Sitting through a media briefing in Amman on Pope Benedict’s visit to Jordan starting on Friday, I whiled away the news-free parts trying to decipher the Arabic writing on the official logo (photo at right). I never fully mastered the Arabic alphabet or the Urdu language (which uses it) during my time in Pakistan over 20 years ago. But some hard-won bits of linguistic trivia remain stuck in the brain and come in handy at the most unexpected moments.

With some effort on my part, that arc of Arabic calligraphy up top revealed itself as saying al-haj al-babawi. The haj of baba … hmmm… Arabic has no “p,” so that could be the haj of papa. The Italians call him papa, so it must be talking about the pope and saying the pope’s haj. Huh? The pope’s haj?

Of course, the word haj simply means “pilgrimage” in Arabic. Western languages have taken it over as the specific term for the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. But the pope has a snowball’s chance in you-know-where to get there. Haj means pilgrimage, no more and no less, and it describes the pope’s visit just the same way as he does in the words of the many western languages he speaks.

This momentary hesitation over the meaning of haj reminded me of the dispute in Malaysia over whether Christians can use the word Allah for God when they pray in the Malay language. Bill Tarrant brought this story up to date on this blog today. Muslims say they pray to the same God as Christians and Jews, and Allah is only their word for the deity. But Malaysia’s Muslim establishment seems to have been westernised to the point that it confuses the root meaning of Arabic words it uses.

Just to check, I asked a Jordanian Roman Catholic how he recites the opening phrase of the Nicene Creed, the prayer in which Christians proclaim they “believe in one God.” Can’t claim I understood the first part of the phrase, but the end of it was crystal clear. The word he used for God was Allah.

(Photos: Papal visit logo above, Papal Nuncio Archbishop Francis Assisi Chullikat at briefing with logo below, 6 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Multicultural Malaysia, whose official religion is Islam but which has sizeable numbers of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, has been struggling of late to ensure religious freedoms for its minorities, without offending the sensibilities of majority Muslims.

In the latest case, a Malaysian court granted permission to a Christian to challenge the authorities for seizing religious materials that used the word “Allah”. The government has banned the use of the Arabic word to describe God by all except for Muslims, saying it might confuse Muslims or offend their sensisibilities.

(Photo: A Hindu pilgrim outside Kuala Lumpur, 8 Feb 2009/Zainal Abd Halim)

The Catholic Herald, Malaysia’s main Catholic newspaper, has been fighting the government for months over the right to use the word “Allah”. Herald Editor Rev. Lawrence Andrew argues that Malaysian Christians have used “Allah” as their term for God for centuries. In a recent edition, the Herald slammed a new locally produced Bible, which further muddied these troubled waters by using the Hebrew word “Elohim” instead of “Allah” (or God for that matter) for the Almighty.

The new government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, which took over last month, is trying to portray itself as reformist. It has begun dismantling, albeit in an incremental way, some of the economic and educational privileges guaranteed Malay Muslims under Malaysia’s ethnically based political system. Najib’s government has undertaken a review of a draconian internal security law that allows indefinite detention without trial and which has been used liberally against Indian and Chinese opposition figures.

In another apparent concession to religious pressure, Legal Affairs Minister Nazri Aziz last month banned the conversion of children to Islam without the consent of both parents. The decision concerned the highly publicised case of a 34-year-old Hindu woman, Indira Gandhi (no relation to the late Indian leader), whose estranged husband converted to Islam and then did the same with their children. Nazri said minors were to be bound by the common religion of their parents at the time of marriage, even if one parent were later to become a Muslim. A number of Muslim organisations were opposed to the move, saying it was unfair to the Muslim parent, and the case has wound up in the courts.

(Photo: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, 10 April 2009/Udo Weitz)

Najib’s reform platform may make some Malay Muslims uneasy. But the coalition government led by the Malay nationalist UMNO party is responding to the debacle it suffered in the last general election, when minorities, and even many Malays, deserted a coalition that has ruled Malaysia uninterrupted since 1957, and made a huge swing to the fractious opposition alliance.

So the government will likely continue its balancing act, offsetting concessions to Hindu and Christians here with a sop to Muslims there. The Ahmadiyyas, a moderate but controversial Muslim sect, may have lost out in these equations. An Islamic council issued a fatwa against the sect last month that bans it from conducting prayers in its mosque. The Ahmadis are considered heretical by some Muslims because they refuse to accept the Prophet Mohammad was Islam’s final prophet, and say that the founder of the sect, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is a prophet and messiah.

All of this is taking place as Muslims have taken a more activist approach to the changing religious climate in Malaysia. A coalition of 50 Malaysian Muslim non-governmental organsiations known as Pembela that came together in 2006 has been spearheading the fight against apostasy, particularly the series of conversion cases (including Indira Gandhi’s) that have come before the courts the last few years.

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.” Or politics in Malaysia for that matter.

(Photo: A Malaysian Muslim at prayer, January 2009/Zainal Abd Halim)

Reuters publishes many more reports on religion, faith and ethics than we can mention on the FaithWorld blog. We sometimes highlight a story here, but often leave an issue unmentioned because it was already covered on the wire, or we have neither the time nor any extra information for a blog post. Here’s a sample of some of the stories we’ve published over the past week:

Philippines says open to amending Muslim autonomy law 13 Mar 2009

China says willing to meet Dalai Lama’s envoys 13 Mar 2009

Jews ask pope for Holocaust studies in schools 12 Mar 2009

Turkey denies firing editor over Darwin article 12 Mar 2009

Pope says pained over “hate, hostility” against him 12 Mar 12 2009

China says it must approve Dalai Lama reincarnation 12 Mar 2009

U.S. says some states curb free speech in name of religion 12 Mar 2009

Australia says may quit UN racism conference 12 Mar 2009

Pope admits Holocaust denier affair was mishandled 12 Mar 2009

Pope to visit Rome synagogue in autumn 12 Mar 2009

Malaysia Christians battle with Muslims over Allah 11 Mar 2009

“Big Love” network apologizes to Mormons 11 Mar 2009

Catholics protest Connecticut church finance bill 11 Mar 2009

Russia church offers to help Kremlin weather crisis 11 Mar 2009

Pope admits Holocaust denier affair was mishandled 11 Mar 2009

Cardinal says bad bankers must ask God’s pardon 11 Mar 2009

US fertility patients want final say on embryos 11 Mar 2009

Dalai Lama slams China over Tibet “suffering” 10 Mar 2009

Cameroon demolishes street stalls for Pope’s visit 10 Mar 2009

Stem cell go-ahead puts Obama at odds with pope 10 Mar 2009

Somali cabinet votes to implement sharia law 10 Mar 2009

FACTBOX: Embryonic stem cells, the ultimate master cell 10 Mar 2009

Stem cell advocates finally get their Obama moment 09 Mar 2009

French filmmaker slammed for likening illegals to WWII Jews 09 Mar 2009

Vatican paper: Washing machine liberated women most 09 Mar 2009

Chechnya wants newborns to be named after Mohammad 09 Mar 2009

Obama to let health institute decide on stem cells 08 Mar 2009

US stem cell announcement only a first step 08 Mar 2009

Pope to visit Holocaust memorial during Israel trip 08 Mar 2009

Turkish Mosque Holds First Official Kurdish Sermon 08 Mar 2009

(Photo credits from top: Romeo Ranoco, Philippe Wojazer, Alessia Pierdomenico, Larry Downing, stringer)

“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of Allah.”

Malaysian Catholics recite this prayer in Malay daily at Masses across the country such as a recent one in St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Keningau, a sprawling timber town in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo island that Niluksi Koswanage visited for this feature about tensions between Christians and the majority Muslims.

Muslims object to Christians using the word “Allah” in their services and publications, even though it is the normal word for God in Malay. The Muslims say it could undermine Islam and aims to convert Muslims. The row over the use of Allah to describe the Christian God feeds into a long-running feud over conversions between the government of a country where all Malays must be Muslims, and other faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism that are practised by ethnic Indians and Chinese.

(Photo: Mass at St. Francis Cathdral in Keningau, Malaysia, 22 Feb 2009/Bazuki Mohammad)

It is illegal in Malaysia to convert from Islam to any other religion, although conversions to Islam are allowed. Malaysian Muslim activists and officials see using the word Allah in Christian publications including bibles as attempts to proselytise. Those concerns led to a ban on the main Catholic newspaper in Malaysia, the Catholic Herald, on using the word “Allah” to denote God. The government partially lifted the ban in mid-February, only to reimpose it later that month. The Herald is now suing the government to overturn the ruling.

Some leading Muslim scholars here say the issue is being blown out of proportion and that the risk of conversions among the 60 percent Muslim population is tiny. They see it, instead, as an attempt by the government that has ruled Malaysia uninterrupted for 51 years since independence from Britain to hold on to power by identifying ethnicity with religion.

That hegemony is now under threat after the opposition scored its best-ever election result in 2008 when it deprived the government of its two-thirds parliamentary majority and ended up in control of five of Malaysia’s 13 states.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is now targeting the voters of Borneo in an effort to keep up pressure on the government and the first test will come in a state assembly by-election in early April. That may give a chance for voters in a constituency near St Francis Xavier to flex their muscles.

(Photo: Malay prayer sheet with words Allah (God), Injil (Bible) and Kristus (Christ), 22 Feb 2009/Bazuki Muhammad)

“If the government wants to be nasty and stop people from using Allah, it can,” said 28-year-old Teresa Palikat, a tailor, after attending Sunday Mass in Keningau district. “But it may not work here. It’s God’s country here.”

Or is it “Allah’s country”? Or does the word used to describe it make no difference at all?

The Rohingyas, a Muslim minority fleeing oppression and hardship in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, have been called one of the most persecuted people on earth. But they have seldom hit the headlines — until recently, that is. More than 500 Rohingyas are feared to have drowned since early December after being towed out to sea by the Thai military and abandoned in rickety boats. The army has admitted cutting them loose, but said they had food and water and denied sabotaging the engines of the boats.

(Photo: Rohingyas in immigration area in soutwestern Thailand, 31 Jan 2009/Sukree Sukplang)

The Rohingyas are becoming a headache for Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia where they have washed up. Indonesian authorities this week rescued 198 Rohingya boat people off the coast of Aceh, after three weeks at sea. Buddhist Thailand and mostly Muslim Indonesia call them economic migrants looking for work at a time when countries in the region, like everywhere else, are in an economic downturn. But human rights groups such as Amnesty International are calling on governments in the region to provide assistance to the Rohingyas and let the UNHCR  have access to them.

Myanmar’s generals have a shabby enough record with their Buddhist majority. The brutal suppression of monk-led protests that killed at least 31 people in September 2007 and the continued detention of opposition icon and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi bear witness to that. But their treatment of ethnic minorities, including the Muslim Rohingyas and the Christian Chin people in the mountainous Northwest — where insurgents have been fighting for autonomy — have been especially brutal. They are not oppressed because of their faith alone, but their faith and ethnicity make them targets. The military government does not recognise them as one of the country’s 130-odd ethnic minorities. They are forbidden from marrying or traveling without permission and have no legal right to own land.

(Photo: Thai policeman with Rohingyas at immigration area in southwest Thailand, 31 Jan 2009/Sukree Sukplang)

Most Rohingyas come from Rakhine State, also known as Arakan State, in northwest Myanmar, abutting the border with Bangladesh.  Their roots go back at least to 1821, when Britain annexed the region as a province of British India and brought in large numbers of Bengali-speaking Muslim labourers. When Burma won independence from Britain in 1948, the Bengali-speaking Muslim population near the border exceeded that of the Buddhists, leading to secessionist tensions. This translated into harassment following the 1962 coup that has led to nearly five decades of military rule by the ethnic Burman majority. Thousands fled to Bangladesh to escape a 1978 military census of the Rohingyas called “Operation Dragon.”

Refugees typically leave Rakhaine state for Bangladesh first before taking off in their flimsy fishing boats to find a new life elsewhere in Southeast Asia. On a recent Reuters visit to a Bangladeshi refugee camp, our correspondent Nizam Ahmed heard harrowing tales of being rape, torture and slave labour. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says 200,000 Rohingyas now live a perilous, stateless existence in Bangladesh. As a result, thousands have fled to try to start new lives, chancing their luck in rickety wooden boats they hope will get them to Malaysia, home to 14,300 official Rohingya refugees and maybe half as many again unregistered ones.

(Photo: Rohingya refugees prepare lunch at a naval base in Indonesia’s Sabang Island, 30 Jan 2009/Tarmizy Harva)

To Myanmar’s generals, the Rohingyas are a suspect lot who support local insurgencies that threaten the unity of the country. To Myanmar’s neighbours, they are fresh wave of boat people in Asia’s endless migrations impelled by destitution. To human rights and religious groups, they are persecuted minorities. As for the desperate and stateless Rohingyas who sail off in flimsy boats hoping to wash up on a friendly shore, they just need somewhere to call home.

(Photo: A Chinese temple in Kuala Lumpur, 7 Feb 2008/Bazuki Muhammad)

Malaysia prides itself on its multicultural heritage, and rightly so. The Southeast Asian nation of around 27 million people is one of the few countries in the world where so many races and religions live together in peace and stability.

Having arrived in July from Hungary, an ex-communist country that has one of the least diverse ethnic makeups in the world, I can attest it is a truly amazing cultural experience and one of which the country should be proud.

After four years of seeing nothing but look-alike Hungarian baroque churches, I now find Hindu and Buddhist temples nestled side-by-side in downtown Kuala Lumpur. A whitewashed Protestant church sits on a square where the country’s independence from Britain was proclaimed. There is a mosque near where I live and the evening call to prayer is still a sound that thrills and intrigues. When you see and hear all that, it is easy to believe the public face of the country.

The nation, however, defines itself by the fissures that run through the whole of society. Difference, both ethnic and religious, is what makes a Malaysian. Religion is bound up with race and race is bound up with politics and the stated political aim of the government is to defend the rights of the majority Malays, who by definition are Muslims.

(Photo: Fireworks over Putra Mosque outside Kuala Lumpur, 31 Aug 2005/Bazuki Muhammad)

The country is nearly 60 percent Malay, with two main minorities. The Chinese (whose religion can be Buddhist, Taoist, Christian or other) make up 11 percent of the population and the Indians (mostly Hindus) are seven percent. Smaller groups practice Sikhism, animism or forms of folk religion.

As the global economy stumbles,  the government is battling to reassert itself against a strong opposition. Political rhetoric about defending Malay rights and attacking non-Malays appears to be heating up.

In a speech on Friday, Malaysia’s normally reserved Foreign Minister Rais Yatim praised the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush. He also observed that we “have to enforce laws, in fact strict laws, and nourish the various conventions of the general Malaysian society”.

The next victim of the rise in tensions could be a Roman Catholic newspaper, the Herald, that may have less than two weeks left to publish after it used the word “Allah” in Malay for “God.” It did this in the Malay language edition of its newspaper, which is aimed at the indigenous populations of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo Island.

(Photo: Herald newspaper, 17 Dec 2008/Bazuki Muhammad)

“Allah” simply means “God” in Arabic, without any religious strings attached. Arab Christians use it in their prayers and it’s the term for the Almighty in Malay translations of the Bible. But Malaysia’s government believes its use here could inflame racial tensions, so it has threatened to suspend the paper’s annual permit to publish.

The government is also struggling against a boisterous Internet culture. While it can easily close down newspapers its pledge to foreign investors to keep the net free has created challenges it did not imagine. It tried to close down a blog written by Raja Petra Kamaruddin after he ignored warnings to abide by the law.

Raja Petra is related to one of Malaysia’s royal families, is a Muslim and supports the opposition. He has been arrested several times under laws that allow detention without trial and was most recently freed in November. He is currently also being tried for sedition.  One of his offences was to write an article entitled “I promise to be a good non-hypocritical Muslim” that said those who attack other faiths “foam at the mouth in defence of Islam. They slander and defile other religions. They declare all other religions as false and their holy books as fakes.” That too threatened the social order, according to the government.

(Photo: Raja Petra Kamaruddin, 6 May 2008/Bazuki Muhammad)

At the same time as the government is battling its opponents, attempts to control the lives of ordinary Muslims are on the rise. There is a seemingly endless series of “fatwas” prescribing what is and is not allowed. Most recently, rulings from the government-backed National Fatwa Council on yoga and young women wearing trousers have provoked both amusement and incredulity.

The fatwa on yoga was seen as an attack on the ethnic Indian minority here who are economically disadvantaged and staged large scale riots in November 2007. Even a small demonstration earlier this year was put down by police using teargas.

With a by-election test looming for the government in January in a seat in the rural Malay Muslim heartland and polls in March for top posts in the biggest coalition party, the United Malays National Organisation, there is a risk the rhetoric will get even harsher.

Of all the things to get exercised about, yoga would seem to be an unlikely candidate for controversy. But such has been the case in Malaysia this week.

Malaysia’s prime minister declared on Wednesday that Muslims can after all practice the Indian exercise regime, so long as they avoid the meditation and chantings that reflect Hindu philosophy. This came after Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council told Muslims to roll up their exercise mats and stop contorting their limbs because yoga could destroy the faith of Muslims.

It has been a tough month for the fatwa council chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, who in late October issued an edict against young women wearing trousers, saying that was a slippery path to
lesbianism. Gay sex is outlawed in Malaysia.

The council’s rulings, and other religious controversies, might at first blush seem to indicate a growing strain of conservative Islam in mostly Muslim Malaysia. But it could also
reflect the growing unease of Islamic authorities in defending the faith in a rapidly modernising Malaysia where non-Muslims constitute 40 percent of the population and are increasingly
asserting their rights.

The yoga fatwa stirred up a hornet’s next, not only in the blogosphere where that could be expected, but in another deeply conservative Malaysian institution — the sultans.  Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who presides ceremonially over the central state of Selangor, said Abdul’s fatwa council should have consulted the nine hereditary Malay rulers who take turns being Malaysia’s king before announcing the ruling.  The highly unusual comment from one of the sultans on a
policy matter suggests some discord about who speaks for Malaysia’s Muslims on matters of faith. Islam is the official religion in multi-religious Malaysia and the constitution designates the nine sultans as guardians of the faith. The (rotating) king is the head of Islam in Malaysia.

The sultans, for their part, have seen what remains of their secular powers eroded over the years, particularly under the two-decade administration of former prime minister Mahathir
Mohamad. They could be defending a last bastion of royal prerogoative in the religious arena.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badaw, who has been preaching a moderate brand of Islam called Islam Hadhari, moved to contain the damage saying Muslims can do exercises like the “sun
salutation” so long as they don’t start chanting.

The fatwa council’s rulings, in any case, are not legally binding until they are adopted as national laws or sharia (Islamic) laws in individual states. There seems to be little appetite for that. No laws have been made against young women wearing trousers. The government in May dropped a proposal to restrict women from travelling abroad by themselves after a storm of derision from women activist groups.

But even as the flap over yoga is relaxing, the government is crossing swords with Christian groups.

A Christian federation  claimed Bibles were seized at entry points earlier this year. Malaysian Catholics are having an ontological argument with the authorities about the word “Allah”.
The government banned the Malay-language section of a Catholic weekly newspaper from using the word, saying it creates confusion among Muslims. Catholics say Allah is simply the Arabic word for
“God”, and has long been used in Malay-language Bibles. (A Dutch bishop has stirred debate in Europe with a similar argument)

Non-muslims, who constitute 40 percent of Malaysia’s population, sometimes worry that things such as the fuss over fatwas and words for God, may augur a mini-clash of civilisations in Malaysia, which last year saw a harsh crackdown on Indian rights protesters. It was one year ago that 10,000 ethnic Indians defied tear gas and waterr cannon to voice complaints of racial and religious discrimination in its biggest ever anti-government street protest.

Malaysia goes to the polls on March 8 and the campaign “is turning into a battle for the religious high ground among majority Muslims,” as our correspondent Jalil Hamid writes. The latest twist is an offer by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s UMNO party to build or repair at least 500 mosques if it wins. Election promises like that show how tough its battle is against the fundamentalist Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), led by clerics who promote “purer” Islamic values. “UMNO and PAS are engaged in a battle: ‘I’m more Islamic than you are’,” says political analyst Ooi Kee Beng.

For its part, the PAS warns darkly of violence and says it doubts the election will be free and fair. It has been especially critical of a change in rules for registering candidates that it says could discriminate against it. “If the Election Commission rejects the nomination papers, we will run amok,” PAS Vice-President Mohammad Sabu told reporters. “But we don’t want this election to end up as in Kenya.”

Analysts point to this growing rivalry for Muslim votes as a gathering cloud over the religious pluralism the country has long been known for. Malaysia presents a religious kaleidoscope, with about 60% Muslims, 20% Buddhists, 9% Christians, 6% Hindus and smaller minorities following Confucianism, Taoism, other faiths or none at all. Religious freedom is the law, but in practice Islam enjoys an advantage over other faiths and the gap between it and the others has been growing.

In a recent post on the blog The Other Malaysia, political scientist Farish Noor captured the sense of loss felt by Malaysians who value the pluralist tradition. He called it “Still Looking for an Islam to call Our Own?” –

Malaysia, and Malaysian-Muslims in particular, seem to have lost their historical bearings and do not know what sort of Muslims they want to be. The emergence of the dreaded moral vigilantes, of exclusive Muslim lobby groups and NGOs, the calls for more Islamic norms to be inculcated in the conduct of governance, the demands for Shariah to be made national law, and the calls for a further Islamisation of Malaysia all seem to stem from a new wave of Muslim political normativity that is so alien to the Islam that was first brought to this part of the world by the Indian-Muslim mystics and missionaries of the 13th to 15th centuries. If in the past Muslim preachers were happy to preach the universal values of Islam using an idiom and discourse that was replete with local cultural references, what we are seeing today is more than simply the Islamisation of Malaysia: it is the Arabisation of our Asian society.

Now I write this without any hint of anti-Arabism in mind. But in a global age where cultural nuances are being effaces and cultural particularities are being flattened out, I am just as wary of the Arabisation of Malaysian society as I am of the Americanisation of Malaysian society. Between Starbucks and MacDonalds on the one hand, and Wahabbism – with its fervent distaste for Sufi mysticism, eclecticism and pluralism on the other – we are lost and still looking for an Islam to call our own.

Noor also offers a good introduction to the complexities of religion and politics in Malaysia in the recent post The Threat to Secular Democracy in Malaysia for the blog Malaysia Votes.

Mark Bendeich, our bureau chief in Kuala Lumpur, says Noor — a Malaysian Muslim — echoed the views of many secular Malaysians. “The trend he describes is an increasingly loud lament of Malaysia’s large non-Muslim community,” he added, noting this trend had accelerated under former Prime Minister Mahathir, “whose critics say he wrapped himself in the cloak of Islam to defend against opposition Islamists. But Malaysia is still a very long way from Wahhabism. You can still find churches, Hindu temples, Chinese temples and mosques on opposite street corners in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Malacca… Malaysia still clings to its pluralist tradition, but the grip is getting weaker in the eyes of many Malaysians .”

Returning to news reporting after two weeks off feels like you’ve been away for two weeks. Returning to blogging after a holiday break feels like you’ve been away for an eternity. So much going on! My colleague Ed Stoddard in Dallas was minding the shop, but he was unexpectedly sent off to report the news from the campaign trail. That gave FaithWorld a very American accent, which was a timely twist given the role of religion in the Iowa vote. It’s back to the view from Paris now — here are some inital comments on recent events concerning religion around the world:

Benazir Bhutto — The assassinated Pakistani leader will speak from beyond the grave next month when her book Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West is published. HarperCollins has announced it has brought forward to Feb. 12 the release of the book that Bhutto worked on before returning to Pakistan in October. In a statement, it called the book “a bold, uncompromising vision of hope for the future of not only Pakistan but the Islamic world. Bhutto presents a powerful argument for a reconciliation of Islam with democratic principles, in the face of opposition from Islamic extremists and Western skeptics.”

It will be interesting to see what she has to say about the role of Islam in Pakistani politics, especially after all the praise for her as a modern, secularist Muslim leader in comments after her assassination. Bhutto’s party is politically secularist and she pledged to fight against Islamist militants now challenging the Islamabad government. But let’s not forget that the Taliban emerged during her second stint as prime minister in 1993-1996 and were a key element in Pakistani policy towards Afghanistan at the time. She worked with an Islamist politician close to the Taliban then and now. It was also on her watch that, as historian William Dalrymple put it, Kashmir was turned into “a jihadist playground.” Whether she supported all this, couldn’t oppose the military people behind it or both (that’s my hunch) is something historians will debate long into the future. But it is clear that her record is more complex than some of the eulogies would have it.

Saying this is not meant to tarnish the reputation of this courageous woman. The Pakistanis who were ready to vote for her know all this already. Her father and political mentor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a left-wing populist who sported Mao caps and campaigned on the faith-free slogan roti, kapra, makan (bread, clothes, housing), played the Islamic card with concessions to religious pressure groups when necessary. It’s more a comment on how complex Pakistani politics are and how hard it is to fit its main actors into categories that readers readily understand.

BTW it’s disappointing to see Dalrymple, a fine historian of the Subcontinent, fall into the same trap as readers who want us to write about “Muslim riots ” in France. In his New York Times op-ed piece cited above, he said that former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by “Sri Lankan Hindu extremists.” The Tamil Tigers are Sri Lankan and presumably mostly Hindu, as most Tamils are, but their separatist struggle is nationalist and not religious at all. They were some of the first modern suicide bombers, but that’s as close to religiously inspired militants as they get.

Anglican Agonies — Will 2008 be the year of decision for the Anglican Communion? Yes, no, maybe… or maybe none of the above? It’s getting more complicated as July’s Lambeth Conference nears. The Global South primates have announced a rival meeting for June called the Global Anglican Future Conference (with the unfortunate acronym GAFCON). The news was hardly out before the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, Bishop Suheil Dawani, complained he had not been consulted and expressed concern it could boost tensions in the region. “I believe our Primate, Dr Mouneer Hanna Anis, is also concerned about this event,” he wrote. “His advice to the organizers that this was not the right time or place for such a meeting was ignored. I urge the organizers to reconsider this conference urgently.”

The organisers say primates can attend both Jerusalem and Lambeth, but it looks like this is the alternative Lambeth conference that Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola has suggested. It’s hard to see what Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams can do. “The Archbishop of Canterbury was never one for diktats,” Andrew Brown blogged at The Guardian. “Now his inaction has let those who would split the church get into a fine mess.”

The next Black Pope — The Society of Jesus, aka the Jesuits, open their General Congregation on Monday to elect a new Superior General, aka the “black pope.” The Jesuits are the largest order in the Roman Catholic Church, with a long intellectual heritage, checkered history and record of theological tussles with the Vatican. We’re covering this for news, so I won’t go into it much now, except to spotlight the Jesuit info page on the pow-wow and two previews from America, Commonweal , The Tablet and the National Catholic Reporter and interviews with the outgoing chief Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach in Vatican Radio, Catholic News Service, Die Tagespost, La Croix, adnkronos and Katholiek Nederland (he’s Dutch). My favourite nugget from all this is that the four days they put aside for considering the new superior general is known as the murmuratio. There’s not supposed to be any campaigning, but they can murmur about the candidates.

Malaysia’s Allah Muddle — Another story on increasingly exclusive Muslim views from Malaysia, where a Catholic weekly has been told it cannot use the word Allah for God in its Malay-language articles, even though it is the usual Malay word for the deity. There seemed to be some flip-flopping over this, and the weekly eventually got its publishing permit renewed. But government officials later insisted the word Allah is from now on reserved for Muslims.

This is not just semantics. The Malaysian government has a policy of moderate Islam that it calls Islam hadhari, or civilisational Islam. It has been talking this up for a while now, just at a time when Washington has been looking for “moderate Muslims” to promote as a counterweight to Islamic radicals. But the trend in Malaysian Islam seems to be going the other way, as increasing complaints from minority Christians, Hindus and Buddhists indicate. As Malaysian political scientist Farish Noor notes: “The administration of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi came to power on the promise that it would promote its own brand of moderate Islam that was pluralist and respectful of other cultures and religions. But time and again the Malaysian public — first Hindus and now Christians — have felt necessary to protest over what they regard as unfair, biased treatment and the furthering of an exclusive brand of Islam that is communitarian and divisive. The latest fiasco over the non-issue that is the name of God would suggest that Prime Minister’s Badawi’s grand vision of a moderate Islam has hit the rocks, and is now floundering.”

Ali Eteraz, a lively Muslim blogger in the U.S., says “Leaders in Malaysia promote supremacist, dominionist versions of Islam, because it makes political sense for them to do so. Sixty per cent of the country is Malay-Muslim; the rest are Chinese Buddhists, Tamil Hindus and animists. So, if you can control the Muslims, you will control the government.”

A few other stories from Malaysia chipped away further at its reputation for tolerance — Taoist statue deemed “offensive” to Islam and Malaysian Hindu loses case to ban conversion to Islam. Next door in Indonesia, there are reports of increased attacks on the Ahmadi sect, which many Muslims consider to be heretics, and an Islamic Defenders’ Front wants to ban it. Also, an Anti-Apostasy Alliance says conversion to Christianity “is a bigger evil than terrorism.”

(more comments to follow)

Malaysia has been getting some negative publicity for a while now because of the problems some citizens face when they want to convert from Islam. Malaysia is majority Muslim, with sizable religious minorities, and it leaves Muslim personal law issues to the sharia courts. They do not allow Muslims to formally renounce Islam, meaning apostates end up in a legal limbo because they cannot register their new religious affiliations or legally marry non-Muslims. Christian convert Lina Joy learned that to her chagrin in May when the the Federal Court — the country’s highest court — refused to remove the word “Islam” from her identity card.

The government now wants to resolve this problem. “The attorney-general’s chambers is studying the matter,” Malaysia’s de-facto justice minister, Nazri Abdul Aziz, was quoted as telling parliament this week. “It is an ongoing process. It is also a sensitive issue and, God willing, a method can be achieved on how to decide on the religion of a person.”

It’s not clear how this is going to work. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said in July that Islamic religious authorities should be ready to handle apostasy cases. “We have to be ready to listen and to solve the problems,” he told reporters. “This is not about something that cannot be done. For those who don’t want to be Muslims anymore, what can you do?”

If a sharia court handled an apostasy case and let the person leave officially Islam, would that be a precedent? We usually hear that they rule in the opposite sense.