Screening: God’s Business

Presenter John McCarthy explores religion as business and religion as power as part of Al-Jazeera’s six part series God’s Business.

The documentary focusses on half a dozen worldwide movements and organisations, in India, Israel, Greece, France and Britain.

The Frontline Club will show the following three of the six 22′ minute films:

Russian Jews

What happens when a new force is introduced into a volatile land with its own delicate balance of faith, identity and power? The latest wave of immigration into Israel poses a huge challenge to the coherence of the Jewish state. More than 1.25 million people have arrived from the former Soviet Union in little more than a decade, bringing with them traditions, culture and language as well as a strong spirit of independence.

Greek Unorthodox

The Greek Orthodox church is reeling from a series of scandals. They include accusations of illicit sex and illegal drugs use, the theft of religious treasures, extensive financial corruption, election-rigging and trial-fixing. Furthermore a secret land deal in the Old City of Jerusalem has exploded into a political crisis and led to the dismissal of the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Islam in France

In French cities one in 10 people are now Muslim. At least a third of the 15 million Muslims in western Europe live in France. What impact does the European Union’s largest Muslim population – estimated at between five and six million people – have on French society and French politics? What effect does living in France have on Muslims? And – perhaps most intriguingly: Is a new Euro-Islamic culture being created in the land where the  Enlightenment and its secular values once flourished?