International News

'08 presidential election faith meter

The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University has set up an indispensable Internet tool for those tracking religion in the 2008 presidential election. Any reference to faith by a major presidential candidate is logged on the Web site and categorized by topic.


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Untangle the church-state thicket, please

Writing about church-state conflicts is not easy. What is the issue at hand? How does it affect ordinary people? Alas, two stories by the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post about a controversial legislative proposal failed to answer both questions adequately.


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Ghost in the Hrant Dink anniversary

I was going through some email from last week and found a note from a reader about coverage of the one-year anniversary of the death of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was killed after he challenged Turkey’s official teachings on the early 20th-century mass killings — or genocide — of Armenians.


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Becoming Bobby Jindal

One of the nastiest campaign tricks in recent memory was the Louisiana Democratic Party’s attempt to derail the candidacy of Roman Catholic Bobby Jindal by quoting — out of context — statements he’d written about Protestantism. The thing I remember about the attacks is that Jindal seemed surprisingly theologically literate for a politician. Jindal explained his adult conversion from Hinduism in the New Oxford Review and the Democratic Party quoted some of it to give the impression that Jindal was a bigot. I know it’s Louisiana and all, but that’s cold.


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No-go zones in today's multicult Britain?

Here is another example (click here for previous discussion of a similar case) of a major story from Britain that needs — somehow — to be confirmed at a level great than the voice of one person who wields great authority. Consider the lede in the Telegraph report by Jonathan Wynne-Jones:


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Gay Muslims dance, in Berlin

The New York Times had a fascinating story about gay Muslims in Berlin. Reporter Nicholas Kulish interviewed visitors to a gay nightclub in the Kreuzberg neighborhood and produces a piece showing how young Muslims — many of them immigrants — are navigating their sexual identity and religion:


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