This is Article18–RLTV’s weekly blog specifically dedicated to religious liberty issues in other countries around the world. Each week, we profile a different nation, and the struggles facing one of its religious communities. This week, Germany, where during a homeland visit, Pope Benedict XVI urged lawmakers to consider religion when drafting laws and Chancellor Angela Merkel highlighted the role that religion can play in the quest for world peace.

The DPA reported that Pope Benedict XVI, “used a speech to Germany’s Bundestag on Thursday to exhort politicians to keep religion in mind when drafting laws, and he defended his right as head of the Vatican to speak in the parliament.” It was explained that his visit was not specifically as a religious leader, but rather as a guest of state.  His “speech to the Bundestag was mainly a philosophical attack on the idea that religion has no place in ethics and politics.” But while some were concerned that the Pope was seeking to influence politics in Germany by taking sides in any upcoming elections, Benedict stated, “I am clearly not promoting any particular political party – nothing could be further from my mind.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany, may not have been seeking to anticipate or preempt the Pope’s remarks, but she also highlighted the importance of religion recently when she spoke for an Italian Catholic peace group in Munich last Monday.

“‘The separation of church and state should never make us forget that we easily become arrogant without belief in God,” Merkel told the assembled group.

Merkel also explained that while terrorism has affected millions, the global community should not let Islamists be the most influential religious group and that other faiths should strive to help undo some of the damage terrorism has caused.

“Politics can encourage cohesion, but it can’t command it to happen. Religion was wickedly misused in our own times. I believe that combating poverty and injustice are a good way to remove the sources of terrorism.”

Article18 is a weekly blog written by Martin Surridge, Associate Editor of Religious Liberty TV. Article18 logo and other artwork created by Bradley Kenyon.

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Don’t forget to check out other recent Article18 entries.

Article18: Poland — Citizens March to Protest Antisemitism; Death Metal Singer Not-Guilty After Trashing Bible on Stage

Article18: Kosovo — Muslim Headscarf Ban Upheld for Schools; Christians Required to be Buried in Islamic Graveyards

Article18: Pakistan — Christian Flood Victims in Punjab Face Land Discrimination in Disaster Aftermath

Article18: Norway — Personal Reflections on the Origin of a Tragedy

Article18: Uzbekistan — Recent Incidents of Violence Against Christians Alarm Religious Minorities

Here in the Bible Belt, many argue that Islam is inherently war-mongering and oppressive, and that it is waging a “holy war” against anyone that refuses to embrace Muhammad.  Others around the country assert that all religions are inherently concerned with the same ethical core, pursuing “love” and “peace.”

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The summer camp where children of the Norwegian Labor Party went for soccer, swimming, political debates and lectures “sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth,” Beck said in his national radio broadcast.

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The “government enshrinement of the cross was an impermissible mingling of church and state,” the American Atheists say in a press statement. The group says it filed the lawsuit this week in state court in New York and posted a copy of the lawsuit on its website.

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Osama bin Laden’s many victims include, first and foremost, those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, and their grieving families, the soldiers sent to war and the loved ones they left behind, and a new generation forced to grow up in a more polarized and paranoid world. For all of them, bin Laden’s death must bring a sense of relief, of justice finally served.

But his victims also include millions of American Muslims — or Americans suspected of being Muslims — for whom the al-Qaeda leader’s death means something different: the chance to finally reclaim our faith and our identity.

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New York (CNN) — Protesters gathered in lower Manhattan mid-day Sunday to demonstrate against plans to build a mosque near the site of Ground Zero, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by Islamist hijackers on September 11, 2001.

Protest organizer Pamela Geller, a conservative blogger, and her group, “Stop the Islamicization of America,” planned the event because, according to the group’s website, “Building the Ground Zero mosque is not an issue of religious freedom, but of resisting an effort to insult the victims of 9/11 and to establish a beachhead for political Islam and Islamic supremacism in New York… Ground Zero is a war memorial, a burial ground. Respect it.”

The project calls for a 13-story community center including a mosque, performing art center, gym, swimming pool and other public spaces. It is a collaboration between the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative. “The Cordoba Initiative hopes to build a $100 million, 13-story community center with Islamic, interfaith and secular programming, similar to the 92nd Street Y,” its website says, referring to the cultural institution on the upper East side of Manhattan. The Cordoba Initiative aims to improve relations between Muslims and the West.

Daisy Khan of the American Society for Muslim Advancement told CNN it was a “community center with a prayer space inside.” She said the project was an opportunity for American Muslims living in New York to “give back” to the community.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/06/new.york.ground.zero.mosque/index.html?iref=allsearch

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As the United States inches towards success in Iraq and an increasing number of international terrorists are apprehended, the world looks like a safer place than it was just a few years ago. While many will point to the increased danger now that Al-Qaeda have spilled over the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan, there is, it appears, less to be afraid of then previously thought. While it is true that Pakistan remains the only official Muslim-majority member in the exclusive club of nuclear nations, and that the acquisition of those warheads are sure to be the primary target for Al-Qaeda, terrorists in Pakistan are likely to face a more difficult challenge establishing permanency and supremacy than they did in Afghanistan. Firstly, Pakistan features a functioning, albeit slightly corrupt and untrustworthy, central government—a luxury that Afghanistan has arguably never had in its 3000 year history. Secondly, Pakistan has a technologically sophisticated military with years of training in counterterrorism and border conflicts with India in Kashmir.

Not for want of trying, but major Islamic terrorist networks such as the Indonesian-based militant group Jemaah Islamiyah and Al-Qaeda, have failed to hit any large international targets since the 2005 underground bombings in London. Some will point to the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, which were attributed to South Asian militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), as an example of global Islamist terrorism. However, the attack which was likely carried out by LeT was neither outside of their region of immediate influence, and has been interpreted by some as yet another instance of proxy warfare in the Pakistan-India conflict.

This decrease in the amount of attacks by global Islamic terror organizations, especially upon nations in Europe and North America, may be due to a gradual increase in the competency and extent of western military efforts in the war on terror, yet it may also be because of internal problems in the terrorist groups. To choose the most notorious of examples, Al-Qaeda, who achieved household name status after the September 11 bombings and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, have had a sizeable portion of their financial income disrupted by officials in the U.S. Treasury department. According to David S. Cohen, assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing, Al-Qaeda’s influence is diminishing after a strategy of targeting donors and fundraisers of terrorist groups, which has left the terrorist organization in their worst financial state in years. Leaders of Al-Qaeda have resorted to broadcasting cell phone video telecasts in order to raise funds.

However, even fully funded, organizations like Al-Qaeda and Lebanon’s Hezbollah face a new problem that few leaders had to contend with twenty years ago, during the movement’s infancy. Partially due to the nation-building efforts of the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq, the domestic ousting of dictators in nations such as Indonesia, and gradual liberalization like in Iran and Turkey, a greater number of Muslim countries practice democracy than did only a couple of generations ago. While it is true that many countries like Iran and Afghanistan face scrutiny for what many believe to be state sanctioned election fraud, Muslims across the world, in dozens of fledgling democracies, are beginning to appreciate the idea of participatory government and the benefits that it can bring. Abu Bakar Baasyir, mastermind behind the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali and alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, recently proclaimed that democracy goes against the will of Allah and that “Islam and democracy cannot coexist.” Such extreme rhetoric will do little to build support among young Indonesian Muslims, who now live in the third largest democracy in the world. As the Muslim world continues to take baby steps towards democratic government and Islamic terrorist groups take massive cultural leaps backwards into the Stone Age, one can only wonder if these financially crippled organizations can continue to find support in a world which is trying so desperately to put them out of business for good.

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Martin Surridge is a freelance journalist who is currently working on his M.A. in Teaching at Walla Walla University.