (Proslogion 1). Anselm expressed the same idea as fides quaerens intellectum. This is paraphrased by the Anselmian scholar Thomas Williams as “an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God.” (Citation in article below.)

So, whence the URL name? 'Where's Fido?' Fido is an ancient name for a faithful dog, taken from the Latin 'fides'. Fido trusts. He also (once housebroken....) is trustworthy. He will come and find his injured master and drag him to safety. Fido knows that the same master will never let him down. 'Where's Fido?' Where is the one who trusts? Where is faith? How do I begin to have faith, if faith is what I need in order to start out on this journey of seeking understanding. It's a cheeky title, drawn from my love of puns and wordplay (especially wordplay involving more than one language). Fides ... Fido.  Quaerens ... Where are you? I'm looking, I'm seeking? Where can you be found? Fido, where are you? Faith, where can you be found?

Here is a useful section from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (a wonderful free online resource written by pre-eminent scholars in the field) on Anselm's motto, fides quaerens intellectum, in the context of his proofs for the existence of God (the Proslogion and Monologion):

2.1 “Faith Seeking Understanding”: The character and purpose of Anselm's theistic proofs
Anselm's motto is “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum). This motto lends itself to at least two misunderstandings. First, many philosophers have taken it to mean that Anselm hopes to replace faith with understanding. If one takes ‘faith’ to mean roughly ‘belief on the basis of testimony’ and ‘understanding’ to mean ‘belief on the basis of philosophical insight’, one is likely to regard faith as an epistemically substandard position; any self-respecting philosopher would surely want to leave faith behind as quickly as possible. The theistic proofs are then interpreted as the means by which we come to have philosophical insight into things we previously believed solely on testimony. But as argued in Williams 1996 (xiii-xiv), Anselm is not hoping to replace faith with understanding. Faith for Anselm is more a volitional state than an epistemic state: it is love for God and a drive to act as God wills. In fact, Anselm describes the sort of faith that “merely believes what it ought to believe” as “dead” (M 78). (For the abbreviations used in references, see the Bibliography below.) So “faith seeking understanding” means something like “an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God.”

Other philosophers have noted that “faith seeking understanding” begins with “faith,” not with doubt or suspension of belief.  Hence, they argue, the theistic arguments proposed by faith seeking understanding are not really meant to convince unbelievers; they are intended solely for the edification of those who already believe.  This too is a misreading of Anselm's motto. For although the theistic proofs are borne of an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of the beloved, the proofs themselves are intended to be convincing even to unbelievers. Thus Anselm opens the Monologion with these words:

If anyone does not know, either because he has not heard or because he does not believe, that there is one nature, supreme among all existing things, who alone is self-sufficient in his eternal happiness, who through his omnipotent goodness grants and brings it about that all other things exist or have any sort of well-being, and a great many other things that we must believe about God or his creation, I think he could at least convince himself of most of these things by reason alone, if he is even moderately intelligent. (M 1)
And in the Proslogion Anselm sets out to convince “the fool,” that is, the person who “has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’ ” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1).

[from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm/]

So.... there you have it. Faith. Trust. A place to begin.

Re-boot

Is anyone reading these? I will attempt a re-boot of this blog. Leave comments to let me know that you are interested.... (Blogger insecurity here.)

To be honest, I started this blog many years ago for myself. I didn't expect nor really want an audience. I know that sounds odd! I was curious about blogging as a process and technology, and thought it might be useful to learn a bit of HTML. And I saw a usefulness in getting me writing something, anything, to get over certain periods of writer's block while working on my doctorate. But then I had a baby. And the baby had his own blog, for the sake of our far away family and friends. And then the push to finish the thesis. And then Facebook came along... And my writing condensed into short posts on daily life--again largely to keep family and friends up-to-date with our news and our son's latest cuteness (in word and photo).

But now... I see the usefulness of returning to the blog with a fresh purpose: a bit more chewing on ideas and thoughts that inhabit my academic life. To be honest, I find it hard to be a theologian on Facebook. For one thing, there is the all-too-frequent observation that 'Someone on the Internet is wrong!' -- and the temptation to do something about it! This is far too tempting to someone (like myself) whose bread and butter is teaching The Development of Doctrine in the Early Church to A.D. 451 (for Oxford peeps, the Theology and Religion Final Honour School Paper 4). I.e. Heresy 101. I want to stay friends with people and not constantly police their citations of Joel Osteen inter alia. It's not that I won't say on Facebook what I think, if I feel it's necessary. But I'd rather spend more time thinking at more length about topics, and if you do that in a Facebook comment, it just looks . . . rude. And I've done it far too often. I guess I just don't know how to be pithy! The curse of the academic life.