A counseling program that employs Muslim clerics to rebut extremist views of detainees has steadily reduced their numbers over the past four years in Singapore, suggesting that religious-based rehabilitation may offer an alternative to indefinite detention without trial in the US-led war on terrorism.

Faced with swelling detention centers, US military commanders in Iraq have begun to take note. In recent months, they have introduced religious-education programs for adults and juveniles that are modeled, in part, on Singapore’s and on a much larger program in Saudi Arabia.

Setbacks in a similar program in Yemen, shelved in 2005 because of high rates of recidivism, had raised doubts about the approach. Experts also distinguish between rehabilitating low-level sympathizers and hardened leaders of terrorist groups, groups, who may see little to gain from cooperating with authorities.

But proponents say that an effective counterterrorism strategy must include efforts to combat religious indoctrination, especially for suspects held behind bars. Injustice is a recruiting tool, and open-ended detention of suspects is an affront to many Muslims. Releasing them into the community armed with Islamic teachings that debunk Al Qaeda’s do-or-die rhetoric can help to win a “war of ideas,” the proponents argue.

“Deprogramming is not 100-percent successful. Among suspects that you rehabilitate, some will go back (to militancy). But it’s the only intelligent thing to do,” says Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Nanyang Technological University and a consultant on the Singaporean program. “We’ve planted a seed.”¦ Iraq was the beginning. I believe America can take this idea to Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and other areas.”

Read it all.

I am having one of those days where things line up in a pattern in an amazing way. This show tells a remarkable story of repentance, and it just happened to be what I listened to on Podcast during my run this morning:

Sam Slaven is an Iraq War veteran who came home from the War plagued by feelings of hate and anger toward Muslims. TAL producer Lisa Pollak tells the story of the unusual action Sam took to change himself, and the Muslim students who helped him do it

It is also an incredibly powerful reminder of some of the real cost involved in the Iraq War.

Listen to it all (34 minutes and very worth the time).

I was thrilled last year to hear my family’s friend, the author Katherine Paterson, interviewed on NPR. I was quite *interested* — but I wouldn’t say thrilled — to hear the contribution of another person I know, on NPR the other day. Another “Silver Bay person”, in fact.

This was Kendall Harmon; I guess these days, that’s the Reverend, Dr., Kendall Harmon. When I knew him, he was a kid at Silver Bay, NY, a couple years older than me. Just another of the “big kids”, into sports and stuff. His family’s very well known and respected in Silver Bay; his mom was a prominent, I guess you’d say, liberal social activist; she just recently died, and is much-missed. Kendall was, and is, very smart and eloquent; but his own personal direction and focus seems to be a little… different…I guess he is becoming one of the mainstays of the Christian Conservative movement; or so I hear. It seems his particular focus is the anti-gay crusade, bringing the Bible back into the Bedroom, that sort of thing. Funny how our paths have diverged…

So it’s not surprising that I’d find my views differ with Kendall’s, on most things. What is surprising is that I found myself *agreeing* with him, in his contribution to this story.

So this NPR story concerned a minister in Seattle, a woman of last name Redding, who is controversial because she is both Muslim and Christian. She started out Christian, but had a faith-moment where she also accepted the tenets of Islam, but you wouldn’t call it a “conversion” because she (in her own mind) still holds to Christianity as well. For her, it is not contradictory to accept both. But her church has suspended her from ministry, because *they* find it contradictory; well, the leadership so finds it: her congregation supports her. So it makes for a good story, and I’m interested that I didn’t know about it already as a local story, before hearing it on NPR.

Kendall’s point — which seems to be one of his running themes, bringing the church back to a stricter interpretation of scripture –was that regardless of what feels OK to this person personally, the scripture of Christianity is quite clear (he says — I don’t know if it is or it isn’t but I think it might be) that you can have no other messiahs or prophets than Jesus.

Read it all. Now, I bumped into this the other day and had a debate with myself about posting it since I really do not like to talk much about me on the blog.

So, why the post? A number of reasons. First, because it illustrates the complexity of the current debate in terms of where people are coming from. Who would guess that my Mom was like that? People don’t fit into pigeonholes, they are complex, and when the media stories try to portray things in terms of American politics or a two category scheme–this versus that–they miss key dimensions of the struggle and the people involved.

Second, this is a good example of what one of my friends calls the everyone-who-has-a-keyboard-is-a-Pope phenomenon on the Internet. You get partial information–sometimes very partial, but then the conclusions drawn do not necessarily follow. Nevertheless the person at the keyboard can and does make them. We have more information in the information age, but, alas, not more wisdom.

The conclusions drawn here are false, but they are typical. I know this author, he is very gifted and bright, and comes from a wonderful family. But how can he say: “So it’s not surprising that I’d find my views differ with Kendall’s, on most things.” Most things? Good heavens! How many things does he know we differ about? We have not even talked about it at all. One difference does not lead to a host of other differences. I have in my email bag from the last year a note from a communications director in one of the Episcopal Church’s dioceses which essentially says: “I differ with you on just about every aspect of the Episcopal Church but I thought you would like to know…”.–and then she sent me some information. The name and the diocese are not important. But how could she know we differ on all those things? I would lay odds that it isn’t true, but it is another example of the kinds of false assumptions and judgments made, all based on one issue and one stand. And this happens by reasserters in their evaluation of reappraisers AND vice versa.

Finally, this is a good illustration of the way in which caricatures get constructed. I am not actually about “bringing the church back to a stricter interpretation of scripture.” I am trying to enable the church of which I am a part to read the Scriptures with the church–both spread through history and throughout the world. Unfortunately I am in a church which is in the process of so losing the center of the Christian faith that to raise these questions means one is caricatured (falsely) this way. Actually, I am regularly accused of being a “liberal” in many settings (and was in fact criticized as one on the floor of one of our own diocesan Conventions at one time, for putting forward a resolution against a state sponsored lottery in South Carolina). That in any case is a longer story for another time.

I would like to see more provisional judgments, less caricatures, and less of a tendency to turn one or two observations or articles into a detailed evaluation of someone else’s perspective. Both the issues and the people involved get short shrift as that is done–KSH.

The Episcopal Church has suspended one of its priests, Anne Holmes Redding, for one year after her announcement this summer that she is both a Christian and a Muslim. A local Muslim leader’s speech to Redding’s church two years ago inspired her to begin attending Muslim prayer services while she was still serving her local diocese.

Listen to it all from NPR’s Day to Day Program. Pay particular attention to what she says she believes about Jesus.

THE instructor held up an unfurled green condom as she lectured a dozen brides-to-be on details of family planning. But birth control was only one aspect of the class, provided by the government and mandatory for all couples before marriage. The other was about sex, and the message from the state was that women should enjoy themselves as much as men and that men needed to be patient, because women need more time to become aroused.

This is not the picture of Iran that filters out across the world, amid images of women draped in the forbidding black chador, or of clerics in turbans. But it is just as much a part of the complex social and political mix of Iranian society ”” and of the state’s continuing struggle, now three decades old, to shape the identity of its people.

In Iran, pleasure-loving Persian culture and traditions blend and conflict with the teachings of Shiite Islam, as well as more than a dozen other ethnic and tribal heritages. Sex education here is not new, but the message has been updated recently to help young people enjoy each other and, the Islamic state hopes, strengthen their marriages in a time when everyday life in Iran is stressful enough. The emphasis on sexual pleasure, not just health, was recognition that something was not right in the Islamic Republic.

Such flexibility is one way the government shapes, or is shaped by, society’s attitudes and behavior. These days, however, its use is an exception. The current government has become far better known for employing the opposite strategy: insisting that society and individuals bend to its demands and to its chosen definition of what it is to be a citizen of Iran.

In fact, both tools remain part of a larger goal: securing the Islamic Republic by remolding people’s own definitions of themselves. In that way, the strategy resembles the failed effort in the Soviet Union to build a national identity ”” the New Soviet Man ”” that was based on its own criteria. The Communists used youth camps and raw terror; anyone challenging that identity, which in their case was atheistic, was seen as challenging the state.

Read it all.

Almost every standard world history textbook celebrates Islam’s golden age of science. Between the ninth and 13th centuries, Muslim scholars not only translated the great works of Greek medicine, mathematics, and science but also pushed the frontiers of discovery in all of those areas. They improved and named algebra, refined techniques of surgery, advanced the study of optics, and charted the heavens. Then, toward the end of the 13th century, something mysterious happened: The scientific spirit seemed to die almost completely.

Today, most predominantly Muslim countries benefit daily from the fruits of science and technology, and most of the leaders of these nations at least pay lip service to the importance of scientific education. Arab analysts, in recent U.N.-backed reports on the deplorable state of human development in 22 Arab countries, have consistently called for more robust support for “knowledge acquisition” as a crucial step toward catching up with other regions of the world.

Yet according to the distinguished Pakistani scientist Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, chair of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the news from the Islamic world is not very encouraging. And if his report in the August issue of Physics Today is accurate, it seems that not only science but the critical reasoning that undergirds it is in a precarious state.

Hoodbhoy marshals an array of data to demonstrate that the commitment to real scientific study and research in Muslim nations still lags far behind international averages.

For example, the 57 nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference can boast only 8.5 scientists per 1,000 population, while the world average is 40.7. Of the lowest national producers of scientific articles in 2003, half are members of the OIC. The OIC countries spend about 0.3 percent of their gross national product on research and development, in contrast to the global average of 2.4 percent.

Read the whole piece.

Ah, dialogue. That would be refreshing when it involves Islam.

The truth is, the most virulent “Islamophobia” plaguing America is the fear of offending Muslims. We’ve grown gun-shy about speaking up and granted radical Islam a formidable power over us from which the Bill of Rights restrains Congress: abridging our freedom of speech.

Now, I’m not hanging a radical tag on Zaghari-Mask. While I believe that on this she was a mite thin-skinned, in America she owns the right to speak her mind. And that’s the point.

Yet, since 9-11, we’ve often ceded that right, often exercising free speech about Muslims with chilled restraint. Just look at Hollywood.

Two years ago, CAIR decried a story line about a Muslim sleeper cell on the popular Fox network series 24 because the portrayal might “increase Islamophobic stereotyping and bias.” So Fox issued a disclaimer.

That same year, Fox swaddled in the free-speech blanket when incensed Christians blasted an episode of Family Guy. God, in the episode, lies beside a blond bombshell who produces a condom.

Read it all.

At the Jamia Mosque on Victor Street in this racially and religiously tense town, Idris Watts, a teacher and convert to Islam, tackled a seemingly mundane subject with a dozen teenage boys: why it is better to have a job than to be unemployed.

“The prophet said you should learn a trade,” Mr. Watts told the students arrayed in a semicircle before him. “What do you think he means by that?”

“If you get a trade it’s good because then you can pass it on,” said Safraan Mahmood, 15.

“You feel better when you’re standing on your own feet,” offered Ossama Hussain, 14.

The back and forth represented something new in Britain’s mosques: a government-financed effort to teach basic citizenship issues in a special curriculum intended to reach students who might be vulnerable to Islamic extremism.

In the long haul, the British government hopes that such civics classes, which use the Koran to answer questions about daily life, will replace the often tedious and sometimes hard-core religious lessons taught in many mosques across the land. Often, these lessons emphasize rote learning of the Koran and are taught by imams who were born in Pakistan and speak little English and have little contact with British society.

Read it all.

Ingrid Mattson knows the media drill well.

She has done the “We condemn ”¦ (fill in the terrorism incident)” speeches ”” as if, she says, that’s all anyone needs to hear from the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

She has done the profiles of her as first woman/first convert/first North American-born head of the continent’s largest Muslim group.

She has done the talk shows retelling how 20 years ago, she left the Catholicism of her Canadian childhood and her college focus on philosophy and fine arts to find her spiritual home in Islam.

“It’s time now to move the focus back off me and back on the issues,” says Mattson, a professor at Hartford Seminary, where she directs the first U.S.-accredited Muslim chaplaincy program at the Macdonald Center.

Read it all.

The path to faith often takes unexpected twists. In the case of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the road went through three of the world’s major religions — Judaism, Islam and Christianity — and ultimately brought him to the FBI.

Born to Jewish parents who call themselves mystics, he grew up in what he calls the “liberal hippie Mecca” of Ashland, Oregon, a town of about 20,000 near the California border. It was in this ultraliberal intellectual environment that a young Gartenstein-Ross experimented with a radical form of Islam that eventually led him to shun music, reject women’s rights and even refuse to touch dogs because he believed this was “according to God’s will.”

“I began to pray for the mujahedeen, for these stateless warriors who were trying to topple secular governments,” he said.

Read it all.

At the conclusion of the Friday service, the Central Mosque of Charleston congregation stands to prayer on Friday.

The message Imam Mohamed Melhem delivered during the Friday afternoon prayer service at the Central Mosque of Charleston emphasized the unity of Islam and its universal message of peace.

But in the wake of the recent arrests of two Egyptian students driving through Goose Creek, he also expressed the collective frustration of local Muslims, many of whom think the public reaction to the arrests has been exaggerated and unfair.

“The media went crazy,” Melhem said. “Most Muslims are good citizens and good contributors to society.”

And nothing much is yet known about the two students, he said, so why the rush to judgment?

“We believe in the system and the court of law and believe it will be fair,” he said.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s local paper.

When pools of water began accumulating on the floor in some restrooms at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and the sinks pulling away from the walls, the problem was easy to pinpoint. On this campus, more than 10 percent of the students are Muslims, and as part of ritual ablutions required before their five-times-a-day prayers, some were washing their feet in the sinks.

The solution seemed straightforward. After discussions with the Muslim Students’ Association, the university announced that it would install $25,000 foot-washing stations in several restrooms.

But as a legal and political matter, that solution has not been quite so simple. When word of the plan got out this spring, it created instant controversy, with bloggers going on about the Islamification of the university, students divided on the use of their building-maintenance fees, and tricky legal questions about whether the plan is a legitimate accommodation of students’ right to practice their religion ”” or unconstitutional government support for that religion.

“It’s an awkward thing,” said Alexis Oesterle, a junior. “If I’m sitting with Muslim friends, I wouldn’t want to bring it up. In this country, at this time, it’s not so easy to discuss the issues of Muslims in American society.”

Read it all.

The day is sunny and hot, the hamburgers are on the grill, the kids are jumping on the moon bounce and about 400 people are milling around the brand new Dar Al Noor mosque in Manassas, Va.

Neighbors and members of the congregation are here ”” even Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is coming. James Dade, a non-Muslim who lives nearby, is manning the grill. As he hands a burger to a Muslim friend, he turns and gives this assessment of his new neighbors.

“They’re very friendly, very helpful, very community-oriented,” he says, noting that his best friend attends Dar Al Noor. “If there were more Christians like my friend, we wouldn’t have any problems in this world.”

Listen to it all.

Muslims around the world increasingly reject suicide bombings and other violence against civilians, according to a new international poll dealing with how the world’s population judges their lives, countries and national institutions.

A wide ranging survey of international attitudes in 47 countries by the Pew Research Center also reported that in many of the countries where support for suicide attacks has declined, there has also has been decreasing support for Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden.

The 95-page survey found that surging economic growth in many developing countries has encouraged people in these countries to express satisfaction with their personal lives, family income and national conditions, said Andrew Kohut, the center’s director.

“It’s a pro-globalization set of findings,” Kohut said.

Most notably, the survey finds large and growing number of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere rejecting Islamic extremism. Ten mainly Muslim countries were surveyed along with the Palestinian territories, as well as five African nations with large Muslim populations.

Read it all.

Fareed Siddiq is a successful businessman and a father of two. He lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio””a 19th-century mill town built on a river and known for its scenic waterfalls and dams””in a five-bedroom house he recently paid for, in cash, with his savings. Prominent in local civic and religious organizations, including the Red Cross and the chamber of commerce, Siddiq was invited to the InterContinental Hotel in downtown Cleveland earlier this month along with about 400 other business leaders to hear President George W. Bush speak.

He was moved to ask his president a question: “What,” he asked, hauling his 6-foot-5, 245-pound frame to the microphone, “are we doing with public diplomacy to change the hearts and minds of a billion and a half Muslims around the world?” What should he tell his friends and relatives in Pakistan about why he continues to live in the United States?

“Great question,” answered the president. “I’m confident your answer is, ‘I love living in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, the country where you can come and ask the president a question and a country where””’ Are you a Muslim?”

“Yes,” answered Siddiq.

“Where you can worship your religion freely. It’s a great country where you can do that.”

It was a good answer, says Siddiq, but not enough for him””not when he, a financial adviser at a major investment bank, is afraid to use the bathroom on flights because he doesn’t want to frighten his fellow passengers as he walks down the aisle. He thinks anti-Muslim sentiment in the country is getting worse, not better.

Read it all.

They sat facing each other, 14 evangelical preachers on one side, 12 U.S-based Arab diplomats on the other. Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the U.S., listened as introductions began, and he found himself amazed.

“Robertson, Falwell, Youssef. … I had heard these names before,” Fahmy later recounted, “and I have to admit I was surprised they were here.”

The initiative launched at that July 2 meeting came as a surprise to many. The evangelical community is known for its support of Israel, and many of its most outspoken leaders, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, have made incendiary comments about the Muslim world. But in recent months, an unusual rapprochement has begun between these two powerful communities, and the sons of some of those same pastors are participating.

Both sides have a lot to gain from a thaw. At a time when the evangelical leadership is seeking new outlets for influence, both domestically and abroad, it provides the possibility of an entree into the Arab world. For the representatives of the Arab-Muslim world, it offers the potential for improving relations with a previously hostile community as well as with Americans in general.

Whether this dialogue will lead to any concrete changes in an increasingly tense environment remains to be seen.

Read it all.

Will the advent of Gordon Brown seriously change the Government’s approach towards radical Islamism? Since the abortive attacks on a London night club and Glasgow airport, much energy has been expended on two issues: whether we can or can’t call terrorists Muslims and the number of days that the police can detain jihadi suspects.

But another, even more important, battle is being waged behind the scenes. Who should be the Government’s chosen Muslim partners in the struggle against radicalisation? Mr Brown is already facing a big push from an Islamist-friendly faction in the Cabinet, led by Jack Straw and John Denham, to bring the once pre-eminent Muslim Council of Britain back in from the cold.

The MCB was cast into outer darkness in October by Ruth Kelly, the first Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. The breaking point for the Blair Government had been the MCB’s denunciation of British foreign policy in the aftermath of the airlines plot of last August. Mass casualties had been narrowly averted ”“ but the best that the MCB could do was blame the West. Far from challenging extremism ideologically, it was appeasing it.

The MCB lost government money, but it always had plenty of funding from other sources. What really hurt the MCB was the loss of influence, as Government sought to engage with a wider range of groups such as the Sufi Muslim Council. How to get back inside the tent has therefore been a serious goal for the MCB in the intervening period; it had been counting the days till Mr Blair’s departure.

Read it all.

NEED TO VERIFY THIS. It is posted on a quite odd blog and was just circulated by Virtue. It could be some old article by Duin.
Daring Leaps of Faith
By Julia Duin
Courtesy The Washington Times

Having just come out of church, they were at an indoor cafe, conversing about former Muslims they knew who were now Christians. Some married into the faith. Some of the converts no longer believed in the Koran. Others said they had had visions or dreams of Jesus Christ. And others felt the Christian message of God becoming a man was more compelling than their faith. These converts face all kinds of dangers for having left Islam: ostracism from family members and friends, kidnappings and even death threats.

“Most of the people who come here start to question the Koran,” one of the Egyptians said. “They can read sources not available in our countries, especially sources in Arabic.” The government of Saudi Arabia, for example, blocks thousands of Web sites through its Internet Services Unit in Riyadh, including anything criticizing Islam. A Harvard University study conducted in May showed that out of 2,038 sites banned by the Saudis, 250 were religious.

In the West, seekers who’ve never heard a serious debate on Islam can click on Exmuslim.com, Islamreview.com and Arabicbible.com. Then there’s Paltalk.com, a chat site featuring discussions in various languages on a wide range of topics. Some former Muslims enter these chat rooms with the intent to convert Arabic speakers to Christianity, including “Sam Ash,” a New Jersey hairdresser.

“I ask them to prove to me that Islam is the way to God,” he said. “Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life. If you can show I have eternal life through Muhammad, I’ll become a Muslim this moment.”

There is no lack of people who wish to challenge him, which is why he will not divulge his real name.

“I’ve been hacked” into, he said, “and you should see the viruses people send me.”

Most of these converts keep their new affiliation secret, as Islam considers those who leave the faith to be apostates. According to Islamic law as practiced in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and in northern regions of Nigeria, the penalty for changing one’s religion is execution.

The U.S. State Department has documented numerous instances of religious persecution overseas against Muslim converts to Christianity. What is not so well known are the threats against such converts in the United States.

The full article is here.

The strained argument between the United States government and nonprofit groups over how to deal with charities suspected of supporting terrorism is expected to play out in federal court here with the trial of the largest Muslim charity in this country, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

[Jury selection in the trial began on Monday, and was expected to take most of the week.]

The government, in the lengthy indictment and other court documents, accuses the foundation of being an integral part of Hamas, which much of the West condemns as a terrorist organization. The prosecution maintains that the main officers of the Holy Land foundation started the organization to generate charitable donations from the United States that ultimately helped Hamas thrive.

The defense argues that the government, lacking proof, has simply conjured up a vast conspiracy by claiming that the foundation channeled money through public charity committees in the occupied territories that it knew Hamas controlled. The federal government, the defense says, has never designated these committees as terrorist organizations.

Read it all.

From the Washington Post:

Attending what Muslim American activists say is the highest-level meeting ever between Muslim American youths and U.S. officials, Mohamed Sabur couldn’t help but notice a frustrating paradox.

Part of what motivated the 23-year-old to leave computer science for politics was anger at seeing his community constantly defined by extreme topics such as religious violence. And yet Sabur sat last week through unprecedented meetings with officials from the departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice, and one subject kept coming up: Muslim American youth radicalization.

“I’m trying constantly to figure out: How can I be a civically involved Muslim, interact with other Muslims as well as the government while not seeming like a sellout, like my allegiance is in one camp or another?” the native Minnesotan said Friday, just before dinner on Capitol Hill with the two dozen other participants of the first National Muslim American Youth Summit, which ended yesterday. The summit was organized by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, one of the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy groups, to expose future leaders to the workings of a government many Muslims feel speaks about them but not to them.

Six years into a serious political and religious awakening prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks, American Muslims know why such meetings haven’t happened before. The community, 65 percent foreign-born, is just starting to build the type of institutions that can produce young Muslim civic leaders (some call this period “embryonic”). On the government side, things were just too brittle for a lot of invitations to be extended, officials say.

But what young Muslim Americans don’t know, summit participants said, is precisely what to do with their newfound drive.

Read it all.

From yesterday’s New York Times, page B5:

On a Saturday morning in September 1987, Eric Stern stood before the congregation of a Queens synagogue, chanting the Torah part for his bar mitzvah. His passage spanned several chapters of Deuteronomy and was notable for containing 74 of the 613 commandments that govern observant Jewish life.

One verse stipulated that a woman should never wear male clothing, or vice versa, or else be “abhorrent” in the eyes of God. The rule forms one strand in the fabric of biblical statements and Talmudic commentaries that espouse and indeed hallow a concept of modesty, known by the Hebrew word “tznius.”

About the same time that Mr. Stern was intoning the religious dress code, a teenage girl, Tahita Jenkins, was learning the same concept from the same passage a few neighborhoods away in Far Rockaway. Ms. Jenkins, though, happened to be an African-American Christian, and her Pentecostal church imbued her with the belief that, among other things, a woman should never wear pants.

While Ms. Jenkins gave over to that particular temptation a few times in high school, she stuck with long skirts all through her studies in technical college and jobs with a bank, hospital, grocery store and three bus companies. Only when she was hired as a New York City bus driver two months ago did her attire become an object of controversy, leading to her dismissal.

The dismissal, in turn, brought her to Mr. Stern, who is now her lawyer, and to a seemingly unlikely partnership that is, on closer inspection, altogether logical. The common bond of Orthodox Jew and Pentecostal Christian is a belief in the right of a devout person to dress according to religious belief, without the risk of being fired.

Read it all.

Idris Tawfiq is a British writer who became Muslim a few years ago. Previously, he was head of religious education in different schools in the United Kingdom. Before embracing Islam, he was a Roman Catholic priest. He now lives in Egypt.

One Religion or Two?
The Case of Anne Holmes Redding

[…] The question is, “Can you be Christian and Muslim at the same time?” I believe the answer to be a very resounding “No,” but it needs a bit of unpacking so we can understand exactly what is going on.

When I first heard the story, my immediate action was to go and look through some of my own papers. Some of you may know that I declared Shahadah and embraced Islam nearly seven years ago in Regent’s Park Mosque in London. Before being Muslim, I was a Roman Catholic priest. Not too long after embracing Islam, I came to live in Egypt.

[…]

I remember very clearly the words I had declared at Al-Azhar. The certificate, signed by the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar himself, contained the words I had uttered.

It says quite clearly that I reiterated [my] acknowledgement of the Islamic Faith, saying [first in Arabic and then in English]: I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.

The next paragraph is most interesting, because it contains the other words that I said: I also acknowledge that Moses, Jesus and all other Prophets are servants and Messengers of Allah. I renounce all religions other than Islam. Furthermore, I hereby and henceforth adhere to Islam as my Faith and Shari`ah.

So there we have it, quite clearly. I remembered saying the words, and I know that the words make sense. In becoming Muslim, we renounce all other religions.

The problem doesn’t lie in Islam accepting what had gone before. Because Muslims accept all former Prophets, as Prophets of Islam, they could not call themselves Christian or Jewish, but they would have no problem in saying that they are followers of Jesus or followers of Moses, since both of these men were Prophets of Islam.

Muslims believe that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the final Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets. The problem, in this situation, lies in what Christianity teaches. Christians believe that the final revelation of Almighty to God to humankind is in the person of Jesus Christ.

According to this belief, there are no more prophets after Jesus. A Christian would be unable to accept Muhammad as a prophet of God, because his Message denies some of what Christians have come to believe.

Anyone who claims to be Christian, then, can’t believe in Muhammad as a prophet. One of the central tenets of Christianity, regardless of the belief in Jesus as divine, is that Jesus died on the cross. The Message revealed to Muhammad in the Qur’an is quite clear: Jesus did not die on the Cross (An-Nisaa’ 4:157). So, anyone who claims to be Christian cannot be Muslim. And as we have said, anyone who claims to be Muslim cannot be the follower of another religion.

The situation of Reverend Redding is only fully known to Allah alone, who knows our intentions and the secrets of our hearts, but as the facts appear, she is neither Christian nor Muslim. Anyone in such a dilemma, having been a Christian minister and wanting to embrace Islam, has a very difficult choice to make.

As Muslims, we should never underestimate what it takes to renounce one’s former religion and embrace Islam. Just as we spend a great deal of time and money on calling others to Islam, we need also to spend similar, if not more, on helping those who have embraced Islam to grow in their new faith.

As an outsider to this particular case, it seems to me that her dilemma much reflects the doctrinal dilemmas being experienced by the Episcopal Church in the US, as much as her personal conversion story. It may be possible in her church to have a variety of beliefs, catering for a wide range of different points of view.

From the website Reading Islam. The full article is here.

Muslims and evangelical Christians are talking ”” at least behind closed doors at the Egyptian Embassy ”” according to several guests at a top-secret lunch last week.

The July 2 gathering lasted two hours and featured ambassadors from nine Arab states plus their umbrella group, and several prominent evangelical leaders or their sons.

“They were assessing the next generation,” said Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and one of the participants. “The meeting was reflective of the generational changes that are happening, and everyone knew it.”

The meeting, which was orchestrated by Pentecostal evangelist Benny Hinn, focused on two issues, though the two groups had differing priorities. Whereas the Americans wanted to discuss the lack of religious freedom in Muslim countries, the ambassadors wanted to know whether Christians could become more “balanced” in their support of Israel.

Read the whole article.

An interesting study by the Pew Forum concludes that in “intensity of religious identity,” Muslims are “not unlike Evangelicals.”

Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, and their holy book and many of their religious rituals are distinctly their own, Muslim Americans are by no means “the other” when it comes to religious life or politics in the United States. In many ways, they stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups.

In their level of religious commitment, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. In their basic political orientation, they closely resemble black Protestants as well as seculars. When it comes to their views on some social issues, such as homosexuality, Muslims’ conservatism matches that of white evangelicals. Muslims are even more likely than evangelicals or any other group to support a role for government in protecting morality.

Muslims account for less than one percent of the country’s population, whereas eight-in-10 Americans are Christian. Recent public opinion surveys by the Pew Research Center find that, with respect to the intensity of their religious beliefs, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. Within all three groups, large majorities (72% of Muslim Americans, 80% of white evangelicals and 87% of black Protestants) say religion is “very important” in their own lives. Those notably high percentages set all three groups apart from Catholics (49%) and white mainline Protestants (36%).

[…]

When asked about how they think of their personal identity, only about a quarter (28%) of all Muslim Americans say they identify themselves first as an American rather than as a Muslim. This number is strikingly similar to the percentage of white evangelicals (28%) and black Protestants (33%) who say they think of themselves first as American and only secondarily as Christian.

The full article, including lots of interesting tables, is here.

From today’s Wall Street Journal Europe:

In neat Arabic writing above the mirrors of the Easy Cut barbershop here, signs tell patrons to praise Allah, work toward paradise and refrain from talking politics in the shop.

“You’re not allowed to talk about religion or politics here because we don’t want trouble between our customers,” said Ejaz Ahmed, who owns the shop in this city’s Pollokshields section.

His modest storefront is around the corner from a mosque on Forth Street where police found a car tied to the plot to ram a burning jeep into Glasgow Airport’s main terminal on July 1.

As a handful of customers waited for haircuts and Middle Eastern news played on a grainy television set one recent afternoon, Mr. Ahmed said religion and politics can lead to heated argument and he would rather not risk it.

Read it all.

From the International Herald Tribune:

Prophet cartoons protester convicted in London of incitement to murder

LONDON: A speaker at a rally protesting against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was convicted Thursday of inciting murder.

Mizanur Rahman, 24, of London, spoke at a February 2006 demonstration protesting the publication in Europe of the cartoons, first published in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten daily.

Prosecutors showed video of Rahman speaking about British soldiers and saying, “We want to see them coming home in body bags. We want to see their blood running in the streets of Baghdad.”

Rahman also had placards calling for the beheading and annihilation of anyone who insulted Islam.

He and three others convicted of offenses at the demonstration face sentencing on July 18.

Rahman had pleaded not guilty, and said the microphone had been thrust into his hand and that he was only repeating chants from others.

From IHT
(hat tip: Abu Daoud)

=========

For those wishing to refresh their memory of Feb 2006’s Cartoon Crisis, Kendall has a lot of links and wrote an excellent analysis of the issue on his old blog. (If the old blog is down, here’s the Google Cache version).

To: Clergy, Members of Diocesan Council and Standing Committee
From: The Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf
Re: The Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding

As many of you know, The Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding is an Episcopal priest who has recently professed her faith in Islam. Dr. Redding is canonically resident in the Diocese of Rhode Island, though she has not served here for over twenty years.

After meeting with her I issued a Pastoral Direction giving her the opportunity to reflect on the doctrines of the Christian faith, her vocation as a priest, and what I see as the conflicts inherent in professing both Christianity and Islam. During the next year she is not to exercise any of the responsibilities and privileges of an Episcopal priest or deacon. Other aspects of the Pastoral Direction will remain private.

I am sending this e-mail to you because the continued web-site coverage suggests that I be as clear as possible with those exercising leadership in our diocese.

====
Update: The Living Church has an article with the news here.

Update: Jun 21, 05:00 EDT — Stand Firm’s newest entry on this is MUST reading, and puts the story in its larger context. Don’t miss it: Under the Radar…and Over the Cliff

The news from Seattle about the Rev. Ann Redding, an ECUSA priest in the diocese of Olympia who claims to be both a Christian and a Muslim, is generating a ton of interest around the blogosphere. (We’ll post some of those links here in a little while.)

It’s also generating a lot of comments. As of now, there are 128 comments on the Seattle Times’ story thread, meaning it’s in a tie for first-place among all T19 comment threads on the new blog.

Also of particular interest, we think, is that the story is generating NEGATIVE attention among some of our reappraising friends and bloggers. The AAC blog, for instance, is reporting that Jim Naughton, the communications director for the Diocese of Washington, and an influential reappraising blogger, is trying to encourage all other Episcopal “Communicators” (i.e. diocesan communications directors) to ignore and not publicize the story. Mind boggling.

We’ll pull together a round-up of links to this story from around the blogosphere shortly and add it to this post as an update.

UPDATE: Roundup of links we’ve seen (only a partial list, I’m sure) is below.
Original Story from Diocese of Olympia’s “Episcopal Voice”

Original Titusonenine comment thread on the Diocese of Olympia article

Original Stand Firm comment thread on Dio Olympia article

Albert Mohler’s blog: Clueless in Seattle — Can You Be Both a Christian and a Muslim?

Seattle Times: Q&A (Redding answers reader questions)

Seattle Times: Reader Feedback on Story

WorldNet Daily

Get Religion: She’s a dessert topping and a floor wax

Magpie Girl: Early Adaptor

Gospel Prism: Jesus Is the Only Way, but Allah Can Come Along Too

OK Preacher: Thumbs Down: Rev Ann Holmes Redding

David Fischler’s 3 part series at Reformed Pastor: Apostasy in the Great Northwest

Apostasy in the Great Northwest

Apostasy in the Great Northwest, Part 2

Apostasy in the Great Northwest, Part 3

From the Answering Muslims blog: Can a person be both a Christian and a Muslim?

From Ad Orientum: Apostasy… Not an Issue

Three entries from Chris Johnson at MCJ:
http://themcj.com/3186
http://themcj.com/3182
http://mcj.bloghorn.com/3164

Whitehall: “I am both Christian and Muslim”

IRD June 20 Press Release: Inclusion Run Amok: A Muslim/Episcopal Priest

Bishop Epting: Christian “and” Muslim?

Anglican Centrist (Fr Jones.com): Another One of those Crazy Episcopalians

Tobias Haller: Of Doubts and Discipline

Stand To Reason: Religion as Ice Cream

The Point (Breakpoint’s blog): The Priest Said to the Imam

Rod Dreher (Cruncy Cons): What Would we Do without TEC

The Corner (Mark Steyn): Interfaith Outreach (and Steyn was linked by Instapundit)

On the Verge: Episcopal Priest Defies Logic! (was posted at Stand Firm here)

Mark Shea (Catholic & Enjoying It): This Being Seattle…

Riddleblog: Worse than Caricature

The Reformed Evangelist: Koran-quoting “Christians”

Update 2:
A technorati search will bring up at least a dozen (or two… or three dozen) more references. Here are one or two that looked particularly noteworthy:

Christianity and Islam Merge in a Postmodern World

Pursuing Truth: “Muslim & Christian” Reverend: Jesus Is Not God

Spiritual Confusion

Balaam’s Ass: Both Christian & Muslim

Anyway, all of the links above suggest that Jim Naughton’s plan to hide the story isn’t going to work. It really is ALL over the blogosphere.

From the Seattle Times:

Some religious scholars understand Redding’s thinking.

While the popular Christian view is that Jesus is God and that he came to Earth and took on a human body, other Christians believe his divinity means that he embodied the spirit of God in his life and work, said Eugene Webb, professor emeritus of comparative religion at the University of Washington.

Webb says it’s possible to be both Muslim and Christian: “It’s a matter of interpretation. But a lot of people on both sides do not believe in interpretation. ”

Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky, agrees with Webb, and adds that Islam tends to be a little more flexible. Muslims can have faith in Jesus, he said, as long as they believe in Mohammed’s message.

Other scholars are skeptical.

“The theological beliefs are irreconcilable,” said Mahmoud Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. Islam holds that God is one, unique, indivisible. “For Muslims to say Jesus is God would be blasphemy.”

Frank Spina, an Episcopal priest and also a professor of Old Testament and biblical theology at Seattle Pacific University, puts it bluntly.

“I just do not think this sort of thing works,” he said. “I think you have to give up what is essential to Christianity to make the moves that she has done.

“The essence of Christianity was not that Jesus was a great rabbi or even a great prophet, but that he is the very incarnation of the God that created the world…. Christianity stands or falls on who Jesus is.”

Spina also says that as priests, he and Redding have taken vows of commitment to the doctrines of the church. “That means none of us get to work out what we think all by ourselves.”

Redding knows there are many Christians and Muslims who will not accept her as both.

“I don’t care,” she says. “They can’t take away my baptism.” And as she understands it, once she’s made her profession of faith to become a Muslim, no one can say she isn’t that, either.

Read the whole article.

Update: A previous thread on this story (an interview with Anne Redding in the Diocese of Olympia “Episcopal Voice”) is here.

This jihad etiquette is not written down, and for good reason. It varies as much in interpretation and practice as extremist groups vary in their goals. But the rules have some general themes that underlie actions ranging from the recent rash of suicide bombings in Algeria and Somalia, to the surge in beheadings and bombings by separatist Muslims in Thailand.

Some of these rules have deep roots in the Middle East, where, for example, the Egyptian Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi has argued it is fine to kill Israeli citizens because their compulsory military service means they are not truly civilians.

The war in Iraq is reshaping the etiquette, too. Suicide bombers from radical Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups have long been called martyrs, a locution that avoids the Koran’s ban on killing oneself in favor of the honor it accords death in battle against infidels. Now some Sunni militants are urging the killing of Shiites, alleging that they are not true Muslims. If there seems to be no published playbook, there are informal rules, and these were gathered by interviewing militants and their leaders, Islamic clerics and scholars in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and England, along with government intelligence officials in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

Islamic militants who embrace violence may account for a minuscule fraction of Muslims in the world, but they lay claim to the breadth of Islamic teachings in their efforts to justify their actions. “No jihadi will do any action until he is certain this action is morally acceptable,” says Dr. Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who runs a leading jihad Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, in London, where he now lives.

Here are six of the more striking jihadi tenets, as militant Islamists describe them…..

Read the whole article.