| Faiths o' the Irish
Sixteen graduate students from Columbia University’s School of Journalism
traveled to Ireland and found a country of many cultures and religions.
 March
14, Day One:
Travel and Roscrea
By Sarah Morgan
We flew overnight from New York to Dublin to Shannon with a Wisconsin
high school marching band off to play in a St. Patrick’s Day parade,
we saw pagan protesters on the front page of the Irish Times and some
of us brought garish plastic watches in a fit of suddenly-it’s-6-a.m.
hysteria.
Most of us woke up for real when our bus arrived at Roscrea, the monastery
where we’ll be spending the next two nights. We were just in time
for a bountiful lunch at 1 p.m., after which we piled back on the bus
for a trip into town.
The Cistercian monastery was founded in 1858 when the order bought its
500-acre farm from two elderly women in London. That farm, with its 250
cows, now provided the monastery’s main source of income.
Only 17 monks now live in the cloisters. The oldest is 94-and-a-half years
old, and half of the community are over 80.
“We’re a bit lost in a church this size,” Father Nivard
Kinsella said, gesturing to the empty pews around him. “There’s
a very big drift away from religion in Ireland.”
Most of the monks are too old to teach in the private school on the grounds.
Father Kinsella himself is 81.
The Roscrea monks, not drifting anywhere, take vows of poverty, obedience
and stability. This means they have no possessions of their own –
and they will remain at Roscrea their entire lives (apparently St. Benedict
felt that, without this vow, monks would flit around too much). They meet
at 4 a.m. every morning for Vigils, a 40-minute prayer in which they watch
with the Lord for the coming morning. There are three shorter offices,
or prayers, during the day, followed by Vespers at 5:15 and finally Complitorium
at 7:30 p.m.
After dinner this evening, we’ll have a chance to see the evening
church service. And then we will very gratefully get an actual night’s
sleep.
 March 15,
Day 2:
Sacred cows and immigrant communities
By Betwa Sharma
For two students in the journalism school group, the day began with a
visit to the farmyard at 5 a.m. The early-risers trudged with camera,
tripod and radio equipment through cow dung and hay to capture the first
hours of a newly born calf, and the unexpected sight of a monk dressed
in farm clothes tending to the cows. Brother Malachy didn’t seem
to notice the overwhelming odor of the farm animals as he guided the American
visitors through the pitch dark and gently persisting rain.
After the cow adventure, Brother Malachy showed his guests the “enclosure,”
which includes a big apple orchard where the monks read and pray, day
after day and year after year. There is no sound, except for the chirping
of birds.
In the pre-dawn light, he pointed to an old cottage swirling in smoke
– the bakery. “That’s Brother Oliver burning the peat
bog,” he said. The peat is used as fuel in the bakery.
It was a sight and smell from long ago.
The day for the rest of the group began at 9 a.m. with a breakfast of
cereal, jam and bread. An hour later, we filed into a bus and our tour
guide, John, drove through Roscrea to Shannon for a visit to a Nigerian
Pentecostal church and a meeting with Pastor Osim and his wife, Joy.
The Pentecostal movement started in the 1700s. In Nigeria, the Pentecostal
church was founded in 1952 and planted its roots in Ireland in 1998. Today,
there are 45 Pentecostal parishes all over Ireland.
Pastor Osim, a small earnest looking man, who belongs to the Redeemed
Christian Church of God, which has 10 parishes, explained that the Nigerian
migration was not about economic emancipation but about safety —
to escape religious and political persecution from the Islamic government.
They chose Ireland for two reasons: the English language and Christianity.
Unlike the Catholic monks from the day before, the pastor said that Pentecostal
congregations are increasing membership all over Ireland. They feel welcome
with one exception— jobs. Professionals from Nigeria work as waiters
and laborers because less qualified natives are given preference by employers.
But Nigerians are confident that their children will integrate into the
Irish milieu.
It was pouring by the time the bus reached St. Michael’s Church,
which now served the Polish, the largest immigrant population in Ireland.
The official figures are 200,000 but Father Szymon Czuwaia, one of 30
Polish priests dispatched to care for the spiritual needs of the immigrants,
said that the actual numbers are probably double the official figures.
Father Czuwaia dismisses allegations against the Irish of resenting the
“Polish plumber.” He said that the Polish immigrants have
been treated better in Ireland than in any other country.
“We share a common history of persecution,” he said matter-of-factly.
 March
16, Day 3:
Bright Lights Big City
By Robbie Corey-Boulet
For those of us who favor the metropolitan to the monastic, our first
view of Galway seemed a harbinger of only good things — an uninterrupted
line of bars, bistros and cafes provided a sharp contrast from the vast
swaths of farmland characteristic of the drive from Roscrea, in County
Tipperary.
After we left the bus and took our first steps along Shop Street, bells
rang out from the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, the largest medieval
church in Ireland. The gesture – to express solidarity with victims
of the recent
violence in Lhasa, Tibet – offered evidence of the church’s
heightened awareness and respect for other cultures and religions.
Though a member of the Anglican Communion, the Collegiate Church of St.
Nicholas is interdenominational. Canon Maureen Ryan said the church attracts
many “transients”– when the students leave for the summer
(Galway is home to one of Ireland’s leading universities), the tourists
begin arriving en masse.
Being both students and tourists, we took our seats in the nave for the
11 a.m. Palm Sunday Eucharist, which featured a dramatic rendering of
The Passion of the Christ according to St. Matthew.
After the Eucharist two Nigerian immigrants baptized their son. Assorted
relatives and friends — including Catholics and Pentecostal Evangelicals
— gathered around the stone baptismal font in the back of the nave
to witness the ritual. The parents wore blue-and-white garments with African
prints, while the little boy wore a white christening gown. To conclude
the ceremony, the worshippers lit candles and sang “This Little
Light of Mine.”
The Rev. Patrick Towers, who performed the ceremony, said the open nature
of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, which was founded in 1320, reflects
an acknowledgement that other Christian faiths can be just as valid as
Anglicanism. To say that only one approach can lead to salvation, he said,
would be presumptuous and potentially misguided. Anglican churches, he
said, “are not at the top of any moral or ethical mountain. We’re
all on a pilgrimage.”
 March
17, Day 4:
A day in the Past
By Liz Bello
A 20-minute ride on a ferry was all it took to travel back in time 100
years.
Although Inis Mor is said to be the most developed of the three Aran islands,
its connection to the past in undeniable.
We arrived at the Na Seacht d’Teampaill (the Seven Churches), an
early pilgrim site. The ruins of two of the original churches remain:
13th-century Temple Brecan and 15th-century Teampall an Phoill. The group
then embarked on an uphill climb to the Dún Aonghusa, the Bronze
Age stone fort that stands 100 meters above the sea, one of the most important
prehistoric sites in Europe.
The trip concluded with a conversation with Connla O’Dúláine,
a priest who joined the Arainn Catholic Church in 1974. He spoke of how
the island has managed to preserve the traditional Irish culture and language,
despite growing tourism and technology.
“Our liturgy is all in Irish and that helps the islanders to preserve
their Gaelic,” he said. Islanders may leave the church but they
return.
“They fall at around age 17 when they leave to school,” he
said. “But I see them return to church no later than age 30. It’s
almost like they’re going off, getting educated, but eager to return
home.”
 March 18,
Day 5:
Pilgrims and Puja
By Deborah Lee
Under a second morning of sunny skies we left Galway and traveled north
to Donegal. Following the footsteps of generations of pilgrims, we explored
the grounds of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, located on an island in
the middle of an enormous lake.
This famous destination draws more than 20,000 believers per year, mostly
Catholic and interdenominational Christians. Commonly referred to as “Lough
Derg,” where, legend has it, the country’s patron saint fasted
and received visions of purgatory, this place has inspired centuries of
pilgrims to flock to the island. They seek penance, divine intervention
or simply an escape from worldly distractions of everyday life.
Most come for the three-day pilgrimage, a rigorous experience consisting
of walking barefoot, fasting and staying awake for 24 hours. Lough Derg
ground manager Deborah Maxwell explained that these physical sacrifices
are spiritual disciplines that allow people to reach their spiritual core.
The sky alternated between rain and sunshine as students walked the winding
prayer paths, wandered through the great stone Basilica and snapped pictures
of the penitential prayer beds. The waves of the surrounding lake rippled
in circles around the island.
“I think even the dramatic weather had a good effect,” said
Rachel Rosenthal. “It was very remote. There is nothing you can
do except reflect there.”
After leaving Lough Derg, we made our way to County Cavan, where our
tour made its first step towards Eastern religion. At Jampa Ling, a Buddhist
center tucked behind woods with narrow gravel paths, crisp air and Tibetan
Buddhists greeted us.
We shared a meal of fresh salad and steaming bowls of curry vegetable
soup with monks and other believers, swapping stories of our faith journey
through Ireland with their journey to Jampa Ling.
One monk, Lobsang Wangchuck — his ordained name — shared with
two students how the sex abuse scandal that shook the Catholic Church
and his life directed his path toward Buddhism.. Two years ago, on his
60th birthday, Wangchuck became the first Western monk ordained by the
center’s lama, the Ven. Panchen Ötrul Rimpoche.
After dinner everyone crowded into a small room for Puja, a practice of
meditation and training of the mind. The lama, his followers and the Columbia
University students sat cross-legged, eyes closed before a large red-painted
shrine filled with images of deities, a large framed photograph of the
Dali Lama, and Buddhist statues. Ani La, the center’s nun, led the
meditation service in both English and Tibetan chants.
Though it was new for many students, some earnestly embraced the experience.
“I really did enjoy it, even though I had no idea what they were
saying,” said Rachel Rosenthal.
 March 19, Day
6:
On the Road to Reconciliation
By Pilar Conci
The day started early in Jampa Ling. Before jumping on the bus once again,
we had breakfast with the lama, Ani La and the other Buddhists.
Some of them walked with us to the main road to say goodbye. One of the
women even got on the bus and sang one of the songs performed the previous
night during the puja, before we left for Northern Ireland.
We traveled through the county of Armagh arriving just after noon at the
Darkley House, headquarters of Crossfire Trust, an organization based
in Keady, which works towards reconciliation in Northern Ireland.
Operating since 1986, the Trust offers assistance and support to those
who still suffer the consequences of the violent conflict between Catholics
and Protestants that ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement.
“We have glass walls, our society is still sectarian,” said
Ian Bothwell, from Crossfire Trust. Over lunch, he explained that a lot
of people in that area were revisiting their past. “We have a lot
of superficial contact. We need a new dose of sincerity towards peace
building.” The scars of the conflict are not remotely healed. Last
November, a man was beaten to death in connection with things that happened
years ago.
Our last visit of the day was Richhill Methodist Church, also in the Armagh
area. We met with the Rev. Paul Ritchie, his wife Caroline, and Alan McMullan,
a former Loyalist paramilitary who talked about his experience of finding
God in jail.
Ritchie and his wife, who recently settled in Northern Ireland, talked
about the experience of growing up Protestant in the overwhelmingly Catholic
Republic of Ireland. “I long for the days this is a mixed community,”
the reverend said.
Our first day in Northern Ireland was very educational. “It was
interesting to see a non-idyllic place,” said Deborah Lee-Hjelle.
“The people at Crossfire explained how difficult it’s been
in their town. It was interesting to be there and see it, as a complement
of what we studied in class.”
 March 20,
Day 7:
Peace Line and Purim
By Sharon Udasin
Waking up cozily in Europe’s most bombed hotel, we each embarked
in different directions on this rainy Belfast morning, where we had two
hours to report stories independently.
After breakfast, Laura Insensee and Deborah Lee-Hjelle explored a section
of Belfast called “the village,” where they interviewed some
migrant workers, including an Albanian Muslim family. Meanwhile, Robbie
Corey-Boulet visited an Anglican church that had initiated talks with
a neighboring mosque in the aftermath of post-9/11 hate crimes. Debra
Katz and Andrew Nusca wandered around the city taking pictures of historical
graffiti and murals, while other students reported from their hotel rooms.
At 11:30 a.m., the nine students who had returned from reporting boarded
the bus for a short drive to the Shankill Methodist Church in West Belfast.
As we got off the bus, the Reverend Jim Rea greeted the group and ushered
us into the church — a no-frills, high-ceiling sanctuary with a
simple gold cross balanced on the altar and the words “This Do In
Remembrance of Me” etched in the wood below.
Although tensions have quieted and violence has mostly subsided, the Shankill
neighborhood still experiences what Rea calls “recreational rioting.”
Within Shankill’s dwindling population, Rea sees a dramatic increase
in secularization, as people move away from both religion and the neighborhood.
Three local Methodist churches have combined their congregations in one.
Aboard the bus for a tour of the neighborhood, Rea guided us to the peace
line, a 20-mile blockade that separates the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods
of Belfast. “An awful lot of people died in this area,” Rea
said.
Later the bus rolled to a stop outside of the Sinn Féin headquarters
for our meeting with Gerry Adams, the leader of the Sinn Féin party.
“The conflict in Ireland is not a religious conflict,” Adams
said. “Religion doesn’t matter, shouldn’t matter.”
He acknowledges that there has been a longstanding cleavage between Catholicism
and Protestantism but feels that the divide was never about theology.
As far as his personal beliefs? “I’m sort of an à la
carte Catholic-Buddhist,” Adams said.
At the end of our private session with Adams, we followed him outside
of the Sinn Féin headquarters, where he was conducting a “doorstep”
open meeting with members of the Belfast media.
After lunch and a second bus tour of the city, the group gathered in the
hotel restaurant for a buffet-style dinner. At 7 p.m., we left for the
Orthodox Hebrew Congregation, to celebrate the Jewish festival of Purim.
Capped in a golden speckled party hat, Rabbi Menachem Brackman, 26, led
Purim services, a joyful holiday for Jews not unlike St. Patrick’s
Day where people dress up and have fun. Wrapped in a long black coat and
sporting a characteristically Hasidic beard, Brackman and his wife Ruth,
22, moved with their six-month-old son to Belfast only five and a half
weeks ago, to take over the vacated rabbinical position.
Part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the young couple are beginning
a six-month trial period in Belfast, before deciding whether or not they
would like to be official Chabad shluchim (emissaries). Although the Jewish
community has been a fixture in Belfast for the past 150 years, the congregation
has fallen to 108 members, with sparse access to kosher foods and Jewish
life.
Yet both Menachem and Ruth Brackman were pleased with the evening’s
turnout, a gathering of nearly 50 congregants. Among the participants
this evening were longtime residents and recent migrants from Israel.
Rabbi Brackman whizzed through the Megillah reading at turbo speed, pausing
occasionally to catch his breath. Jews and non-Jews alike clanked their
noisemakers and banged on the glossy wooden pews every time he voiced
Haman’s name.
After the service, congregants and visitors gathered together in the lobby
and hall attached to the sanctuary, where they shared hamantashen, coffee
and conversation. Brackman made his rounds dispensing shots of Scotch
whiskey and quietly disappeared to reemerge as a full-feathered yellow
chicken, to conduct a children’s costume contest.
The few children attending the service flocked around the rabbi in their
elaborate costumes, which most notably featured Spiderman and a giant
banana. Despite these scattered young faces, the average age was over
75 years old.
Northern Irish Jews find sanctuary in a community where for once they
aren’t a minority and can enjoy common traditions of generations
past. Although they find very few Jewish people walking the street of
Belfast, they rarely face anti-Semitism and find that the majority population
is very accepting of their culture.
 March 21, Day
8:
Dublin: Past and Present
By Jamie McGee
Two members of the Garda Síochána were the first people
we met as we traveled back into the Republic of Ireland this morning.
They were not there to welcome us, but pulled us over to check our passports,
another indication of how the political climate and demographics have
changed in Ireland. During the Troubles police conducted searches at the
borders for weaponry. Today they are looking for illegal immigrants.
We spent the first part of our afternoon at the Islamic Cultural Center
of Ireland, one of the two mosques in Dublin. The males in our group joined
the more than 700 men on the first floor while the females in our group,
each wearing headscarves, sat upstairs with about 200 women. The faces
in the mosque reflected the growing immigrant population in Ireland from
countries around the world, but also included those born in Ireland. “I
met two women who had converted from Catholicism,” Sarah Morgan
said.
The mosque, built in 1979, felt open and expansive, with tall ceilings
and a large dome space in the ceiling’s center. “The building
got my attention,” said Pilar Conci. “It was big and new.
None of the mosques I went to in New York were like this.”
During these services, Imam Hussein Halawa spoke Arabic and then the mosque
secretary translated the sermon into English. Halawa, who came to Ireland
from Egypt in 1996, spoke emphatically, even yelling at times. The congregation
prayed together standing in perfect rows and bowing their heads to the
ground. Betwa Sharma said she enjoyed listening to the prayers in such
a large crowd. “I liked when they all said ‘amen’–the
echoing,” she said. “I liked that we got to hear that.”
After the mosque, some students explored and reported in Dublin, while
others went to the Hill of Tara, where St. Patrick achieved victory over
Pagan Druids in the fifth century. With strong winds roaring around us,
we walked up a hill to see monuments dating from 3500 B.C. to the seventh
century A.D. Two rings of man-made ridges mark the hill’s crown.
In the middle of one ring, a circle of stones surround a phallic monument
called Lia Fáil, or stone of destiny, where the High Kings of Ireland
were crowned.
March 22, Day 9:
Free Day in Dublin’s Fair City
By Conn Corrigan
Taking advantage of a free day, many of us branched off to shop, visit
museums or explore other attractions in Dublin.
Some of us opted to take in some more religion and went along to a Sikh
temple called Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbar, in Sandymount Dublin, about
a 10-minute drive from the city center.
Shortly after 10 a.m., we arrived at the temple, which was founded in
1987. It is the only Sikh temple for the 3,000-plus Sikhs in Ireland,
and 200 to 400 people worship there each Sunday.
After entering, we took off our shoes in the lobby and took note of a
sign that stated, “Please do not bring alcohol or tobacco onto the
premises.” Because it’s a requirement that hair be covered,
Melanie, Mary Catherine and Jamie each brought scarves, while John and
I donned orange bandanas that were on offer.
Jasvir Singh, a priest at the temple who came to Ireland in 1996 from
Punjab, in India, lives at the temple, which is open 24 hours a day. Many
of the Sikhs who come to worship are students, Jasvir said. Others work
in the field of medicine.
Although there was no service or event scheduled, 10 worshippers showed
up to meet us. During most of our meetings throughout the trip, reporters
vastly outnumbered sources. Today, however, was a different story, and
the five of us who visited the temple and were able to interview those
present felt rather spoiled.
The men launched into a detailed account of their experiences in Ireland.
Before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, they said, many Irish
were simply curious about Sikhs’ beards and
turbans. But the treatment of Sikhs in Ireland worsened considerably following
the attacks.
The men also recalled the case of a Sikh in Ireland who wanted to join
the police force but was told he would have to remove his turban. This
case proved especially offensive. “A turban is like a crown –
you cannot take it off,” said Dr. Jasbir Singh Puri, a trustee at
the temple. “We have to keep our identity at all costs. We want
to be integrated, not assimilated.”
Despite these incidents of discrimination, the men had generally favorable
impressions of Irish people. Even when discussing troubling events, they
spoke without anger or hatred.
In the afternoon, about 12 of us met at Trinity College for a tour of
the campus and a viewing of the Book of Kells. Laura Insensee said she
found the Coptic influence on the design of the book fascinating, as she
has been studying the Christian Orthodox faith. “To learn about
that connection was really interesting,” she said.
Later, Pilar Conci went to a Polish Catholic church on High Street, where
she saw groups of Polish people waiting for a priest to bless the food
they will eat on Easter Sunday. “This isn’t something that
Irish Catholics would do,” Pilar said. “It’s a uniquely
Polish Catholic experience.”
In the evening, Laura and I attended a service at the Church of St. Peter
and St. Paul, the first Russian Orthodox Church established in Ireland,
located in the inner suburb Harold’s Cross. Because it is a former
Church of Ireland chapel, it features stained glass windows and balconies,
two features atypical of Russian Orthodox churches. Around 20 people arrived
for the prayer service, and all of the women wore headscarves, a requirement
of this church. The wonderful singing of the priest along with the five-person
choir, which mixed beautiful melodies with pitch-perfect harmonies, was
particularly striking.
The experience of Russian Orthodox Christians in Ireland has been less
turbulent than that of the Sikhs, at least according to the Rev. Michael
Gogoless, who said the church has a “very good” relationship
with the Catholic Church.
“We do work hand in hand,” he said, referring to issues such
as their stance against abortion, and other social policy positions. He
said that one-third of his congregation is made up of Irish worshippers,
some of whom married a Russian Orthodox Christian and then converted.
In the morning, students peeled themselves out of bed to eat a final
Irish breakfast at the Camden Court Hotel. Robbie Corey-Boulet managed
to attend an 8 a.m. Easter mass. Some stayed in the hotel to pack. An
ambitious crew continued to the Irish Jewish Museum at 3 Walworth Road
in the Portobello section of Dublin.
Raphael Siev, the museum’s curator, greeted Columbia students at
10 a.m. with some Irish-Jewish history and a tour of the museum. From
Torah covers to Jewish business cards, the converted synagogue bursts
at the seams with seemingly arbitrary relics of Dublin’s Jewish
memory.
“My first thought was New York apartment,” said Melanie Huff.
“You got the feeling that it was Jewish, it belonged.”
Soon after we were winging our way back home to New York, our ten-day
trip to a fascinating land over.
 The Indian Christians
in Galway
By Betwa Sharma and Zachary Goelman
The ground floor entrance of the Westwood House Hotel entices passers-by
with rock music and drink specials. It is a popular haunt in Galway and
people mill around the bar on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day. But
upstairs a different scene is unfolding.
A spiral staircase leads to a dark landing with a heavy door. The rock
music from the floor below grows faint, soon getting drowned on the other
side of the door by people singing about Jesus Christ. “Hallelujah,
hallelujah, praise the lord,” they shout.
This is a congregation of Indian Christians from Kerala, a state in South
India. They gather at the hotel every Sunday and pray in Malayalam, their
regional language.
Congregation members estimate that there are some 300 to 400 Indian Christians
in Galway, and the number has been rising steadily these past few years.
They come to Ireland to study, work and make a better life. Children of
these immigrants learn Malayalam at home and Gaelic at school.
While a constellation of Irish churches of various Christian denominations
exists in Galway, the Malayalam-speaking Indians prefer to pray together.
Many of them don’t find the native Irish religious enough.
The Indian congregation is a Pentecostal service but welcomes Christians
of all denominations.
Light bounces off the red carpets and walls giving the room where the
faithful gather a robust glow. The prayer leader is a man named Shinil
Matthew, 34. He is not a priest or a minister, but a lay leader.
A tall man, Matthew wears a checked shirt that stretches across his broad
shoulders. His prominent nose and thick eyebrows give him an air of authority.
He stands facing the congregation and sets a vigorous pace for the two-hour
service, singing aloud and keeping time by clapping and swaying from side
to side. His eyes are closed and face wrinkled in concentration.
As the momentum builds, every person in the congregation rises up from
the chairs singing and tapping their shoes to the lively beat.
The “hallelujahs” are the only words spoken in English. “We
had to worship in our own language,” Matthew said, over a cup of
tea after the service. And even if they do they prefer to pray in Malayalam.
Another congregant, John Mathew, 30, an immigrant from Kerala, sits in
the front row with one hand raised, palm open. His oiled hair is sharply
slicked back and his black moustache bounces up and down as he chants.
At a verse which is particularly moving for him, he clenches his palm
into a fist and punches the air with an accompanying “Hallelujah.”
The congregation started with a few friends gathering at Mathew’s
house to pray. But the number of people from Kerala increased in the past
few years. The house wasn’t big enough.
“We had all Christians, not just Pentecostals so everyone could
not fit,” said Mathew speaking through a translator because he does
not speak English.
Mathew, a Pentecostal, approached the Assembly of God, a loose order of
Pentecostal churches that took the Indian congregation under their wing.
The Assembly’s branch in Galway, called the Discovery Church, is
led by Pastor Paul Cullen, and also rents space in the Westwood House
Hotel.
“Many Indians come to our regular Sunday services, but some of the
men felt that they couldn’t participate because of the language
barrier,” said Cullen, 34.
The women generally speak English, something required of those who work
as nurses in the Galway University Hospital.
Many Indian nurses, mostly women, have been recruited by the university
hospital, which provides them with work visas. In many cases, their husbands
follow and find simple jobs, or take courses at the university.
Many Malayalam-speaking Christians living here say that in Ireland religion
doesn’t enjoy the same primacy of place it does in India, and say
that the power of faith flows more vibrantly in their small congregation
than in the Irish Catholic cathedrals.
Alice Ninin, 28, nurse by training, says she “came here for better
opportunities.” Ninin, who belongs to the Mar Thorma Church, feels
that the Christians in Ireland, particularly among the younger generation,
are not religious. “In India, the churches are packed,” she
said. “The young people here prefer going to pubs.” Many others
at the congregation echo her sentiment.
Next door to the prayer room, the children of the congregants are playing.
Irin Sajupaula, 9, and Silin Verghese, 8, hunch over sheets of white paper
drawing with colored crayons thicker than their fingers.
These children have lived in Galway since their parents left India over
a year and a half ago. Sajupaula can converse in Malayalam, Hindi, English,
and began learning Irish Gaelic this year in school.
“Ban is white,” she said, holding up the white crayon, and
displaying her acquisition of Gaelic. “And dearg is red. Bandearg
is pink.”
Sam Verghese, 27, is a Pentecostal who moved here 10 months ago to be
with his wife, who is a nurse. He believes that Christians of all denominations
can pray together because “Jesus is same for everyone.”
Rajesh Verghese, 38, a salesman, is a Roman Catholic. He said that even
in a Pentecostal service he maintains his Catholic identity. “There
is nothing wrong with singing and praying, Catholics can do that,”
he said.
 The
Cavan Mongolian Connection
By Rachel King
Jampa Ling, the residential Buddhist retreat center in County Cavan in
the heart of Ireland, aims to spread Buddhist tradition and culture through
chanting and meditation, but it also has a strong commitment to re-establish
Buddhism in Mongolia and help the country’s impoverished citizens.
Jampa Ling is fulfilling its charitable mission through scarves, slippers
and handbags that it imports from Mongolia and then sells to high-end
boutiques in Ireland and now in America through a micro-finance project
called Made in Mongolia (MIM). Through the program, impoverished single
mothers are being given the opportunity to make a living to support their
children’s education.
“What we started doing was training women in something that gave
them a job and a sense of their own value as well,” said the Venerable
Tenin Choeden, a Buddhist and native Irishwoman, also referred to as Ani
La, “Ani” meaning “nun” and “La” as
a distinction of honor. Additional aid is being given through the partnership
to provide assistance with health, food, and heating.
Pat McCarthy, an Irish designer and a student of Venerable Panchen Ötrul
Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk and the spiritual leader at Jampa Ling,
volunteered to make the trek to Mongolia and assist the workers. For two
weeks, he worked with the women on altering the designs to make them more
colorful and desirable to Western customers. When Pat returned to Ireland,
Ani La said, he determined there was a basis for a business, but the products
would have to be high-quality, and a high return was required from initial
orders.
McCarthy assembled a team of volunteers to design leaflets and packaging,
while he sent associates to Mongolia to manage the production.
After the women produced some samples, he made a sales pitch to Avoca,
a high-end clothing and home-décor boutique in the Republic of
Ireland and Northern Ireland.
With a fair-trade ethos, the sales pitch was a huge success. Shipping
to four stores in Dublin and one store in Belfast in October 2007, the
demand was so great that the Mongolian women needed more time to complete
the handmade orders.
“We had to ask them to reduce the order from 500 to 300,”
said Desmond Gough, the grounds manager at Jampa Ling, “and they
sold out. It was phenomenal.”
This past year, it was determined that the center was too small to accommodate
the workers and their growing demand for more products, thus an additional
Buddhist-sponsored center is being scouted to expand the business.
The Irish Buddhist center’s efforts got off the ground in 1995 when
Rinpoche made his first pilgrimage to Mongolia. With permission from the
Dalai Lama, he continues to visit and work on bringing Buddhism back to
the northern Asian country.
Since the breakup of the Communist Soviet Union in 1991, Mongolia, a traditionally
Buddhist nation, has been experiencing a difficult transition to democracy.
As many families have moved to Mongolia’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar,
there has been a sharp increase in the poverty level, as many are unable
to find work.
Thanks to the efforts of Rinpoche and his fellow Irish believers, a partnership,
Asral Charity, was struck in 2001 between Mongolian and Irish Buddhists
to support families and keep them together. A Buddhist center was opened
in the capital city along with a number of philanthropic projects sourced
there.
“When Rinpoche opened the center, he recognized people needed work,
because when the Communists moved out of Mongolia, the infrastructure
completely broke down,” Gough said while standing in the main house
of the three-building Buddhist center next to the center’s gift
shop, displaying a variety of goods produced by the Mongolian women.
Typical winter temperatures in Mongolia fall below 22 degrees Fahrenheit,
threatening the lives of many, especially those in severe poverty. Most
households are run by single mothers, who are some of the poorest citizens
in their society. Most women work to prevent their children from being
sent to orphanages or ending up on the street.
“We identified families where the woman was the main breadwinner,”
Gough continued, “The children of those women were in danger of
being street children, dropping out of school.”
All funding for Rinpoche’s projects in Mongolia comes from Ireland,
Ani La noted.
MIM is opening the sales market to the United States, with the first American
order at Moonjar in Seattle, Wash.
“We’re delighted,” Ani La said of the American market
expansion. “The more orders we can get, the more work we can provide
for the women in Mongolia.”
 Belfast’s
Hindu Temple
By Sharon Udasin
The aroma of Indian spices fills the old Protestant church on Clifton
Street, now transformed into a Hindu temple. Images of Indian gods and
goddesses have supplanted those of Jesus Christ, but the house of worship
remains intact, a stable fixture on the borderline between Northern Irish
tensions.
The temple, Laxmi Narayana Mandir, is located at 86 Clifton St. in Belfast,
directly on the midline that separates Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods,
according to its residents. Indian rugs and portraits of Hindu deities
hang side-by-side with Christian stained glass and other remnants of the
former church. An anomaly in this predominantly Christian city, the Hindu
temple belongs on neither side of the religious feud and seems like a
refuge for peace amidst conflict.
Above the temple sanctuary and up the winding stairs to the building’s
second floor, Gopi Sharma, the temple’s priest, lives with his wife
and two teenage children. He speaks minimal English and called for his
daughter when I arrived.
Wrapped in a cream-colored blanket over pajama sweatpants, the 16-year-old
girl introduced herself as Poonam Sharma. Her long shiny black hair was
pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a simply studded ring in her
nose. Sharma was home enjoying her Easter break on this Thursday morning,
relaxing in the family’s living quarters and relishing her day off.
The building was an active Protestant church 25 years ago, as conflicts
raged on between the Catholic and Protestant populations of the city,
Sharma explained. Amidst the turmoil, a Hindu priest purchased the building
approximately 19 years ago, inadvertently neutralizing a place of former
conflict.
“The people didn’t want this to go to a Catholic or Protestant,
so they sold it to a Hindu,” Sharma said.
The original priest presided over and lived in the converted temple for
10 years, after which a second priest took over for the next five. Following
these two leaders, Sharma’s father arrived as priest four years
ago, leaving a Hindu temple in Kenya.
“I’ve actually got a mixture of Indian, African and Belfast,”
Sharma said, chuckling at her positively unique accent. Initially, she
wanted to move back to Africa, but after beginning school in Belfast,
Sharma became better acquainted with the city.
“It took another year to settle down,” she said. “A
quarter of me still feels that I’m different from everyone.”
After she finishes high school and college, Sharma hopes to become a psychologist.
“More than half are nurses or in the medical businesses,”
she said, pointing to the popularity of medicine among Indians.
As she walked downstairs to the temple itself, Sharma explained that visitors
must leave their shoes outside its glass doors. Inside the sanctuary,
plush red carpet lines the floor, and matching velveteen drapes clothe
the large-scale dioramas, encasing a series of sparkling deities in emerald
green garb. In the center compartment sits the largest pair of statues,
the two adopted as the temple’s central deities – Narayana,
another name for the god Vishnu, and his consort Lakshmi.
Adjacent to the sanctuary is a huge hall for Hawan, a monthly prayer service
that now brings 50 to 60 worshippers, in a congregation that began quite
small. “Not a single person used to come to the temple when it first
started,” Sharma said.
Gradually, however, Hindu residents began to trickle in for festivals,
Sharma explained, and now over 800 people from Northern Ireland come to
the temple for Diwali, the Hindu “Festival of Light,” typically
celebrated in October. Indians travel from as far as London to celebrate
Diwali at Laxmi Naranaya, where they sing and dance in the huge upstairs
auditorium, next to the family’s living area.
“That’s the only time we come together to celebrate a function,”
Sharma said. Despite having a temple of their own, Belfast Hindus do not
always take advantage of the building’s unique cultural opportunities.
“People have been living here for 30 years and they forget their
culture,” Sharma said.
Many of Sharma’s Indian friends have been in the country for decades
and have assimilated to the culture, including 26-year-old Natasha, who
declined to provide her last name.
“You could pretty much call us Irish by now,” confirmed Natasha,
whose family has been living in the United Kingdom for four generations.
“I’m on a British passport, but if you asked me what I am
I would classify myself as Northern Irish.”
With little diversity in a largely Christian society, assimilation is
convenient and comfortable.
“I go to a Protestant school,” Sharma said. “All I get
here is Protestant, Catholic, Protestant, Catholic.” Interestingly,
however, she observed that each contingent of her Christian friends is
afraid to enter the opposite group’s territory. Meanwhile, Sharma
has both Catholic and Protestant friends, but neither sect will speak
to the other.
Sharma can recognize the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant
by the way they speak.
“Catholics would speak in a different way,” she said. “Protestants
are more rough and tough.”
And though Sharma continues to study Hindu culture and take classical
Indian dance classes, she is becoming more and more Northern Irish –
so much so that she has decided she wants to stay there, where she is
a minority within a sea of white faces. She has no intention of moving
to India or even to London, where Hindus live in densely packed neighborhoods.
“I’m just not used to seeing so many Indians,” she said.
 Baghdad in
Dublin
By Betwa Sharma and Zachary Goelman
On Good Friday almost one thousand Dubliners face Mecca and touch their
foreheads to the carpeted floor. Released from their jobs for the Easter
holiday, hundreds of Muslims flocked to the palatial Islamic Cultural
Center in Clonskeagh, County Dublin, for their own weekly Friday prayer.
Tareq Sammaree, 58, is a frequent visitor to the Sunni mosque. A former
Baghdad University professor who sought asylum in Ireland after the U.S.
invasion of Iraq, Sammaree is a long-time Ba’ath party member and
remembers Saddam Hussein fondly.
“He made some mistakes, but he was a good man,” says Sammaree.
But other Iraqis in Ireland feel differently.
A fifteen-minute walk away from the grand Sunni mosque stands the Ahlul
Beyt Islamic Center, the only Shi’ite house of worship in Ireland,
where Ahmed Ali, 38, prays.
Ahlul ran away from Iraq to escape Saddam Hussein’s
persecution of the Shi’ites. “The day he was executed was
the happiest day of my life,” he says.
The legacy of the former dictator is but one issue that divides Iraqi
Sunnis and Shi’ites. Even in Dublin, far removed from the bloody
fighting in the streets of Baghdad and Karbala, sectarian identities flare
up.
The Muslim community in Ireland is fast-growing, with official estimates
of roughly 40,000 adherents. Iraqi refugees from the violence in their
home country are the latest to join this community. Although they leave
behind them the physical violence, they bring with them many of their
sectarian prejudices.
Discord between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Dublin heightened after the
invasion of Iraq. The bloody tales of torture, suicide bombings and execution
squads employed by both groups have strained relations in Dublin.
Imam Dr. Ali Saleh is the leader of the Shia mosque. Born in the Iraqi
city of Najaf, he lived for a while in Saudi Arabia, close to the border
with Iraq. He came to Dublin in 1985, and remembers a time when relations
between the two groups were cordial.
“The Sunnis used to come down to the Shia mosque all the time,”
he says; “they don’t anymore.”
The Shi’ite Muslims say that tensions began after the U.S. invasion,
when Shi’ites gained power in Iraq.
Dr. Hameed Albdri, 28, an Iraqi Sunni by birth, said he used to visit
the Shia mosque.
“I used to visit with my friend, but my friend was asked not to
bring me back again,” Albdri says. He’s lived in Ireland for
six years, and saw the change after the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent
explosion of sectarian violence.
Ahmed Ali, who came to Dublin from Mosul in 1999, remembers a time when
it was easy to crack a Shia-Sunni joke. But no longer. “They cannot
handle it anymore,” he says.
Tareq Sammaree sees little humor in the current situation. The former
Baghdad University professor lost everything when Saddam Hussein fell
and the Ba’ath party lost power. Shi’ite paramilitaries kidnapped
him and his son and tortured him for more than a year. He was released,
but his son is still missing. He fled the country, seeking asylum in Dublin.
Fatima Mussam, 16, a Sunni who came from Mosul, Iraq, to Dublin in 2002,
blames the sectarian violence in Iraq on the Shi’ites. Fatima says
that she had Shi’ite ‘acquaintances’ in school, but
they were not her friends. “I won’t deliberately be rude to
them but I don’t like them,” she says. Mussam, whose family
left Mosul because her family anticipated the war, blames the sectarian
violence in Iraq on the Shi’ites. “They started it,”
she says. She is also contemptuous of the Shi’ite faith. “It
is going against Islam,” she says.
The small Shi’ite community in Dublin fears that the sectarian divisions
are exacerbated by Fatima’s conviction, shared by some Sunnis, that
the Shi’ite are not true Muslims.
Zahra Rahim, 47, is a Shi’ite from Hilla, near the city of Babylon
in Iraq. Her son, Jafar, 15, attended Muslim National School, a primary
school under Sunni management.
Rahim says her son has been called ‘kafir,’ which means unbeliever,
by Sunni students and occasionally been taunted when the Shi’ites
suffer in the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq.
“Who teaches them this?” Rahim asks. “It is not the
teachers. The children get this understanding from their parents.”
“Sectarian feelings are inherent,” says Imam Saleh. “Whether
it is Catholics and Protestants or Shi’ites and Sunnis. We are living
between people who have suffered from sectarian violence. We should learn
from them.”
 Sikh
the Fair Land
By Jamie McGee
Harpreet Singh moved to Ireland from India three weeks after 9-11 and
looked for work in Dublin without success for two months. About 30 applications
later, he still had no prospects. He knew the turban on his head and his
long beard, both identifications of his Sikh faith, were not helping his
chances. Meanwhile, people on the streets often shouted “bin Laden”
and sometimes threw bottles at him. He went to the barber and cut the
hair that he had grown 17 years since birth, and shaved his beard, abandoning
one of the core duties of Sikhism.
“It was very hard,” he said. “I cry on that day.”
Shortly after, Singh was hired at a merchandising cash-and -carry shop,
but he felt empty inside, he said. A year later, after growing more connected
to the Sikh community in Dublin and to his Sikh beliefs, he decided to
once again wear the turban and grow out his hair. No sooner than he returned
to the faith, the abuses on the street began again. A day after the 2005
London bombings a group of men attacked him as he was leaving a grocery
store and he was stabbed in the hand.
Singh, now 25, is not alone in handling frequent discrimination in a country
that has only recently been introduced to Sikhism through an increasing
number of Sikh immigrants. The National Consultative Committee on Racism
and Interculturalism in Dublin reports about 1,200 Sikhs in Ireland, although
Sikhs there estimate the number is closer to 3,000, a population that
has grown extensively in the last five or six years because of economic
and academic opportunity. Most of the Sikhs in Ireland live in Dublin
and a majority of them are students of business or technology who hope
to take their skills back to Punjab one day or find jobs in Ireland. While
acceptance is growing and more people are learning about Sikhism, the
faith is still often wrongly associated with terrorism and Islam. Negative
stereotypes still thrive, and some Sikhs choose to stop wearing the turban
“They throw bottles, it happens many times,” said Gurmeet
Singh, 26. “Now it is better than before. If people do know about
Sikhs, they are respectful.”
Sikhism developed in northern India in the 15th century and has more than
25 million followers worldwide. The faith denounces blind ritual and emphasizes
equality among all mankind and devotion to one god. Sikhs follow the teaching
of 10 gurus and are taught to be both saints and soldiers, using the sword
only when others cannot defend themselves.
On a recent morning at Dublin’s only Gurdwara, or Sikh temple, a
group of men explained they have all learned to ignore such comments and
incidents, knowing that it stems from ignorance more than anything else
and that anger does not solve their problems. To find work they learn
which sectors are accepting of the turban and which ones to avoid. The
restaurant sector, which depends on tourism, is especially difficult to
penetrate, they said.
“We ignore abuses,” said Jasbir Singh Puri, a surgeon who
immigrated to Dublin 20 years ago. “You end up in a brawl. We are
peace-loving people.”
Puri, who has a grey beard, said children often ask him if he is Aladdin,
or where is his magic carpet, and he will happily explain his turban and
his faith to them. “They ask me are you a genie?” If they
ask if he is a Taliban member, however, he takes offense, he said. “I’ll
resent that. But I will not blame the child. I blame the parents.”
While the Sikhs interviewed could laugh and joke about some of the abuses
they endured from other citizens, they were less tolerant of the government’s
rejection of the turban in the Army and in the police force, known as
the An Garda Síochána. To be excluded from military and
police because of their turban is counter to their religion, the men said.
Last August, a Sikh training to serve in the Garda was told to give up
his turban if he wanted to begin work, a turban ban that drew criticism
from Sikh organizations worldwide. A spokesman for the An Garda Síochána
said that the turban was a breach of the Garda’s uniform and that
the Garda was not advocating one religious belief over another, nor being
racist.
Puri, however, said that the Sikhs should be able to integrate without
giving up the turban.
“The turban is like a crown. We cannot take it off. If the Garda
is not allowing a person to do community service, it’s a violation
of a fundamental right of equal employment.”
But there are several Sikhs who have decided that they must remove the
turban to survive in their new country. Such choices are not unique to
Ireland, as Sikhs in the United States and even India have also abandoned
the turban for employment, athletics or comfort. While some Sikhs do not
look down on those who abandon the turban and understand the struggle,
they say that abandoning the turban means that you are no longer a full
Sikh.
Harpreet Singh said he did not tell his parents, who are farmers in Punjab,
that he had stopped wearing a turban. Seven years later, he is still apologetic
about his decision to cut his hair.
“This is new country, this is new people,” he said, explaining
the loneliness and uncertainty he felt when he moved to Ireland to pursue
a degree in information technology. “I come after 9-11. People look
at you in a different way. They say things very rudely.”
Singh lived with his cousins at the time and said he felt shame when he
returned from the barber. “I go home, have a shower. I was upset
for a few days,” he said. “They were thinking he left his
faith. I disappointed myself as well. That’s why I came back.”
Cutting his hair made him reflect more on his faith and he began visiting
the Dublin temple, formally known as the Guru Nanak Gurdwara. He learned
more about Sikhism and realized that the discrimination he faced with
a turban was a small struggle in comparison to the Sikhs who lived before
him. “If you see our history, our past Sikhs gave their life for
our faith.”
The Gurdwara welcomed him back as a full Sikh when he chose to grow his
hair out again and wrap it in a turban each morning. “I feel good,”
he said. “Everybody says it is very good to come back.”
When a group of men came after him with a knife after the London bombings,
Singh was shaken. He had raised his hand to protect himself, otherwise
the man who attacked him would have stabbed his face, he said. He contemplated
moving home, but felt at ease again after a few days. This time, however,
he was not questioning his choice to wear a turban. “I am more strong,”
he said.
Now Singh works at a home equipment store and is in school for his second
degree, this time in business. “If I go back I have good knowledge
in international market,” he said.
The Sikh men discussing their experiences in Ireland said despite the
discrimination they feel, there are signs that acceptance is growing.
Singh and about 40 other men from the Gurdwara recently danced and marched
in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin, an invitation Puri described
as a great honor. The men at the Gurdwara also formed a soccer team that
played in a recent Against Racism tournament, in which teams from different
religious and ethnic groups play one another. Events such as these have
made them feel more connected and increase awareness and understanding
of their faith, but they are skeptical that the climate of discrimination
will change any time soon. Puri said it is a piece of the Sikh history
that will carry far into the future.
“We will always be fighting against injustice,” he said.
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