Improvements
The government's approach towards religious minorities continued to improve. It toned down public rhetoric aimed at religious minorities, permitted the publication and distribution of Christian newspapers in the north, and allowed a church to broadcast religious radio programming from Khartoum. Unlike prior reporting periods, the government did not engage in severe abuses of religious freedom. The National Assembly, the Council of States, and the Cabinet feature both Muslims and Christians in prominent roles. The government sought alliances with local Christian leaders, funding site improvements for Khartoum's Catholic cathedral.
In April 2008 a delegation of the World Council of Churches toured the country, met with government officials in the north and GoSS officials in the south, and hosted a large nondenominational Christian festival in Juba. Unlike prior reporting periods, some of Khartoum's English-language newspapers featured lengthy articles on Christian themes. In the south, Muslim religious leaders reported less interreligious tension during the reporting period.
Read more about this topic: Freedom Of Religion In Sudan
Famous quotes containing the word improvements:
“... these great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and religious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)
“A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree.... Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to its value as well as to its ornament.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)