Where else do you shop so religiously?

Bethlehem, Palestine, is one of the most historic and religiously significant sites on earth.

Yet it is important when researching the causes, roots, and background of religiously motivated terrorism not to allow any taboos.

However, it would appear that this highly symbolic and emotionally and religiously charged question cannot be resolved simply by the settlement of a purely property dispute.

Top researchers have had their reports changed by political operatives when the facts contradicted official belief. Encouraged by a religiously influenced administration, school systems are shifting their focus from science to values.

Others assert that the world was created 2,000 years ago. The age of the universe and its size measured in light years these are things that the purely religiously trained ulamas cannot comprehend.

LONDON Governments worldwide are increasingly facing a fundamental question how to deal with the causes of violent often religiously motivated extremism. They are not short of advice and from a wide range of sources.

The prosperous region was the Islamic Middle East, while an ignorant Europe remained poor. Both regions were religiously governed (historians differ about the role and natures of the religions in this context), but science flourished only in one of them.

Most of the conflicts in today s world have a religious dimension. Extremism based on a perversion of Islam shows no sign of abating indeed, it will not abate until it is taken on religiously, as well as by security measures.

In the explanatory memorandum annexed to the letter, the Bureau members stressed the significance of holding the millennial celebration in a global vision of hope and peace for all peoples at Bethlehem, one of the most historic and religiously significant sites on Earth.

The best present we could give to the world this Christmas (regardless of whether we celebrate it religiously or not), would be to dedicate ourselves to championing tolerance everywhere. This will require us to address the inverted narratives of victimhood, which are often recruited to justify intolerance.

Iraq and Lebanon are also the Arab world s most ethnically and religiously diverse countries. Though Lebanon has not conducted a reliable census in decades, its population is thought to be about 30 Sunni Muslim, 30 Shia Muslim, and 30 Christian, with Druze and others accounting for the rest.

In fact, the preconditions for intra regional cooperation up to partial integration of the interests of the countries involved look more auspicious than they did in Western Europe in the early 1950 s. Europe had neither a common language, nor was it as religiously and culturally as homogeneous as the Middle East.

Even if democracy might be viewed primarily as an evil from an Islamic point of view, there is another principle of interpretation of religious laws in Islam, according to which minor evils even if religiously impermissible or not recommended at first become permissible, recommended, and even mandatory if they alone can prevent major evils.

The second factor is America s pluralistic public sphere, an arena not without religion but with many religions, which are visible and active in civil life as the basis for institutions, publications, and symbols that influence values and conduct. The US is not a secular society it is a religiously pluralistic one with secular legal and political structures.

In July, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) religiously conservative but economically liberal won a landslide in parliamentary elections called after the military balked at seeing Gül become president. That victory, combined with Gül s election, confirm the AKP s emergence as a party of realignment, and that, despite an upsurge of xenophobic nationalism, Turks wanted to integrate with the European Union.

Anything else suggests that political Islam is the Marxism of our time, preparing a long term strategy ultimately aimed at replacing the system rather than reforming it. The liberal democratic alternative is to participate in the push and pull over the role of religion in public life within limits set by a super majoritarian constitution, as more religiously oriented parties do in the US, Europe, and Israel.

This approach to Islamic texts coming from both secular and religiously oriented Muslims, as well as from non Muslims with an interest in the subject calls into question the compatibility of Islam and democracy, and also whether Islam is capable with peace and moderation. But, based on more than a decade of study and debate, I am convinced of the compatibility between Islam and democracy.

Election results around the Middle East mark a new trend Islamist political parties those that base their platforms on Islamic law are highly popular. Where elections are held, Islamists do well Hamas among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the religiously oriented Shi ite coalition in Iraq a parliamentary faction in Morocco and, most significantly, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey.

During its nearly 55 years of independence, Sudan has experienced a succession of violent conflicts, in the South, the West (Darfur), and the East. It is commonly accepted that what lay at the root of these conflicts was the failure of independent Sudan one of Africa s most racially, ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse countries to construct a polity informed by the principle and practice of unity in diversity.

Since the 1970 s, the Assads have failed to foster Arab nationalism in order to unite the religiously divided population, resorting instead to divisive sectarian politics to control Syria s population. While ensuring that their Alawite allies filled key positions in the military and intelligence services helped the Assads to retain their grip on the country, it was a strategy that widened and reinforced the Sunni Shia rift among the population.