Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a major address today on the election there. It was in the form of a khutbah, an Islamic Friday sermon that is often the platform for the most important public pronouncements in the Islamic Republic. So one might assume it would be couched in Islamic terminology and religious themes.

But a rough-and-ready indicator, a web “cloud” that indicates the frequency of certain words, tells us otherwise. Aziz Poonawalla over at the City of Brass blog generated a Khamenei khutbah cloud on Wordle on the basis of a quick translation of the ayatollah’s speech. I had some trouble reading all the terms, so I went to that site and generated one myself. Here is the result:

To be absolutely clear — this cloud is only a rough computer analysis. I generated it in Paris hours after the speech, without consulting any other Reuters bureau, so it played no part in our Tehran reporting of Khamenei’s comments or other coverage on our wire from Beirut and from London. Nothing can replace on-the-spot reporting by Persian-speaking correspondents who understand all the nuances in a political sermon like this.

That said, my techie side still thinks this cloud does highlight some interesting aspects of the sermon. The most frequently used words — people, election, state, president, revolution, country, leaders, legal — are political terms. Islamic makes a good showing, but it is only one of the top dozen or so terms — including God , which came up nine times — after the clear front-runner people (56 times).

Koran doesn’t appear at all.

Since 9/11, studying the relations between Islam and the West have become a growth field in academia. Among its leading proponents is Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a billionaire who has spent tens of millions of dollars via his Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation creating study centres at leading universities, including Cambridge, Harvard and Georgetown, with the goal of fostering interfaith dialogue and understanding.

(Photo: Prince Alwaleed in Kabul, 18 March 2008/Ahmad Masood)

In the wake of the Islamist attacks in Mumbai last November, the foundation’s executive director, Muna AbuSulayman said recently, the organisation is keen to set up a centre in India and also to foster dialogue between Muslims and Jews.

A Mumbai Jewish community centre was seized and its rabbi and his wife killed during those attacks, in which 179 people were killed in a days-long rampage by members of a Pakistan-based militant group. “What has happened in India with the shooting was a wake up call,” she said. “India and Pakistan have a history, there’s a reason they separated. We want to help them minimise that.”

During an interview in London, AbuSulayman, wearing a cream-coloured headscarf, talked broadly about the need for interfaith dialogue, and included Judaism in that. But she said the Alwaleed Foundation definitely wouldn’t open a centre in Israel even though it does support dialogue with Jews.

“Would we do something on Jewish studies? Most definitely. We really do separate the idea between Zionism and Judaism,” said AbuSulayman. “We do believe in this tradition of all of the Abrahamic religions being together.”

Saudi Arabia and Israel have no diplomatic relations, although last summer King Abdullah hosted a meeting of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists in Madrid.

“We wouldn’t get into the political part of it,” said AbuSulayman. “The prince really believes in academia as a way to solve problems, a way to ask uncomfortable questions.”

The prince, who has a majority stake in the Kingdom Holding Company and is among the world’s richest men, is certainly laying a very well-funded path towards greater dialogue.

But can the foundation really improve relations among people of different faiths — especially between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East — if debate remains solely within academia?

For many churches, synagogues and mosques in the United States, this holiday season will be a lean one.

The outpouring of contributions usually prompted by festive goodwill and end-of-the-year giving geared to next year’s income tax calculations is feeling the pinch from the global financial meltdown. The shortfalls are startling.

(Photo: Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Chicago, 10 April, 2008/John Gress)

“The giving patterns we’re witnessing suggest that churches, alone, will receive some $3 billion to $5 billion less than expected during this fourth quarter. The average church can expect to see its revenues dip about 4 percent to 6 percent lower than would have been expected without the economic turmoil. We anticipate that other non-profit organizations will be hit even harder.”

That grim news comes from George Barna, whose California-based Barna Group looks at trends and patterns among worshippers and church goers. He based it on a survey of 1,203 adults in the United States done in November.

Barna says most churches and non-profit groups operate in the red for most of any calendar year, expecting to gain a third or more of their annual income in the final three months of the year. But his survey found that one in every five households has cut back on giving to churches or other religious centers. Within that group, 22 percent have stopped giving completely.

(Photo: Atlanta Masjid of al-Islam, 25 Feb 2007/Tami Chappell)

The cutbacks come at a time when social needs, ranging from food and clothing to financial support for the needy, have risen dramatically. They also have the potential to pinch the flow of contributions from the United States to poverty-stricken destinations around the globe.

But some faith leaders in the United States believe global poverty and health concerns need not get pushed aside by the financial crisis, as long as the faithful are reminded of their obligations in the context of their beliefs.

“When times are tough, people tend to be more aware. We have within the framework of faith tradition a sense that when you are in need your spiritual reward for giving increases,” said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, director of outreach for the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center. “Our ancestors gave even though poverty was their lot — and God increased his blessings upon them.”

He and several other faith leaders spoke at a briefing organized by ONE, the global advocacy agency founded by U2 singer Bono that has launched an effort to unite Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu congregations to raise awareness about poverty among themselves and among U.S. political figures as a new leadership takes over in Washington.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, told the same briefing there was a growing grassroots consciousness about global poverty and a growing momentum for dealing with it. Helping the poor and unfortunate, he said, “is the most common repeated theme of ancient scripture.”

The economic slide is a global one. Is the giving picture likely to be as dire outside the United States?

(Photo: B’nai Jeshurun synagogue in New York, 25 Jan 2006/Keith Bedford)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. Matthew Weiner, the author, is the Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. He is writing a book about Interfaith and Civil Society.

When terror attacks like those in Mumbai occur, many people of faith want to stand together despite their differences to condemn them with one voice. Faith leaders in New York, having seen their own city targetted in 2001, quickly responded with a show of support for their sister city in India. Their news conference on the steps of New York’s City Hall on Monday was an example of how faith communities in the world’s most religiously diverse metropolis can join hands to speak out against such violence.

(Photo: New York interfaith meeting, 1 Dec 2008/Edwin E. Bobrow)

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, senior vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis, Mo Razvi, a Pakistani-American Muslim and community organizer, and the Interfaith Center of New York organized the meeting while Councilman John Liu got the green light to use City Hall as the venue. Potasnick worked through Thanksgiving weekend to make it happen and insisted on having representatives from every faith. “It is very important to condemn the attacks…but it is imperative we stand together with one voice,” he said.

Indeed almost everyone was there. Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York spoke condemned the attacks by Muslim extremists as un-Islamic. Jaspreet Singh of the United Sikhs spoke on behalf of a community rooted in the Indian Subcontinent. Imam Syed Sayeed, a Muslim from India and longtime New Yorker, recalled his homeland has been a religiously plural place for thousands of years. Ven. Kondannya of the New York Buddhist Council called for a non-violent response to the attacks, as did Jain community representative Naresh Jain, who lost a friend in the killing. Members of Chabad, the Brooklyn-based Hasidic community who lost a rabbi in the attacks, were also present.

Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, said she had trained in a Mumbai hospital that treated many victims and remembered the discussions that students of different faiths used to have there. “In Mumbai now, they are getting back to work,” she said. “This is all we can do. It is what the terrorists want to stop us from doing.” Dr. Mysorekar had held a prayer service with Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn just hours after the attack and prayers have continued at her temple in Queens ever since.

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel, Mumbai, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

“We know how hard it is to build relationships across difference in times of crisis, and our hearts go out to Mumbai,” Said Rev. Chloe Breyer, the Executive Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. In fact, it was not easy to assemble members of all the main religions represented in Mumbai; in the rush to arrange the meeting, we could not contact the Zoroastrians in time. But how often do Hindu, Ultra Orthodox Jewish and Muslim leaders get together?

Actually, they get together more often than one would think. Potasnik and Mysorekar first met at an Interfaith Center news conference two days after 9/11. It was there that Mysoekar witnessed the courage of a dozen Muslim leaders denouncing those attacks and realized how interfaith contacts could help keep the peace. She invited a Muslim speaker to her Hindu program in Queens, which did not go over all too well among some of her more conservative members.

In the years since then, many of these faith leaders have met regularly despite reservations in their own communities. Monday’s press conference was not be held at Mysorekar’s temple in part from fear the Orthodox Jews would be uncomfortable. Many Muslim leaders were invited but there are serious tensions among some of them and the Jewish leadership in this city, tensions that will not go away with this small victory. But the day-to-day ties forged since 9/11 helped assemble this interfaith group quickly to respond to the Mumbai violence. To date 13 different local Muslim organizations have condemned the Mumbai attacks.

(Photo: World Trade Center, New York, 11 Sept 2001/Brad Rickerby)

On Wednesday, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Interfaith Center plan a program in Queens with mostly Hindu and Jewish groups (including an Indian Jewish congregation). Dr. Mysorekar wants to hold another program at her temple and all will be invited. The work of interfaith dialogue in the world’s most religiously diverse city goes on.