The answer is Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. At least that was the conclusion of the latest Pew Research Institute survey of attitudes about religion around the world — a look at 24 countries based on thousands of interviews. Indonesia came in first with 99 percent of the population rating religion as important or very important in their lives — and it topped everyone else in the “very important” slot at 95 percent. Beyond that 80 percent of those surveyed in Indonesia say they pray five times a day every day — adhering to one of the five pillars of Islam.

Indeed Islam is well represented in the top five countries where religion is valued in life — with Tanzania, Jordan, Pakistan and Nigeria following Indonesia.

At the bottom of the chart was France, where only 10 percent saw religion as very important and 60 percent said they never pray.

Indeed the wealthier, more developed nations in the world seem to care less about religion. Does that means circumstances trump faith? Or does it say more about the kind of faith involved? The Pew report drew few conclusions on that front but did say that Muslims consistently rated religion as central to their lives. By one estimate every fourth person on the planet is a Muslim, many living in some of its poorest quarters.

One anomaly in the new report involves the United States — and it may help explain to puzzled outsiders why faith is often wrapped in the the flag when it comes to politics and elections. In the list of countries rating the importance of religion, America, wealth not withstanding, lands about in the middle — with 55 percent saying religion is very important. That compares, for example, to 13 percent in Japan, 18 percent in Britain and 22 percent in Germany. In addition, 33 percent of Americans say they pray at least once a day, and only 11 percent say they never do.

Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish feelings are rising in several major European countries, according to a survey by the Washington- based Pew Research Center’s Global Attitude Survey. Mike Conlon in our Chicago bureau has summed up the report here.

Apart from the figures themselves, what struck me most was the way the study says the trends are moving. Pew said the upswing in anti-Muslim feelings came mostly between 2004 and 2006, with some falls since then, while the upswing of feelings against Jews has come mostly between 2006 and 2008. Is this matched by facts on the ground, such as attacks on religious people and sites or increasingly discriminatory acts or agitation against religious minorities? Or is this a change in mood that need surveys like this to be perceived?

The news media tend to focus on actual examples of such prejudices, such as the recent anti-mosque campaign in Italy or suspected anti-Semitic attack on a young Paris Jew, since these are news events that reflect prejudices. This is admittedly an imperfect measure (which, by the way, is one reason why we also report surveys like this). We don’t claim to be able to cover such events so thoroughly that we could track trends like Pew does. Even with that proviso, I’m not sure I would have said that Europe saw a surge of anti-Muslim feeling between 2004 and 2006 and a surge of anti-Jewish feeling since then. The evidence from actual events is difficult to read.

A certain level of prejudice and violence against both groups is always present. But events seem to point towards upswings in anti-Muslim feeling more right after 9/11 and then in recent years with the growing anti-mosque movement and the Prophet Mohammad cartoons controversy. As for anti-Jewish feeling across Europe, the upswing in actual anti-Semitic acts and rhetoric seemed stronger at the start of the second Intifada early in this decade. Maybe the fact that this poll series began in the summer of 2002 skews the data.

Do you see upswings in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim feelings going the way Pew sketches them, or differently?

Italy may soon say “basta” (enough!) to new mosques. The far-right Northern League party, allies of centre-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, wants to limit the growth of Islam in the centre of world Catholicism by blocking the construction of mosques through strict new regulations. My feature on this — “Italy’s right to curb Islam with mosque law” — outlines the proposed legislation.

One thing that struck me while researching the story was how much work the author of the draft law, Andrea Gibelli, seems to have done preparing this law. He quoted the Koran in Arabic, cited the legal systems of various Arab countries and said he had read “200 books” on the subject.  He also gave a clue to some of the thinking behind the draft legislation when he told us that he had been helped in his understanding of Islam by friends from the Middle East. It turns out they were Lebanese Druze and Coptic Christians from Egypt, members of minorities whose opinions may be coloured by their long and not always harmonious relations with Muslims.

The Northern League does not mince words — for example, it once advised the use of gunboats to scare off would-be illegal immigrants. Roberto Calderoli, now a cabinet minister, once walked his pet pig on a proposed mosque site to defile the soil there and  wore a T-shirt with a Danish caricature of the Prophet Mohammad, triggering riots in Libya. Gibelli’s bottom line was that building mosques in Italy at the current rate of expansion was a form of cultural colonisation. He said mosques “are often places of cultural indoctrination, sometimes linked to international terrorism.” They get in the way of Muslims integrating into Italy’s Catholic culture, he said. Anyway, he finally said, Muslims don’t really need them as the Koran states that they can “pray anywhere.”

Apart from Rome, whose Grand Mosque is a strong contender for the title of Europe’s biggest mosque, Muslims in Italy certainly do have to “pray anywhere” at the moment. Many local communities, and not just those with Northern League mayors, have found ways to block the construction of new places of Islamic worship. Even Italy’s business capital Milan has no proper mosque. Thousands of Muslims have been forced to pray on the pavement outside a converted garage known as the “Jenner Street mosque.” But  local authorities have decided this was too disruptive and moved them to a velodrome, where local media say the Muslims are charged for entry as if they were going to watch a race.

The left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper asked last week if, with many Muslims in the League’s north-east strongholds forced to worship “in hiding” during the current Ramadan, the current centre-right government was respecting the constitutional right to freedom of worship. Il Giornale, the paper owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s brother, reported on a “revolt against the mosques” in the north east. In the Veneto and Friuli regions, it said, about 150,000 Muslims who already have 40 prayer halls are asking for more, to the consternation of local communities.

Tensions concerning construction of new mosques have been reported from around Europe. What do you think about the way Italy is dealing with the issue?

The Church of England has just issued an apology to Charles Darwin for opposing his theory of evolution when The Origin of Species first came out 150 years ago. The Roman Catholic Church says it sees no need to say “sorry” for its initial hostility to the same theory. But both are now reconciled to evolution as solid science and are getting active in presenting their view that it is not incompatible with Christian faith. Is one approach better than the other to get this message across?

Next year’s double anniversary — the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species — is one reason to speak up about evolution. Another is the fact that evolution has become an increasingly controversial public issue, especially in the United States, and the debate is dominated by mostly conservative Protestant creationists and “intelligent design” supporters on one side and agnostic/atheistic scientists on the other.

That debate is so entangled in U.S. politics — the latest chapter being the questions about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s views on teaching creationism in schools — that a less polarised view has a hard time getting heard. Trying to walk a middle path can be a tricky business, too, as Rev Michael Reiss in Britain has learned. A biologist and Anglican priest, he has just had to resign as the Royal Society’s director of education after causing an uproar among scientists by saying creationism could be discussed as a “world view” in science class. He wasn’t advocating it, but thought that simply telling students with creationist views that they were wrong would turn them off science completely.

So what’s the best way for anyone who wants to get a word in edgewise? Apologies to a man long dead? Arguments that may not be heard? Something else?

One reason for the different approaches may be that the churches are responding to  different poles of this debate. The Church of England seems more concerned about arguments from the “new atheists” such as Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins. The Vatican seems to be thinking more about creationists and “intelligent design” supporters.

On a new website the Church of England has devoted to Darwin, Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, its director of mission and public affairs, declared that “good religion needs good science”. The CoE opposed evolution back then, he said, but it was, after all, “not such an earth-shattering idea”. He continued:

Darwin’s immense achievement was to develop a big theory which went a long way to explaining aspects of the world around us. But to treat it as an all-embracing theory of everything is to travesty Darwin’s work. The difficulty is that his theory of natural selection has been so effective within the scientific community, and so easily understood in outline by everybody, that it has been inflated into a general theory of everything – which is not only erroneous but dangerous.”

After explaining the current Anglican view, Brown added: “Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.”

The Vatican started off with theology on Tuesday as it announced a conference next March on evolution with  scientists, theologians and philosophers. “I would like to repeat from the outset … that there is no incompatibility between the theory of evolution and the message of the Bible and with theology,” Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, told journalists in Rome.

Asked about the Anglican apology, he said: “Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session … Darwin was never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned … The attitude of the Anglican Church is curious and significant, the style belongs to a mentality a bit different from ours.” 

Professor Phillip Sloan of Notre Dame University, which will co-host the conference with the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, put the issue in wider context. “In the United States, and now elsewhere, we have an on-going public debate over evolution that has social, political and religious dimensions. Most of this debate has been taking place without a strong Catholic theological presence, and the discussion has suffered accordingly.”

Rev Marc Leclerc, a Jesuit philosophy professor at the Gregorian, said Darwin’s work was more often discussed ideologically than scientifically, which has led to a stand-off between what he called evolutionism and creationism. The “intelligent design” argument had added to the confusion by saying only divine planning could explain evolution, he said. That amounted to confusing divine purpose and a mechanism, “whereas these are obviously two distinct planes”.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai used a Sept 11 address last year to appeal to the Taliban to come for talks and end bloodshed in the war-torn nation.

The Taliban responded with even more attacks, turning 2008 into the bloodiest year yet since the U.S. led invasion seven years ago, and understandably Karzai who survived an assassination attempt this year has gone quiet on the talks offer.

But should Karzai, and especially his western-backers, be completely shutting the door on them, or should they be playing the field given that there does seem to be some level of sympathy for them among the local population?

I was in Kabul during the last two weeks and was struck by some Afghans talking about the positives during the Taliban years even as they were clearly ill-at-ease with the more brutal face of the regime.

Mohammad Nasim, a gardner at Kabul's soccer stadium where the Taliban staged public executions, told me during an interview there were no bribes to be paid, and no running around government offices endlessly under the Taliban.

Work got done in time, he stressed, contrasting his employer's current struggle to get money from the government for rebuilding the socccer field still haunted by the shootings and hangings.

At the same time, Nasim recalled with obvious pain how three of his relatives were either shot dead or hanged  by the Taliban, near the goalpost where we stood talking to him one quiet afternoon last week. They were innocent like many others put to death by the Taliban on flimsy charges, he said.

But the Taliban also punished thieves and criminals, chopping off arms and legs and it was not long before crime fell.

Much of that is back now along with a full-blown insurgency in which more people have been killed this year than any since the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban in 2001.

Seven years on, life was no better, Afghans told a Reuters reporter in Spin Boldak , a town in the southern province of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, with one saying he had donated money to the Taliban fighters during the holy month of Ramadan.

Surging violence, including a spike in civilian casualties, has reignited Afghans' distaste for foreign forces on their soil of which they have had more than their share throughout history.

And then disillusionment with Karzai for failing to deliver on development, high prices and poverty seem to have added to the frustration that many Afghans feel.

As previously highlighted on this blog, while the Taliban are broadly unpopular in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, they do have some claim on sentiments of sub-nationalism among the Pushtun ethnic group. They have managed to become political movements, writes Juan Cole in Informed Comment. 

It is interesting that even in Pakistan relatively few speak out forcefully against civilian casualties caused by Taliban suicide bombings or their other violent acts such as targeting of girls schools, as journalist Mustafa Qadri says in this report.

Ramadan television always throws up some controversy or talking point in the Arab world, but never of the nature of this year’s talking point. Hardline Saudi religious scholars are saying enough’s enough on the fun and frolics of Ramadan television and demanding trials for TV channel owners that could impose the death penalty.

What’s more, these owners are in fact Saudi royals and their friends. The main culprit is MBC1, owned by a brother-in-law of former King Fahd, but others include billionaire playboy prince Alwaleed bin Talal, dubbed by the religious right in Saudi Arabia “the shameless prince” (al-amir al-majin). The clerics in Saudi Arabia have enormous influence and they are worried that liberals in government and their royal allies are plotting to caste them aside and secularise the country.

It is unlikely that Alwaleed or the family of Fahd’s sister are worried about the attacks. They live in a world apart of palaces, servants, private planes and cruise ships in France and probably no one could get near them if they tried. The clerics were careful to talk about a legal process in any case. In fact, one of them, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, said specifically that he wasn’t calling for vigilantes to take the law into their own hands.

For Saudi clerics, the process is all, since they have the unique privilege in the Islamic world of sitting as judges in the Sharia court system. That is the very definition of the Islamic state in their eyes. It’s not the first time the religious establishment has condemned liberals in any case. Even Osama bin Laden singled out Labour Minister Ghazi Algosaibi — a poet, former ambassador to London and confidante of the king — in a taped message from his hideout on 2006 attacking a liberal “fifth column” at home. But Algosaibi and other punching bags of the Islamists survived.

Interestingly, most Saudis would probably say Lohaidan and co. have a point. Everyone complains about cheap jokes and sexual innuendoes in some Saudi comedy shows on TV after sunset during Ramadan. Most would say that the “sorcery” channels on Arab satellites are wrong. But it’s a vague tut-tut of disapproval delivered in the knowledge that the clerics’ ability to stand up to the temporal power of the Al Sauds has always been limited despite their loud bark (the most notable modern example being the way they were forced to sanction the presence of US troops on Saudi soil to eject Iraqi troops from Kuwait). People will nod in agreement that “immodest” and “immoral” television must stop, but not fully compute the fact that for the clerical puritans “sorcery” includes horoscopes that so many follow and the romantic soap operas from Turkey that their wives are hooked on.

A popular Arabic saying has it that “the dogs bark but the desert caravan rolls on.” It is a notable shift in the socio- political landscape of Saudi Arabia that this is how a significant portion of the population now view the once all-powerful clerics.

Regarding those romantic Turkish soap operas — they’re a hit across the Arab world. Riyadh staffer Farah al-Sweel wrote about the hit series “Noor” a few months ago. The Algerian daily Le Quotidien d’Oran recently ran a story about its effect there, including warnings by imams not to watch such immoral fare.

Part of the attraction for female viewers seems to be the heartthrob leading man, Kivanc Tatlitug. Here he is in a scene, dubbed into Arabic, where he visits his wife Noor in hospital.

Pope Benedict’s speech to France’s bishops at Lourdes was a classic example of an “iron first in a velvet glove” address. Delivered calmly and in elegant French, it basically laid down the law to a group that has been among the most critical in the Church of his turn towards traditional Catholicism. It was billed as a meeting but was in fact a monologue. He read it out without hardly ever looking at the 170 cardinals and bishops before him and left right after finishing the text.

“Benedict XVI gave the bishops a veritable road map to help them trace the paths of the future for the church in France,” wrote Jean-Marie Guénois, religion correspondent of Le Figaro. “He wanted this meeting. It’s the only one he imposed on the organisers. Which shows the importance, in his eyes, of what he wanted to tell them.”

The most striking part was his call to the bishops to make more place for traditionalists. The French bishops lobbied the Vatican last year before Benedict liberalised the use of the Tridentine Latin Mass, arguing that giving the traditionalists too much leeway would undermine the authority of the bishops. The “tradis” are especially strong in France, both in the form of those loyal to Rome and those who have broken with it. The culture war between them and the majority church is deeply rooted and mutual suspicion is strong. Bishops worry that traditionalists want to form a “church within a church” if given the slightest chance. Among mainstream Catholics, that can translate into a high sensitivity to anything seen as rolling back the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

“I am aware of your difficulties, but I do not doubt that, within a reasonable time, you can find solutions satisfactory for all, lest the seamless tunic of Christ be further torn,” the pope said while talking about the Tridentine mass. “Everyone has a place in the Church. Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home, and never rejected.”

To bishops faced with serious priest shortages, Benedict warned the bishops not to rely too much on the lay people who now replace missing priests in many functions. He urged them to continue to try to encourage vocations instead. “Where their specific missions are concerned, priests cannot delegate their functions to the faithful,” he said.

With a growing number of Catholics divorcing and then remarrying outside the Church, bishops in several developed countries have asked whether the Vatican could relax the marriage laws that require an annulment before a divorced Catholic can remarry in the Church. Benedict recognised that “a particularly painful situation concerns those who are divorced and remarried.” But he said he could not change Church teaching: “The Church, which cannot oppose the will of Christ, firmly maintains the principle of the indissolubility of marriage, while surrounding with the greatest affection those men and women who, for a variety of reasons, fail to respect it. Hence initiatives aimed at blessing irregular unions cannot be admitted”

Benedict also encouraged the bishops to remind the French of their country’s Christian roots now that President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he wants to take a more flexible approach to laïcité, the traditionally rigid separation of church and state. He said: “Drawing attention to France’s Christian roots will permit each inhabitant of the country to come to a better understanding of his or her origin and destiny. Consequently, within the current institutional framework and with the utmost respect for the laws that are in force, it is necessary to find a new path, in order to interpret and live from day to day the fundamental values on which the Nation’s identity is built. Your President has intimated that this is possible. The social and political presuppositions of past mistrust or even hostility are gradually disappearing.”

Things are changing, but this is still a touchy issue in France, where many Catholics are wary about reopening the debate on laïcité. One of them, for example, is François Bayrou, a prominent centrist politician and practicing Catholic who boycotted Benedict’s speech at the Elysée Palace because he thought it violated the separation of church and state. But he was here in Lourdes for the pope’s mass on Sunday, as a private citizen. Another issue is whether the bishops want to be seen to be so close to Sarkozy himself. “Speedy Sarko” was quite close to France’s Muslims a few years ago, before they fell out in a big way. He has made pitches to the Jewish community with mixed success. The Catholics are the focus at the moment, but you never know with Sarko when his attention will shift elsewhere.

The bishops gave Benedict a standing ovation at the end of his address, which is probably to be expected during a papal visit. It remains to be seen how much of his road map they follow.

When I was nine years old, I began fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It is a religious duty I love to carry out each year, to experience the sense of unity with Muslims who don't eat or drink from dawn until sunset.

But this year the chronic shortages of electricity and water supplies that plague the Iraqi capital Baghdad -- combined with Ramadan falling during a very hot summer -- has forced many to abandon the fast at times.

This saddens me but I don't blame them because I also have had to stop fasting on Friday and Saturday, my days off from work, because of frequent power outages at home.

One Friday during this Ramadan my eight-year-old son saw me drinking water during the fasting period. I confessed to him that I was not fasting.

I should have been a symbol of strength for him just like my mother was to me during my childhood.On the first day of Ramadan, my son said he wanted to fast so I encouraged him to do so.

He made it until 1 p.m., when thirst forced him to drink water.

My mother, who I enjoy preparing food and sweets to break the fast with, managed to fast only for the first two days of Ramadan. After that, she had to stop. A friend of mine told me she fainted on the first day and said she would not be able to complete the fasting month. Muslims in Iraq are fasting for around 14 hours, until the fourth prayer of the day at sunset. Like Muslims around the world, they can eat and drink after the sun has set until the next morning's predawn prayer.

One of my colleagues at my office -- where a big generator keeps the power on all day -- described fasting this year as "hard" because of the heat and power cuts and water shortages.

But he said he was determined to keep fasting until Ramadan finishes at the end of September. I wish I could do the same.
 

Is Pope Benedict getting impatient to make some progress in dialogue with Muslims? He told French bishops in Lourdes today that the Church wants to pursue interreligious dialogue, but it must be real dialogue about serious theological issues and not just polite talk that leads nowhere.

“Good will is not enough,” he told them at a meeting during his pilgrimage to the famous shrine. “One must follow closely the various initiatives that are undertaken, so as to discern which ones favour reciprocal knowledge and respect, as well as the promotion of dialogue, and so as to avoid those which lead to impasses.”

These comments may help put an end to a long-standing doubt about how committed Benedict is to dialogue with Muslims. The doubt started soon after his election when he sidelined the Vatican’s top Islam expert, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, and folded his Council for Interreligious Dialogue into the larger Council for Culture. His Regensburg lecture in 2006 seriously set back relations with Muslims by suggesting Islam was violent and irrational. As part of the patching-up work, he restored the interreligious council as an independent Vatican department. But he handed it over not to an Islam or dialogue expert but to a former diplomat, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who publicly said that theological discussion was impossible with Muslims (much to some Muslims’ surprise) and that the world was “obsessed” with Islam.

Since that time, Tauran has met with leaders of the Common Word initiative on Christian-Muslim dialogue and attended Saudi King Abdullah’s Madrid interfaith mega-meeting. There seems to be “something in the air” on the interfaith front. The Vatican is now preparing to meet 24 representatives of the Common Word group in November for theological discussions about their proposal that the double love commandment — love God and neighbour — is common to both major faiths. So it was probably time to clear up the question of whether the Vatican thought such a discussion was even possible. The way Benedict mentioned theological dialogue as a step beyond the listening (i.e. polite conversation) phase suggests he’s thinking of the Muslims here. Catholics have already had extensive theological discussions with other Christians and Jews.

While open to dialogue, Benedict made very clear he felt the ultimate purpose of such talk is to lead people to Jesus Christ. There are certainly Muslims who think the same way about leading people to Islam. What effect this issue will have on the dialogue remains to be seen.

The Muslim scholars will have an audience with the pope, but it’s not clear if that is simply a formality or whether they will actually get to discuss theology with him. It would be fascinating if Benedict put on his old Herr Professor hat and actually engaged them in a constructive debate. That could be as interesting as the debate he had with his former doctoral students on evolution and creation, which was later published in a book of the same name. Imagine a similar book on Christian-Muslim dialogue!

Take a look at what Benedict had to say and let us know whether you think he is getting serious about holding a real dialogue with Muslims. The relevant passage from his speech reads:

The goal of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, which naturally differ in their respective nature and finality, is to seek and deepen a knowledge of the Truth. It is therefore a noble and obligatory task for every believer, since Christ himself is the Truth. The building of bridges between the great ecclesial Christian traditions, and dialogue with other religious traditions, demand a real striving for mutual understanding, because ignorance destroys more than it builds. Moreover, only the Truth makes it possible to live authentically the dual commandment of Love which our Saviour left us. To be sure, one must follow closely the various initiatives that are undertaken, so as to discern which ones favour reciprocal knowledge and respect, as well as the promotion of dialogue, and so as to avoid those which lead to impasses. Good will is not enough. I believe it is good to begin by listening, then moving on to theological discussion, so as to arrive finally at witness and proclamation of the faith itself. May the Holy Spirit grant you the discernment which must characterize every Pastor. As Saint Paul recommends: “Test everything; hold fast what is good!”. The globalized, multicultural and multireligious society in which we live is a God-given opportunity to proclaim Truth and practice Love so as to reach out to every human being without distinction, even beyond the limits of the visible Church.

PARIS (Reuters) - It’s sunset in the French capital, and hundreds of hungry people are poised to begin their meals at the sounding of a Muslim call to prayer.

Elsewhere in the world, the call rings forth from the minarets of mosques, but inside a tent in a gritty part of north Paris, it comes from a tinny radio speaker.

For the holy month of Ramadan, a soup kitchen has opened outside Cite Edmond Michelet, a tough public housing project in Paris’ notorious 19th arrondissement. On the menu is a traditional dinner, starting with yoghurt and dates.

I heard a lot more stories that could fit into this feature on the Ramadan soup kitchen in Paris (click here). One thing that was surprising was how many people there said they had professions and jobs and so didn’t really need the free meal. I met an architect, a waiter, a hairdresser, a construction worker — lots of people claimed they were working, or had come to France to work.

Some said they were at the soup kitchen for its community feel and chaleur (warmth), others because they loved the soup. One fellow said “It tastes exactly like mom used to make” but since she lives so far away in the suburbs, he can’t visit her often. He even brought a thermos to take some soup home.

It took us a while to get any images as people were quite camera shy. A volunteer told me that many might fear being on television because they had invented stories of successful lives in Paris and didn’t want to risk having relatives see them accepting charity.