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Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II and spiritual leader of Azerbaijan Allahshukur Pashazadeh will meet in September, spokesperson for Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin Fr. Vahram Melikyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.
“According to preliminary information, the meeting is set for September 8 in Moscow,” he said.
The meeting is organized under mediation of Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus Kirill.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled Turkey must pay 3,000 euros each to 203 applicants in a case concerning Turkish authorities’ “refusal to provide the applicants, who are followers of the Alevi faith, with [a] public religious service,” the Hurriyet Daily News reports.
In its decision, the court stated that Turkey had violated the applicants’ rights to freedom of religion and the prohibition of discrimination.
In its April 26 ruling, the court said the authorities’ “refusal of the applicants’ requests amounted to a lack of recognition of the religious nature of the Alevi faith and its practices (cem).” The ruling also elaborated that Turkey’s lack to recognize their religious practice had the “effect of denying legal protection to Alevi places of worship [cemevis] and religious leaders [dedes],” thus causing “numerous consequences for the organization, continuation and funding of their religious activities.”
Turkish MP Armenian member of the Democratic Party of Peoples (HDP) Garo Paylan proposed on January 13 that the Turkish Parliament removes affiliation with a religious component on Turkish identity cards and removes secret codes ethnicity classification for citizens.
In his speech to Parliament on 13 January, Garo Paylan noted that he himself was subjected to the racism in the Turkish bureaucracy, because of these classification systems. “When they see a name like Garo that is not familiar, they seek to find religion related. When they see that I am registered as a Christian, work one day will not be for a week or ten days … I have repeatedly been the victim of discrimination, “he has said.
Garo Paylan also strongly criticized the classification of secret codes of the ethnic origin of citizens, the government keeps on file. “We, Armenians have the number” 2 S “, the Greeks the” 1S “, Jews have the” 3 S “and the Assyrians the” 4 S “Has he said, adding that people are discriminated against because of these codes in various ministries like the army.
The use of toilet paper has been declared halal by Turkey’s religious authority Diyanet, after centuries of forbiddance by Islamic toilet etiquette.
The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs has issued a fatwa (Muslim religious ruling) stating that it’s now acceptable to use toilet paper for personal hygiene, but only if water is nowhere to be found.
“If water cannot be found for cleansing, other cleaning materials can be used. Even though some sources deem paper to be unsuitable as a cleaning material, as it is an apparatus for writing, there is no problem in using toilet paper,” the ruling says, as reported by Hurriyet Daily News.
The previous prohibition on the use of toilet paper was established by Qadaahul Haajah, an extremely prohibitive set of rules detailing how and when Muslim should relieve themselves. The rules were conceived before the invention of toilet paper or toilet seats. While not compulsory, they are observed by many devout Muslims.
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Among other things, the rules state that one should say a short prayer before and after going to the toilet, should not do your business standing up, and in fact should not take the trip to the loo at all unless absolutely necessary. For cleaning, one should use water, three stones, or one’s left hand.
Even before the latest relaxing of the rules, some hygiene product manufacturers were marketing “halal toilet paper” around the world – featuring labels of approval by local Muslim authorities. It is unclear how this falls in line with Qadaahul Haajah, but at least for Turkish Muslims, any inconsistencies have now been resolved.