Egyptians’ embrace of a set of proposed constitutional amendments in this weekend’s referendum is the clearest sign yet that leadership of the country’s revolution may be passing from youthful activists to Islamist religious leaders, according to analysts.

Electoral officials said 77% of Egyptians voted to accept a set of proposed amendments to Egypt’s constitution that will, among other changes, limit the presidency to two four-year terms and ease restrictions on independent political participation, according to results announced Sunday.

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Safoorah Khan had taught middle school math for only nine months in this tiny Chicago suburb when she made an unusual request. She wanted three weeks off for a pilgrimage to Mecca.

The school district, faced with losing its only math lab instructor during the critical end-of-semester marking period, said no. Khan, a devout Muslim, resigned and made the trip anyway.

Justice Department lawyers examined the same set of facts and reached a different conclusion: that the school district’s decision amounted to outright discrimination against Khan. They filed an unusual lawsuit, accusing the district of violating her civil rights by forcing her to choose between her job and her faith.

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After Nazli Currim’s father died, her mother moved into Ms. Currim’s home. She cared for her mother full time, even after a stroke six years before she died.

Ms. Currim, 69, co-founder of the American Muslim Women’s Association and author of “Grandma Lives With Us”, a children’s book, never thought about finding a nursing home for her mother. Her attitude is common among Muslims in the United States, many of whom are reluctant even to consider placing an aging family member in a facility.

Part of that decision was a personal one, but part of it was practical: It is difficult for Muslims to find nursing homes and assisted living facilities that reflect their way of life.

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Over the next year, [Yasir] Qadhi was thrust into the center of a crucial struggle ”” for the minds of his young students, the trust of his government and his own future as America was waking to a new threat. Since 2008, more than two dozen Muslim-Americans have joined or sought training with militant groups abroad. They are among the roughly 50 American citizens charged with terrorism-related offenses during that time. These suspects are a mixed lot. Some converted to Islam; others were raised in the faith. They come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and have migrated to different fronts in their global war, from Somalia to Pakistan. Their motivations differ, but the vast majority share two key attributes: a deep disdain for American foreign policy and an ideology rooted in Salafiya.

In the spectrum of the global Salafi movement, Qadhi, who is 36, speaks for the nonmilitant majority. Yet even as he has denounced Islamist violence ”” too late, some say ”” a handful of AlMaghrib’s former students have heeded the call. In addition to the underwear-bomb suspect, the 36,000 current and former students of Qadhi’s institute include Daniel Maldonado, a New Hampshire convert who was convicted in 2007 of training with an Al Qaeda-linked militia in Somalia; Tarek Mehanna, a 28-year-old pharmacist arrested for conspiring to attack Americans; and two young Virginia men held in Pakistan in 2009 for seeking to train with militants.

Qadhi said that none of those former students had approached him for counsel. But in recent years, countless others have come to him with questions about the legitimacy of waging jihad. “We’re finding ourselves on the front line,” Qadhi said. “We don’t want to be there.”

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(ACNS) Preaching at the memorial service held at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster , London , on 17 March 2011 for Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan Minister of Minorities, Bishop Tony Robinson, Chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pakistan Focus Group, reflected, “Death came with the fire of the gun. There was no gentle death for Shahbaz Bhatti ”“ as there is also not for many other Christians who are suffering as part of the of minority population of Pakistan.”

Shahbaz Bhatti, a Roman Catholic Christian who was part of the Cabinet of the Federal government of Pakistan was murdered by gunmen in Islamabad on March 2.

The service, held in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the High Commissioner of Pakistan was a tribute to a remarkable man who had made a practical difference for the minority populations in his country even though his life was cut short at the age of 42, but also an act of dedication by those present to seek to continue the tasks he had set himself.

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Last June, writer and political scientist Peter Beinart launched a broadside at the American Jewish community, accusing it of forsaking its own liberal democratic values in blind support of Israel’s rightward lurch, and in the process creating a generation of young Jews who feel no attachment to the Jewish state.

“The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” published in the New York Review of Books, made a lot of waves and fueled a wider argument about when, and whether, American Jews should speak out against Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The discussion will continue 7 p.m. Thursday [in the Pittsburgh area]…His topic: “Is the love affair over? Young American Jews and Israel.”

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As Congress is considering the extent of Islamic extremism in America, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic wonder whether the liberal Protestant theology of the last two centuries must share some blame for the violence committed by Muslim radicals….

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Christians in south Punjab Province are accusing senior district officials of supporting local Muslims who allegedly demolished 150 Christian graves and desecrated holy relics ”“ and are now threatening Christians seeking legal redress.

In the Kot Addu area of Muzaffargarh district, Waseem Shakir told Compass by telephone that an influential Muslim group last Nov. 6 took illegal possession of a 1,210-square yard piece of land designated as a Christian cemetery and set up shops on it. Official records state that the portion of land was allotted as a Christian cemetery, he said.

“Local Muslims demolished 150 Christians’ graves and desecrated the cross and biblical inscriptions on the graves in a bid to construct shops on the property,” said Shakir, a resident of Chak (Village) 518, Peer Jaggi Morr, Kot Addu. “Only five marlas [151.25 square yards] are all that is left for the Christians to bury their dead now.”

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The Rev. Steve Lawler should have just given up chocolate or television for Lent.

Instead, Lawler, of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Ferguson, decided to adopt the rituals of Islam for 40 days to gain a deeper understanding of the faith.

On Friday, he faced being defrocked if he continued in those endeavors.

“He can’t be both a Christian and a Muslim,” said Bishop George Wayne Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. “If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church.”

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Television writer-producer Jill Soloway turned off her electronic devices for 24 hours last Saturday and spent the morning playing with her 2-year-old son in her yard in Silver Lake.

“It was excruciating and kind of wonderful. I struggled with a feeling of anxiety that there was something in my inbox I needed to tend to,” she said. “Then came a moment when it felt like a holiday. Holiday means holy day. What a huge gift.”

Soloway, executive producer of the Showtime series “United States of Tara,” and a self-described smartphone junkie, was taking part in the “National Day of Unplugging,” organized by Reboot, a group of urban media professionals who try to reconnect with Jewish tradition in a way that is meaningful to their hectic lives.

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…this week, despite his political affinity for conservatives and Republicans, Mr. [Suhail] Khan has found himself indignant and appalled. Representative Peter T. King, a conservative Republican from Long Island, has convened hearings into what he says is the radicalization of American Muslims and the supposed refusal to cooperate with law enforcement officials.

If these hearings are meant to draw some bright line between “good” and “bad” Muslims, between “moderates” and “radicals,” then that point has been lost on Mr. Khan and many of the Muslims who work on Capitol Hill. Republican and Democrat, Sunni and Shia, convert and born Muslim, they echo a common revulsion.

“It’s saddening that faith has become a partisan issue,” Mr. Khan said. “It’s disappointing that some people have attempted to exploit fears and real threats to demonize a whole faith community.”

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We are in the midst of a fundamental sea change in Western culture: the battle lines have been drawn, and the outcome remains unclear.

The traditional strategy of liberal democracies has been to seek to regulate religious debate by treating faith as a private activity carried out by consenting adults behind closed doors.

Recent terrorist attacks carried out in the name of religion have forced politicians to recognise that for the vast majority of religious believers ”“ not just the religious extremists ”“ authentic faith must impact on every aspect of their lives and cannot be consigned to the private sphere.

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A few days ago I stirred a hornets’ nest with a column [the post immediately preceding this one on the blog] looking at why the Middle East lags economically and politically behind the rest of the world. The column was based on a terrific new book, “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East,” which was written by a Duke University scholar, Timur Kuran, who is an expert on the economic history of the region.

It’s difficult to address the issues comprehensively in 780 words (the length of a column), so I’ve asked Professor Kuran to expand a bit and address three common points raised by readers. The first question raised by many readers is about women: isn’t one major factor in the Middle East’s long stagnation the fact that it underutilized the female half of its population? If you’re only playing with half a deck, is it any wonder you lag? The second common question was about Western colonialism ”” many Arab readers thought that was far more important a factor in inhibiting Muslim countries than my column suggested, so I’ve asked Professur Kuran to address that. And, finally, many readers were left profoundly uncomfortable with the exercise itself ”” asking “Is Islam the Problem?” Is this a dangerous, unhelpful line of inquiry that ultimately creates polarization and cross-cultural antagonisms?

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Many Arabs have an alternative theory about the reason for the region’s backwardness: Western colonialism. But that seems equally specious and has the sequencing wrong. “For all its discontents, the Middle East’s colonial period brought fundamental transformation, not stagnation; rising literacy and education, not spreading ignorance; and enrichment at unprecedented rates, not immiserization,” writes Timur Kuran, a Duke University economic historian, in a meticulously researched new book, “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East.”

Professor Kuran’s book offers the best explanation yet for why the Middle East has lagged. After poring over ancient business records, Professor Kuran persuasively argues that what held the Middle East back wasn’t Islam as such, or colonialism, but rather various secondary Islamic legal practices that are no longer relevant today.

It’s a sophisticated argument that a column can’t do justice to, but for example, one impediment was inheritance law.

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The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have been widely described as secular rebellions led by middle-class, tech-savvy young people seeking economic and political justice. Protests have generally called for democratic, not Islamic politics, and for the rule of law, not Shariah law. Islamists were late to join the crowds, and they have participated only as one group among many. Because of all this, most Westerners have embraced the revolts. We should not, however, assume that the protesters seek to build replicas of the societies that exist in the West.

That assumption is erroneous because the Arab world is only beginning to debate basic questions of civic and political life””especially what role religion should play in government.

Westerners should avoid the so-called problem of transference: the natural tendency to assume that our historical experience is universal. It is misguided to assume that because the West””after centuries of bloodshed and experimentation””arrived at a broad consensus around democracy and secularism, so has the rest of world. The historical experience of Arab and Muslim societies has been qualitatively different.

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As 2.5 percent of the population in a Muslim state of 170 million people, Christians in Pakistan are “a fly on the wall” that can sometimes be treated as a nuisance, says the Rt. Rev. Munawar K. Rumalshah, Bishop Emeritus of Peshawar.

The church’s minority status manifests itself regularly, the bishop said ”” from Islam’s effects on how Christians conduct themselves to the threat of death for converts and the martyrdom of Shahbaz Bhatti, a Roman Catholic who was minister for religious minorities in Pakistan.

The bishop spoke at St. Stephen’s Church, Richmond, Va., March 6, concluding a fundraising tour of the United States. The bishop spoke on the theme of “Wishing for an Embrace: Minority Faith in an Islamic World.”

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Bhatti, 42, was shot repeatedly Wednesday as he left his mother’s home in Islamabad. As the Federal Minister for Minorities, he was an outspoken opponent of Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws, which can impose the death penalty for actions judged to insult Mohammed.

He is the second Pakistani official to be murdered for his opposition to the laws in as many months. Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province, was killed in early January by his bodyguard.

“Both were killed for the same reason,” said Father Lombarid, “because they opposed the blasphemy law, a law that is itself truly a blasphemy, because in the name of God it causes injustice and death.”

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Shahbaz Bhatti will not be remembered as a quiet man. As Pakistan’s outspoken Minister for Minorities Affairs, the only Christian member of Parliament, and a tireless advocate for Pakistan’s imperiled Christian community, Bhatti was accustomed to standing out in a crowd.

Bhatti’s impassioned defense of Pakistan’s minority Christian community moved and motivated human rights advocates and government officials around the world. “He never achieved what he dedicated his life to ”“ the eventual repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws,” saidStuart Windsor, National Director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, “But he tried, bravely and with indefatigable spirit, and his life was a blessing to many.”

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In the history of some countries there comes a period when political and factional murder becomes almost routine ”” Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, Germany and its neighbours in the early 1930s. It has invariably been the precursor of a breakdown of legal and political order and of long-term suffering for a whole population. And last week, with the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, Pakistan has taken a further step down this catastrophic road.

To those who actually support such atrocities, there is little to say. They inhabit a world of fantasy, shot through with paranoid anxiety. As the shocked responses from so many Muslims in this country and elsewhere make plain, their actions are as undermining of Koranic ethics as they are of rational politics.

But to those who recognise something truly dreadful going on in their midst ”” to the majority in Pakistan who have elected a government that, whatever its dramatic shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism ”” we have surely to say, “Do not imagine that this can be ”˜managed’ or tolerated”.

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A quick search of YouTube today for “Anwar al-Awlaki” finds hundreds of his videos, most of them scriptural commentary or clerical advice, but dozens that include calls for jihad or attacks on the United States.

The story of You Tube and Mr. Awlaki is a revealing case study in the complexity of limiting controversial speech in the age of do-it-yourself media, as the House prepares for hearings next week on the radicalization of American Muslims.

In eloquent American English or Arabic with English subtitles, Mr. Awlaki can be seen in videos decrying America’s “war on Islam”; warning Muslims why they should “never, ever trust a kuffar,” or non-Muslim; praising the attempt by his “student” to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner; and patiently explaining why American civilians are legitimate targets for killings. Such videos have been posted in multiple copies and viewed hundreds or thousands of times.

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When 7-year-old Amalya Knapp took the beam at the New Jersey state gymnastics finals last month, her excellent performance symbolized a far more complicated balancing act.

Although she would have ranked fifth in her age group, eligible for a medal, her individual scores were discounted. She was unable to compete on a Saturday because of her Orthodox Jewish family’s observance of the Sabbath.

“I was upset,” Amalya said, “but my mother told me there are decisions you have to make.”

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(This article is based on the piece just preceding it posted on the blog below–KSH)

One prominent figure on Pakistan’s religious Right, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-iIslam-Fazl, yesterday warned the West not to use international disgust at Mr Bhatti’s murder to put pressure on them to moderate their behaviour. He said: “I have already condemned the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti in the Parliament but it seems as if an international lobby is using such incidents to gain a leverage on religious parties.”

Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, told a memorial service for Mr Bhatti at the weekend that the Government “will try our utmost to bring the culprits to justice”.

But Dr Williams makes clear that patience in Christian-dominated donor countries is wearing out. “To the majority in Pakistan who have elected a Government which, whatever its dramatic shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism, we have surely to say, ”˜Do not imagine that this can be managed or tolerated’.”

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The protection of minorities of any and every kind is one acid test of moral legitimacy for a government; and such protection is built into Pakistan’s modern identity as an Islamic state with civic recognition for non-Muslims. Many are anxious about Pakistan’s future for strategic reasons. But those of us who love Pakistan and its people are anxious for its soul as well as its political stability. It is heartbreaking to see those we count as friends living with the threat of being coerced and menaced into silence and, ultimately, into a betrayal of themselves. This must not be allowed to happen. They need to know of the support of Christians and others outside Pakistan for their historic and distinctive vision.

Shahbaz Bhatti died, for all practical purposes, as a martyr ”” let me be clear ”” not simply for his Christian faith, but for a vision shared between Pakistani Christians and Muslims. When he and I talked at Lambeth Palace last year, he was fully aware of the risks he ran. He did not allow himself to be diverted for a moment from his commitment to justice for all.

That a person of such courage and steadfastness of purpose was nourished in the political culture of Pakistan is itself a witness to the capacity of that culture to keep its vision alive and compelling. And that is one of the few real marks of hope in a situation of deepening tragedy that urgently needs both prayer and action.

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In a more nuanced way, a number of influential scholars, such as Rodney Stark and Regina Schwartz, have also cast monotheism as particularly intolerant towards the “Other” and thus a fertile ground for violence.

But I would like to ask whether there actually is an intrinsic link between monotheism and violence? Is such violence virtually inevitable?

There are a number of points that can be made in response to this question. The first is why is there such a preoccupation with religious and Monotheistic forms of violence, often to the point of dismissing secular violence? Why are violent secular causes often let off the hook?

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Anti-Semitism still rears its ugly head. The British designer John Galliano, for instance, has just been sacked as head designer of Christian Dior for an alleged anti-Jewish drunken rant in a Paris bar. His instant dismissal was perhaps commercially necessary. But it was morally justified too. At a meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee in Paris, the city’s Archbishop, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, said anti-Semitism must be “unambiguously exposed as a sin against God and humanity”, as it was “unfortunately, not dead”.

Traditionally across Europe, the most dangerous day of the year for Jews was Good Friday, as some of the prayers and readings used in churches that day could easily become an incitement to anti-Semitism. That changed when the Second Vatican Council decree Nostra Aetate specifically instructed that “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”

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[STEFAN FATSIS]…Columnists and commentators love to defend righteous acts. But I think there’s more to this conversation.

[MICHELE] NORRIS: More like what?

[STEFAN] FATSIS: Well, these rules, for one thing. We haven’t heard much about whether these rules are applied uniformly across the student body. And it’s also worth noting that Brandon Davies is African-American, and the last two athletes who left their BYU teams for the same reason are of Pacific Island descent. And this is a campus that is overwhelmingly white.

Then you’ve got the stickier subject of whether these rules should maybe be questioned by people outside of the Mormon Church. And finally, I think it bears asking, you know, does BYU’s willingness to shame a 19-year-old in such a public way, is that the best approach, honor code or not?

Read or listen to it all. I happened to catch this yesterday in the car running an errand and what struck me was this phrase: BYU’s willingness to shame a 19-year-old in such a public way. Ah, so this is the university’s fault. Except, hang on now. First, the young man in question signed up for this school knowing the honor code on the front end of his whole undergraduate undertaking. So the possibility of bad consequences is something he already agreed to. Second, the young man is the one who has shamed himself, no?

This reminds me a bit of discussions in the house when I was growing up (with two parents who were teachers). One more than one occasion it was noted that when students do well a person will say “I got an A” but when things go wrong, what happens? The rhetoric changes to “the teacher failed me.” Oh what a tangled web we weave–KSH.

In retrospect, I’d say that Huntington committed the Fundamental Attribution Error. That is, he ascribed to traits qualities that are actually determined by context.

He argued that people in Arab lands are intrinsically not nationalistic. He argued that they do not hunger for pluralism and democracy in the way these things are understood in the West. But it now appears as though they were simply living in circumstances that did not allow that patriotism or those spiritual hungers to come to the surface.

It now appears that people in these nations, like people in all nations, have multiple authentic selves. In some circumstances, one set of identities manifests itself, but when those circumstances change, other equally authentic identities and desires get activated.

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Bible-reading, knitting, Twitter, and atheism are among the activities Christians are being encouraged to take up for Lent, starting on Ash Wednesday next week.

The Bishop of Huntingdon, Dr David Thomson, this week issued a challenge to Christians to join him in reading the whole of the Bible during Lent, as part of the challenge, “Round the Bible in 40 Days”.

“Most people have their favourite Bible passages, but they usually read it in small chunks and often without much sense of continuity,” Dr Thom­son said. “So it’s good from time to time to get to grips with the whole of its architecture and soak ourselves in its big story of creation, redemption, and the coming of the Kingdom.”

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Pope Benedict has rejected the idea of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ’s death, in a new book to be published next week.

Tackling an issue that has led to centuries of persecution, the Pope argues there is no basis in scripture for the Jewish people to be blamed.

The Catholic Church officially repudiated the idea in 1965.

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A judge has found that a group of self-described witches may have gotten special treatment from the town of Catskill ”“ and not in a good way.

In a strongly-worded decision issued on Tuesday, Judge George J. Pulver, Jr. of the Greene County Supreme County ruled that the town’s denial of a property tax exemption for the Maetreum of Cybele smacks of discrimination.

“Consistent with [the Matreum’s] claim that it is being discriminated against, respondents’ counsel attempts to hold petitioner to a higher standard than other religious organizations,” Pulver wrote in the decision, a copy of which was obtained by the Watershed Post.

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