Stories about Islam and the West:
Sultan of Circumcision still reigns in Turkey
Turks circumcise their sons, as almost all Muslims do, to follow the practice of their religion's founder, Mohammed. A small group of Turkish pediatric surgeons advocates abandoning tradition in favour of circumcising at birth and in a hospital, and Turks who can afford it are increasingly following that advice. But the ritual as presided over by Mr. Ozkan remains a popular choice, and is rooted in Turkish history.
Globe and Mail, June 2
Obama aims to assuage Muslim anger
Fulfilling a campaign promise to speak in a major Muslim capital during his first months in office, Barack Obama travels to Cairo today, intent on repairing relations between the United States and followers of Islam that frayed during the Bush administration.
Sheldon Alberts, Canwest News Service, June 3
Obama's advantage with Muslims: He isn't George Bush
On the eve of the long-awaited speech, Arabs and Muslims have a long wish list, from bringing peace to the region to fixing problems with visas. Commentators in Arab newspapers recognize there is no way Mr. Obama can satisfy all these demands, but give him kudos for trying anyway. Ordinary Arabs are not so understanding.
Araminta Wordsworth, Full Comment, National Post, June 3
The war on Christianity in the Middle East
Hamas and radical Muslim sects routinely drive Christians from their homes and churches. The Salafis want to cleanse the Gaza Strip of its 2,500 Christians. Individual Christians have been killed or maimed there simply for being Christian. Both the Latin Church and the Rosary Sisters School in Gaza City have been torched and looted, and the 8,000-book YMCA library destroyed. The director of the Teacher.s Bookshop, run by the Palestinian Bible Society, was stabbed to death.
Barbara Kay, Holy Post, National Post, June 4
Pop goes the Muslim world
Political Islam will take exception to this book. Zionists will take exception to this book. . . . The Sheik's Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World is, in a way, a spiritual sequel to Poplak's first book, Ja, No, Man: Growing up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa (2007).
Mary-Lou Zeitoun, Globe and Mail, June 4
Earlier: Stories about Islam and the West
Other stories from the past week:
Haunted by past lives? Academics wrestle with treating the 'reincarnated'
A teenage boy in Newfoundland is certain he has been here before. On his first trip to his parents' hometown in India, the youth became consumed by vivid memories of a past life, started viewing his mother and father as "alien" and insisted he belonged with another family, his doctor recounts in a recently published medical journal article.
National Post, May 30
Hudak loses support over human rights plan
Tim Hudak yesterday defended his call to scrap human rights tribunals, despite two former supporters defecting to a rival candidate for the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership based partly on the issue. Robert Bibicis, a member of the party's economy political advisory committee, and Gary Crawford, a former candidate for the party, both announced yesterday they had left Mr. Hudak's campaign and instead endorsed Christine Elliott.
National Post, May 30
Earlier: Stories about "human rights" tribunals and commissions
Sun's Douglas Todd wins second place for opinion pieces
The American Academy of Religion has awarded Vancouver Sun religion and ethics writer Douglas Todd second place for opinion writing. The academy, in a media release Friday, praised Todd for taking on tough topics and dissecting conventional wisdom.
Vancouver Sun, May 30
Why aid to Africa must stop
Born and raised in Zambia but educated at Oxford and Harvard, Dambisa MoyoDambisa Moyo was an uncommon face as a black woman in the world of high finance. Now with the publication of her book Dead Aid, she has become an uncommon voice, a strong and eloquent advocate of stopping financial aid to Africa as the best way to help the troubled continent. It is an idea contradicting rock star campaigners, Western politicians and grassroots wisdom all at once. As she makes her way to Canada for a highly anticipated debate on Monday with Stephen Lewis and others at the Munk Debate on Foreign Aid, she spoke with the National Post about her ideas and the hazards of opposing the aid orthodoxy.
National Post, May 30
A Noble Pope
An interesting and important historical controversy now coming to a boil after stoking up for decades is the role of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War. These allegations -- that he should have been more vocal and active in condemning the atrocities -- came only after Pius XII died in 1958. They really began with Rolf Hochhuth's scurrilous but diverting play, The Deputy. (This wild liberty with the facts inspired local emulation by Renaude Lapointe, with her completely fictitious portrayal of the former archbishop of Montreal and Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, Charbonneau and the Chef, for which she was rewarded with a Liberal Senate seat.) Criticism of the pope has gradually escalated to extreme charges that he was a partisan or even an outright stooge of Hitler.
Conrad Black, National Post, May 30
Ship of Fools charts course through religion's weirdest waters
Ahoy, scurvy pewsitters! Avast, ye landlubbing, tithing genuflectors! Like a breath of bracing sea air, ShipofFools.com charts a lunatic voyage through the weird waters of religion the world over. Had enough of the Notre Dame controversy? Fed up with Church of Scotland turmoil? Relief is at hand in this U.K.-based website's hilarious and bizarre tidbits from across the religious spectrum.
Nancy Gall, Holy Post, National Post, May 30
Sun cartoonist for 47 years, Peterson leaves an indelible mark
Roy Peterson's editorial cartoons don't usually make me LOL. (That's "Laugh Out Loud," in today's digital-speak). Instead, they give me a chill. A raw chill of recognition. A frisson of: "He nailed it." Peterson's decades of brilliance on The Vancouver Sun's editorial pages have often elicited within me a shudder. They come from his blunt exposing of injustice, of hypocrisy, of lies, of hatred, of corruption, of greed, of calumny.
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, May 31
Three Catholic trustees finally repaying $19,000 to board
Three Toronto Catholic trustees who owe the board $19,000 in unauthorized expenses are finally paying it back. "The process is in place, it starts" this month, provincial supervisor Norbert Hartmann told the Star. He was put in charge of the board a year ago amid a trustee spending scandal and after they failed to balance the budget.
Toronto Star, June 1
Earlier: Stories about the Toronto Catholic school board
Liberals courting religious vote
The federal Liberals are making a deliberate attempt to woo religious groups after years of "benign neglect" by the party, Liberal MP John McKay says. Mr. McKay, an evangelical Christian, said Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff asked him to start meeting with religious leaders across Canada to find ways of including them in the national discussion.
Charles Lewis, National Post, June 1
Most Canadians oppose public funding of religious schools
Urgent memo to provincial Canadian premiers: Do not fight any upcoming election campaigns on the issue of taxpayers supporting independent religious schools. A new Angus Reid poll shows a strong number of Canadians are opposed to provincial governments spending tax dollars to support Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Mormon polygamist or other kinds of religious private schools, including Christian.
Douglas Todd, The Search, Vancouver Sun, June 1
Evangelical Christians measure the likelihood of end times with the Rapture Index
According to The Rapture Index, a biblical prophecy ranking system created by Todd Strandberg, Jesus will descend to take Christian believers to heaven very soon. The ranking on The Rapture Index is currently 166 -- hitting the index's highest category, which Strandberg dubs with a warning: "Fasten your seat belts."
Sarah Efron, Holy Post, National Post, June 1
Will the truth finally set Galileo free?
Tough beans for Cosmas Indicopleustes, virtually no one remembers him. Yet if it had actually been true that marquee medieval Christian writers and philosophers taught that the Earth was flat, then Cosmas -- his name means "who travelled to India" -- should have remained on the tip of humanity's tongue.
Michael Valpy, Globe and Mail, June 3
Atheist Hitchens gores some religious oxen
Christopher Hitchens, author, journalist and professional atheist, set out last night to prove that the Ten Commandments are nothing more than "a blizzard of contradictions," simply pure nonsense that was man-made and not divinely inspired. Mr. Hitchens was the first speaker in a series being hosted by the Royal Ontario Museum on what the Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue, mean today and how they can be made more relevant.
Charles Lewis, National Post, June 3
Atheist teens lead the way
Can we be good without god? This may become a defining question for our time. University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby's has written a new book, The Emerging Millennials, which, while clear on the unprecedented rise of atheism, seems to suggest two irreconcilable answers to this fundamental question.
Justin Trottier, Holy Post, National Post, June 3
Yeats, Protestant Ireland and the occult
I have been puzzled by W.B. Yeats's abiding interest in the occult in the same way that I am puzzled when an intelligent person asks me what my astrological sign is, but then I come from such a non-religious background (my parents were Northern Irish Communists and could have held party meetings in a Belfast telephone kiosk) that I am puzzled by conventional church-going, as well. Probably not a good person to comment on occultism, in other words, but I did therefore read biographer R.F. Forster's comments on Yeats' occult interests with all the more attention.
Linda Leith, Globe and Mail, June 3
June 4/2009
