As a divorcee who was pro-choice on abortion, the United States's most prominent Catholic politician was not exactly in the Vatican's good books.

Yet Pope Benedict XVI blessed the terminally ill Senator Edward Kennedy, according to correspondence made public at his burial in Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday.

Kennedy, whose political career was marred by scandal, asked for the Pope's prayers in a letter that was handed to the pontiff by President Barack Obama in Rome on July 10.

"I am writing with deep humility to ask that you pray for me as my own health declines. I was diagnosed with brain cancer more than a year ago, and, although I continue treatment, the disease is taking its toll on me. I am 77 years old and preparing for the next passage of life," Kennedy wrote.

"I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith, I have tried to right my path."

In his nearly 50 years in the Senate -- Kennedy wrote -- he championed the rights of the poor, opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. His commitment to accessible healthcare for all Americans was the political cause of his life, the dying senator wrote to the pontiff.

"I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings. I continue to pray for God's blessings on you and our Church and would be most thankful for your prayers for me."

The Pope replied through a Vatican official that he was saddened to know of Kennedy's illness.

"Commending you and the members of your family to the loving intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Father cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of wisdom, comfort and strength in the Lord."

Photo by Brian Snyder (President Obama and Kennedy family members stand by Sen. Edward Kennedy's casket during funeral services in Boston)

U.S. President Barack Obama enlisted the “Religious Left” on Wednesday to help galvanise public support for his faltering drive for healthcare reform, using the language of faith as he accused some of the critics of his biggest domestic project of “bearing false witness.”

Obama made a brief pitch to a “call in” organised by various liberal and progressive faith groups called “40 minutes for Health Reform.” It is part of  a campaign launched last week to counteract a movement to stop “Obamacare” that has been driven in part by conservative Christian activists.

“There has been a lot misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness,” Obama said.

Obama took issue with some of the most emotive allegations that have been raised by social conservative opponents of his vision for overhauling America’s healthcare and health insurance system.

“This notion that somehow we are setting up death panels that would decide on whether elderly people get to live or die  … that is just an extraordinary lie.”

“You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortions. Not true,” he said.

Liberal people of faith helped to propel Obama to power but it remains to be seen if they can make the difference on healthcare reform.

“In the weeks ahead the nation will hear a steady moral drum beat from the faith community,” said Jim Wallis, a leading liberal evangelical of the activist Christian group Sojourners. The campaign will include prayer meetings, sermons and nationwide TV ads.

They face a competing chorus from the Religious Right which has focused on the allegation that Obama’s healthcare plan will lead to federal funding for abortion — a point denied by the president and many of his supporters (see previous blog).  But it is an issue that can gin up the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base.

In America, both the political left and right must often appeal to people of faith because of the country’s high rates of religious belief.

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama holds a town hall meeting about healthcare at the Kroger Supermarket in Bristol, Virginia July 29, 2009.  REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)

The Family Research Council, a leading activist group among America’s “Religious Right,” has launched a new TV ad in five key states that claims President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan will lead to publicly funded abortions — a charge disputed by the president’s allies and abortion rights groups.

You can see the new video, Life and Death, below.

FRC President Tony Perkins told reporters in a telephone conference that the ads will run on cable news programs in Arkansas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Alaska and Pennsylvania — five states that have significant numbers of social conservatives but are represented by more moderate lawmakers who can be swayed.

The announcement came just ahead of a “phone in” featuring liberal and left-leaning faith leaders — or the Religious Left – and Obama seeking to galvanize support for the president’s bid to overhaul the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system.

Abortion, which is a hugely polarizing issue in America, has become another flashpoint in the escalating battle over healthcare reform, risking public support for an initiative already under attack on several fronts.

Liberal Democrats are threatening to withhold their support after the White House seemed to waffle on its commitment to a public insurance option that would compete with private insurers and offer more choices for consumers.

The liberal rebellion came three weeks after a group of conservative Democrats blocked consideration of healthcare legislation by a House panel until they won concessions from the administration.

PHOTO: Anti-abortion demonstrators unfurl a giant sign on the side of North Table Mountain in Colorado, August 26, 2008, referring to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.  REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Liberal U.S. religious groups launched “40 Days of Health Reform” on Monday.

You can see our coverage here and a video of their nationwide TV spot below.

The campaign aims to energize efforts by President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party to overhaul America’s healthcare system.

(PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama holds a town hall meeting about healthcare at the Kroger Supermarket in Bristol, Virginia July 29, 2009. REUTERS/Larry Downing)

America’s “Religious Left” is jumping into the healthcare debate with a plan to launch a “40 Days for Health Reform” initiative starting Monday.

The move comes as conservative resistance hardens to President Barack Obama’s attempts to overhaul America’s healthcare system. This has taken the form of angry scenes at townhall meetings and has been driven in part by the ”Religious Right,” which claims on Christian radio stations and on the blogosphere that, among other things, “Obamacare” will result in taxpayer-funded abortion. That’s a point disputed by most Democrats and their allies. 

The pro-faith-based healthcare reform campaign is organized by liberal leaning religious groups such as Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faith in Public Life. Borrowing a page from the Religious Right, the conservative Christian movement that rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as a key base for the Republican Party, the campaign will feature prayer rallies and a national TV ad.

 It brings together evangelicals, Catholics and mainline Protestants and  includes heavyweights from the Religious Left such as Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners. There are many people of faith in the United States who believe that coverage needs to be extended to the nearly 46 million Americans with no health insurance because of biblical calls to care for the poor and the sick.

In his campaign for the White House Obama had tapped into the religious community and frequently invoked his own Christian faith. It remains to be seen if the faith community can inject some energy into what some see as a faltering drive at health care reform.

One wonders if this part of Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda has a prayer without such help.

Iraqi Americans Wasan Alqaisi and Sumer Majid made a Fourth of July family picnic of kebab — served on hamburger buns with slices of American cheese.

Celebrating Independence Day in Washington D.C., the two Muslim women were doing what generations of Americans have done before them: blending their faith and lifestyle with a U.S. national identity.

Eight years after Middle East militants carried out the September 11 attacks, Muslim Americans are raising their profile, encouraged by the election of Barack Obama, a U.S. president proud of his Kenyan father’s Muslim heritage.

“We are more optimistic about the future for us here,” said Alqaisi, an accountant. “They changed the way they communicate with the Muslim countries. We feel like we have more value here now. We hope that will continue in the future.”

Read the whole feature here.

(Photo:Wasan Alqaisi (R) prepares kebabs on hamburger buns for Sumer Majid (L) and Sabaa Sabeeh (C) during a Fourth of July picnic in Washington, 4 July 2009/Wendell Marsh)

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A coalition of progressive U.S. faith groups and pastors has launched a push for affordable health care reform, an effort they say is rooted in a “scriptural call to act.”

Radio ads will appear from today until July 4th in five states: Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Nebraska and North Carolina. The ads urge those states’ Senators, whose votes could ultimately decide the fate of President Barack Obama’s drive to transform America’s health care system, to back legislation “that makes quality coverage truly affordable for every American family.” You can see the ad script and audio here.

Organizers also say that more than 600 clergy from 41 states and 39 denominations have said they will deliver sermons in coming weeks on the issue and urge their flocks to act. A pastors’ guide to health care will also be distributed to 4,250 religious leaders along with a shorter version to wider church members.

PICO National Network, Faith in Public Life, Faithful America, Sojourners, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good are the main religious advocacy groups behind the campaign.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. The tactics being adopted by these liberal and centrist groups and activists are a carbon copy of the successful ones employed in the past by the U.S. religious right. The distribution of pastors’ guides, the call for public policy to be guided by scripture (in this case compassion for the poor and the ill), the preaching of sermons on looming legislation — it’s all taken from the loose network of conservative Christians which has delivered many a vote for the Republican Party.

Conservative Christians remain a key base for the Republicans and they have also been decrying “Obama-care” on talk radio, the blogosphere and other outlets.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing.  Members of the audience shake hands with U.S. President Barack Obama after his speech about reforming America’s health care system in Green Bay, Wisconsin, June 11, 2009.

(Dawn front page for Sunday, 21 June 2009)

Almost two million people have inexplicably disappeared from the estimates of the U.S. Muslim population that President Barack Obama has given recently. In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 4, he spoke about “nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today.” On Sunday, the Karachi daily Dawn published an interview with him where he said “we have five million Muslims.”

There was no explanation for the change, but his reason for citing the figure seemed to be the same. Shortly before his Cairo speech, Obama told the French television channel Canal Plus that “one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He cited no figure there but mentioned seven million in Cairo three days later.

Many blogs, FaithWorld included, questioned that figure and noted that estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million. The U.S. Census Bureau cannot ask about religion on a mandatory basis but refers on its website to a Pew Forum study pegging Muslims at 0.6% of the population. The CIA World Factbook uses the same percentage figure. It translates into about 1.8 million.

Speaking to Dawn, Obama lowered his estimate but made his original point again. He said: “We have Muslim Americans who are doing extraordinary things. In fact, their educational attainment and income is generally above the average here in the United States. We have Muslim members of Congress. And, in fact, we have 5 million Muslims, which would make us larger than many other countries that consider themselves Muslim countries.”

The downsizing puts the U.S. even lower on the this Wikipedia list of countries according to the size of their Muslim population, from 32nd place (after Kazakhstan and before the current #32 Tajikistan) to 38th (between Chad and Turkmenistan).

In the interview, Obama also spoke a bit about his visit to Pakistan as a student in 1981 that caused some confusion and speculation in the end phase of the 2008 campaign. Dawn’s Washington correspondent Anwar Iqbal asked Obama if he planned to visit Pakistan soon and the president responded:

‘I would love to visit. As you know, I had Pakistani roommates in college who were very close friends of mine. I went to visit them when I was still in college; was in Karachi and went to Hyderabad. Their mothers taught me to cook,’ said Mr Obama.

‘What can you cook?’

‘Oh, keema … daal … You name it, I can cook it. And so I have a great affinity for Pakistani culture and the great Urdu poets.’

‘You read Urdu poetry?’

‘Absolutely. So my hope is that I’m going to have an opportunity at some point to visit Pakistan,’ said Mr Obama.

A new on-line forum launched on Tuesday seeks to spark discussion among faith and secular leaders and activists about ways to find some elusive common ground on the divisive issue of abortion.

It’s being rolled out by RH Reality Check, which focuses on reproductive health and rights issues, and can be seen here.

The initial posts include contributions from David Gushee of Mercer University, a leading intellectual figure in the emerging “evangelical center movement,” Katie Paris of Faith in Public Life, and Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.

Paris says in her blog that common ground on abortion can surely be found. After all, people from different faith traditions and sides of the political spectrum have come together on issues like climate change and torture.

Waldman says that his “common ground fantasy” would involve “a pro-life leader standing up and declaring, ‘We will be open to looking at family planning efforts, including contraception, to reduce the number of abortions.’  This would be followed by a pro-choicer saying, ’we accept that society would be better if there were fewer abortions.’”

There are already land mines there. The Catholic Church for one is unlikely to drop its opposition to birth control. And some abortion rights supporters don’t want to give any ground that they feel could show they have moral qualms with abortion.

A tall order indeed but there are thoughtful people on both sides of this highly charged debate who are starting to move in this direction.

U.S. President Barack Obama has signaled he is looking for common ground on the issue, for example by finding ways and funding programs to reduce the number of abortions. But Waldman points out that many supporters of abortion rights and even some key people in the Obama administration have pointedly stressed the importance of reducing the “need” for abortion instead of the idea of abortion reduction.

Abortion is a huge political issue that usually (though not always) follows starkly partisan lines in America: Republicans oppose abortion rights, the Democratic Party supports them.

The killing of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in a Kansas church last month has highlighted the more polarized side of the debate in America.

But polls show varying degrees of ambiguity on the issue and those who are weary of America’s culture wars will no doubt welcome this initiative. Some may dismiss it as a gab fest while the real culture warriors dig in and stoke the bases of both parties. But at least some people are talking.

(PHOTO: Anti-abortion activist Craig Kuhns wears mirrored sunglasses and a piece of tape over his mouth as he stands in front of the US Supreme Court building in Washington, June 1, 2009. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES)

By Razak Ahmad

Should non-Muslims be allowed to join an Islamist party? Would the Islamists want them to join? This is the issue facing the Pan Malaysian Islamist Party (PAS) at its annual assembly this week.

Photo: Women’s wing of PAS prays at its national convention on 3 June, 2009/Bazuki Mujammad

For decades, PAS dreamed of a rigid theocratic state, even to the extent of issuing an edict in 1987 declaring the ruling Malay-Muslim nationalist ruling party as infidel. The ethnic minority Chinese and Indians who make up a combined 35% of the Southeast Asian country’s 27 million population were rarely in the Islamist party’s political equation.

But now PAS is part of Malaysia’s three-party opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim. It claims that 20,000 non-Muslims have joined the party’s supporters club, which will be recognised as an official party wing if a proposal on the matter is endorsed. This would in turn pave the way for non-Muslim members of the supporters club to become card carrying PAS members.

The party enjoyed a surge in support among non-Muslim voters in general elections last year after a group of party reformers took control of PAS and moderated the party’s hardline image. The supporters club is an extension of the party’s attempt to broaden its voter appeal but it is more than just an outreach.

PAS’ non-Muslim engagement parallels the evolution of other Islamist parties like Indonesia’s Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) or Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AK) to expand their appeal to moderate and progressive Muslims and even non-Muslims. The old paradigm of replicating Iran’s Islamic revolution in their home countries seems to have faded away.

Nonetheless in a multicultural society such as Malaysia and neighbouring Indonesia, rifts appear inevitable. Within PAS there are questions about how far the religious leadership is prepared to go to water down the party’s founding principles.

And of course, outreach isn’t a one way process, as U.S. President Barack Obama tried to show.

Having covered PAS extensively for the past 10 years, I  can say that PAS’ shifting trajectory has been remarkable — and so, too, has been the response.

What do you think about this new face of Islamist parties? Could non-Muslims vote for them?