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$18
By Deanne Stillman
$9.66
$18
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Truthdig / Todd Wilkinson
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By Chris Hedges — On Tuesday night, Chris Hedges and Sam Harris debated “Religion, Politics and the End of the World.” The following is Hedges’ opening statement, in which he argues that Harris and other critics of faith have mistakenly blamed religion for the ills of the world, when the true danger lies in the human heart and its capacity for evil.
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Saudi Arabian authorities say they have captured 172 militants who were planning a series of attacks around the country. The royal family began a more aggressive approach toward extremists, which it calls a “deviant group,” four years ago after attacks targeted the nation’s oil industry.
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Turkey’s leading presidential candidate has Islamist roots, a cause for concern among the country’s many secularists. The Turkish military has even weighed in on the issue, saying the armed forces were troubled by the election and would display their “positions and attitudes” as “a staunch defender of secularism” at the appropriate time.
Posted on Apr 27, 2007
READ MORE 
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asianews.it
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Four hundred thirty-three foreigners were arrested by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for attending a party that served alcohol and allowed men and women to dance together. So far, 20 have been sentenced to lashings and months of prison time. (Photo above involves a separate case.)
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By Nicholas Schmidle — Pakistan’s “madrassas” have been described as “jihad universities” because of their ties to the Taliban and Islamic extremists, but a small-scale indigenous effort to reform the religious schools could be making more progress than the combined forces of the American, British and Pakistani governments.
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Ladies and gentleman, the main event: The nation’s most prominent atheist dukes it out with one of America’s most eloquent defenders of faith. Check out the opening salvos in their “blogalogue” at Beliefnet or AndrewSullivan.com.
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Think Progress
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Despite all the outrage, Keith Ellison managed to get sworn in to the House of Representatives with his hand on a Koran without destroying democracy or cracking the rotunda. Appropriately, the Koran Ellison used once belonged to another wild and rebellious character: Thomas Jefferson.
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theepochtimes.com
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Despite a vow to fight to the death, Islamist leaders and their troops have mysteriously vanished from the streets of Mogadishu, according to residents there. The Ethiopian army, in support of the powerless transitional government, had driven the Somali fighters back to their stronghold and the nation’s traditional capital after a wave of devastating attacks.
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God forbid that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, should be allowed to put his hand on a Quran when he’s sworn in without the likes of Virginia’s Rep. Virgil Goode (above) summoning his xenophobic nonsense: “... if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran.”
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Join Truthdig’s Robert Scheer, along with Arianna Huffington, Tony Blankley and Matt Miller, for a lively discussion on the week in politics, policy and culture. This week: the Bush-Republican detainee-interrogation deal, U.N. rants, midterm elections, corporate spying, upheaval at the Los Angeles Times and the furor surrounding the pope’s recent comments on Islam.
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Pope Benedict XVI said he was “deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages” of the address he gave last week.
Note: He’s sorry for the reactions—not for saying what he did.
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AP/ Jens Meyer
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By Sam Harris — The bestselling author of “The End of Faith” responds to Pope Benedict XVI’s speech on the interplay between faith and reason. Harris: “It is ironic that a man who has just disparaged Islam as ‘evil’ and ‘inhuman’ before 250,000 onlookers and the world press is now talking about a ‘genuine dialogue of cultures.’ ”
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From asquithberowraparishes.org.au
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Pope Benedict XVI began a speech in Germany by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying, ?Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.? Many Muslim leaders are not happy. (h/t: Huff Po)
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AP / Irwin Fedriansyah
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Islamic hard-liners called the magazine a form of moral terrorism, despite the fact that there are no nude photos in it.
This is reminiscent of what happened in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain when titillating material quickly appeared and then spread like kudzu.
Liberties will always rush to fill a vacuum, just not necessarily in the way favored by religious fundamentalists.
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Afghan authorities are planning on releasing the man who faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity, but they will base the action on a technicality. So a showdown with the U.S. still looms.
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From Wikipedia.org
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By Sam Harris — “The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center,” writes America’s most prominent secularist in a challenging and provocative new essay.
UPDATE: Harris responds to a deluge of comments and some criticism.
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Sullivan, whose N.Y. Times Magazine essay on the connection between Islam and 9/11 was perhaps the best ever mainstream treatment on the subject, now takes on the Islamic cartoon controversy. | essay
Also, a German journalist talks about his mixed feelings about running the cartoons in his paper. | Op-Ed
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Rebuilding efforts have been crippled in part because “American intelligence failed to predict the brutal insurgency,” says the congressional report. | story
Really, did anyone think the president was the right man to play God in the oldest powder keg on Earth?
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