For five years, I became a fervent Islamist, moving up the ladder of increasingly radical organizations. All strands of this movement descend from the teachings of Banna. He fought against the British in Palestine, trained a paramilitary organization, and members of the movement killed Egypt’s prime minister in 1948. In response, the Egyptian state had Banna assassinated a few months later.

Yet I learned, through bitter experience, that Islamism is far from unitary or coherent. In the end, I quit what’s called “the Islamic movement” because I found it too controlling of my life ”” but also because I no longer wanted to be in a perpetual state of confrontation with the West. It took me several years of travel and study in the Middle East before my mind was free of Islamist influences. I remain a follower of Islam, the religion, but not of Islamism, the political ideology.

Because I was once a part of this movement ”” whose primary goal has been the creation of Islamic governments ”” and then established the world’s first counter-radical think tank, Quilliam, in London to oppose their ideology, I have been following the Arab uprisings with more than a passing interest.

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There are several scales used, recently I have been following the CIA Factbook. No peaking, phoning a friend, googling etc.

Nearly a year after Tunisia set off the Arab Spring of popular revolt, the face of political Islam in this fledgling Muslim democracy is a 47-year-old mother of two who favors tailored suits and stiletto heels.

Souad Abderrahim’s main political experience was as a student union leader more than two decades ago, but the political neophyte is now cheered at rallies and trailed by the media as a leader of Ennahda, the Islamist party that is now the main political force in this North African country.

Abderrahim holds a seat in the country’s new Constituent Assembly, charged with creating a democratic political structure following the downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled Tunisia for nearly a quarter century.

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In the mountainous and beautiful south-west of Uganda, the Anglican Diocese of Kigezi is running a highly-successful water and sanitation programme. This is providing safe facilities for village communities, many of which are located in remote areas, where many people have died from water-borne diseases.

Trained staff teach the locals about the importance of good hygiene and safe water and the conservation of supplies. Rain water tanks are built, pipes are laid over rugged terrain, taps are installed and springs are protected and fenced off from animals and other predators.

The women and children are thus saved hours of carrying heavy containers of water daily up steep hillsides. Accordingly, the children have more time for school, and the parents have more energy and opportunities take greater care of their families, their land and their livestock.

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Dear Mr President,

I write to you as one who grew up under a system that oppressed and censored the media ”“ a system that invoked fear in anyone who dared to read, or embrace, different views to those of the government of the day. The passage of the Protection of State Information Bill has stirred up in me vivid memories of my time as a student in the 1980s at Wits, and the traumatising experience of police ransacking our residence as they looked for classified material. The undercurrent of fear running through our lives that this created is so totally in contradiction to the open atmosphere of constructively critical readings of our life and times which we so much need in South Africa today.

Of course, every country has state secrets, and needs to classify them as such and protect them. I fully understand this. That South Africa needs to replace the old law from apartheid times, I also fully agree. Yet I also hear the cry that the current bill passed this week lacks the one necessary thing, an adequate public interest clause that relates to the criminality of those who ”˜transgress’ on these grounds.

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This morning, I invite you once again to rejoice with me. One hundred and fifty years ago the cross of Christ was raised in your country, and the Gospel was proclaimed for the first time. Today, we give thanks to God for the work accomplished by the missionaries, by the “apostolic workers” who first came from among you or from distant lands, bishops, priests, men and women religious, catechists, all those who, both yesterday and today, enabled the growth of the faith in Jesus Christ on the African continent. I honour here the memory of the venerable Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, an example of faith and of wisdom for Benin and for the entire African continent.

Dear brothers and sisters, everyone who has received this marvellous gift of faith, this gift of an encounter with the risen Lord, feels in turn the need to proclaim it to others. The Church exists to proclaim this Good News! And this duty is always urgent! After 150 years, many are those who have not heard the message of salvation in Christ! Many, too, are those who are hesitant to open their hearts to the word of God! Many are those whose faith is weak, whose way of thinking, habits and lifestyle do not know the reality of the Gospel, and who think that seeking selfish satisfaction, easy gain or power is the ultimate goal of human life. With enthusiasm, be ardent witnesses of the faith which you have received! Make the loving face of the Saviour shine in every place, in particular before the young, who search for reasons to live and hope in a difficult world!

The Church in Benin has received much from her missionaries: she must in turn carry this message of hope to people who do not know or who no longer know the Lord Jesus.

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The Anglican Church has declared a seven-day fasting and prayers for Nigeria and its leadership, Primate of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, has said.

Okoh disclosed this at the 2011 Carnival for Christ, a gathering of all Anglicans in the diocese of Abuja.

He said that the prayers and fasting would begin from Nov. 28 to Dec. 3 and that the prayers would be directed at God’s intervention for peace to return to the country.

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The Church can not keep this Word of God to herself; hers is the vocation to announce it to the world. This Jubilee Year should be a privileged occasion for the Church in Benin to give renewed vigour to her missionary consciousness. Apostolic zeal, which should animate all the faithful, is a direct result of their baptism, and they cannot shirk their responsibility to profess their faith in Christ and his Gospel wherever they find themselves, and in their daily lives. Bishops and priests, for their part, are called to revive this awareness within families, in parishes, in communities and in the different ecclesial movements. I would like once more to highlight the admirable and essential role played by catechists in the missionary activities of your dioceses. On the other hand, as I emphasized in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, “In no way can the Church restrict her pastoral work to the ”˜ordinary maintenance’ of those who already know the Gospel of Christ. Missionary outreach is a clear sign of the maturity of an ecclesial community” (No. 95). The Church, therefore, must reach out to everyone. I encourage you to persevere in your efforts to share missionary personnel with those dioceses experiencing a shortage, whether in your own country, in other African nations or in distant continents. Do not be afraid to call forth missionary vocations among the priests, religious and the laity!

So that the world may believe this Word which the Church proclaims, it is indispensible that Christ’s disciples be united among themselves (cf. Jn 17: 21). As leaders and pastors of your people, you are called to have a lively consciousness of the sacramental fraternity which unites you, and of the unique mission which has been entrusted to you, so that you may be effective signs and promoters of unity within your dioceses.

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With only days to go before the Pope arrives in the African country of Benin, Bishop Barthélemy Adoukonou says he hopes Benedict XVI’s visit to his homeland will help Africa resist secularization.

“Some within the secularized culture of the West are trying to direct all mankind in the same direction, and (it’s) the wrong direction,” the secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture told CNA Nov 15.

Bishop Adoukonou said the influence of secularism is “a great injustice against other cultures, including our African culture, which is very much open to God.”

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Minority Jews and Christians are putting their faith in Tunisia’s nascent democracy to ensure its new Islamist-led leadership respects their rights in this traditionally secular state.

Religious minorities in the Arab world have mostly lost out when dictators are toppled and radical Islamists exploit the power vacuum to attack non-Muslims. The targeting of Christians in Iraq and Egypt constitutes a frightening example.

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A series of bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu has killed at least 63 people, the Red Cross says.

Witnesses said the bombs hit several targets, including churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police.

Many people are reported to have fled the town after a night of violence.

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Despite this year’s vote by South Sudan for independence, churches in Sudan and South Sudan have decided to remain united, mainly to help denominations in Muslim-majority Sudan.

Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church on 28 October approved maintaining one conference covering the two states, alluding to shared history and existing “very real practical human links.” In July, the Episcopal (Anglican) Church decided to remain one body for the next two years and the Sudan Council of Churches has also said it will not split.

“It’s more about solidarity,” observed John Ashworth, an advisor with the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, which enhances churches’ work for peace in Sudan, on 3 November.

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Martin Luther has many claims to fame. In recent years I have found him useful in an unexpected way: as a guide to understanding emerging Afri­can Christianity. Here is my unscientific rule: if Martin Luther treated a biblical book with disdain or outright hostility, then that book is really popular in modern Africa.

As a Bible scholar, Luther was a perceptive and quite daring critic. He tested the authority of books by their claims to apostolic authority and judged their faithfulness against what he considered the core teachings of the earliest church. By this standard, he argued that four New Testament books in particular””Revelation, Hebrews, James and Jude””fell short of true canonical status and should be printed separately in future versions of the Bible.

In different ways, each of these books enjoys enormous popularity in Africa. Each speaks to the harsh conditions in which believers must live: conditions of poverty, social fragility and political oppression; a world in which vestiges of older religions still flourish; a world of complex religious coexistence.

–Philip Jenkins, “Within the African canon,” Christian Century (November 1, 2011 edition), page 45

Times are tense for North Sudan’s Christians, said Episcopal Bishop of Khartoum Ezekiel Kondo, who was visiting the U.S. in October to meet with the Department of State and major nongovernmental organizations and to speak on a panel at an anti-genocide conference sponsored by Save Darfur.

Since July 9, when South Sudan became an independent country, Christians in the majority Muslim north have been under increasing pressure, Kondo said.

“As far as the north goes, the independence has brought a difference,” he said. Christian government officials and private sector workers have been laid off; the government is introducing full Islamic Sharia law which poses a challenge to the church; and South Sudanese are not being given citizenship. People are leaving or being forced out, and the church in Khartoum has been diminished.

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…would you have guessed that Lebanon’s fertility rate is now the same as Finland’s?

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Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa has urged a leading candidate for president to promise to return to the church mission schools nationalized by the government.

Speaking at a school fundraising event on 24 Oct 2011 in Dar es Salaam, Dr. Mokiwa asked Edward Lowassa MP to return the schools if he wins the presidency. Elections are scheduled in the east African nation in 2015 to succeed President Jakaya Kikwete. While Mr. Lowassa has not formally announced his candidacy, he is considered a front runner for the post.

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The Anglican Alliance has welcomed the report from the International Development Select Committee which recommends the UK Government to reconsider its decision to cut its aid programme to Burundi.

The report which highlights the fragile economy and security of the land-locked country included evidence from the Anglican Church in Burundi and the Anglican Alliance, which brings together development relief and advocacy work across the Anglican Communion. Its recommendations were that the UK Government should reinstate its £13.7 million programme, and said that the closure decision was inconsistent with DFID;s poverty focus, and undermined DFID’s investment in other countries in the region.

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On October 5-6 in Cairo, Egypt, bishops from the Diocese of Egypt and dioceses in the north of Sudan held a meeting of reflection and planning with several mission partners, including the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Relief and Development Fund. This important meeting was held for the benefit of discussing the challenges and needs facing the suffering northern dioceses of the Province of the Episcopal (Anglican) Church of Sudan. Upon completion of this meeting, the partners in mission with Sudan released an official communique stating the challenges facing this region, their specific needs, and the top priorities of the partners in mission in order to implement lasting peace in the Sudan.

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Precious in thy sight, O Lord, is the death of thy saints, whose faithful witness, by thy providence, hath its great reward: We give thee thanks for thy martyrs James Hannington and his companions, who purchased with their blood a road unto Uganda for the proclamation of the Gospel; and we pray that with them we also may obtain the crown of righteousness which is laid up for all who love the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

One of the extraordinary features of us human beings is how deep the desire for fairness goes. Parents often hear a cry from their children “It’s not fair”. Parents sometimes reply “Well life isn’t fair”. Indeed it is not. But the point is that we feel it ought to be, and that we ought to try to make it as fair as possible. If a child at school is being punished unfairly, others in the class will protest. If someone is getting away with a wrong, we feel they ought to be caught and admonished. Those childhood feelings are no different from the moral realm we inhabit as adults. However unjust life is, we sense an obligation to do what we can to make it more just, and that includes bringing home to criminals and tyrants the terrible consequences of their deeds….

The great cry running through the Hebrew scriptures is that this world is grossly unjust but that that God will reveal a true justice at the end-so when, when, will God act in that way to put right all that is wrong? Jews, Christians and Muslims have never lost that hope of an ultimate justice.

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Partial official results from Tunisia suggest victory for the moderate Islamist party Ennahda, in the first democratic elections prompted by the Arab Spring uprisings.

The electoral commission said Ennahda was well ahead in the vote for a new assembly that will write a constitution and appoint a caretaker government.

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Catholic leaders said they could not rejoice at the death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, but they recalled some of his more brutal moments and speculated on the future of Christians in the region.

“Gadhafi brutalized people for 42 years. He lived by the sword and, therefore, it’s not surprising that he would die by the sword,” said Habib Malik, associate professor of history at the Lebanese American University, Byblos campus.

“The manner of his death was gruesome and, no matter how evil a person might have been, such an ending is never something to rejoice about; however, he is now dead and his people are justifiably relieved and hopeful about starting a new chapter in their history,” he said.

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The BBC’s Caroline Hawley in Tripoli: “We’ve heard quite a lot of celebratory gunfire” (Still photo shows NTC troops celebrating the capture of Sirte)

Commanders for Libya’s transitional authorities say they have captured ousted leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

The reports came after transitional forces claimed control of Sirte, Col Gaddafi’s birthplace, following weeks of fierce fighting.

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Update–Qaddafi died after capture, the Misrata Military Council says.

The Church at its second Synod in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, also expressed concern over the fact that the reports of panels set up to investigate major crisis in the country have not been released to the public.

This may have also contributed to the reuption of more violence.

Delivering the Bishop’s Charge at the Synod, the Bishop of the Diocese of Egba West, Anglican Communion, Rev. Samuel Ogundeji, deplored the spate of violence and other forms insecurity in the land. He named Boko Haram, post election killings, bloodletting in Jos, the beleaguered Plateau State State capital and other parts of the city, as well as other forms of insecurity rocking parts of the country.

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Just before the American-led strikes against Libya in March, the Obama administration intensely debated whether to open the mission with a new kind of warfare: a cyberoffensive to disrupt and even disable the Qaddafi government’s air-defense system, which threatened allied warplanes.

While the exact techniques under consideration remain classified, the goal would have been to break through the firewalls of the Libyan government’s computer networks to sever military communications links and prevent the early-warning radars from gathering information and relaying it to missile batteries aiming at NATO warplanes.

But administration officials and even some military officers balked, fearing that it might set a precedent for other nations, in particular Russia or China, to carry out such offensives of their own, and questioning whether the attack could be mounted on such short notice.

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A spokesman for the Somali militant group al-Shabab is threatening Kenya with suicide attacks like those that killed 76 people in Uganda last year.

Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told a news conference in Mogadishu on Monday that Kenya must pull its troops out of Somalia. Lines of Kenyan troops poured into Somalia over the weekend. Kenyan officials say the country has the right to defend itself from Somalia’s most powerful militant group.

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Begun in October 2006 by Mount Pleasant-based Mustard Seed International, a Christian, all-volunteer ministry, the Akot clinic has become an all-consuming focus of Deans, Mustard Seed’s president, and a vital player in the lives of South Sudan’s residents.

Since 2009, its medical director, Dr. Clarke McIntosh, has contended with South Sudan’s 25 percent child mortality rate, malnutrition that affects about half the population and a high demand for basic medical care in an impoverished country that lacks infrastructure and basic social services.

Christian faith is what drives Deans and McIntosh. The men are responding to a clear calling, they said, and have devoted themselves to the task at hand: to improve the lives of the region’s people and introduce them to the word of God.

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Stories of child abuse and neglect at an Anglican orphanage have tempered Zimbabwe Anglican’s celebrations at legal decisions provisionally returning church property to them.

Today the Anglican Diocese of Harare revealed that children at the Shearly Cripps Children’s Home–an orphanage taken from the church by supporters of the excommunicated bishop Nolbert Kunonga–have been suffering under those who replaced the legitimate staff.

“It has been brought to the attention of the Anglican Diocese of Harare (CPCA) that orphaned children at Shearly Cripps are being ill-treated, under-fed and have become exposed to all forms of threats,” said a spokesperson for the diocese. “Reports indicate that one child allegedly drank a harmful substance and was rushed to hospital for urgent medical attention.”

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The crisis is deepening for some of the 13m East Africans worst-hit by one of the most devastating droughts in 60 years, aid agencies have warned.

World Food Day is being marked nearly three months since the UN declared a famine in parts of the Horn of Africa.

But people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and the newly-formed Republic of South Sudan remain in desperate need of food, water and emergency healthcare.

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