Top Orthodox Cleric Blames Liberalism for Nationalist Crimes
Created: 04.04.2006 16:54 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:54 MSK, 15 hours 5 minutes ago
MosNews
A top Orthodox cleric said on Tuesday that liberal values were responsible for nationalism and racism in Russia.
Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s external relations department, quoted by Reuters said “we cannot accept the mocking of the sacred, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, the exploitation of national feelings and other similar kinds of behavior, which are often defended as human rights.”
“You cannot complain about a rise in xenophobia at a time when we allow a person to destroy the sacred, spit on his fatherland and destroy his own culture without being stopped by right-thinking people. This person will go and kill someone else, on the basis of race, or of faith,” he said.
In late March a young Russian, Alexander Koptsev, was found guilty of a brutal attack in a Moscow synagogue. The court found him guilty of racially-motivated attempted murder but incitement to ethnic hatred charges were dropped.
Kirill singled out the organizers of an exhibition called “Beware, Religion”, which linked religious and capitalist symbols, as an example of the decay afflicting Russian society.
The organizers of the 2003 exhibition were convicted of offending the public —- to the outrage of rights activists who said the ruling violated the right to free speech. “The conception of human rights is to defend human values,... not to let the genie out of the bottle,” said Kirill. “This starts with breaking icons on display, goes on to the ”Beware, Religion“ exhibition, and then you kill people just because they belong to some race or other.”
Top Orthodox Cleric Blames Liberalism for Nationalist Crimes
