Although most Americans regard September 11 as the single event that changed the world, Craig Unger would argue that the 2000 presidential election served as a convergence point of certain groups of people who helped create what he calls “the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history—one that could result in the end of American global supremacy.” 

In an eloquent and fascinating study of the Neoconservatives, the Christian Fundamentalists and their presidential candidate, George W. Bush, Unger reveals their policymaking role in the Middle East. 

Today’s Neoconservatives were originally New Left intellectuals who came out of the sixties’ antiwar and counterculture movement as angry individuals who either felt rebuffed socially or professionally and/or were attracted to the hawkish anti-communist dogma of Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. 

Sinking back in his armchair, Maulana Shuja ul-Mulk strokes his thick beard with one hand and the fluffy tail of a small toy dalmatian with the other. 'We were surprised by the results,' he admits from a supporter's home in the small rural western Pakistani town of Mardan, 'but we believe in democracy.'

Whether the claim is true or not, the hard political reality is that Mulk and his hardline religious party are now out of power. In the 2002 election, he and scores of other ultra-conservative clerics swept into government in Pakistan's turbulent North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on a tide of anti-Americanism and resurgent religious enthusiasm, vowing to impose Islamic law. But in last week's national and provincial polls, voters backed secular and liberal candidates and evicted the ruling alliance of religious parties.

The German Family Ministry is pushing to have a book it says slurs Judaism, Christianity and Islam labeled dangerous for children. The book's publisher says kids have a right to enlightenment.

 

The German Family Ministry is pushing for the children's book "How Do I Get to God, Asked the Small Piglet," by written by Michael Schmidt-Salomon and illustrated by Helge Nyncke, to be included on a list of literature considered dangerous for young people.

 

"The three large religions of the world, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, are slurred in the book," the ministry wrote in a December memo. "The distinctive characteristics of each religion are made ridiculous."

The atheist lobby, in the blonde, pregnant person of Jennifer Lange, waited with diminishing patience for the elevator in the Legislative Office Building.

I FIND THE GOD DELUSION BY RICHARD Dawkins particularly relevant to Kenya's current political impasse: Why has it been felt necessary to call in religious leaders to broker peace? Have their pleas to the gangs of the discontented and dispossessed to put down their machetes helped? Of course not. Even the great Archbishop Desmond Tutu failed to achieve anything.

Dawkins asks of just such initiatives that involve the clergy: "But why the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef? Why are scientists so cravenly respectful towards the ambitions of theologians over questions that theologians are certainly no more qualified to answer than scientists themselves?"

Could it be that religion is part of the problem and not the solution? Has a blind faith in God and religious leaders led to a kind of fatalism and willingness which leads people to hand over responsibility for important decisions in their lives to others, in this case men who are clearly not cut out for the job? Dawkins even doubts that theology is a subject at all.

Premier Dalton McGuinty wants to end the daily recital of the Lord's Prayer in the Legislature in what opposition parties are calling a bid to heal wounds from a divisive provincial election fought over religious schools.

McGuinty, whose Liberals were re-elected Oct. 10 partly by defending public funding of Catholic schools while attacking a Progressive Conservative scheme to extend it to other faith-based schools, made the surprise announcement yesterday.

"It's time for us to ensure that we have a prayer that better reflects our diversity," said the premier, who is Catholic.

"The members of the Ontario Legislature reflect the diversity of Ontario - be it Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or agnostic. It is time for our practices to do the same. That is the Ontario way," he wrote in a letter to the other party leaders.

The University of Oxford is to undertake a $4 million study to examine what it is that makes people believe in God.

I FIND THE GOD DELUSION BY RICHARD Dawkins particularly relevant to Kenya’s current political impasse: Why has it been felt necessary to call in religious leaders to broker peace? Have their pleas to the gangs of the discontented and dispossessed to put down their machetes helped? Of course not. Even the great Archbishop Desmond Tutu failed to achieve anything.

The "Atheist and Agnostic Group" MySpace page has been reactivated, a month after the page was deleted following a November 2007 hacking incident where unauthorized users renamed it "Jesus is Love."

The incident is the second reported high profile cyberattack in recent months on a religion-oriented webpage. Last month, the Church of Scientology's website experienced disruptions after it was threatened by a hacker group.

Bryan Pesta, a Cleveland State University assistant professor and the atheist group's founder, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week that his 35,000-member webpage had been shut down twice by the social networking site since its 2004 founding.

Private Muslim schools have been given the power to police themselves, despite widespread fears over religious segregation... In a controversial move, they have won the right to appoint their own Ofsted-style inspectors.

A new independent watchdog has been set up to be more "sensitive" toward Islamic education.

The decision comes despite concerns some private Muslim schools are already failing to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain.

A advertising poster for the Christian Congress for Traditional Values which claimed that gay people want to abolish families has been found to breach the advertising standards code.