The 1996 murder of seven French Catholic monks in Algeria, called the Martyrs of Atlas because of the Atlas mountains where their monastery was located, was not the work of Islamist militants as officially stated at the time, according to testimony by a retired French general to an inquiry into the killings.

(Photo: Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin — with red sash — visits monks’ graces, 20 Feb 2007/Larbi Louafi)

In fact, he told a closed-door inquiry in Paris, Algerian troops in a helicopter inadvertently gunned down the Trappists when they strafed an isolated camp they believed belonged to the radical Armed Islamic Group (GIA) that was battling the Algerian state at the time. When they landed to inspect the scene, the troops found the bullet-ridden bodies of the monks who had been kidnapped two months beforehand. Algeria then concocted the story that the Islamists had slit the monks’ throats to hide their fatal blunder.

The inquiry also heard from a Trappist who went to Algeria to identify the bodies. He said he had to insist on having the sealed coffins opened so he could identify the bodies. When his wish was finally granted, he found the coffins contained only the men’s heads and was urged by the French embassy not to divulge this. He told the inquiry he suspected the bodies were disposed of to hide the evidence they had been gunned down.

Here is our news story on this.

The monks have been honoured as Christian victims of Islamist militancy. They were clearly victims of the bloody war between the GIA and the state. The GIA has a sordid part in this story, as they apparently abducted the monks after the Trappists had been kidnapped by Algerian agents in a complicated plot. But if these testimonies are correct, the monks did not die at the hands of Islamists who slit their throats, as the official Algerian explanation has it.

(Photo: Lyon Imam Azzedine Gaci prays at monks tomb, with Cardinal Barbarin at his side, 20 Feb 2007/Larbi Louafi)

These testimonies added weight to persistent but less well sourced reports about the role of the Algerian authorities in the killings. They also raise potentially explosive questions about the purported role of France in helping to hide the truth. If secret French defence documents are made public, as the families of the victims demand, some very embarrassing facts may come to light.

The murders shocked France at the time and has weighed on French-Algerian relations ever since. A Catholic-Muslim delegation from Lyon, led by Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and Imam Azzedine Gaci, visited the monastery in February 2007 to promote interfaith understanding.

(Photo: Thousands attend Paris memorial service for the slain monks, 25 May 1996/stringer)

For French speakers, here are links to French reports on this:

L’armée algérienne mise en cause pour la mort de moines français - Reuters France

Tibéhirine : un témoin dénonce une «bavure» — Le Figaro

Tibérihine menace les relations franco-algériennes — Le Figaro

L’armée algérienne aurait tué les moines de Tibéhirine, selon un militaire français — Le Monde

Moines de Tibéhirine : le rappel des fait — Le Parisien

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

A new poll shows public opinion in Pakistan has turned sharply against the Taliban and other Islamist militants, even though they still do not trust the United States and President Barack Obama. Reporting on the poll, our Asia specialist in Washington, Paul Eckert, said the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, conducted in May as Pakistan’s army fought the Taliban in the Swat Valley, found that 81 percent saw the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda as a critical threat to the country, a jump from 34 percent in a similar poll in late 2007. Read Eckert’s report here.

(Photo: Pakistani Taliban in Swat, 2 Nov 2007/Sherin Zada Kanju)

The poll shows a wide divergence between Pakistani public opinion and the views of the Taliban on the implementation of sharia, a religious issue sometimes cited to help explain earlier tolerance of the militants. Some 80 percent of the respondents said sharia permits education for girls, one of the first services the Taliban close down when they gain control of an area. And 75 percent said sharia allows women to work, which the Taliban do not.

Reflecting their distrust, 71 percent said they believed the Taliban would not even submit to the sharia courts that they themselves have set up or promised to install as a pure and speedy alternative to Pakistan’s corrupt and inefficient civil courts. Only 14 percent supported the Taliban claim that it could provide more effective and timely justice than the state, a claim that partly helped the Islamist militants in the past (although it must be added that only 56 percent expressed trust in the civil courts). Only 9 percent said they thought the Taliban would do better at fighting corruption than the government, which got a lukewarm 47 percent. In any case, these results seem to indicate very little support for trademark Taliban promises that once seemed attractive.

If accurate, these findings mark a major shift from the results of a similar poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org in late 2007, not long after the Pakistani army flushed out Islamist militants who had taken control of the Red Mosque complex in the heart of Islambad. More than 100 died in the raid, including dozens of suspected militants and at least 10 troops. Some 64 percent said the raid was a mistake while only 22 percent supported the decision. A 60 percent majority believed that sharia should play a larger role in Pakistani law than it did at the time.

(Photo: Anti-Taliban rally in Lahore, 19 June 2009/Mohsin Raza)

Another poll, by the International Republican Institute, relativises this shift a bit. Conducted in March, before the height of the Taliban-army clash in Swat and the video of Taliban flogging a teenage local girl that reportedly turned Pakistani opinion against the militants, it shows more sympathy for the Taliban’s sharia demands. While 74 percent said religious extremism was a problem in Pakistan, 80 percent supported the introduction of sharia in Swat and 72 percent supported the government peace deal with the Taliban there. Some 56 percent said they would support the Taliban if they demanded sharia in other cities such as Karachi, Multan, Quetta or Lahore.

The relationship between traditional religious views and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan is so complex that I’m not sure any poll gives a very accurate picture. Unfortunately, neither poll examined in greater detail what those polled thought about sharia and how much of it should be applied in Pakistan. Does anyone have other poll results that give what they think is a better picture?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

UPDATE (July 2) Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid has an interesting opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times saying: “The Pakistani public, army and government have suddenly awakened to the Taliban threat. That is a crucial first step. But it will need strong international support to effectively respond.”

One theory about how to deal with militant Islamism calls for promoting Sufism, the mystical school of Islam known for its tolerance, as a potent antidote to more radical readings of the faith. Promoted for several years now by U.S.-based think tanks such as Rand and the Heritage Institute, a Sufi-based approach arguably enjoys an advantage over other more politically or economically based strategies because it offers a faith-based answer that comes from within Islam itself. After trying so many other options for dealing with the Taliban militants now openly challenging it, the Pakistani government now seems ready to try this theory out. Just at the time when it’s suffered a stinging set-back in practice…

(Photo: Pakistani Sufi musicians in Karachi, 7 May 2007/Zahid Hussein)

Earlier this month, on June 7 to be exact, Islamabad announced the creation of a Sufi Advisory Council (SAC) to try to enlist spirituality against suicide bombers. In theory at least, this approach could have wide support. Exact numbers are unclear, but Pakistan is almost completely Muslim, about three-quarters of its Muslims are Sunnis and maybe two-thirds of them are Barelvis. This South Asian school of Islam, heavily influenced by traditional Sufi mysticism, is notable for its colourful shrines to saints whose very existence is anathema to more orthodox forms of Islam. Among those are the minority of Pakistani Sunnis, the Deobandis, who are followers of a stricter revivalist movement founded in 19th-century India whose militant branch led to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. Many Deobandis think Pakistan’s Shi’ite minority is not truly Muslim.

The late President General Zia-ul Haq was a Deobandi. With massive support from the United States, Saudi Arabia and other countries, he favoured Afghan guerrilla groups influenced by the Deobandis and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis in the 1980s war against the Soviet Union.

(Photo: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari prays at shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan Sharif, 12 Sept 2008/Akram Shahid)

As the Swat Valley crisis came to a military showdown, Barelvi leaders who had stood quietly on the sidelines for years began to organise anti-Taliban rallies to stand up for their peaceful view of Islam and support the government’s military drive against the Taliban. “What these militants were doing was un-Islamic. Beheading innocent people and kidnapping are in no way condoned in Islam,” Sahibzada Fazal Karim, a leader of the moderate Islamist party Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Pakistan who organised some rallies, told Reuters in early May.

Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi, a senior Barelvi leader in Lahore, told our Islamabad correspondent Zeeshan Haider at the time that mainstream Muslim leaders like himself could no longer stay silent in the face of the Taliban threat. “They want people to fight one another, that’s why we have kept silent and endured their oppression,” he said. “We don’t want civil war … But God forbid, if the government fails to stop them, then we will confront them ourselves.”

Apart from his anti-Taliban campaigning, Naeemi was very much a traditional Barelvi mufti. He was a leading figure in Sunni groups advocating sharia enforcement, ran a madrassa in Lahore and sat on boards govering Barelvi madrassas, according to his obituary in the Pakistani daily The News. He lost a government post and was briefly arrested after protesting against Pakistani logistical support for the U.S. “war on terror” and was arrested again for protesting against the Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. These views might not be called moderate positions in world Islam, but they were quite traditional and middle-of-the-road on the Pakistani religious spectrum.

(Photo: Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi, 17 July 2005/Mohsin Raza)

On June 12, five days after Islamabad announced the formation of its Sufi council, a teenage Taliban suicide bomber walked into Naeemi’s office in the Lahore madrassa and blew himself up, killing the mufti. The message was unmistakable — Pakistan’s Barelvis may have local Islamic tradition and popular support on their side, but the trump card in this fight right now is violence, not Sufism. The Taliban challenge is an armed insurrection powerful enough to intimidate the tolerant Sufis into submission.

Ali Eteraz, a keen Pakistani-American observer of militant Islam, has just published an interesting analysis in Foreign Policy that further undermines the Sufi trump card theory:

“State-sponsored Sufism (which the SAC is) gets everything backward: In an environment where demagogues are using religion to conceal their true political and material ambitions, establishing another official, “preferred” theological ideology won’t roll back their influence. Minimizing the role of all religion in government would be a better idea. Only then could people begin to speak about rights and liberty,” he writes on the FP website.

(Photo: Naeemi’s office after the bomb, 12 June 2009/Mohsin Raza)

“The SAC will undoubtedly embolden extremists by giving them ideological motivation: They now have evidence to provide young recruits and foot soldiers that the “war” they are fighting is, in fact, about the integrity of Islam. Far from reducing extremists’ influence, the SAC is doing them a favor…

“After years of bemoaning official Saudi sponsorship of Wahhabism, and condemning official Iranian sponsorship of millenarian Islam, we are now being asked to celebrate a state-sponsored brand of Islam in Pakistan. We are asked to believe this is “different” from those other cases solely because it’s a version of the religion that looks benign. But not only is this unprincipled — it is going to backfire, leaving Sufism discredited and more religious resentment among the numerous peaceful Salafis in the world.”

What do you think? Does Sufism have any role to play in this struggle?

Pakistani Islamist women activists in Lahore, 5 Feb 2009/Mohsin Raza

French politicians seem ready once again to make a political issue out of Muslim women’s clothes. A group of 58 legislators has called for a parliamentary enquiry into what they said was a growing number of women wearing “the burqa and the niqab on the national territory.“ Their initiative comes five years after France banned the Muslim headscarf from French state schools. President Nicolas Sarkozy hasn’t tipped his hand yet, but his government’s spokesman, Luc Chatel, said on Friday that Paris could opt for a law “if, after this enquiry, we see that burqa wearing was forced, which is to say it was contrary to our republican principles.”

“There are people in this country who are walking around in portable prisons,” said André Gerin, a Communist legislator who was behind the initiative. More than 40 legislators from Sarkozy’s ruling centre-right party were also signatories. “We have to be able to open a loyal and frank dialogue with all Muslims about the question of the place of Islam in this country … taking into account the slide towards fundamentalism (of some Muslims),” Gerin told France Info radio.

The politicians’ appeal argued that burqas and niqabs violated the principle of gender equality: “If the Islamic headscarf amounted to a distinctive sign of belonging to a religion, here we have the extreme stage of this practice. It is no longer just an ostentatious show of religion, but an attack on women’s freedom and the affirmation of femininity. Clothed in a burqa or niqab, she is in a situation of reclusion, exclusion and inadmissible humiliation. Her very existence is negated.”

Saudi woman pharmacist in Jeddah, 4 June 2007/Susan Baaghil

Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council of the Muslim faith (CFCM), said he was shocked by the proposal and asked why politicians wanted to focus on what he called a marginal phenomenon when they had bigger economic problems to deal with. “Bringing up the subject in this way, through the creation of a parliamentary commission, amounts to a stigmatisation of Islam and the Muslims of France,” he said.

No estimates exist for the total number of women wearing the all-encompassing garments in France and whether their number has been on the rise. Gerin said the commission would try to establish these facts. There are reasons to question just how widespread the practice really is. In previous public debates in France about Muslim headscarves or Muslim demands for hospitals to respect Islamic traditions (no men doctors to examine women, etc), some politicians and media seemed to assume the word “anecdote” was the singular of “data” and present a few stories as proof of a worrying trend.

Reactions have been mixed within Sarkozy’s government. State secretary for urban affairs Fadela Amara,  one of three cabinet members of Muslim background, has advocated a law against burqas and niqabs while Immigration Minister Eric Besson says France should oppose this clothing “but it has to do it by education, by teaching, by dialogue. A law would be ineffective and would create tensions we don’t need right now.”

Fadela Amara in the National Assembly, 14 Feb 2009/Jacky Naegelen

Sociologist Jean Bauberot, one of the leading specialists on France’s system of laïcité, or separation of church and state, told Libération this debate was similar to the headscarf controversy of 2003-2004 in that both showed a French tendency to think the state can know what’s best for its citizens. But there was an important difference in that facial veils could pose “practical problems for recognising the identity of the person standing in front of you.” We’ve discussed a similar argument in Canada on this blog.

“Of course, one may regret that women wear a burqa, but one cannot liberate people despite themselves,” he remarked.

Do you think there’s a difference between women covering their hair and covering their faces? Are both religious traditions that western countries should respect? Or do the practical problem Bauberot mentions mean a country could say yes to hijabs but no to niqabs?

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?

The Palestinian issue has figured prominently over the past week in stories with a religion angle. Pope Benedict’s visit to Israel, which ended on Friday, was the most prominent. While visiting Bethlehem, he called Israel’s barrier in the West Bank “one of the saddest sights” on his whole tour. Early this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met U.S. President Barack Obama for the first time. Netanyahu said the Palestinians must recognise Israel as a Jewish state as a precondition for peace talks while Obama said Jewish settlements in the West Bank “have to be stopped.” On Wednesday, United Nations human rights investigators said they hoped to visit Gaza in early June and hold public hearings on whether war crimes were committed there in Israel’s blockade of the area governed by the Islamist movement Hamas.

(Photo: Palestinian protesters wave flags at the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem’s Old City, 21 May 2009/Amir Cohen)

In almost every speech he made, Pope Benedict pleaded for more interfaith contacts and cooperation as a way to move forward towards peace. With the Israeli-Palestinian issue so polarised, the question of promoting understanding among the people of the Holy Land often seems to be reduced mostly to a Jewish-Muslim issue. The tiny Christian minority in the local population often seems to be standing on the sidelines.

But within the occupied West Bank, there are numerous examples of religious coexistence between the Muslim and Christian populations. The West Bank village of Aboud, which I described in a feature you can read here, is a case in point. Father Firas Aridah, head of the local Catholic parish, points to the joint celebration by Muslims and Christians of their respective religious holidays. The Catholic school he operates with a majority of Muslim students doesn’t impose the church’s beliefs on the student body but teaches them their own faiths.

The village’s religious pluralism is under threat because its Christians are slowly leaving, changing the demographic dynamics with the Muslim majority. Nearly 900 of Aboud’s 2,200 residents are Christians. One reason for the exodus cited in the Israeli media is rising Islamist extremism. But Fr. Firas will have none of that. “Islamic fanaticism, and all this, is propaganda,” he said. “It is Israeli propaganda that distracts people’s understanding that [Israel] is occupying Palestine.” The reason 34 Christian families have left Aboud since 2000, he said, was the Israeli occupation and the security restrictions it imposes, stifling the economy and limiting opportunity.

(Photo: Israeli wall at the Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah, 19 May 2009/Baz Ratner)

Husam al-Taweel, a Greek Orthodox member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from Gaza who was elected with support from the governing Islamist movement Hamas, told FaithWorld earlier this week: “I won’t say there are no problems and we are living in heaven. But there is no discrimination against Christians in particular. We don’t see ourselves as a minority, but as part of the Arab majority.” (Emigration) “is not a problem only for Christians. This is a problem for the Palestinian community in general. They’re all looking for a job, a better future.”

When Pope Benedict visited Bethlehem, in the West Bank, last week, he was less than 100 km (60 miles) away from Gaza. But for the 4,000 Christians in this crowded Palestinian territory along the Mediterranean Sea , he might as well have been on the moon. Like nearly all Gazans, they are barred from leaving the Gaza Strip by Israeli restrictions. An Israeli embargo on supplying many essential goods to them has left the impoverished area unable to repair buildings destroyed or damaged by an Israeli offensive in January. Added to all that, the tiny Christian minority has been living since June 2007 under the Islamist rule of Hamas. Faced with conditions like that, attending a papal mass is a luxury few would even dream of.

(Photos: Sunday Mass at Holy Family Church, Gaza, 17 May 2009/Suhaib Salem)

Behind the altar at Holy Family Church in Gaza, paintings depict Gospel scenes that all took place within a few hours’ drive. There’s the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Nativity in Bethlehem, Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River and the Last Supper in Jerusalem — all places that Benedict visited. But the only place the Gazan Catholic faithful at Sunday Mass here could hope to visit anytime soon would be the route of the Flight to Egypt. Joseph and Mary would probably have brought Jesus through the Gaza region while fleeing Herod’s plan to kill all newborn boys in Bethlehem. The rest are all unreachable for them.

I made a quick visit to the Christian community in Gaza on Sunday to gauge the mood following the pope’s visit to Israel and the West Bank. My colleague and I had only a few hours until the border closed in mid-afternoon, so there was only enough time for some impressions and short conversations at the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches and with a Hamas government minister.

There were about 70-80 Catholics attending Mass when we arrived at Holy Family Church in the old city centre of Gaza. After Mass, several parishioners talked about the pope and about life in the isolated territory. “For us, his visit didn’t mean anything,” Salama Saba, a 60-year-old unemployed electrical engineer, said when we asked about the pope. “He should come here to Gaza to see the destruction My son was killed. My home was destroyed. There is nothing for us.”

Rami Tarazi, an unemployed 31-year-old, said he would have loved to go see the pope, but it was not possible to get a permit to leave Gaza for Bethlehem. “You had to be over 40 to qualify, and then they only chose some people. We don’t know who did the choosing.” Several people said only about 90 of Gaza’s 4,000 Christians were allowed to leave to go see Pope Benedict.

Life under Hamas is a delicate topic. “We don’t have any problem with them,” Saba said carefully. A 21-year-old student, who asked not to be named, said Hamas didn’t do anything specific against Christians but didn’t protect them when they came under attack from Islamist extremists. Over at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrous, a parishioner there who also asked not to be named said Christians were concerned about Hamas although he gave no details.

Husam al-Taweel, a Christian member of the Palestinian Legislative Council elected with Hamas support, gave a fuller view of the situation for Christians in Gaza. “I won’t say there are no problems and we are living in heaven,” he said in an office at the Greek Orthodox church, where he is secretary general of the board. “But there is no discrimination against Christians in particular. We don’t see ourselves as a minority, but as part of the Arab majority.”

Taweel said 90 percent of Gaza’s 4,000 Christians were Greek Orthodox, the rest being Roman Catholic and a few Baptists. The Christian community has dwindled because of migration, he said, but added: “This is not a problem only for Christians. This is a problem for the Palestinian community in general. They’re all looking for a job, a better future.”

The rise to power of Hamas had not changed life much for Christians, he said. “Nobody asks my sister to put on a veil,” he said, “I will not allow anyone to interfere in my life as a Christian.” But there had been attacks on Christians, such as some who sold liquor or on a YMCA library, and the culprits were never found. One man, Rami Ayyad, was abducted and killed, apparently as a result of his work at the Protestant Holy Bible Society. Taweel spoke at length about the need to apply Palestinian law, implying that this wasn’t done equally.

Asked about sales of alcohol, which is no longer available in Gaza, Taweel said drink was a luxury that Gazans couldn’t even think of anymore. “We can’t even find clean water. Even bottled mineral water here has to be boiled before you can drink it — although you usually don’t have enough gas, and if you use electricity, the power is often cut off. So alcohol is a luxury we don’t expect to find here anyway.”

With only a short time left, we paid a quick visit to Dr. Basem Naim, minister of health in the Hamas government in Gaza. With his fluent English and German, Naim often meets foreign journalists to explain Hamas policy. When I asked what had changed in terms of religion since Hamas took over in Gaza from Fatah, the rival, secular Palestinian party that still governs in the West Bank. He started by saying that Hamas, for all its Islamist agenda, was first and foremost a Palestinian resistance movement and it saw Christians as part of Palestinian society. If there were tensions between Muslims and Christians now, he said, they were more due to efforts by evangelical Christians to convert Muslims than any policy of Hamas. He said evangelical Christians with U.S. support had been working among Palestinians for the past 15 years. According to Naim, several leaders of established churches in Gaza had asked the government to ban this missionary activity.

(Photo: Greek Orthodox church with “Hamas” spraypainted on front wall, 17 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

“If we stop these people, there are many in Europe and the United States who are just waiting for such a move to start talking about Hamas as a religious regime,” he said. But Hamas was primarily a political organisation, he insisted. “We have not decided yet about the final model of Palestinian society,” he said. “We cannot impose things by force.”

Naim presented Hamas as being in “the middle ground” in the Islamic world. “What is allowed here would be banned in Saudi Arabia,” he said, citing the right for women to drive as an example. “There are extremists to the right of us, who cannot understand that Christians can come here and talk about Christianity. But they are not only against Christians. They would also be against Muslims who shake hands with a lady. They could attack a wedding party if they’re playing music. They could attack internet cafes because people can see sex films there.”

Short though the visit was, I got the impression that Hamas had much bigger problems on its hands right now than to start Islamising what is already a traditional Muslim society. The police arrest people for possessing drugs, but not alcohol, which is simply confiscated, residents said. It was never especially common, even before Hamas took over. Women wear headscarves, but beards are not noticibly more frequent than in other Arab societies. Other residents said what was most noticable since Hamas took over was a kind of self-censorship that people practisced themselves. There were probably more women wearing headscarves and young men were more careful about playing loudly secular music in their cars.

(Photo: Dr. Basem Naim, 17 May 2009/Suhaib Salem)

On the way out, we saw one scene that showed it was still an Islamist administration. Hamas border guards searching the bags of two women aid workers driving into Gaza were in the process of confiscating a bottle of white wine they’d found in one suitcase and were searching elsewhere in their car for more.

(Photo: Benedict speaks at King Hussein bin Talal Mosque, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

If Pope Benedict had delivered today’s speech on Christian-Muslim cooperation back in Regensburg two years ago, there might never have been a “Regensburg.” The name of the tranquil Bavarian university town where Benedict once taught theology has become shorthand for how a man as intelligent as the pope can commit an enormous interfaith gaffe. His long-awaited address today in the King Hussein bin Talal Mosque, Jordan’s magestic state mosque on a hilltop in western Amman, was an eloquent call for Christians and Muslims to work together to defend the role of faith in modern life. Rather than hinting that Islam was irrational, as Muslims understood him to say in Regensburg, he called human reason “God’s gift” to all. Christians and Muslims should work together using their faith and reason to promote the common good in their societies, he said, and oppose political manipulation of any faith.

The speech clearly sought common ground with its Muslim audience. It started off linking the massive pale limestone mosque to other places of worship that “stand out like jewels across the earth’s surface” and “through the centuries … have drawn men and women into their sacred space to pause, to pray, to acknowledge the presence of the Almighty, and to recognize that we are all his creatures.”

Benedict described the increasingly frequent argument that religion caused tensions and division in the world as worrying both to Christian and to Muslim believers. “The need for believers to be true to their principles and beliefs is felt all the more keenly,” he said in the speech in English. “Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshipers of God faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and live by the Almighty’s decrees, merciful and compassionate, consistent in bearing witness to all that is true and good, and ever mindful of the common origin and dignity of all human persons, who remain at the apex of God’s creative design for the world and for history.”

After praising Jordan’s work promoting interfaith dialogue, he said the greater reciprocal knowledge both sides had gained through dialogue “should prompt Christians and Muslims to probe even more deeply the essential relationship between God and his world so that together we may strive to ensure that society resonates in harmony with the divine order.”

Today I wish to refer to a task which … I firmly believe Christians and Muslims can embrace… That task is the challenge to cultivate for the good, in the context of faith and truth, the vast potential of human reason… As believers in the one God, we know that human reason is itself God’s gift and that it soars to its highest plane when suffused with the light of God’s truth. In fact, when human reason humbly allows itself to be purified by faith, it is far from weakened; rather, it is strengthened to resist presumption and to reach beyond its own limitations. In this way, human reason is emboldened to pursue its noble purpose of serving mankind, giving expression to our deepest common aspirations and extending, rather than manipulating or confining, public debate.”

(Photo: Benedict with Prince Ghazi (in robes) outside the mosque, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

So has Benedict “made up for Regensburg” or managed to trump it with this speech? His critics here naturally didn’t think so. Sheikh Hamza Mansour, a leading Islamist scholar and politician, told my colleague Suleiman al-Khalidi that the pope had “not sent any message to Muslims that expresses his respect for Islam or its religious symbols starting with the Prophet.” Benedict had spoken on Friday about his deep respect for Muslims, but not specifically for Islam.

“I wouldn’t want to read too much into selecting a particular word or not,” Ibrahim Kalin, a Turkish Islamic scholar and spokesman for the Common Word group of Muslim intellectuals promoting dialogue with Christians, told me by phone from Ankara. The speech was “very positive,” he said. “He said many other things in this speech. He said Christians and Muslims pray to the same God. That’s an expression of enormous commonality. I would go by the context of what hes saying. It’s a long way from Regensburg speech.”

Kalin, who also teaches at Georgetown University in Washington, said this speech couldn’t “make up for Regensburg” but it did represent an evolution in the pope’s thinking about Islam. “He’s made substantial changes (in his thinking) but he’s not coming out and saying ‘I atone for my sin at Regensburg.’ Kalin said. He’s not saying that and he’s not going to say that. But reading between the lines, it’s happened gradually.”

Prince Ghazi bin Muhammed bin Talal, a leading Common Word signatory who was the pope’s host at the mosque today, brought up the Regensburg speech in his address. But he did this in the context of thanking Benedict for expressing his regrets “for the hurt caused by this lecture to Muslims.”

(Photo: Benedict inside the mosque, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

Benedict’s Amman speech has gone a long way to putting Regensburg into context, and dialogue proponents like the Common Word group are helping him do it. But it’s a wild card that can still be drawn against him, especially by Islamists opposed to cooperation with Christians. “My guess is that he’ll give three, four or five more speeches like this to try to make people forget the Regensburg speech,” Kalin commented.

Driving home very late one night in Jakarta, I passed four men on motorbikes. The white tunics, trousers and skullcaps of the drivers and their pillion-riders, who carried furled green flags, stood out in the badly-lit street and marked them as vigilantes of the Islamic Defenders Front. The Front, or FPI, is a hardline Muslim group best known for smashing up bars and nightclubs.

(Photo: Islamic Defenders Front motorcycle protest in Jakarta, 22 Aug 2004/Supri Supri)

The group is something of an oddity in an officially secular and predominantly Muslim country that is largely tolerant of other religions and ways of life. But a change in the political landscape could alter that.

Following a general election this month, Indonesia looks headed for a possible coalition between a centrist, secular party - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party - and a conservative Islamist party called the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). Sunanda Creagh and I have written an analysis on how this prospect has worried Indonesia’s religious and ethnic minorities — click here to read it.

Conservative Muslim politicians pushed Yudhoyono’s previous government into promoting a controversial anti-porn law last year that could make some forms of art, whether painting or dancing, illegal if they are considered too erotic. The largely Hindu Balinese were furious; would this mean they could now go to prison for their erotic art ? what about the skimpily clad tourists who make a big contribution to the local economy ? Bali’s governor defied Jakarta and decided the island would refuse to implement the law.

The PKS has supported the introduction of sharia by-laws in some parts of the country and recently caused a stir when a PKS official tried to ban a traditional form of dance in West Java because he considered it too sexy.

PKS chairman Tifatul Sembiring told Reuters in an interview earlier this month:

“I don’t mean cutting off hands, I mean following your religious teachings. We don’t want people to become atheists. We want people to have a religion. If you are a Muslim, you must obey your religion. If you are a Christian or Jewish or other, please obey your religious teaching too… But you must have a belief, because people with a belief have a moral code. People who are atheists, I don’t know how they have moral control.”

That was presumably meant to be reassuring. Should Indonesia’s religious and ethnic minorities be reassured?

(Photo: Tifatul Sembiring, 10 July 2008/Crack Palingg)

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?