After concern about the film led Mr. Wilders’s Internet service provider to take down his Web site, Mr. Wilders issued a statement this week that he will personally distribute DVDs “On the Dam” if he has to. That may not be necessary, as the Czech National Party has reportedly agreed to host the video on its Web site.
[Islam and Free Speech]
Marked for death: Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Reasonable men in free societies regard Geert Wilders’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, and films like “Fitna,” as disrespectful of the religious sensitivities of members of the Islamic faith. But free societies also hold freedom of speech to be a fundamental human right. We don’t silence, jail or kill people with whom we disagree just because their ideas are offensive or disturbing. We believe that when such ideas are openly debated, they sink of their own weight and attract few followers.

Our country allows fringe groups like the American Nazi Party to demonstrate, as long as they are peaceful. Americans are permitted to burn the national flag. In 1989, when so-called artist Andres Serrano displayed his work “Piss Christ” — a photo of a crucifix immersed in a bottle of urine — Americans protested peacefully and moved to cut off the federal funding that supported Mr. Serrano. There were no bombings of museums. No one was killed over this work that was deeply offensive to Christians.

Criticism of Islam, however, has led to violence and murder world-wide. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie over his 1988 book, “The Satanic Verses.” Although Mr. Rushdie has survived, two people associated with the book were stabbed, one fatally. The 2005 Danish editorial cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad led to numerous deaths. Dutch director Theodoor van Gogh was killed in 2004, several months after he made the film “Submission,” which described violence against women in Islamic societies. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch member of parliament who wrote the script for “Submission,” received death threats over the film and fled the country for the United States.

The violence Dutch officials are anticipating now is part of a broad and determined effort by the radical jihadist movement to reject the basic values of modern civilization and replace them with an extreme form of Shariah. Shariah, the legal code of Islam, governed the Muslim world in medieval times and is used to varying degrees in many nations today, especially in Saudi Arabia.

Radical jihadists are prepared to use violence against individuals to stop them from exercising their free speech rights. In some countries, converting a Muslim to another faith is a crime punishable by death. While Muslim clerics are free to preach and proselytize in the West, some Muslim nations severely restrict or forbid other faiths to do so. In addition, moderate Muslims around the world have been deemed apostates and enemies by radical jihadists.

Radical jihadists believe representative government is un-Islamic, and urge Muslims who live in democracies not to exercise their right to vote. The reason is not hard to understand: When given a choice, most Muslims reject the extreme approach to Islam. This was recently demonstrated in Iraq’s Anbar Province, which went from an al-Qaeda stronghold to an area supporting the U.S.-led coalition. This happened because the populace came to intensely dislike the fanatical ways of the radicals, which included cutting off fingers of anyone caught smoking a cigarette, 4 p.m. curfews, beatings and beheadings. There also were forced marriages between foreign-born al Qaeda fighters and local Sunni women.

There may be a direct relationship between the radical jihadists’ opposition to democracy and their systematic abuse of women. Women have virtually no rights in this radical world: They must conceal themselves, cannot hold jobs, and have been subjected to honor killings. Would most women in Muslim countries vote for a candidate for public office who supported such oppressive rules?

Not all of these radicals are using violence to supplant democratic society with an extreme form of Shariah. Some in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark are attempting to create parallel Islamic societies with separate courts for Muslims. According to recent press reports, British officials are investigating the cases of 30 British Muslim school-age girls who “disappeared” for probable forced marriages.

While efforts to create parallel Islamic societies have been mostly peaceful, they may actually be a jihadist “waiting game,” based on the assumption that the Islamic populations of many European states will become the majority over the next 25-50 years due to higher Muslim birth rates and immigration.

What is particularly disturbing about these assaults against modern society is how the West has reacted with appeasement, willful ignorance, and a lack of journalistic criticism. Last year PBS tried to suppress “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,” a hard-hitting documentary that contained criticism of radical jihadists. Fortunately, Fox News agreed to air the film.

Even if the new Wilders film proves newsworthy, it is likely that few members of the Western media will air it, perhaps because they have been intimidated by radical jihadist threats. The only major U.S. newspaper to reprint any of the controversial 2005 Danish cartoons was Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. You can be sure that if these cartoons had mocked Christianity or Judaism, major American newspapers would not have hesitated to print them.

European officials have been similarly cautious. A German court ruled last year that a German Muslim man had the right to beat his wife, as this was permitted under Shariah. Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, stated last month that the implementation of some measure of Shariah in Britain was “unavoidable” and British Muslims should have the choice to use Shariah in marital and financial matters.

I do not defend the right of Geert Wilders to air his film because I agree with it. I expect I will not. (I have not yet seen the film). I defend the right of Mr. Wilders and the media to air this film because free speech is a fundamental right that is the foundation of modern society. Western governments and media outlets cannot allow themselves to be bullied into giving up this precious right due to threats of violence. We must not fool ourselves into believing that we can appease the radical jihadist movement by allowing them to set up parallel societies and separate legal systems, or by granting them special protection from criticism.

A central premise of the American experiment are these words from the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” There are similar statements in the U.S. Constitution, British Common Law, the Napoleonic Code and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. As a result, hundreds of millions in the U.S. and around the world enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and many other rights.

These liberties have been won through centuries of debate, conflict and bloodshed. Radical jihadists want to sacrifice all we have learned by returning to a primitive and intolerant world. While modern society invites such radicals to peacefully exercise their faith, we cannot and will not sacrifice our fundamental freedoms. [wsj]

Yahoo, Google and News Corp.’s MySpace said yesterday that they were forming the nonprofit OpenSocial Foundation to promote the technology. OpenSocial, introduced in October, may save developers time and money by letting them create a single application that works on multiple sites.

Teaming with Yahoo gives the alliance the backing of the most-visited U.S. Web site. Google and MySpace, the most popular social-networking site, have sought more programs to appeal to users as they compete for advertising revenue.

Internet users have flocked to social-networking sites where they can keep up with their friends, show pictures, share music and play games. The number of visitors to Facebook rose fourfold, to 100.7 million, in January from a year earlier. The number of MySpace visitors rose 15 percent, to 109.3 million, according to Reston-based researcher ComScore.

The increased popularity is luring advertisers eager to target Web users based on their ages, locations and hobbies. The alliance may help Yahoo make headway in the social-networking market, where Facebook and MySpace have won an increasing share of graphical banner ads. Spending on social-networking sites more than doubled last year, while sales growth at Yahoo slowed to 8 percent from 22 percent in 2006.

Google recruited networking sites LinkedIn, Friendster and Ning as early OpenSocial supporters, as well as business software makers Oracle and Salesforce.com. [wp]

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book “Long Live Israel.”

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Allam’s head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

Vatican Television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with six other candidates for baptism. He later received his first Communion.

Allam, 55, told the newspaper Il Giornale in a December interview that his criticism of Palestinian suicide bombing provoked threats on his life in 2003, prompting the Italian government to provide him with a sizable security detail.

The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy—which Allam has frequently criticized as having links to Hamas—said the baptism was his own decision.

“He is an adult, free to make his personal choice,” the Apcom news agency quoted the group’s spokesman, Issedin El Zir, as saying.

Yahya Pallavicini, vice president of Coreis, the Islamic religious community in Italy, said he respected Allam’s choice but said he was “perplexed” by the symbolic and high-profile way in which he chose to convert.

“If Allam truly was compelled by a strong spiritual inspiration, perhaps it would have been better to do it delicately, maybe with a priest from Viterbo where he lives,” the ANSA news agency quoted Pallavicini as saying.

The nighttime Easter vigil service at St. Peter’s Basilica marked the period between Good Friday, which commemorates Jesus’ crucifixion, and Easter Sunday, which marks his resurrection.

Benedict opened by blessing a white candle, which he then carried down the main aisle of the darkened basilica. Slowly, the pews began to light up as his flame was shared with candles carried by the faithful, until the whole basilica twinkled and the main lights came on.

The pope administers baptism “without making any ‘difference of people,’ that is, considering all equally important before the love of God and welcoming all in the community of the Church,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

Allam, who has a young son with his Catholic wife and two adult children from a previous relationship, indicated in the Il Giornale interview that he would have no problem converting to Christianity. He said he had even received Communion once—when he was 13 or 14—”even though I knew it was an act of blasphemy, not having been baptized.”

He did not speak to the press Saturday and his newspaper said it had no information about his conversion.

Allam said in the interview that he had made a pilgrimage to Mecca, as is required of all Muslims, with his deeply religious mother in 1991, although he was not otherwise observant.

“I was never practicing,” he was quoted as saying. “I never prayed five times a day, facing Mecca. I never fasted during Ramadan.”

Allam also explained his decision to title a recent book “Viva Israele” by saying he wrote it after he received death threats from Hamas.

“Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants,” he said. “Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life.”

In 2006, Allam was a co-winner, with three other journalists, of the $1 million Dan David prize, named for an Israeli entrepreneur. Allam was cited for “his ceaseless work in fostering understanding and tolerance between cultures.”

There is no overarching Muslim law on conversion. But under a widespread interpretation of Islamic legal doctrine, converting from Islam is apostasy and punishable by death—though killings are rare.

Egypt’s highest Islamic cleric, the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, wrote last year against the killing of apostates, saying there is no worldly retribution for Muslims who abandon their religion and that punishment would come in the afterlife.

On Wednesday, a new audio message from Osama bin Laden accused the pope of playing a “large and lengthy role” in a “new Crusade” against Islam that included the publication of drawings of the Prophet Muhammad that many Muslims found insulting.

Lombardi said Thursday that bin Laden’s accusation was baseless. He said Benedict repeatedly criticized the Muhammad cartoons, first published in some European newspapers in 2006 and republished by Danish papers in February. [ap]

The message from King Abdullah, which was welcomed by Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders, comes at a time of stalled peace initiatives and escalating tensions in the region.

Muslims have been angered by cartoons published in European papers seen as insulting the Prophet Muhammad and by the pope’s baptizing on Easter of a Muslim journalist who had converted to Catholicism.

“The idea is to ask representatives of all monotheistic religions to sit together with their brothers in faith and sincerity to all religions as we all believe in the same God,” the king told delegates Monday night at a seminar on “Culture and the Respect of Religions.”

The specifics of Abdullah’s initiative—and who would participate—remained unclear, in particular whether Israeli religious leaders would be invited to a Saudi-brokered dialogue. The kingdom and all other Arab nations except Egypt and Jordan do not have diplomatic relations with Israel and generally shun unofficial contacts.

The call—the first of its kind by an Arab leader—was significant. The Saudi monarch is the custodian of Islam’s two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina, a position that lends his words special importance and influence. Abdullah said Saudi Arabia’s top clerics have given him the green light—crucial backing in a society that expects decisions taken by its rulers to adhere to Islam’s tenets.

It also raises the possibility that a religious dialogue could have a political impact in the Middle East, easing tensions between Arabs and Israelis in a way that years of off-and-on negotiations and political conferences have failed to do.

The White House welcomed the king’s gesture.

“We think increased dialogue is a really good thing,” presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino said Tuesday. “And, of course, when you have someone like the king of Saudi Arabia, and all of his stature, that is recommending such a dialogue, it can only give us hope that there would be further recognition of everyone’s right to freedom and freedom of expression and religion. So we are encouraged by it.”

Abdullah said he planned to hold conferences to get the opinion of Muslims from other parts of the world, and then meetings with “our brothers” in Christianity and Judaism “so we can agree on something that guarantees the preservation of humanity against those who tamper with ethics, family systems and honesty.”

Abdullah, who said he discussed the idea with Pope Benedict XVI when they met at the Vatican in November, framed his appeal in strictly religious and ethical terms, aimed at addressing the weakening of the family, increasing atheism and “a lack of ethics, loyalty, and sincerity for our religions and humanity.”

A Saudi official with knowledge of the proposal said it was not intended to have a regional political angle, saying “the initiative is not aimed at the Middle East but at the whole world. It’s a global initiative.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

But Abdullah, considered a reformer in Saudi politics, has in the past proposed peace deals with Israel, saying his country and other Arab nations are willing to recognize the Jewish state as long as it gives up land to Palestinians.

Prominent Saudi cleric, Sheik Muhammad al-Nujaimi, said he saw no reason why any Saudi official, including Abdullah, cannot meet with Jewish religious leaders. “The only condition is for the rabbi not to be supportive of the massacres against the Palestinian people,” he said.

In Israel, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger welcomed Abdullah’s call.

“Our hand is outstretched to any peace initiative and any dialogue that is aimed at bringing an end to terror and violence,” he said in a statement.

Rabbi David Rosen, head of inter-religious relations at the American Jewish Committee and a former chief rabbi of Ireland, said framing the dialogue in religious terms was key.

“Religion is all too often the problem, so it has to also be the solution, or at least part of the solution and I think that the tragedy of the political initiatives to bring peace has been the failure to include the religious dimension,” he said.

Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said a Saudi-backed dialogue between Muslims and Jews “could be a balancing factor” against extremists but cannot replace diplomacy.

“Negotiations need to be negotiations and you don’t mix religion into a diplomatic conflict, because then there is a danger of turning it into a religious war,” he said.

Michael Cromartie, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors religious freedom globally and makes policy recommendations, called the proposed dialogue long overdue.

“I don’t care who you put in the room—the fact they’re having the conversation can only help,” he said. “It’s a courageous thing for the king to do. One should not expect Utopia, but it’s a start to have an open and free dialogue in a country with a reputation for religious oppression.”

Saudi Arabia follows a severe interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism, and it was not clear whether Abdullah’s call would be followed by steps in the kingdom to relax the ban on non-Muslim worship services, as well as symbols from other religions, such as crosses and Bibles.

Abdullah’s contacts with Benedict are also significant.

Benedict angered many Muslims with a 2006 speech in which he cited a medieval text that described some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly the command to spread the faith “by the sword.” He later expressed regret that his remarks angered Muslims and stressed that the text didn’t reflect his own opinion.

In an audiotape released last week, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden accused Benedict of playing a “large and lengthy role” in what he called a “new Crusade” against Islam. Bin Laden also warned of a “severe” reaction for Europe’s publication of the Muhammad cartoons.

Muhammad al-Zulfa, a member of the Saudi Consultative Council—an appointed body that acts like a parliament—said Abdullah’s conciliatory remarks were “a message to all extremists: Stop using religion.”

Antonios Kireopoulos, head of Interfaith Relations at the National Council of Churches, agreed, noting: “Despite recent years of hostilities, usually by extremists, … there have been generations of peace between Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

“This is a way to reclaim some of that neighborliness,” he said. [wt]

The traditional Christ on the cross, performed at an Easter Passion parade.

But now the producers of a BBC drama about Christ’s final days have challenged the traditional representation, saying they believe Jesus probably did not die that way.

Instead of portraying Christ with his arms out wide and his legs straight down, The Passion will show him nailed to the cross in a foetal position, with his arms above his head and nails through his arms - the way, the producers claim, he may well have been crucified by the Romans.

Leading theologians accused the BBC of “misleading” the public and said it was ignoring the Biblical account of the crucifixion. But the makers of The Passion insist their ideas are based on new historical evidence.

Simon Elliott, the production designer, claimed that they had tried to make the drama as “historically accurate” as possible.

“The Victorian image of Jesus doesn’t tie in with the historical evidence,” he said.

“He was probably put on a crude wooden gibbet and made to stand in a loose, foetal position. It was fiendishly designed.”

While acknowledging that his ideas are likely to upset Christians, Mr Elliott argued that the position so familiar to churchgoers was only one of a range of methods used by the Romans in crucifixions.

“It is a minefield, as everyone has such strong feelings about it. Our portrayal is based on lengthy research.” In particular, he said they had been influenced by the discovery of a crucified skeleton, which was found near Jerusalem in 1968 and is the only such archaeological find.

This led them to believe that Christ could well have been crucified on a T-shaped gibbet, with his arms above his head and his legs tucked up and under him so that his chest was crushed and he died of asphyxiation. Instead of having nails through his hands, they could have been driven through his arms.

advertisementThe Passion has already proved controversial for appearing to exonerate Judas and Pontius Pilate for their roles in the Christ’s death.

But Mark Goodacre, associate professor of religion at Duke University, who advised the producers, defended the decision to put forward an alternative representation of the crucifixion. “The Romans used a number of ways to crucify people and this was one of the most common and effective methods,” he said.

“The makers wanted something that wasn’t the typical image that would surprise the viewers. This is not an attempt to be iconoclastic, but to get people to look again at the events surrounding his death.” He added that he thought the Bible did not actually explain in any detail the form of crucifixion employed.

Paula Gooder, a New Testament scholar, said that the traditional image had become important to Christians in understanding what the crucifixion was about.

“They have clearly decided to go for this option because it’s unusual and will jolt viewers and challenge them about their assumptions,” she said.

“Their portrayal causes a problem as it seems to ignore what the Bible says.”

In the Book of John, Jesus says to Thomas: “Put your finger here; see my hands.”

Dr Gooder, canon theologian at Birmingham Cathedral, said that the BBC’s version would change the image of Jesus “throwing his arms out in a symbol of love”.

She added: “There’s a lot of significance attached to the traditional image that has been lost in this version and is likely to upset those who don’t like a move away from what they’re used to.”

The Reverend George Curry, who is the chairman of the Church Society, said: “They are misleading people by distorting the facts.

“That’s a serious and dangerous thing to do, but sadly utterly predictable and regrettable. Jesus’s nails went through his hands, not his forearms. We should be true to history and the events that occurred.”

The Passion begins tonight on BBC1. The programme is to be broadcast in four episodes, culminating on Easter Sunday with the Resurrection. [tlg]

As video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has widely aired on television and the Internet, Obama responded by posting a blog about his relationship with Wright and his church, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, on the Huffington Post.

Obama wrote that he’s looked to Wright for spiritual advice, not political guidance, and he’s been pained and angered to learn of some of his pastor’s comments for which he had not been present. A campaign spokesman said later that Wright was no longer on Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee, without elaborating.

“I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies,” Obama said. “I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue.”

In a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Wright suggested the United States brought on the attacks.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Wright said. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

He also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus, promoting his candidacy and playing down Clinton.

Questions about Obama’s religious beliefs have dogged him throughout his candidacy. He’s had to fight against false Internet rumors suggesting he’s really a Muslim intent on destroying the United States, and now his pastor’s words uttered nearly seven years ago have become an issue.

Obama wrote on the Huffington Post that he never heard Wright say any of the statements that are “so contrary to my own life and beliefs,” but they have raised legitimate questions about the nature of his relationship with the pastor and the church.

He explained that he joined Wright’s church nearly 20 years ago. He said he knew Wright as a former Marine and respected biblical scholar who lectured at seminaries across the country.

“Reverend Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life,” he wrote. “… And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”

He said Wright’s controversial statements first came to his attention at the beginning of his presidential campaign last year, and he condemned them. Because of his ties to the 6,000-member congregation church — he and his wife were married there and their daughters baptized — Obama decided not to leave the church.

Obama also has credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

“With Reverend Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good,” he wrote.

Also Friday, the United Church of Christ issued a 1,400-word statement defending Wright and his “flagship” congregation. John H. Thomas, United Church of Christ’s president, lauded Wright’s church for its community service and work to nurture youth. Other church leaders praised Wright for speaking out against homophobia and sexism in the black community.

“It’s time for all of us to say no to these attacks and to declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends,” Thomas said in the statement. [ap]

Emboldened by the success of this literary shape-shifting, the formerly raunchy Ms. Rice now delivers a second installment: “Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana.” (There will be at least one more novel in this series.) And as it jumps forward toward the adulthood of its narrator, the new Ms. Rice steers the story toward passions that the old Ms. Rice understood.

Piety courts brazenness as “The Road to Cana” raises personal questions about its main character, since Yeshua bar Joseph (its name for Jesus) is now over 30. Ms. Rice describes this stage of his life with awe and respect. But she does present Yeshua as the subject of rumors — said to be what was once called a confirmed bachelor. And she gives him a crush on one of his relatives, a 15-year-old girl.

So “The Road to Cana” perches on the brink of blasphemy. But it succeeds in treating Yeshua’s humanity as an essential part of his divinity. That humanity nearly takes the form of bodice-ripping (“The man in me knew that we were alone, and the man in me knew that I could have this woman”), now that Ms. Rice’s confidence about her daunting subject allows some of her familiar proclivities to emerge. Gone is the earlier book’s attention to pottery and textiles. Along come suppressed passions and eyebrow-raising about Yeshua’s unattached status. Does he care about nothing but carpentry? Is he devoid of interest in women? So the cattier residents of Nazareth seem to think.

“Well, they talk, don’t they?,” says Jason, a gossip whose telltale linen robes are a little too natty for Nazareth. “Where is your wife, Yeshua, where are your children?” Since this book begins with the stoning to death of two young men said to be interested in each other (“What, two young ones under the same blanket on a winter night?”) this becomes a terribly provocative question.

The first half of this book lingers eagerly upon its characters’ unfulfilled desires. In its opening scene, Yeshua’s thoughts of Avigail, his beautiful “young kinswoman,” lead him straight to a cold bath in a Nazareth spring. But Ms. Rice also presents the bigger biblical picture: ongoing tensions between the Jewish community, of which Yeshua is part, and all-powerful Rome, with the threat of Pontius Pilate’s army on the horizon. Some of this historical detail calls for awkward mouthfuls of exposition. As the same Jason proclaims: “And now as we all know, this equestrian, Sejanus, rules the world for this heartless Emperor, whose own son, Drusus, Sejanus murdered!”

But “The Road to Cana” keeps Yeshua at the center of its broad canvas. And once his pining for Avigail and regret about her imminent marriage are put to rest, the book is free to describe the majesty of Yeshua’s transformation. At the novel’s precise midpoint, Avigail throws herself at Yeshua with the steam heat of a Rice vampire, sobbing, “I am your harlot.” Yeshua fights back his desires in order to refuse her. “You’re really the child of angels,” she realizes, in a tone of disappointment. But the book is clear in purpose and bound for glory from this point on.

And Ms. Rice, when inspired, can deliver hypnotic, incantatory prose that celebrates Yeshua’s ascension. “I moved slowly towards what was at last going to separate me from all around me,” he says as he begins to feel the divinity within him. Many readers will be lured by the promise of simply rendered holiness to “The Road to Cana.” Here are its rewards.

“I had to see it beyond hamlet or town or camp,” Yeshua says, embarking on his road of no return. “I had to seek it where there was nothing but the burnt sand, and the searing wind, and the highest cliffs of the land. I had to seek it as if it was nowhere and as if it contained nothing — when in fact it was the palm of the hand that held me.” To put it more nervily, and of course Ms. Rice does: “Well, now I knew just what it meant to be the man who knew he was God.”

Then “The Road to Cana” actually sets itself on the road to Cana: to the place where Jesus’ first miracle is performed, as described in the Gospel of John. With John the Baptist (John bar Zechariah) and Satan (“Ahriman, Mastema, Satanel, Satan, Lucifer”) now present and aware of Yeshua as their Messiah, the book moves to the wedding at Cana. Here is when Yeshua transforms water into wine.

Ms. Rice presents this miracle as she has the other biblical events on which her fiction is based: she decoratively embroiders the Gospels while fully respecting their message. In her version, the wedding becomes that of Avigail, who is an entirely fictitious character. The absence of wine at the wedding becomes calamitous, though the Bible describes it without alarm. “It was a disaster of unlikely and dreadful proportions,” Ms. Rice maintains.

The book ends on a note of best-sellerly promise, mindful of how much more is yet to come. “Whatever it was, well, it had only begun,” Yeshua says, signaling that Ms. Rice’s rendering will be epic and sustained. And with what sounds more like a politician’s voice than a Messianic one, Yeshua declares: “I’ve entered history for the whole of it. And I won’t be stopped.” [nyt]

On the surface, it is a convention filled with new technologies and new ways to reach people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But underneath the bright lights and demos, a battle is brewing — a battle between federal government and the Church.

“It’s going to be a dangerous threat,” radio talk show host Janet Parshall told CBN News. “Just before our convention started down here, Charles Grassley actually put out the word that he’s going to use subpoena power. If that happens you’re going to have a battle royale.”

Should the Church be concerned about the Grassley probe? Click play button to watch CBN News’ report and Pat Robertson’s analysis at the end.

Parshall participated on a special panel at the NRB convention. Panelists addressed the investigation by Iowa Senator Charles Grassley into several large television ministries. The ministries include those associated with Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Bishop Eddie Long, Joyce Meyer, and Randy and Paula White.

“This is not a crusade against ministries,” Grassley said. “It has nothing to do with doctrine. It has only to do with the enforcement of the law, and it’s no different than the investigation I’ve been doing on non-profits for the last five years.”

Grassley is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. He believes the government has a right to investigate these tax-exempt ministries to make sure they are using funds for charitable purposes and not lavish lifestyles.

Right now, Grassley’s investigation focuses on six television ministries. But those associated with NRB say the implications of that investigation are far-reaching, affecting Christian broadcasters across the spectrum.

“It’s going to create an insatiable appetite for investigation,” Parshall said. “It’s really the Church on trial. It would be a bad day for America and it would be a deadly precedent for ministries straight across the board.”

Craig Parshall serves as the NRB senior vice president & general counsel. “We put together a letter, a very firmly worded letter telling Senator Grassley why we disagree, why the approach was wrong, and why we believed he should have used a scalpel in this very delicate constitutional area,” he said. “Unfortunately he used an axe.”

NRB members say wielding an axe amounts to violating the First Amendment rights of television ministries.

“I think the only thing they’re going to respond to is public protest and just a voice of Christians being heard in opposition to this witch hunt that’s going on,” said Ben Bull, chief counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. “Because it is a witch hunt and they will not stop with these handful of ministries. This is only the beginning.”

Still, the panel believes there’s a lesson to be learned in the Senate probe –­ make sure your ministry stays above reproach.

“We need to be very careful in our ministries never to give the government the lumber to build our own gallows,” Janet Parshall told the audience. [cbn]

In a 42-minute speech to the National Religious Broadcasters convention, Mr. Bush called upon European allies to step up their efforts in Afghanistan, and conceded that recent security gains in Iraq “are tenuous, they’re reversible and they’re fragile.” Still, he insisted his troop buildup there is succeeding.

“The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency,” Mr. Bush said, to a standing ovation. “It is the right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision.”

The speech, coming a week before the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, is the first of three talks on terrorism and war policy that Mr. Bush will give before next month’s Congressional testimony by the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the senior diplomat there, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.

General Petraeus is widely expected to recommend a temporary pause in troop withdrawals from Iraq, although at least one senior administration official said the president envisions further reductions this year. With the nation’s attention turned to the race to succeed Mr. Bush, White House aides say the speeches are a way for the president to frame the Iraq discussion, taking it back from the presidential candidates and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“It’s a way of resetting a little bit,” said one senior White House official. “There was a lot of talk about the surge, and then when the surge worked, it was like, ‘O.K., it worked,’ and then ’08 heated up and people sort of moved on. People need to be reminded of who we’re up against and what the stakes are.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Bush cast the stakes in stark terms, repeatedly invoking his desire to spread freedom and democracy, the central themes of his foreign policy. Those themes are hardly new to American presidents. Woodrow Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy, while Ronald Reagan warned that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

But Mr. Bush, most experts agree, has taken the American freedom agenda to an entirely new level, by trying to foster democracy in nations that have not known it before, like Iraq and Afghanistan. Some historians have called it folly, and Mr. Bush conceded in an interview with conservative commentators last year that his critics believe he is “hopelessly idealistic.”

Still, he renewed his case on Tuesday, predicting that liberty will soon be on the march in the region.

“The effects of a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan will reach beyond the borders of those two countries,” Mr. Bush said. “It will show others what’s possible. And we undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That’s why we’re doing this. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”

Mr. Bush’s faith is well known; he credits his acceptance of Jesus with turning his life around by helping him to quit drinking at age 40. His beliefs have colored his policy decisions on matters ranging from abortion to embryonic stem-cell research to fighting malaria and AIDS in Africa.

Christian conservatives are an important component of Mr. Bush’s political base, and the broadcasters greeted him so enthusiastically on Tuesday that he laughed and called them “kind of a rambunctious crowd.”

The last time he last time he talked to the religious broadcasters, in 2003, he focused on his faith-based initiative.

On Tuesday, he opened with a nod to the Rev. Billy Graham, who is recovering from surgery at his home in North Carolina. Mr. Bush said the preacher “brought the gospel to millions, and many years ago he helped me change my life.”

He went on to praise the broadcasters for “standing up for our values, including the right to life,” and pledged to veto any legislation that would reinstitute the so-called “fairness doctrine,” which required broadcasters to give air time to opposing views.

Mr. Bush often talks about his belief in “the universality of freedom,” as he did last year to a conference of political dissidents in Prague. But rarely has the president mixed the language of faith and God so closely with talk of war and terrorism, as he did Tuesday at the Opryland hotel here.

Calling freedom a “precious gift,” Mr. Bush said: “The liberty we value is not ours alone. Freedom is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to all humanity.” His words were punctuated by shouts of “Amen.” [nyt]

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called on Europe and America to take stronger measures against ‘Islamophobia’ in a report prepared for a summit of the group’s 57 members in Dakar on Thursday and Friday.

The report by a special OCI monitoring group said the organisation was struggling to get the West to understand that Islamophobia “has dangerous implications on global peace and security” and to convince western powers to do more.

Islamic leaders have long warned that perceptions linking Muslims to terrorism, especially since the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, would make Muslims more radical.

OIC leaders have expressed renewed concern following events such as the publication in Denmark of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed and a plan by the Dutch far-right wing MP Geert Wilders to release a film calling the Koran holy book “fascist”.

The OCI report said Islam had faced attacks since it was created “but in recent years the phenomenon has assumed alarming proportions and has become a major cause of concern for the Muslim world.”

The monitoring group called on Europe and North America to do more, through laws and social action, to protect Muslims from threats and discrimination and prevent insults against Islam’s religious symbols. [ant]