Click here for the answer.

Recently, a group of Evangelical Christian leaders let loose an Evangelical Manifesto upon the world (short summary here). By attempting to save Evangelical Christianity from the political and religious excesses that threaten believers and non-believers alike, the authors point to possible way forward for Muslims living in western countries, attempting to be good liberal democratic citizens and maintain their faith at the same time.

"Insistently moderate" as Alan Jacobs calls it, the Manifesto abjures a sound-biteAmerican Muslims: American, as well as Muslim discussion of Christianity and criticizes the whole spectrum of the Evangelical movement from right to left, including its own authors. And it extends beyond its own tribe, asking secular humanists and new atheists and liberals of all stripes if they are satisfied with the relationship that society and religion currently have, and taking a pox-on-both-thy-houses approach to "French style secularism" as well as "Islamist violence."

Evangelicals must not, the authors contend, become "useful idiots" to any political party --- no doubt a reference to Republican operatives like Karl who call Evangelicals "loons" behind their backs --- and they must not try to coerce or force other people to believe in their way. They must not try and depict themselves as the apex of truth. They must not be fundamentalist (yes, the manifesto uses the f-word), must help the poor, the under-trodden and needy. Over and again, the document condemns the "dangerous" alliance between church and state, denying that Christianity deserves special treatment because it's the majority faith, contending instead that "no one faith should be normative."

What's more the emotional and argumentative crux of the Manifesto --- the claim that "Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally" --- draws a necessary and important distinction between religious and other kinds of identities that should be instructive to people of all faiths, and to western Muslims in particular.

Is there such a thing as a "Muslim vote" or "Muslim politics"? And if there isn't should Muslims try and vote as "bloc"? Or should there be Muslims for Ron Paul, Muslims for Obama, Muslims for George Galloway, Muslims for Ken Livingstone, and Muslims for Joe Lieberman? Should mosques endorse candidates? Should our national organizations pander to politicians? Should there be "Muslim" PACs or "Muslim" foreign policy initiatives?

The Manifesto says "no," loudly. Muslims should define themselves theologically and not politically, socially, or culturally. They should see that their primary relationship to Islam isn't utilitarian but salvific, and that "Muslim" identity isn't a fulcrum with which to advance certain ends in the public sphere, but simply a pact with God, whose rewards are identity reaped in the next life.

Many Muslims will be quick to retort that given the current climate --- where they are under attack not just from fundamentalists among them but Islamophobes of every stripe --- taking such an apolitical approach to being Muslim is virtually impossible. Every day, Muslims are asked to condemn bombings, and address beheadings, and talk about foreign wars against their co-religionists. How, then, can anyone suggest that when Muslims talk about Islam, they should focus on the afterlife? Even if we wanted to, Muslims will say, other people wouldn't let us!

The Evangelical Manifesto has an ingenious response to this problem, interpreting it as a "cost of discipleship":

Unlike some other religious believers, we do not see insults and attacks on our faith as offensive and blasphemous in a manner to be defended by law, but as part of the cost of our discipleship that we are to bear without complaint or victim-playing.

In other words, when Muslims are put in a position where others are speaking for them --- and putting them into political and social and cultural categories --- it will be up to them to resist the temptation of accepting these categories. They, as the Manifesto suggests for Evangelicals, will have to say:

[W]e insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our --- true motives and our --- real agenda.

By taking this approach to political debates, even debates about Islam, Muslims could at last enter the debate not as Muslims, but as Americans. Or, say, as Philadelphians. Or as lawyers.

Perhaps precisely because Evangelicals have had the experience of acquiring massive political power and squandering it, they are singularly qualified to provide a lesson to American Muslims, who have virtually no power as a religious community. When religion becomes inextricably tied to partisan politics, it can be bought and sold like stocks, simultaneously cheapening the faith and corrupting the secular principles of liberal government. Addressed to every faith community in the US, the Evangelical Manifesto is a warning American Muslims should heed. To be accepted as full members of a liberal polity, they have to be prepared to accept that their profession of faith is just one feature of their identities among many, and not the one that should dictate their engagement with politics.

The Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy boys basketball team in Denver qualified for the regional championship, but won’t be able to play because the game was scheduled to take place on Shabbat. The Colorado High School Activities Association governs the league the boys play in, and has refused to move the game to a time when the team could play without breaking Shabbat, claiming that rearranging the schedule on the regional level would be too complicated.
The Herzl Tigers: don't roll on shabbos
The communications coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Amina Rubin, has come out with a statement supporting the Jewish team: “In a nation as religiously diverse as America, it is important that we all make the extra effort to accommodate the beliefs and practices of others. Student athletes should not be forced to choose between their faith and participation in sports." Several news sites chose to lead with the revolutionary idea that Muslims might support Jews in anything.

But there are some gaps in this story, like: Why is RMHA suddenly making a stink now that they’re in the finals. Why not push for a policy of no championship games on Saturdays? Why hasn’t this been an issue before now? And if, as the CHSAA claims, moving the game to late Saturday night would affect fifteen other teams and could mean more missed school time for kids on those teams, does the RMHA really have the right to demand religious accommodations?

On the other hand, incidents of anti-Semitism in Colorado are on the rise, so maybe it’s a good thing to have the Jewish community standing up for themselves.

During the course of the presidential campaign, many of the candidates – and their staffers – on both sides of the political aisle have behaved in a way that has left Muslim citizens of this country feeling like a fifth column; as if Muslims do not belong here unless we cower and feel ashamed about our faith.

It started with Tom Tancredo of Colorado suggesting that he would be willing to bomb Mecca and Medina, sites considered holy by each and every American-Muslim. Then Mitt Romney stated that he couldn’t conceive of a reason why a Muslim might ascend to a cabinet position. Then Mike Huckabee implicitly compared Muslims to dogs. Then John McCain essentially said that Muslims were not qualified to run for President. Then one of Rudy Giuliani’s people said that Muslims – “all Muslims” – should be chased “back to their caves.” Then, early on, early Clinton’s staffers were fired for forwarding disinformation against Senator Obama. All of this occurred with terms like “Islamofascism” and “Islamic terrorists” flying about without nary a concern for accuracy or consequence.

Will Obama say "'Muslim' is no insult"? Every time someone says Obama is a Muslim, he and his people label it a smear. Before a Jewish group in Cleveland, he analogized it to getting swift-boated. He has gone to great lengths to minimize the religiosity of the Muslims he has encountered in his life, as if the fact that his father was agnostic will somehow dull the underlying prejudice that Americans have against Muslims. I have a message for him.

Dear Senator Obama: there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim. It is not a smear. It is not akin to swift-boating. There is nothing nefarious about it. There are millions of Muslims in America, contributing to its welfare just as you and the other presidential candidates aspire to do.

When people say that you are a Muslim, I don’t want to hear you or your people say that you are being smeared. It is, I repeat, not a smear to be a Muslim. Instead, I want you to say that your opponents are lying, since, after all, you are a Christian. In fact, your response should be: “I am not a Muslim, nor would it matter if I were.” The second half of that statement is crucial.

My ideas are not anything new. In fact, Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic, and a prominent Jewish intellectual, advised you to do the same in an article where he touted you as a good candidate for American-Jews. You have gone to great lengths to defend your association with Jewish-Americans -- why can you not do the same for American-Muslims?

Unless you yourself come out and say both parts of the aforementioned sentence, the suspicious emails that follow you around, the rumors that suddenly besiege you in a primary state, the whispers that surround you right before a debate, will continue. You will continue to give fuel to the right-wing whisper campaigns. The reason that rumors can continue about you is because you do not crush them and, just as importantly, do not challenge the prejudice that undergirds them.

Not only that, but you fail as a leader when you fail to take on the Americans who do find the very idea of a Muslim human being repugnant. Right now it seems that you are counting on the self-hate and political timidity among American Muslims – who have kept their heads down since 9/11 – to simply avoid taking you to task.

How long will your evasiveness continue? This is not good leadership. This is not the politics of hope. You are essentially saying: no, you won’t.

No, you won’t remind the American public that being the President has nothing to do with religion.

No, you won’t remind the American public that there is nothing intrinsically malicious or frightening or nefarious about Muslims.

No, you won’t remind the American public that you are not Muslim, nor would it matter if you were.

So far, all you've done is looked out for your interest. I am glad, because I do want you to win. However, there is more to leadership than self-interest; I learned that from you.

I understand that you are in a tough position. Unlike John F. Kennedy, who was looked upon suspiciously for being a Catholic, you are not being demonized for your own religion, but the religion people say that you are secretly. However, that’s exactly what makes this matter so much more pernicious. That same JFK – to whom you take great pleasure in being compared – said that the politics of suspicion needed to be opposed no matter what religion they were directed against. He said:

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew–or a Quaker–or a Unitarian–or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Senator Obama, this year the finger of suspicion is directed at Muslims. I, an American-Muslim, intend to cast my vote for you as President of the United States. Will you, as my candidate of choice, remind the world that in America, we are all identified, recognized and respected on the basis of our shared status as Americans -- and not on the basis of our religion?

UPDATE: Over the weekend, speaking to 60 minutes, Senator Obama said that the smear emails were offensive to Muslims as well.

Pickles was the most challenging and touching documentary that I saw at the Other Israel Film Festival. A moving film about the limitations of faith and culture, it follows the lives of eight Muslim widows who start a pickling factory in Israel.

Each woman in the film has her own struggle: Samira is estranged from her daugher, whose husband's family won't let the two women interact; Matza's son dies of a botched operation; Fatma begins a career in marketing once she is well into her fifties. Working in the factory gives them the opportunity to share these stories with each other. As they form a community, the women begin to question their roles in society. I interviewed Nitza Gonen, the producer of the film, to learn more about the significance of the film, its legacy, and the ideas behind it.

Women at work: In the pickles factory.What inspired the film Pickles?

One day, Dalit, the director, read an article about eight Muslim women in a northern village in Israel who started a pickle factory, and this story was very unusual because it was about widows. A widow isn’t supposed to go out of the home, she is supposed to watch over her children. She lives off social security and is watched over by her husband’s family. She is very miserable. She is not supposed to remarry. If she does, she cannot bring her children with her, and she must give them to her former husband’s family. There are few films about the inner lives of Muslim women. We wanted to lift the veil—and show that on the other side they were having a revolution.

As an Israeli Jewish woman making a documentary about Muslim widows, what were some of the obstacles that you faced during the production of the film? How did you deal with the language barrier? Were the villagers or women’s families suspicious of the motives of your film?

First, I don’t speak Arabic—none of us on the film crew speak it. We needed a common language so we got a translator. She was a Muslim woman who taught us the different cultural codes. The widows were very nice to us. They knew we had good intentions and that we were just trying to expose their lives to the world. The problem was with this woman in the municipality. Her role was to care for the women of the village and when she saw that we were making a film she interfered and forbade us from shooting private moments in the home and in the factory. She represented women trying to keep up their modesty and tradition, so I don’t blame her. Somebody had to protect the widows. But they couldn’t disobey her. She had lots of influence and she helped them to take care of their families. It was difficult because we didn’t want to raise conflict, so we missed some interesting situations.

In an interview with PBS, Dalit Kimor, the director, said that "Not one political word was said when we were filming" between the filmmakers and the widows. Why did you choose to do this? Do you consider your film political?

We didn’t want to make a political film. The widows weren't concerned with politics—on the first day of filming, Arafat died, and no one talked about him in the village. No one was occupied with his death. No one was praying for him in the mosques. They didn't speak about it. We didn't speak about it. We wanted to make a social human film. In Israel every film is political. Choosing Arab women as a subject of a film is political. Some people have criticized the film for not being political. It is completely innocent of politics.

Nitza Gonen: In her house in Israel.You have said that the women had never heard of the word feminism and yet were creating a small revolution. Was this film made from a feminist perspective? Did a feminist thread evolve during the production of this film?

Neither Dalit nor myself are feminists in the classic sense. Feminism is old news—we are feminists, but we are beyond this term. We didn't aim to make a feminist film, but the film talks about the rise of feminism in Arab society in Israel. The widows made a revolution in the village and the young women respect them. Now they are thinking of going to work, to school, and developing careers—and they weren't thinking of this before. These women did something for feminism without knowing it. Feminism is not the subject of the film, but it is the subtext.

After the production of Pickles, did any of the women stay in touch? Was a social network established? Did the pickle factory leave a legacy for the women in the film?

Widows are supposed to live in loneliness, and the factory gave them the opportunity to have a social club. In the film they cry together and tell jokes and comfort each other, and this it is not something that was in their lives before. So when the factory closed they had to go back to their former lives—but not Fatma. Because she was the marketing director she had a lot of contacts, so she is still making pickles, with her daughters. They have started their own business. Her daughters want to go to school, so she is saving money so they can study.

What has been the response to Pickles internationally and in Israel?

People liked the film very much, although it's unusual because when Israelis make films on Arabs it's always about identity, conflict with Palestinians, or about Palestinians, and this film was not dealing with this. In Israel, our subject was not dealing with the hard stuff. The big success of the film was abroad. People were surprised to learn how Arab women were living, to discover that they are like us, like everybody. The Muslim world in the eyes of the West—it's a kind of riddle. We see them as fanatics or fundamentalists, but we don't see their lives. The film revealed a lot about this without saying it.

Through the production of Pickles, you started a dialogue between secular Muslim women and secular and non-secular Jewish women in Israel. Have you done other work to increase dialogue or contact between Muslims and Jews in Israel? What are your thoughts on Jewish and Muslim relations in Israel?

We are both Mediterranean and we come from the same area. We have many shared characteristics: hospitality, human warmth, we are straight-forward. Before 1948, Arabs and Jews lived together and sometimes had good relations. Through progress I think that we will have better relations. On the last film I worked on, the director of photography and director were both Arab. I would like them to join all fields of life in Israel. We share the same country and there is no excuse for being apart.

* * *

Also in Jewcy:

The Other Israel Film Festival

Sometimes I like to close my eyes and try to imagine what I’d be like if I were a kooky feminist observant Muslim instead of a rockin’ feminist observant Jew. I would definitely subscribe to Muslim Girl instead of Lilith. I would cover my hair with neon purple hijabs instead of dying it purple the way I do now. I would probably kiss fewer boys (fewer, but not none). And where would I go for reliable sex education? Who would be the Muslim Dr. Ruth?

The last problem is now solved. Thanks to an awesome Salon.com article called Sex and the Married Muslim in which they interview Egyptian sexologist Dr. Heba Kotb. She has a popular TV show called “The Big Talk” during which she answers questions about sex and relationships for a huge Muslim audience. Here’s a little excerpt from the interview:

Heba Kotb: Will tell you how to get yours, girls
You've said you believe that by having more sex, married couples will please Allah. Why?

Whenever you have sex you get rewarded because you're avoiding the woman being prone to have sex outside of the marriage and vice versa. It's a way to please each other in our world and to please Allah.

Is the Quran concerned with female pleasure?

Yes, it is. The biggest chapter of the Quran is called "The Cow." There is a verse talking about the woman's rising pleasure. It's an order to the man to give the woman the right to have pleasure -- it orders the man to give the woman foreplay and also to get the wife to have sex repeatedly and to not wait for the woman to ask because sometimes she's too shy to ask.

You've blamed Egypt's high divorce rate on "bad sex." But why is the country stricken with "bad sex"?

I think that probably more than 80 percent of divorces in Egypt are from a lack of sex education. Sex is a taboo; it's not to be discussed or complained about. A lot of people didn't know that they could complain about sex.

Why is sex such a controversial topic in the Muslim world?

It's culture -- it's not Islam, whatsoever. Islam is a very liberal and progressive religion. It invites people to have sex, of course within the marital frame. Prophet Mohammed never showed any offense to anyone asking about sexuality. On the contrary, he responded to every single question. The thing is, the culture overwhelms this.

What do you think about the in-your-face American approach to sex and sexuality?

I'm totally against this. It's harmful -- sex loses its luster and its preciousness. God orders that sex remains precious, like a pearl -- it's not just for everyone. A balance has to be built: This is allowed, this is not allowed; this is halal, this is haram. Sex is one of the things that is forbidden before marriage and outside of marriage; on the other hand, it's allowed within marriage with a lot, a lot of freedom. This creates a balance. In the American approach everything is allowed -- you can have sex at any age, on any occasion.

Who do you think is having better sex -- Americans or Egyptians?

Well, I'm not a witness. [Laughs.] Believe it or not, I've been to several countries for various conferences and it's quite the same everywhere -- there are the same problems. I don't think one group is having better sex than the other, but there is great individual variation. Those who are open, clear with each other and confront the problems they are having are far ahead.

You have encouraged women to explore their bodies -- does that include masturbation?

The woman, by means of instinct, does not need masturbation. She's not like the man whatsoever. It's not a call of nature for her. So that's why I'm not very sympathetic with young women and girls choosing to masturbate. They're ruining their sexual future -- a woman has to remain blank until she gets married and by masturbating she's forming her sexuality.

I wish there was an Orthodox Jewish woman doing something like this. I’d do it except I bet I’d have to get married and wear a snood. No dice. I’ll watch, though.

According to this article in the Jerusalem Post, Muslim cab-drivers who work the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are about to receive some harsh penalties for refusing to serve passengers carrying alcohol.

The panel of the Metropolitan Airports Commission voted to suspend a driver's airport taxi license for 30 days for the first offense and revoke it for two years for a second offense. . . . The issue went before went before the panel after a months-long dispute in which passengers said they were being denied taxi service by some Muslim drivers if they were transporting alcohol. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport officials say more than 70 percent of the cab drivers at the airport are Muslim. . . .The drivers, however, have argued that Islam forbids the carrying of alcohol.

In the months before the decision to consider stiffer penalties, the commission proposed a compromise that would have let Muslim drivers display a different-colored light on their cab if they did not want to pick up passengers carrying alcohol.

Now, how do they know if the passenger is carrying alcohol? If I were carrying alcohol, I would pack it away in my bag rather than be seen schlepping it around like a person with a problem. This is where a good old Talmudic discussion would come in handy (what would Rashi say?), to answer questions like, What if the person who wishes to be carried in my taxi does not disclose that he is carrying liquor? Or, What if that same person does not carry a bottle of liquor, but has consumed alcohol within one hour of his request for my taxi-ing services -- does that count as carrying alcohol? And, what if the person who wishes to ride in my taxi is experiencing a life-threatening emergency, but I notice a bottle of Jim Beam peeking out of her carry-on bag?

I really really REALLY hate it when people bring up the Holocaust as a trump card. I have a huge respect for everyone who died in camps, and on death marches, and in ghettoes, and everywhere else during World War II, and that’s why I cringe whenever camps, ghettoes and death marches are brought up in political conversations. It seems disrespectful, and it also often seems whiny. And then when people start calling Jews Nazis for any reason whatsoever I just turn my back on the conversation entirely, because it seems to me that there’s NOTHING to be gained when you call someone a Nazi, and when that person is Jewish, you’re gonna get your tush kicked by someone’s Israeli soldier cousin, or the ADL, depending on who “you” are.
British Muslims Have Their Houses Searched for Explosives
But I have to admit, I didn’t know what to think when I saw this headline on an article in the London Times: We’re victimised like Jews by the Nazis, says Muslim leader.

On the one hand, all kinds of alarm bells are going off in my head right now. On the other hand, the article presents some pretty compelling evidence. There are nine Muslim men being held without charges in British prisons, and Mohammad Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, is understandably pissed about it. Muslims feel like they’re being “picked on,” he says, and feel that they’re being made the scapegoat of a terrorist witch hunt.

I think those are legitimate sentiments. I mean, when 13 Jewish men were randomly accused of espionage in Iran, the Jewish community completely freaked out.

Clearly, though, the British Muslim community is producing some terrorists who are committing acts of terrorism (like 7/7) fueled by a certain understanding of the Q’uran. And those people are causing all the negative response. But in Nazi Germany I’m pretty sure there was a blatant disregard for facts one way or another. The government was going out of their way to be explicitly anti-Semitic, more interested in broad strokes than making scapegoats of particular people (and if I’m wrong about this, somebody please correct me).

I guess what I’m saying is, I think the Nazis solution was generally just to fabricate things completely, and wait until some random case came along that happened to uphold their view, and then to glorify that case. And in Britain it seems like people are just scared, so they’re taking the little information they have and applying it way too broadly, which results in the demonization of Muslims. This isn’t helped by an inept and insensitive government (but what is?).

Just when I was ready to write off the Times article as useless and over-the-top, I came across this penultimate quote, by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former leader of the Muslim Council of Britain: “I wouldn’t have used the Nazi reference but I know from the number of calls that we are getting that people are really disturbed by the onslaught on the Muslim community.”

Well, yeah. That’s pretty reasonable. But if you’re looking for something really helpful, check out this article from The Guardian about how eerily parallel the treatment of Jews and Muslims has been in Britain. Pretty much left my head spinning.

Even though I’m a grad student I’m enrolled in an undergrad class that sounded interesting to me. It’s supposed to be about the history and literature of the Middle East, co-taught by a history and a literature professor. So far, though, it’s been an ‘Islam is really not that bad’ class. As far as I can tell the underlying agenda of this class is to get all the rich white Christian kids in the class to see that not all Muslims are terrorists. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for educating people about religion, and I think Americans need to work as hard as possible to understand Islam because it looks like we’ll still be trying to sort things out in the Middle East a good thirty years from now. That said, sitting in class is excruciating.
City of Wrong: Most Obnoxious Book Ever
Our first assignment was to read a few chapters from a book called Islam Today by Akhbar S Ahmed. It only takes Ahmed ten pages to make a ridiculous claim: “Every Muslim is a fundamentalist, believing in the Quran and the Prophet.” Later he says, “For Muslims what happened in the past is important, since they live in the present with an acute awareness of their history.” Really the fastest way to piss me off is to make grandiose claims you can’t back up, like that every Muslim believes in the Quran and Prophet. Really? Every single one of the billion Muslims in the world? Wow! That’s great! And it’s so good to hear that history is important to Muslims, because it’s completely irrelevant to everybody else. Jews especially. We hate history.

And last week we read City of Wrong by M. Kamel Hussein. The book is a retelling of the day of the crucifixion, and on the very first page of the text it says, “On that day the Jewish people conspired together to require from the Romans the crucifixion of Christ so that they might destroy his message.” Several times in the course of the text he refers to Jews as a “corporate entity” and a “corporate personality” which is threatened by Jesus. Even if I wasn’t offended by the blatant disregard for any understanding of the political situation that was the actual provocation for the crucifixion, the assertion that “the Jewish people” did anything makes me crazy. The Jews? That implies everyone from King Solomon to Adam Sandler. And to imagine that shepherds and lawyers and judges all came together and were like, “As Jews, we feel strongly that this ‘King of the Jews’ character has got to go,” is ludicrous.

So yeah, I’ve been pretty offended by all kinds of things that go on in this class, but I’m hesitant to bring it up in class. First, because I don’t want to be the Jewish girl who’s always crying anti-Semitism. And second because if I get started talking about how a book written by a Muslim in Egypt in 1953 is hugely influenced by the animosity between Egypt and Israel at the time… well, that’s a good ten minutes that no one is learning about Islam, and even though I think it’s really important to know where this book is coming from, part of me wants to give the professors all the time possible to teach about Islam. Because isn’t it more relevant, more important, even, for someone to learn about Islam than Judaism in today’s world?

What do you guys think? Should I get out my soapbox, or zip it and just scribble my wrath into the margins of my book?

See no truth. Hear no truth.An Egyptian blogger is on trial for "on charges of insulting Islam and inciting sectarian strife for his Internet writing criticizing Muslim authorities and the Egyptian government."

Abdel Kareem Nabil, the blogger, has been detained in solitary confinement since November and could face up to seven years in prison. What's more, he's one of many bloggers in Egypt that have been arrested on the same charges.

Nabil, who uses the name Kareem Amer on his blog, frequently denounces the government of President Hosni Mubarak on his blog and is often deeply critical of Egypt's Islamic authorities, particularly Al-Azhar, one of the Sunni Muslim world's top religious institutions. Nabil, a resident of Alexandria, was former a law student at Al-Azhar University.

He was detained briefly in late 2005 after posting an article to his blog commenting on violent riots that erupted in October that year in which angry Muslim worshippers rioted and attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.

Titled "The Naked Truth of Islam as I saw it," Nabil said of the riots, "Muslims revealed their true ugly face, and appeared to all the world that they are at full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity."

We've witnessed the backside of this true ugly face and it ain't pretty...

I joined Amnesty International my Senior year of high school in the hopes that I'd absolve the guilt associated with my apolitical outlook on life and in the process, help me appear more well-rounded to college admissions committees. Club etiquette consisted of writing countless letters to various POWs in third world countries with a standard form letter. I didn't think much of it, I just filled in the blanks, the names and addresses, etc. and handed it to the teacher. This was pretty much par for the course with the club.

Most of the time, however, I found myself vehemently opposed to writing the letter since I didn't feel informed enough politically of the particular country's ways or the crime committed to be telling them what to do. In short, I respected that country's decision, even though it wasn't always one that was in  accordance with my own beliefs. And my conscience was torn over this. And my guilt sky-rocketed.

There is a point to my rambling here. And it's not just that I'm anti-Global democracy.

In the past few days, I've been reading various articles on the ADL and getting that same feeling in my stomach that I felt for Amnesty 15 years ago. Disillusionment.

Case in point: A recent article on the ADL giving an award to Albanian Muslims. Not that I speak on behalf of all Jews when I say that anyone who saved a Jew during the Holocaust and risked their life in the process wasn't doing an incredible selfless mitzvah, but somehow I feel like bestowing the Courage to Care Award to the ancestors of Albanian Muslims that helped during the Holocaust 60 years after the fact, given today's global political climate, a little distasteful, not to mention manipulative on the part of the ADL.

And not that I'm trying to sound like an ultra-Zionist or someone who just watched a Steven Spielberg movie, but admittedly I'm both. However, it's not the ADL's responsibility to serve as social barometer of some faux global conscience they've helped to perpetuate. Their mission statement is, after all, to stop the defamation of the Jewish people. Not those that serve a greater political agenda. Besides, don't they have some Germans to hunt down?

A new piece of British legislation aimed at protecting gay rights is concerning religious groups- Muslims, Christians, and Jews, on the basis of "moral grounds" that they feel threaten the collective "freedom of conscience."

The rules, which are in line with European Union requirements, will punish businesses and organisations which discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. Hotels which refuse to let double rooms to gay couples could, for example, be taken to court.

Nadia Lipsey, a spokesperson from the Board of Deputies gave a statement on behalf of Britain's Jewish community:

"It must be possible for people to live their lives in the manner in which they choose as long as it does not impinge upon the rights of others.

"We hope that to this effect the regulations will be framed in such a way that allows for both the effective combating of discrimination in the provision of goods and services whilst respecting freedom of conscience and conviction."

Speaking for the Muslim community, Dr. Majid Katme, of the Islamic Medical Association called for Muslims "to join our Christian friends in their campaign against the new proposed law on sexual orientation." He elaborated further with: "It is against our religious rights and against our human rights and against our conscience and religious beliefs to have this new unjust law forced on all of us British Muslims."

Note, in the above paragraph, the glaring absence of the word jew.

This story at Jewschool (God, how I love Jewschool!) seems not unrelated to what I was blathering on about yesterday.

We think the Catholics are honoring/respecting a bad guy and want them to stop (Pius).
But then some Muslims think that we’re honoring/respecting a bad Jewish guy (Prager).

The question is…. How much power should one group have over another, particularly in the incredibly subjective world of faith? Is it our place to tell other people when they’re being wrong/politically incorrect? Should we threaten each other with bad PR? Repercussions?

There are many many important differences between the two situations (namely that the US Holocaust Memorial Council is not a religious agency like the Catholic Church) but there’s something funny about reading the stories side by side.

Jews want to affect the way Catholics decide their own leadership/hierarchy/ agenda… and then are bothered by the idea that Muslims would feel the right to affect the process by which Jews determine their own leadership/hierarchy/agenda (assuming one can call the Holocaust Memorial Council a bunch of “Jews”. And one can argue that it’s not, but we certainly claim it most of the time.)

I’m still not sure that I have a “position” of any kind on this, but I’m trying to think about both situations and sort them out. I feel like we can pick at the differences in the situations, but in the end… it seems hypocritical to view them too differently.

Not that culture and faith don’t turn everyone into hypocrites, but in this case… both sides are trying to apply logic… and it isn’t quite working.