Jesus of Nazareth belongs to that category of human beings whose performance and legacies have combined to make them the most widely-recognized names in human histories.

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A number of questions can be raised about the National Prayer Breakfast and its relevance to the American experience and the American dream of being a better society and a God-loving community of believers.

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Since former president Jimmy Carter published his most recent book on the Palestinians and Israel, the debate about anti-Semitism has captured the imagination of many Americans.

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There was a time when Catholics were not fully welcomed into the inner councils of closely guarded Protestant citadels of power in this country.

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The Mormons provide an example to any minority American religious group how to withstand suffering and how best to cultivate the challenges and threats of the past into future benefits and advantages.

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Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was born on August 11, 1933, passed away on May 15 2007. He led services at Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. He changed affiliations from the more traditional Baptist Bible Fellowship International to the mainly conservative Southern Baptist Convention. He ended his self-identification with fundamentalism in favor of evangelicalism.

He will enter the history books as a religious and political force that sought to affect the direction of American religious and political history. Through his religious and social maneuvers as well as his political rhetoric, he helped create in American life a new way of getting traditional Christians, who heretofore were to a certain degree allergic to political matters, more receptive to the callings of his caravan. In doing so he thought and believed American life and thought would reverse the secularizing tendencies. Caught in the web of the Cold War and the culture war in his own country, he tried to exercise political influence among the politicians and spiritual magnetisms among the rank and file Christians of American society.

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Pagan rights can be a subject of dispute only when the state and society are not in sync with respect to the standing of the Pagans as members of society and to the public acknowledgment of their status as fellow citizens.

There are three points to remember about this matter. The first is the question of citizenship and the right of the Pagan to live and let live with Pagan or non-Pagan members of American society. Because the state allows Americans to believe or not to believe in a Deity (monotheism as in the case of the Abrahamic religions), secularism, polytheism and many other world views have coexisted with the Monotheists for many decades.

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Faith and doubt are twin brothers or sisters in the human condition. The Qur'an recognizes the capacity of the human being to believe or not to believe. Believing in the visible and the tangible is more widely acknowledged by most people when they are confined within their own mental estate. When they venture beyond their own world into the wide world of others where language and concepts rule, chances are one may claim belief when in actual fact belief is not the thing in place, social solidarity has become the mother of all faiths. This is true of religious belief as well as secular faith in ideologies.

There are a number of things to ponder about this revelation about Mother Theresa. To me such revelations are merely articulations of her spiritual journey which was unknown to all of us but a few who travel led along with her in their universe of fears and hopes, promises and anxieties. She was a human being and her belief is Jesus and Christianity most probably were reinforced by the element of doubt.

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The Dalai Lama is a man of peace and a maker of world history. His statement is true at three levels.

No religion has ever appeared on this planet that advocates suicide, homicide and genocide. All of them, to the best of my knowledge, preach the language of peace between the creatures of the planet. On this point of convergence which advocates the common bond of humanity that links all of us together, the Dalai Lama is on the right side of the road of life.

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Every year since I knew myself as a young Muslim kid growing up in the Gambia, Christians in Africa, in Europe and in the United States of America where I have lived for over forty years, Christians have celebrated Christmas with fun and joy.

What was striking to me in my childhood days back in the Gambia, then a British colony, was the fact that Christians were joined by certain Muslims in this festival. Not only did you have young Muslims dressed in masquerades dancing joyously with their Christian friends but local communities in Bathurst (now called Banjul) built lanterns known as Fanal. According to David P. Gamble, the well known British anthropologist who pioneered research in this field in the Gambia over fifty years ago and spent a large part of his life in the U.S., traced the roots of this phenomenon back to the Portuguese influence in the Gambia.

Apparently, though the Portuguese Catholics failed to make significant inroads in terms of conversion of Gambians, their legacy includes part of this phenomenon of Muslim-Christian celebrations during the month of Christmas.

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Einstein has been quoted as saying," science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind." If these words of wisdom from one of the most celebrated scientists are taken seriously by both scientists and religious people, then one can make the statements I am going to assert in this brief piece.

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