When Jane Stranz of the World Council of Churches emailed me a link to her blog about me, I thought I should mention something here that is already out there on the web. The Conference of European Churches in Geneva has awarded its John Templeton Award for the European Religion Writer of the Year 2006 to yours truly.

The award was for articles on the Atlas of Creation, a Muslim creationist book by Harun Yahya (left) that was mysteriously distributed for free in Turkey (and later more widely in Europe), Vienna imam Sheikh Adnan Ibrahim who says yes to Europe but no to Euro-Islam and a French comic book by René Pétillon called The Headscarf Affair (right) that spoofs the debate about Muslim headscarves.

At the award ceremony in Paris this week, I gave a short speech about the problems international religion writers face when struggling to express untranslatable foreign words and concepts in English. Since much of our reporting and research is done in foreign languages, this is a constant challenge. Ecumenical News International has a short item on the speech and the text.

With Muslim women’s headgear becoming a political issue in some European countries, do you think journalists in these countries are right to adopt words like hijab or niqab as better terms to use than headscarf or veil?

Two Dutch politicians seem to be doing their best to stir up a controversy with Muslims. The far-right MP Geert Wilders says he wants to make a film for television about the Koran. Ehsan Jami, an Iranian-born local councillor who launched a Committee of Ex-Muslims in September, plans a film called “The Life of Mohammad.” Both are due to be ready early next year.

Shades of the bloody protests over the Danish Prophet Mohammad cartoons and Theo van Gogh’s murder for his film “Submission”…

Are we in for another “free-speech-versus-blasphemy” (or, to put it more bluntly, “West-versus-Islam”) clash?

Wilders, who has compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and called for it to be banned, says he only wants to express his opinions. “It is not my intention to offend people. I just want to illustrate my opinions, which I have expressed as a member of parliament,” he said. “If people do feel offended, that is a shame, but it is not my problem.” The Dutch justice and foreign ministers have met him to discuss the risks to himself and Dutch interests abroad if he makes the film. Jami says his film will “stir up more dust than the Danish Mohammad cartoons,” according to an interview with him in the Amsterdam daily De Telegraaf. “I show how violent and tyrannical Mohammad was. This man murdered three Jewish tribes, killed people who left the faith and married a 6-year-old girl, with whom he had sex when she was 9 … I will give 50,000 euros to anyone who can refute these facts.”

Is this a train crash just waiting to happen? Has anybody learned anything from the Dutch and Danish cases? Should anybody take precautions to prevent a clash — and if so, who should take which ones?