The murder of more than 50 Catholics by jihadists during Sunday Mass in Baghdad on Oct. 31 is the latest in a series of outrages committed against Christians by Islamist fanatics throughout the world: Egypt, Gaza, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan and on the list goes. The timing of the attack on Baghdad’s Syriac Catholic cathedral was striking, however, for it came shortly after the conclusion in Rome of a special Synod on the Middle East. During the Synod, very little was said about Islamist persecution of Christians; indeed, every effort was bent to show the Catholic Church sympathetic to Muslim grievances, especially with regard to the politics of the Middle East.

This strategy of appeasement has always struck me as unwise. The al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists’ answer to the Synod””the Baghdad murders””has now proven the strategy deadly. Appeasement must stop.

Read it all.

The fact that nearly 20% of Americans say that President Obama is a Muslim has certainly not kept him from talking to Muslims. Just in the past week, the president gave his second major address to the Muslim world, and issued greetings to Muslims for Eid-ul-Adha, the celebration of Abraham’s “willingness to sacrifice his son.” Even in this small act of presidential courtesy, however, Obama had to tread very carefully. Note that the administration did not include the name of Abraham’s son. Muslims believe that Abraham was willing to sacrifice Ishmael, while the Jewish and Christian Scriptures contend that it was Isaac ”” indeed, this is one of the most fundamental divergences between these religious traditions. The president wants to acknowledge the Muslim holiday, without exacerbating religious tensions.

In matters large and small, Obama has to strike a delicate balance regarding Islam. It is not that he has taken an unprecedented interest in Islam: President Thomas Jefferson had his copy of the Quran, and President George W. Bush discussed Islam just as much as Obama. But because of the ongoing war against jihadist terror, the controversy about the Ground Zero mosque, and especially because of persistent (if absurd) rumors about the president’s own faith, Obama has a special burden to carry about Islam. He must communicate that America’s millions of Muslims are fully welcome here, and that America is not at war with the Muslim community at large. Yet he must also maintain moral clarity about the menace of jihadist terrorism.

Read it all.

A Muslim advocacy group filed suit Thursday (Nov. 4) in Oklahoma, saying a just-passed amendment forbidding judicial use of Islamic law is unconstitutional.

The suit, filed by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, seeks a federal district court’s order to prevent board of elections officials from enacting the constitutional amendment. Seventy percent of Oklahoma voters Tuesday approved State Question 755, which bans the use of Shariah law in state courts.

Read it all.

This year’s papers focused especially on the importance of religious leaders using their influence to play a constructive role in ensuring religious harmony, particularly in countries where there is religious diversity. Bishop Mouneer Anis reviewed the religious situation in Egypt and Singapore. He drew attention to some examples of inter-communal violence in Egypt, and analysed the causes of these incidents in the context of the wider Middle East. Bishop Mouneer referred to the experience of Singapore, an Asian country with a diverse religious demography which has successfully fostered both religious tolerance and full citizenship. Mrs Clare Amos spoke about the relationships between Christians and Muslims in England, and the pivotal role of the Church of England in this particular context. She pointed out the positive role played by the current Archbishop of Canterbury in seeking to enable adherents of all religions to contribute ”˜to the common good’ of the nation. Dr El Gindi noted the common goals of Christianity and Islam and highlighted the importance of religions demonstrating their positive commitment to peace, both for the well-being of all people and because otherwise religion often seemed to be discredited in the eyes of non-religious people. Sheikh Ali Abdel Baki noted how within Islam forgiveness was considered preferable to revenge, and reflected that justice and tolerance were considered two bases within Islam, and important pathways to peace.

Both Dr El Gindi and Bishop Mouneer Anis spoke of the special importance of ensuring that Christian and Muslim young people were educated in ways which encourage them to treat other religions, and their followers, with respect. The need for mutual respect in relation to the doctrines and sacred texts of each other’s religion was highlighted.

Read it all.

While much about what prompted Chesser’s transformation remains a mystery, he illustrates a growing phenomenon in the United States: young converts who embrace the most extreme interpretation of Islam.

Of the nearly 200 U.S. citizens arrested in the past nine years for terrorism-related activity, 20 to 25 percent have been converts, said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. More than a quarter have been arrested in the past 20 months. The center provided The Washington Post with saved copies of Chesser’s postings, most no longer available on the Web.

“Many of these converts are basically white kids from the suburbs” in search of a community, said Segal, whose group has produced numerous papers on those arrested, including Chesser. They are overwhelmingly male, frequently in their 20s and eager to “become something more than they are, or be part of something greater,” he said.

Their militancy is not a product of the alienation that has sometimes prompted Muslim-born young people in the United States and elsewhere to embrace extremism, particularly in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Read it all.

As the country grapples with its worst economic downturn in decades and persistent unemployment, voters in Oklahoma next week will take up another issue ”” whether they should pass a constitutional amendment outlawing Sharia, or Islamic law.

Supporters of the initiative acknowledge that they do not know of a single case of Sharia being used in Oklahoma, which has only 15,000 Muslims.

“Oklahoma does not have that problem yet,” said Republican state Rep. Rex Duncan, the author of the ballot measure, who says supporters in more than a dozen states are ready to place similar initiatives before voters in 2012. “But why wait until it’s in the courts?”

Some conservative activists contend that the U.S. is at risk of falling under Sharia law. They point to Europe, with its larger Muslim population and various accommodations to the Islamic religious law.

Read it all.

We have heard about Islam, mosques, and freedom of religion a whole lot lately. Much of that conversation has been energized with passions and fears. In light of it all, I find myself really torn by the whole discussion about Islam and the Church’s response. Let me be clear it is fair to be confused by Islam, even concerned by it.

Most of us do not know the difference between Sunni, Shia and Sufi Muslims, or how to read the Quran or each Hadith. In the midst of the current conversation, I offer my own perspective. My experience of Islam is very different than what I most often see in the media here in the US–for two key reasons. First, my experience with Islam really began in Southeast Asia where the Muslims see themselves differently than those in the Middle East.

Second, and more importantly, my focus in Southeast Asia was to share the Good News of Jesus with Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Freethinkers alike. As a result, I am fascinated by the variety of expressions of Islam. There the three main schools, Sunni, Shi’ite and Sufi””which have protestant, catholic and charismatic qualities. They also have their own progressives, secularists, fundamentalists, off-shoots, and cults.

Furthermore, I have a deep assurance that Islam does not stand up well to the witness of Jesus Christ.

Read it all.

Mutual distrust leads many Palestinians and Israelis to think of peace as a mirage. Since religion plays a significant role in justifying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, politicians need the help of religious leaders in their search for a solution.

The problem is that often the patriarchal figures of the three faiths are too focused on “protecting” the community from erosion of piety or the threat of assimilation to pay enough attention to moral empowerment. Too many leaders defend ownership of land at the expense of justice, rationalize war and its spoils, and remind their people to track the enemy vigilantly using partial interpretations of sacred texts for this purpose.

Religious leaders from outside the region oftentimes also fuel the conflict, sometimes without even being aware that they are doing so. Based outside of the area and free from the considerations of local day-to-day life, these authorities too often espouse hardline positions. The American charismatic church, for example, supports Israel automatically, even at the risk of threatening long-term Jewish security. To become enablers of peace, religious authorities will have to shift from a preoccupation with protecting the tradition from change to becoming agents of inter-communal reconciliation.

Read it all.

A Pakistani man’s solution to the age-old dilemma of whether to embark on an arranged or a love marriage has captivated the country’s media.

Television channels have provided live coverage of Azhar Haidri’s decision to marry both women over a 24-hour period.

At first he refused to marry the woman selected by his family since childhood because he loved someone else.

Pakistani law allows polygamy because it interprets Islam to allow a man to have up to four wives.

Islam is the main religion in the country.

Read it all.

Some 50 priests and 50 imams, plus a number of lay people, met last Saturday in Savar (Dhaka), at a Qur”˜an research centre to discuss ”˜Leadership in a pluralistic society from the Muslim and Christian points of view’.

Organised with the support of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), the seminar was chaired by philosopher Obidur Rahman. The Italian ambassador to Bangladesh, Ms Itala Maria Marta Occhi, and Ms Kilmeny Beckering Vinckers, Australian deputy high commissioner, were present at the event.

In his address, Rev Paul Sishir Sarkar, bishop of the Anglican Church of Bangladesh, said that society today is increasingly pluralistic, and that mutual understanding and dialogue are increasingly important. In this context, an open exchange of opinions can be advantageous to everyone. For this reason, it is even more important for Christians and their leaders to lead a life according to their faith, with honesty, humility and openness to dialogue, for “Muslims are our neighbours,” he said, and as leaders, “we should teach our people to love them”.

Read it all.

A rash of mysterious killings by gun-wielding motorcycle assassins of policemen, politicians and others in this city near the desert has led authorities to declare that a radical Islamic sect thought to have been crushed by Nigerian troops last year has been revived.

Soldiers have been deployed here again, a curfew has been imposed and many residents worry about bold daylight attacks that officials call a renewal of the anti-Western sect’s strikes on police stations and soldiers that took place last year.

An outright challenge to the Nigerian government appears to be under way, with an audacious twilight prison break last month in Bauchi that freed over 700 ”” including many jailed sect members ”” the firebombing of a police station in Maiduguri last week and the killing of numerous police officers and other leaders in recent months.

Read it all.

Our role in Iraq has also been to help win the hearts and minds of Iraqis through humanitarian missions and establishing local relationships with religious leaders. One such local leader is the Rev. Canon Andrew White.

Canon White is the rector (pastor) of St. George’s Church of Baghdad, the only Anglican Church in the country, established during the time when Iraq was a British territory. Canon White, also titled the vicar of Baghdad by the Church of England, plays an important role as a peace ambassador in the Middle East. He has been kidnapped. He has been beaten. He has lain on a floor with body parts scattered around him. Yet, he faithfully continues to preach and works for peace in one of the most dangerous places in the world today. He faces such persecution because he is one of the few vocal Christians in the city working for the good of Iraq.

Given Canon White’s persecution in Baghdad, I have reflected on what the situation would be like if it were reversed. What would the situation be like for those who are not the religious majority of a country?

Read it all.

“Because of the national interest in the project, we felt that we should try to really educate people about what this project is all about and a picture speaks a thousand words, as they say,” El-Gamal told NPR’s Scott Simon.

The project will include much more than a mosque. El-Gamal says the nearly 120,000 square-foot center will include a Sept. 11, 2001, memorial, an athletic facility and other features. The facility, he says, is tailor-made for one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in New York state where there are “more strollers than briefcases.”

“All that we’re looking to do is provide a much-needed community center in Lower Manhattan,” he said.

Read or listen to it all.

My God is better than your God.

That’s the dispute at the heart of recent hearings in a lawsuit aimed at derailing the new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. What started as a zoning issue has turned into a fight over theology and the role of government in recognizing religion.

Mosque opponents say that Islam is not a real religion. They argued in a Rutherford County courthouse last week that the world’s second-largest faith, with its 1.6 billion followers, is actually a political movement….

Read it all.

Last Saturday, at a university-sponsored event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Harvard’s Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, a group of former students launched a research fund in honor of Martin Peretz, a former teacher in the program and the longtime editor in chief of the New Republic. After the event adjourned, the afternoon turned ugly as police had to protect Mr. Peretz while he walked across campus surrounded by a mob of screaming students.

Mr. Peretz admits that he wasn’t blameless in the controversy. On Sept. 4, blogging at the New Republic’s web site, he lamented that Muslims don’t respond more vigorously to acts of terrorism against their own people:

“Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [of the proposed Cordoba House mosque] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

Read it all.

With the nation on high alert, an Indian court handed down a long-awaited decision on Thursday over control of the country’s most disputed religious site by splitting the land into three portions to be divided among Hindus and Muslims, according to lawyers in the case.

Much of the detail and rationale behind the decision issued late Thursday by a three-judge panel in the state of Uttar Pradesh remained unclear. The court was expected to release the complete ruling only later in the evening. But lawyers in the case, interviewed on Indian news channels, said the panel had unexpectedly ruled by dividing the land in a way that gave something to both Hindus and Muslims after a legal battle that originated six decades ago.

The case focused on a site in the city of Ayodhya, which many Hindus have long claimed as the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram, but which also was the site of a mosque, known as the Babri Masjid, built in the 16th century by India’s first Mughal ruler. In 1992, Hindu extremists destroyed the Babri Masjid, sparking riots that would claim the lives of about 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

One of the central questions in the case had been whether a Hindu temple had existed on the site before the construction of the Babri Masjid. Lawyers in the case said the court’s ruling would reserve one-third of the land for construction of a temple to Ram, another third for another Hindu party to the case, while designating the final third for Muslims to build a mosque.

Read it all.

Despite tragic violence and discouraging developments, there are signs of hope. Majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians still support a two-state solution. Arab states have declared their commitment to peace in the Arab Peace Initiative. There are U.S. diplomatic efforts to restart Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese negotiations for peace. Official and informal negotiations have produced the outlines of concrete compromises for resolving the conflict, including the final status issues: borders and security, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem. Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders both here and in the region reject the killing of innocents, support a just peace, and believe sustained negotiations are the only path to peace.

As we said two years ago, there is a real danger that cynicism will replace hope and that people will give up on peace. With the resumption of direct negotiations, clarity is demanded. So let us be clear. As religious leaders, we remain firmly committed to a two-state solution to the conflict as the only viable way forward. We believe that concerted, sustained U.S. leadership for peace is essential. And we know that time is not on the side of peace, that delay is not an option.

The path to peace shuns violence and embraces dialogue. This path demands reciprocal steps that build confidence. This path can lead to a future of two states, Israel and a viable, independent Palestine, living side by side in peace with security and dignity for both peoples, stability in the region, and a comprehensive peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbors.

Read it all.

A strong work ethic, devotion to God and family, conservative views on abortion and sexuality ”” on these scores and more, the newcomers would appear to be right in stride with the traditional-values folk in Anytown, USA.

In view of the Christian gospel followed by most of the established residents, you might assume they’d extend a hand of hospitality. You certainly wouldn’t expect them to resist the newcomers’ worship centers, would you? Or squander an opportunity to enlist potential allies in the fight against the country’s inexorable drift toward coarseness and secularism?

These perfectly logical thoughts might run through your mind until you learned that the newcomers in question often have Middle Eastern-sounding names, wear beards or head scarves, and take their spiritual cues from the Quran. And then you’d know that the situation was bound to play out on a whole different frequency. At flashpoints from Temecula, Calif., to Gainesville, Fla., to New York, N.Y., and all along the low road in between, mongers of fear and haters of the “other” are sounding the alarm about Islam with a new level of intensity. To hear it from conservative spokesman Newt Gingrich and those of a similar persuasion, the Muslims between our shores are bent on taking over the country and imposing their “un-American” values.

Read it all.

Real democracy is messy. It’s got protestors and agitators and banners and manners and morals and financial pressures and gossip and policemen on horses keeping an eye out to make sure it doesn’t turn violent. Oh, yes, it’s also got government, but apart from paying for those policemen, government ought not to be too deeply involved as these things sort themselves out. If what the Muslims want to do is not illegal, than government should have nothing more to say.

That does not mean, however, that everyone else should also have nothing more to say. The attempt to build a large, new mosque and Islamic center anywhere near the site of the World Trade Center is so offensive, so bizarre, and so deliberate that it should be stopped.

And stopped it will be, through the offered mediation of New York’s Archbishop Dolan, or the skittishness of the financial community, or the disturbance of the neighbors, or the anger of the protestors, or the refusal of the building contractors. It will be messy, and it will be sharp. Inspiring and disturbing, with loud shouts on the streets and a few quiet words in the back rooms.

But that’s democracy””it’s how things get done when you accept that government shouldn’t do everything. The churches and the synagogues have long experience with this kind of democratic negotiation. Time for the mosques to learn how to do it, too.

Read it all.

In the case of Jones and his church in Gainesville, the Council on American-Islamic Relations decided that the timing of his Koran travesty was simply too hot to ignore. Even though the group regularly ignores the videos that it receives of people burning, shooting or ripping apart Islam’s holy book, CAIR decided to issue a July 19 press release announcing its own protest of “International Burn a Koran Day.” The group handed out free copies of the Koran.

The word was officially out and the media storm kept growing as angry reactions ”” from Arab streets to the White House ”” rolled into the world’s newsrooms.

Lost in the din were the quiet, measured words of many religious leaders who tried to walk a knife’s edge of logic in their public statements.

For starters, they had to note the painful fact that the Dove World Outreach Center was an independent Pentecostal congregation and its members were responsible to no higher religious authority than their own pastor. Thus, there was no one who could stop this event, other than public officials who, in order to do so, would have had to trample the rights of Jones and his flock.

Read it all.

At a time of growing tensions involving Muslims in the United States, a record number of Muslim workers are complaining of employment discrimination, from co-workers calling them “terrorist” or “Osama” to employers barring them from wearing head scarves or taking prayer breaks.

Such complaints were increasing even before frictions erupted over the planned Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, with Muslim workers filing a record 803 such claims in the year ended Sept. 30, 2009. That was up 20 percent from the previous year and up nearly 60 percent from 2005, according to federal data.

The number of complaints filed since then will not be announced until January, but Islamic groups say they have received a surge in complaints recently, suggesting that 2010’s figure will set another record.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found enough merit in some of the complaints that it has filed several prominent lawsuits on behalf of Muslim workers.

Read it all.

Debate over the so-called Ground Zero mosque, followed by the inflammatory press attention paid to Pastor Terry Jones’s threat to burn Qur’ans on September 11, has stirred an excess of angst over the Muslim presence in America. Opportunists have exploited that anxiety for political advantage. The overheated debate may be moot: while the legal standing of the planned Muslim community center is solid, its financing is reportedly shaky.

What is not settled is the place of Muslims in American society. Anxiety about Islam has spread in response to proposed mosques in Wisconsin, California, and Tennessee, where an arsonist set construction equipment ablaze. Muslims who wish to build places of prayer meet resistance, both violent and verbal. How should American Christians respond?…

Read it all.

American pundits and politicians continue to argue over whether building an Islamic cultural center two blocks from ground zero ”“ where Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center nine years ago ”“ is appropriate.

But as the debate, centered around religious freedom and the role Islam itself played in the 9/11 attacks, continues in New York another of the world’s great cultural cities is arguing over a proposal for its first mosque. And proponents are getting help from an unlikely corner: the Vatican.

Read it all.

There is no gain to be had, no hearts and minds to be won, in Imam Rauf insisting that Ground Zero can’t be hallowed ground because there is a strip joint and an off-track betting office nearby. This may be true, but it is irrelevant.

A terrible deed took place on that ground nine years ago. Nineteen young Arabs brought death and ruin onto American soil, and discretion has a place of pride in the way the aftermath is handled. “Islam” didn’t commit these crimes, but young Arabs and Muslims did.

There is no use for the incantation that Islam is a religion of peace. The incantation is false; Islam, like other religions, is theologically a religion of war and a religion of peace. In our time, it is a religion in distress, fought over, hijacked at times, by a militant breed at war with the modern world.

Read it all from the op-ed page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

An online music video praising Osama bin Laden has driven home a troubling new reality: A radical brand of Islam embraced by al-Qaida and the Taliban is gaining a foothold in the Balkans.

“Oh Osama, annihilate the American army. Oh Osama, raise the Muslims’ honor,” a group of Macedonian men sing in Albanian, in video posted on YouTube last year and picked up by Macedonian media this August. “In September 2001 you conquered a power. We all pray for you.”

Although most of Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority are Muslims, they have generally been secular. But experts are now seeing an increasing radicalization in pockets of the country’s Islamic community, particularly after armed groups from the ethnic Albanian minority, which forms a quarter of the population of 2.1 million, fought a brief war against Macedonian government forces in 2001.

Read it all.

In Pakistan — second only to Indonesia in the number of Muslims who live there — competing versions of Islam are at play, said John Voll, professor at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.

Most Westerners regard tensions within Islam as a struggle between its two largest branches: Sunnis, who constitute a significant majority of Muslims in Pakistan and worldwide, and Shiites, a distinct minority in most Muslim nations except for Iran and Iraq.

But Voll said the developing fissure is “much more between political-elite, stability-oriented Sunni Muslims and the radical extremists” who are also Sunnis.

A visiting professor at the Georgetown center, Shireen Hunter, said Sunnis are targeting minority Shiites, but the indiscriminate nature of suicide bombings means members of both branches get killed.

Read it all.

IT is often thought the main threat of radical Islamism to the West and, indeed, the world, is terrorism. It is also said to be the isolation of Muslim communities, which allows extremists to recruit people to their cause.

Such views are not mistaken but they confuse effects with causes. What the world has to recognise is that we are not simply dealing with faith, but with a political, social and economic ideology. Radical Islamism is a worldview. Its nearest parallel, despite many differences, is Marxism.

Radical Islamists claim their all-encompassing program for society is rooted in fundamental Islamic sources. They reject the interpretations of Koran and sharia law offered by reformist or moderate Muslims. We must, of course, respect the faith of ordinary Muslims, but the ideology has to be met in a different way.

Read it all.

Soothing misunderstandings between American Christians and American Muslims begins with a renewed national commitment to the free exercise of religion. In no way should the government try to prevent the building of the Islamic center at Ground Zero. With this safeguard in place, it should be easier to move the discussion to questions of propriety. With the anniversary of 9/11 upon us, America needs no more gratuitous statements or actions from either Christians or Muslims. Enough damage has been done already, by both Christians and Muslims.

Thankfully, there are very few things that, as Americans, we don’t have the right to do. But just because we can do (or build, or burn) something doesn’t make it a good idea.

Read it all.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf promised on Monday to resolve the fierce dispute around plans to build a Muslim community center and mosque two blocks from ground zero, and he gave personal reflections about Islam and terrorism and about his identity as an American and a Muslim.

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, he promised to find a way out of the current impasse around the planned center, which opponents say is insensitive to the memory of 9/11 and which supporters say sends the opposite message, that Muslims, like other Americans, object to and were victims of the attacks.

“Everything is on the table,” he said. “We really are focused on solving it” in a way that will be best for everyone concerned, he added. “I give you my pledge.”

Read it all.

There is no simple way for American Muslims to move forward.

Images of violence overseas in the name of Islam have come to define the faith for many non-Muslims at home. The U.S. remains at war in Afghanistan, and although America has formally declared an end to its combat operations in Iraq, U.S. troops there continue to fight alongside Iraqi forces.

Within the U.S., domestic terror has become a greater threat, while ignorance about what Islam teaches is widespread. More than half of respondents in a recent poll by the Pew Forum for Religion & Public Life said they knew little or nothing about the Muslim faith.

Some U.S. Muslims say their national organizations share the blame, for answering intricate questions about Islam with platitudes, and failing to fully examine the potential for extremism within their communities. Muslim leaders often respond when terrorists strike by saying Islam is a “religion of peace” that has no role in the violence instead of confronting the legitimate concerns of other Americans, these Muslim critics say.

Read it all.