Do I believe in God? Yes. But what has that really told you about me? I’m Jewish. Whether you know some or a great deal about Judaism that would still tell you little about me. The same would apply, I believe, if I had been born Catholic, Presbyterian, Muslim or Hindu. The label means nothing. You will only know us in this world by our deeds, by the way we live, and by the way we treat our fellows.

Locked deep down in each of us is our own personal, utterly unique, understanding of and compact with our Maker. "Call that a him or a her, call it God, the deity, creator, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus or Yehuda, like no two snowflakes, no two thumbprints, our compacts with that entity are absolutely individual, no two alike."

Not to belabor the point, but I submit that three hundred or three thousand people, sitting knee to knee in the same pew of the same church every Sunday year after year, praying together from the same sacred text, no two congregants are having the same inner experience. The sacred texts we read from and the church strictures we observe may nurture our relationships with the entity we are worshiping, but the specifics of that relationship are buried deep within each of us and should remain there.

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I have just returned from a remarkable meeting of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church. It was remarkable for its importance, its intensity, and its civility. Yet, contrary to the expectations of many, our recommendations, “though not unanimously endorsed by the House, came at the conclusion of long and gracious conversation.”

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We do not know exactly why Tariq Ramadan cannot set foot in the United States. But given what we do know, that policy is a disaster.

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The past few weeks, I have been traveling in the U.S. – Los Angeles, Hawaii, New York City, and Washington, D.C. – to meet with a variety of church groups, political groups, and nonprofit organizations.

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Muslims in America today seem to have lost the right to be individuals. We are treated as a collectivity – responsible as a group for any crime committed by another Muslim or done in the name of Islam.

Shortly after 9/11, I wrote an article stating that Muslims have the greatest obligation to reject terrorism and political violence committed in the name of Islam. I still believe this is the case. Islam does not have a centralized authority; there is no universally recognized council of scholars or clerics who speak on behalf of all Muslims.

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In the just-published paperback edition of American Theocracy, I replaced the old 9-page introduction with a new 40-page version. Part of the reason was to update the book in the light of the 2006 elections and the passage of another year relative to oil, debt and the Middle East. But a second motivation was to clarify how and why the book was written.

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To justify its existence, every religion must differentiate itself from secular culture—but not too much, or the sect will repel non-members.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(Mormonism) walks an especially narrow line between being too ordinary and too strange, because it is based on the truth claims of infallible “living Prophets.” Some of these fall outside secular norms, or have been scientifically disconfirmed (LDS scholars are occasionally excommunicated for research that contradicts doctrine).

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Grateful for this unique opportunity, I share with pleasure my reflections as we Catholics of Bosnia-Herzegovina and other citizens commemorate the April 1997 visit of Pope John Paul II.

The Pontiff presented himself as a pilgrim of peace and he remains for all of us a strong moral leader who raised his voice supporting this multi-ethnic country and believing that a just peace is reachable and enjoyable to all of us.

We as members of three ethnic communities do differ in looking for concrete structures of our shared homeland, but in commemorating this anniversary we agree that this visit was an encouraging event for all of us.

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Pope Benedict XVI may have been flying to Brazil and speaking about Mexico City, but his in-flight words to reporters on May 9 have caused a stir here in the United States. Initial headlines raised the specter of papal excommunication for Mexico City politicians who voted to expand abortion rights. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi quickly clarified the Pope's comments; such politicians were not excommunicated, but "legislation in favor of abortion is not compatible with participation in the Eucharist."

Even with excommunication headlines missing the mark, the story hits home here in the United States. It raises questions for pro-choice Catholic candidates in both the Republican and Democratic primaries. Reporters brought up the issue last week with Rudy Giuliani. His response, "I don't get into debates with the pope," is unlikely to be the last word we hear on the subject.

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The first assignment I give the graduate students in my class at Chicago Theological Seminary is Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. I figure it is only fair for them to do a thorough reading of perhaps the most prevalent theory of our times.

And then I spend the rest of the semester trying to dig out of that hole.

It’s not that my students – most of them bright, progressive, hopeful people of faith – want to believe that there is a clash of civilizations. It is that Huntington has created a framework that facts seem to fit in. And as our media continues to provide a microphone and a stage for religious totalitarians, the Huntington thesis that civilizations are inherently at odds with each other acquires the force of inevitability, which makes it the single most dangerous idea of our time.

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By Salman Ahmad

Long before 9/11 and the subsequent drum beat of a war on terror and talk of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistan's greatest musical export, sang ecstatically about the Oneness of God and love for humanity.

Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu, all people with or without faith who tuned into the power and emotion of his voice were transported to another place, beyond the self-created ghettos of the mind and into a spiritual wonderland of joy and transcendence.

I was first introduced to Nusrat in 1990 by the Pakistani cricket captain, Imran Khan, for whose cancer hospital we did a fund-raising tour of concerts together. Having been born in Lahore and grown up in New York, my musical leanings were the blues and classic rock: John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and Pink Floyd. As a result, I felt a little out of place arriving at Lahore's Alhamra arts council carrying a stratocaster and a guitar amp to my first Qawwali rehearsal with the celebrated Nusrat.

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In a world in which Islamophobes blur the distinction between the barbaric acts of Muslim extremists and terrorists and the religion of Islam, two recent legal decisions in Sudan and Saudi Arabia will reinforce accusations that Islam is an intolerant religion.

After years of civil war and bloodshed and having failed to effectively respond to what some describe as genocide in Darfur, Sudan’s government and judiciary have captured global attention with an outrageous verdict of guilt for a British school teacher for allegedly insulting Islam.
In a case in which it is clear that Gillian Gibbons did not intend to malign the Prophet Muhammad and that the children in her class had chosen the name Muhammad for their class teddy-bear, some might still question why she was not more culturally sensitive to a potential backlash. That said, school officials or the courts could have asked her to apologize for an inadvertent “mistake” in judgment. But instead, Gibbons who had made the decision and sacrifice to teach in Sudan, was found guilty of ‘insulting religion,’ a victim to a court’s distorted notion of Islamic law and justice.

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