Travels in the Riel World

There is a fascinating article in the NY Times about the culture of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. This city has become a contemporary melting pot of the Islamic world, where expatriates form a new identity and try to merge the choices of modernity with the traditions of their Islamic religion.

In his old life in Cairo, Rami Galal knew his place and his fate: to become a maintenance man in a hotel, just like his father. But here, in glittering, manic Dubai, he is confronting the unsettling freedom to make his own choices.

Here Mr. Galal, 24, drinks beer almost every night and considers a young Russian prostitute his girlfriend. But he also makes it to work every morning, not something he could say when he lived back in Egypt. Everything is up to him, everything: what meals he eats, whether he goes to the mosque or a bar, who his friends are.

“I was more religious in Egypt,” Mr. Galal said, taking a drag from yet another of his ever-burning Marlboros. “It is moving too fast here. In Egypt there is more time, they have more control over you. It’s hard here. I hope to stop drinking beer; I know it’s wrong. In Egypt, people keep you in check. Here, no one keeps you in check.”

In Egypt, and across much of the Arab world, there is an Islamic revival being driven by young people, where faith and ritual are increasingly the cornerstone of identity. But that is not true amid the ethnic mix that is Dubai, where 80 percent of the people are expatriates, with 200 nationalities.

This economically vital, socially freewheeling yet unmistakably Muslim state has had a transforming effect on young men. Religion has become more of a personal choice and Islam less of a common bond than national identity.

Dubai is, in some ways, a vision of what the rest of the Arab world could become — if it offered comparable economic opportunity, insistence on following the law and tolerance for cultural diversity. In this environment, religion is not something young men turn to because it fills a void or because they are bowing to a collective demand. That, in turn, creates an atmosphere that is open not only to those inclined to a less observant way of life, but also to those who are more religious. In Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Algeria, a man with a long beard is often treated as an Islamist — and sometimes denied work. Not here in Dubai.

“Here, I can practice my religion in a natural and free way because it is a Muslim country and I can also achieve my ambition at work,” said Ahmed Kassab, 30, an electrical engineer from Zagazig Egypt, who wears a long dark beard and has a prayer mark on his forehead. “People here judge the person based on productivity more than what he looks like. It’s different in Egypt, of course.” …

In this way, Dubai offers another prescription for promoting moderation. It offers a chance to lead a modern life in an Arab Islamic country. Mr. Abu Zanad raised his beer high, almost in a toast, and said he liked being able to walk through a mall and still hear the call to prayer.

“We like that it’s free and it still has Arab heritage,” he said “It’s not religion, it’s the culture, the Middle Eastern culture.”

Here’s an interesting confluence of religion and business - the Dow Jones Dharma for faith-based investing. Business Week has the story.

Back in India, a new generation of gurus is promoting the latest thing to hit the Indian stock market: values investing. Not to be confused with Warren Buffett-style value investing, values-based investing draws on the principles of Indian religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Last month Dow Jones launched the faith-based Dow Jones Dharma indices, which measure the performance of 254 companies that have characteristics like good governance and environmental friendliness in common.

Letters are pouring in to support the new group of five indices. They are not your typical congratulatory notes, but blessings and endorsements from assorted Indian spiritual leaders and scholars. “May the maximum number of investors utilize it, and thus globally advance core Hindu values,” writes Shastri Narayanswarupdas, a religious leader from Ahmedabad in western India. Writes another: “Trust is the breath of business, ethics its limbs, to uplift the spirit its goal.” …

The dharma-compliant stocks, according to Gor, are those that adhere to the precepts relevant to good conduct. They include opposition to animal slaughter, support of the environment, and adherence to good corporate governance. Assorted temples, scholars, and academicians support the idea…

There’s no shortage of companies that adhere to these Dharma principals. Already, in India, Dow Jones has compiled a list of 254 companies that are dharma-compliant.

There was a fascinating article a few days ago in the NY Times, just prior to the death of former Indonesian President Suharto, which discussed the power of local beliefs in spirits and black magic. The story focused on mystical explanations as to why Suharto was clinging to life, but in the process it also illuminated the role that mysticism plays in the daily lives of many Indonesians and contemplated how animist beliefs have managed to hang on in a contemporary Muslim society.

The diagnosis among believers here in Solo, the heart of Javanese culture, is that powerful occult forces in (Suharto’s) body will not let him go, that certain rituals that would cleanse his spirit have not yet been performed or that nature has not yet signaled that it is ready to receive him…

Indonesia is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, the most populous in the world, with 240 million people. But the version of Islam practiced by most people here is mixed with the Hinduism, Buddhism and especially animism that were present before Muslim traders brought their religion to the country in the 12th century.

Animist beliefs and superstitions color everyday life for many people, and occult explanations, including the power of curses and black magic, are sometimes given for everyday events.

“Indonesian Islam is what I call accommodative,” said Azyumardi Azra, director of the graduate school at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta. “Most Indonesian Muslims accept local tradition even though the local tradition could not be accepted by, say, Wahhabi-minded people,” he said, referring to followers of a strict Islamic sect.

When a reporter expressed skepticism about the existence of spirits, a local mystic responded this way:

“It’s just because you don’t understand, just the way I can’t understand you when you speak English.” … “It’s not mysticism,” he insisted, as if trying to break through a language barrier. “It’s reality.”

Staying with Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” issue (yesterday’s post was from the same magazine and covered a road trip through Russia), today’s topic looks at Time’s portrait of Chinese President Hu Jintao. Specifically, at the way Hu is trying to blend the ancient Chinese wisdom of Confucianism with modern economics and a Communist governing philosophy.

In reality, the way Hu has negotiated a difficult situation says much about him as a person and about his evolving and distinctive political philosophy…Hu has ended up as something of a closet traditionalist whose sense of a political true north derives as much from the Chinese classics, to which he has turned in search of models of concord, as it does from Mao and Marx.

In February 2005, for example, Hu quoted Confucius to party officials, declaring that “harmony is something to be cherished.” He and Premier Wen Jiabao regularly proclaim an aspiration to hexie shehui, or a harmonious society. And they often use another slogan, heping jueqi, or peaceful rise, a phrase designed to soothe foreigners worried about the double threat of China’s fireball economy and rapidly modernizing military.

Such traditional-sounding rhetoric about harmony and peace — the antithesis of Maoist phrases about class contradictions and anti-imperialist struggle — has been spilling from party propaganda organs…

Much of his political demeanor seems to suggest a yearning for leadership in the style of a Confucian junzi, or gentleman — one who governs by virtuous example and thus radiates benevolence throughout society…

(But) just beneath Hu’s exhortations about harmony, peaceful rise and benevolent leadership, old Maoist structures remain. Far from wanting to weaken party control, Hu would like to reinforce it, to inspire officials to live up to the old ideals of “serving the people.”

John Tierney wrote a fascinating article recently for the NY Times about the role that culture and religion play in determining scientific beliefs and practices. The story focuses specifically on biotechnology, and about the different approaches taken by Asian and Western cultures on issues like stem-cell research and genetic engineering.

While critics on the right and the left fret about the morality of stem-cell research and genetic engineering, prominent Western scientists have been going to Asia … (which) offers researchers new labs, fewer restrictions and a different view of divinity and the afterlife…

“Asian religions worry less than Western religions that biotechnology is about ‘playing God,’” says Cynthia Fox, the author of “Cell of Cells,” a book about the global race among stem-cell researchers. “Therapeutic cloning in particular jibes well with the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation.”

You can see this East-West divide in maps drawn up by Lee M. Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton. Dr. Silver, who analyzes clashes of spirituality and science in his book “Challenging Nature,” has been charting biotechnology policies around the world and trying to make spiritual sense of who’s afraid of what.

Dr. Silver’s interesting work has led him to divide spiritual and scientific believers into three geographic groups:

The first, traditional Christians, predominate in the Western Hemisphere and some European countries. The second, which he calls post-Christians, are concentrated in other European countries and parts of North America, especially along the coasts. The third group are followers of Eastern religions.

“Most people in Hindu and Buddhist countries,” Dr. Silver says, “have a root tradition in which there is no single creator God. Instead, there may be no gods or many gods, and there is no master plan for the universe. Instead, spirits are eternal and individual virtue — karma — determines what happens to your spirit in your next life. With some exceptions, this view generally allows the acceptance of both embryo research to support life and genetically modified crops.”

By contrast, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the master creator who gives out new souls to each individual human being and gives humans “dominion” over soul-less plants and animals. To traditional Christians who consider an embryo to be a human being with a soul, it is wrong for scientists to use cloning to create human embryos or to destroy embryos in the course of research.

But there is no such taboo against humans’ applying cloning and genetic engineering to “lower” animals and plants. As a result, Dr. Silver says, cloned animals and genetically modified crops have not become a source of major controversy for traditional Christians. Post-Christians are more worried about the flora and fauna.

“Many Europeans, as well as leftists in America,” Dr. Silver says, “have rejected the traditional Christian God and replaced it with a post-Christian goddess of Mother Nature and a modified Christian eschatology. It isn’t a coherent belief system. It might or might not incorporate New Age thinking. But deep down, there’s a view that humans shouldn’t be tampering with the natural world.”

Hence the opposition to genetically modified food. Because post-Christians do not necessarily share the biblical view of an omnipotent deity with the sole power to create souls, Dr. Silver says, they are less worried about scientists “playing God” in the laboratory with embryos.

There is an interesting story in the Washington Post about a new and younger group of Muslim televangelists who have not only been taking advantage of advances in technology to spread their message, but who have also been promoting a more contemporary and tolerant form of Islam. an excerpt:

Muna el-Leboudy, a 22-year-old medical student, had a terrible secret: She wanted to be a filmmaker. The way she understood her Muslim faith, it was haram — forbidden — to dabble in movies, music or any art that might pique sexual desires.

Then one day in September, she flipped on her satellite TV and saw Moez Masoud.

A Muslim televangelist not much older than herself, in a stylish goatee and Western clothes, Masoud, 29, was preaching about Islam in youthful Arabic slang.

He said imams who outlawed art and music were misinterpreting their faith. He talked about love and relationships, the need to be compassionate toward homosexuals and tolerant of non-Muslims. Leboudy had never heard a Muslim preacher speak that way.

“Moez helps us understand everything about our religion — not from 1,400 years ago, but the way we live now,” said Leboudy, wearing a scarlet hijab over her hair.

She said she still plans a career in medicine, but she’s also starting classes in film directing. “After I heard Moez,” she said, “I decided to be the one who tries to change things.”

Masoud is one of a growing number of young Muslim preachers who are using satellite television to promote an upbeat and tolerant brand of Islam.

Television preaching in the Middle East was once largely limited to elderly scholars in white robes reading holy texts from behind a desk, emphasizing the afterlife over this life, and sometimes inciting violence against nonbelievers. But as TV has evolved from one or two heavily controlled state channels to hundreds of diverse, private satellite offerings, Masoud and perhaps a dozen other young men — plus a few women — have emerged as increasingly popular alternatives.

Masoud and others promote “a sweet orthodoxy, which stresses the humane and compassionate” as an alternative to “unthinking rage,” said Abdallah Schleifer, a specialist in Islam and electronic media at the American University in Cairo.

As a “contemporary figure,” Masoud is fast becoming an influential star among youth from “a middle-class full of yearning” who will eventually become decision-makers across the Middle East, Schleifer said. And as a product of American-founded schools in the region, Masoud is able to speak with authority about Western values in a way many others can’t. His most recent show, a 20-part series that aired this fall on Iqra, one of the region’s leading religious channels, attracted millions of viewers from Syria to Morocco. Clips of the show appeared immediately on YouTube, and fans downloaded more than 1.5 million episodes onto their computers.

Interesting essay in the recent issue of Time Magazine. Carla Power examines a key difference between Western and Muslim societies, notably that Westerners are uncomfortable with public prayer while Muslims are uncomfortable seeing bare skin in public. She writes:

Reams have been written on the differences between Islamic and Western societies, but for sheer pithiness, it’s hard to beat a quip by my former colleague, a Pakistani scholar of Islamic studies. I’d strolled into his office one day to find him on the floor, at prayer. I left, shutting his door, mortified. Later he cheerfully batted my apologies away. “That’s the big difference between us,” he said with a shrug. “You Westerners make love in public and pray in private. We Muslims do exactly the reverse.”

At the nub of debates over Muslim integration in the West lies the question, What’s decent to do in public–display your sexuality or your faith? The French have no problem with bare breasts on billboards and TV but big problems with hijab-covered heads in public schools and government offices. Many Muslims feel just the opposite.

As my friend suggested, Westerners believe that prayer is something best done in private, a matter for individual souls rather than state institutions. In the Islamic world, religion is out of the closet: on the streets, chanted five times daily from minarets, enshrined in constitutions, party platforms and penal codes. Sexual matters are kept discreet…

So here is a sweeping generalization, but perhaps a useful one: Western societies are cultures of personal revelation and exposure, while Muslim cultures are traditionally structured around protecting honor and propriety. On our shrunken planet, the two codes bump up against each other, throwing the other into relief.

There is an interesting educational effort underway in Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah is putting his monarchy’s money and influence behind a new university that could change the way students learn in that famously conservative society. The International Herald Tribune reports:

On a marshy peninsula 50 miles from this Red Sea port, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is staking $12.5 billion on a gargantuan bid to catch up with the West in science and technology.

Between an oil refinery and the sea, the monarch is building from scratch a graduate research institution that will have one of the 10 largest endowments in the world, worth more than $10 billion.

The prospect of this new university has provoked much discussion in Saudi Arabia, with strong feelings apparent among both supporters and detractors of the project.

Its planners say men and women will study side by side in an enclave walled off from the rest of Saudi society, the country’s notorious religious police will be barred and all religious and ethnic groups will be welcome in a push for academic freedom and international collaboration sure to test the kingdom’s cultural and religious limits.

This undertaking is directly at odds with the kingdom’s religious establishment, which severely limits women’s rights and rejects coeducation and robust liberal inquiry as unthinkable…

The king has broken taboos, declaring that the Arabs have fallen critically behind much of the modern world in intellectual achievement and that his country depends too much on oil and not enough on creating wealth through innovation.

“There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilization,” said Abdallah Jumah, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco. “We are no longer keeping pace with the advances of our era.”

Slowly but surely, women in the ultra-conservative nation of Saudi Arabia are beginning to gain some of the rights and freedoms that females in most other countries have long taken for granted, including the right to divorce, travel abroad without a male, and own a business. The ability to legally drive a car still eludes Saudi women but the topic is being broached more often these days, even on a popular television show, as this story reports.

In a recent episode of Saudi Arabia’s most popular television show, broadcast during Ramadan this month, a Saudi man of the future is seen sitting in his house as his daughter pulls into the driveway, her children piled into the back of the car.

”Where have you been?” the father asks.

”The kids were bored, so I took them to the movies,” she replies, matter-of-factly, as she gets out of the driver’s seat.

The scene may appear mundane, but in Saudi Arabia, where women are forbidden to drive — and, by the way, where there are no movie theaters, either — the skit portends something of a revolution. From a taboo about which there could be no open discussion, a woman’s right to drive is becoming a topic of growing and lively debate in Saudi Arabia…

”We are telling everyone this is coming, whether today or tomorrow,” said Abdallah al-Sadhan, producer, writer and host of ”Tash Ma Tash” (”No Big Deal”), a variety comedy show that is broadcast during Ramadan and tackles controversial social issues in Saudi Arabia. Other episodes have also shown women driving in what Mr. Sadhan says is a deliberate message. ”There will be a time we will accept it, so now is the time to get prepared for that.”

The debate over women drivers is centered, not surprisingly for Saudi Arabia, on religious and moral issues.

Some Saudi officials and religious men agree with the women that Islam does not forbid women to drive. In the past, Saudi women were able to move freely on camel and horseback, and Bedouin women in the desert openly drive pickup trucks far from the public eye.

Clerics and religious conservatives maintain that allowing women to drive would open Saudi society to untold corruption. Women alone in a car, they say, would be more open to abuse, to going wayward, and to getting into trouble if they had an accident or were stopped by the police. The net result would be an erosion of social mores, they say.

Something is definitely sitrring in Burma (or Myanmar, as it’s currently called). In a country known for a repressive military dictatorship that tolerates no dissent, thousands of Buddhist monks are suddenly taking to the streets to lead peaceful anti-government protests in what some are dubbing a “Saffron Revolution” in honor of the monks’ saffron-colored robes. According to a report in the U.K. Times:

Twenty thousand people, including nuns, monks and ordinary Burmese, marched through the streets of Rangoon yesterday demanding freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate, in a dramatic escalation of the country’s Buddhist-led “Saffron Revolution”.

Ten thousand monks, joined by about the same number of ordinary supporters, marched from the gold-covered Shwedagon Pagoda through the centre of Burma’s largest city in the biggest anti-government demonstration since the bloody suppression of the first democracy movement in 1988.

After heavy-handed efforts to put down demonstrations earlier in the month, the junta has recently been more restrained, even allowing a large group of monks to march past the house of the detained Ms Suu Kyi and pray with her on Saturday.

But the rapidly growing scale of the demonstrations — from a few thousand a week ago to tens of thousands over the weekend — inevitably raises fears of another crackdown by a dictatorship that usually tolerates no challenge whatsoever to its authority. Bystanders cheered the monks as they walked by yesterday, and presented them with flowers and drinking water and balm for their bare feet.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Sydney Herald notes:

By linking the biggest street protests in Burma in two decades to the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s barefoot monks have raised the stakes against the country’s military government…

After a week of marching by the monks, the protests have become explicitly political, though the clerics prefer to make their point indirectly through chants and prayers at key locations. Members of the public who have joined them have taken up chanting the slogans of the pro-democracy movement: national reconciliation - meaning dialogue between the Government and opposition parties - freedom for political prisoners, and pleas for adequate food and shelter…

Soe Aung, a spokesman for a coalition of exile groups based in Thailand, said: “The monks are the highest moral authority in the Burmese culture. If something happens to the monks, the situation will spread much faster than what happened to the students in 1988.”

South Korea may be a technically savvy country (it has one of the highest per capita rates of broadband internet subscribers in the world, well ahead of the U.S.), but that doesn’t stop them from consulting shamans when they need a little luck or assistance. According to this article, in fact, shamanism in Korea is more popular than it’s been in decades.

There are an estimated 300 shamanistic temples within an hour of Seoul’s bustling city center, and in them, shamans perform their clamorous ceremonies every day. They offer pigs to placate the gods. They dance with toy guns to comfort the spirit of a dead child. They intimidate evil spirits by walking barefoot on knife blades…

Korean shamanism is rooted in ancient indigenous beliefs shared by many folk religions in northeast Asia. Most mudangs are women who say they discovered their ability to serve as a mediator between the human and spirit worlds after emerging from a critical illness. They believe that the air is thick with spirits…So when tradition-minded Koreans are inexplicably sick or have a run of bad luck in business or a daughter who cannot find a husband, they consult a shaman.

I also found it interesting how the writer placed shamanism within Korean culture and the country’s other spiritual beliefs.

Shamanism’s eclecticism has influenced Korean attitudes toward religion, helping make South Korea one of the world’s most pluralistic countries — a place where Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity coexist peacefully and often overlap, said Yang Jong-sung, a senior curator at the National Folklore Museum of Korea.

“Korean shamanism is very, very materialistic and this-worldly, as Koreans tend to be,” the curator said. “I don’t think a Christian pastor can succeed here if he only talks about heaven and does not hint at health and material prosperity.”

That’s the message of a story in the Christian Science Monitor, which reports that the 2,500-year-old teachings of Confucius are gaining popularity in contemporary China.

Come back, Confucius, all is forgiven. For nearly a century the ancient sage was confined to the intellectual doghouse in the land of his birth.

Today he is fast supplanting communism as Chinese rulers, businessmen, and ordinary citizens turn back 2-1/2 millenniums to his teachings to help them cope with the economic and social changes racking their country.

“The economy is developing very fast, but people feel the need for wisdom and morality,” says Gu Qing, who publishes books on traditional Chinese culture. “Now we’ve solved the problem of filling people’s stomachs, they are looking for something to fill their minds.”…

For most of the 20th century, Chinese leaders reviled Confucianism as a feudal philosophy whose emphasis on respect for elders, propriety, and the harmony of hierarchy had trapped China in its past. The nadir for the man whose precepts defined society for more than 2,000 years came during the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards went on a weeks-long rampage of destruction in his hometown.

The current government sees Confucius in a more positive light: President Hu Jintao’s key slogan, “a harmonious society,” is a conscious evocation of the Confucian value of harmony and balance.

The new popularity of Confucius has even made a star out of university professor Yu Dan, thanks to a television lecture series. She has her own thoughts about why the ancient sage’s teachings are again striking a chord in China.

Ms. Yu says she struck a chord with a public confused by rapid change. Not long ago, she notes, citizens found a job and stayed in it for life, were assigned a home and lived in it for life, and rarely contemplated divorce. “Life was poor, but poverty brought its own kind of stability,” she says.

Today, the freedom to choose a career and a home can be unsettling, Yu says. “For a person who knows what he wants, choice is a luxury. But for someone who has no standards by which to choose, it can be a disaster. That’s why the pursuit of belief is getting stronger.”

Pope Benedict XVI just began a visit to Brazil, which has resulted in a spate of news stories about the religious changes afoot in Latin America. Although the region is home to half of the world’s Catholics, the Church has been losing adherents at a rapid clip in recent years. Rather than losing churchgoers to a secular society, however, as has been the case in Europe, the Church has been losing ground to evangelical Protestantism, thus heralding a fairly significant change in the relationship between Latin Americans and their faith.

According to an article in the Washington Post:

Latin America is still predominantly Catholic, but not like it used to be. In Brazil, for example, as evangelical Pentecostalism has spread, the country’s population has gone from being 89 percent Catholic in 1980 to about 64 percent today…

Similar shifts are happening throughout the region, from Mexico to Chile. Young people have shown a greater reluctance to join the clergy, resulting in a priest shortage that is 10 times more severe regionwide than it is in North America or Europe. Many congregations have tried to retain members by relaxing the formality of Masses and infusing services with more emotion, fueling a “charismatic movement” that is now practiced by roughly half of Brazilian Catholics…

“There is a trend here — even among priests — that people should be more free to follow their own conscience, and there’s a growing distance between most Catholics and the church’s hierarchy,” said the Rev. Luiz Roberto Benedetti, a Catholic priest who is a professor of social science at the Catholic University of Campinas, near Sao Paulo. “It’s a trend that goes in the complete opposite direction of the message that the pope wants to send.”

The Los Angeles Times also reported on the story and discussed the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a Latin effort to retain Catholic churchgoers:

Rossi’s Mass employs traditional prayers and rituals, but otherwise the scene is reminiscent of a Southern revival meeting. At the service’s boisterous conclusion, Rossi uses a bucket to douse worshipers with holy water…

“It’s not a new church, it’s not a new religion, it’s the same Catholic Church — with more passion,” said Father Vandro Pisaneschi, who advises a group of charismatic students on campus. “The church realized that we had to use a different language to reach some of the faithful.”

According to some, this type of service is more in line with Latin American culture.

“It’s very much Latino,” said Father Edward Dougherty, a Jesuit who pioneered the movement in Brazil and helps run a Catholic television station. “Brazilians love Carnival, so we have Carnival retreats. We dance, have a lot of fun…. In the beginning we said we’d be the leaven, we’d be the salt of the food.”

Interesting article in this morning’s NY Times about a desire among many Saudis to open up their society but without giving up the traditions of Islam. These individuals are seeking a middle way between an orthodox version of Islam and the extreme openness of Western society.

Perhaps more than most societies, Saudi Arabia is a land of contradictions, a nation that demands conformity to very strict social rules even as it rides a wave of oil wealth into modernity. Heads and hands can be chopped off as punishment for crimes. But more young people than ever have been awarded scholarships by the government to attend universities in the United States.

It is the extremes that tend to define Saudi Arabia in the Western consciousness, particularly the radicals who see terrorism as a valid way to spread their ideas.

But a lot of people here also say that what they want is something in the middle, not quite Western democracy and not quite the restrictive life forced on them by the ultrareligious. The issue is less immediately about whether women can drive, or whether there should be movie theaters, as it is about the more abstract concept of allowing people to decide some things for themselves.

“Some people think that all you can find here are conservatives or liberals,” said Shemoukh al-Almaei, 23, a university student studying language and translation, as she walked through a mall in the capital city. “But there are people in the middle.”…

The Koran and the Sunna, the teaching of Prophet Muhammad, still serve as the constitution. People all over the kingdom said they lived by the word of the Koran, the literal word. But as with any other religious practice, the literal word is often a matter of interpretation.

“Nobody wants to separate Islam from the state,” said Hussein al-Shobokshy, a writer and television commentator from Riyadh. “But, I am talking for myself, I want to separate sect from the state. We don’t have any choice but to open.”

It is in the space between religion and tradition where many Saudis say they are trying to have it both ways, to enjoy the benefits of the modern world without giving up the traditions of the old.

Pope Benedict XVI has embarked a trip to Turkey, where he began by supporting Turkey’s membership in the European Union and calling for more dialogue between Christians and Muslims.  The Pope’s travels have spurred a flurry of media coverage, focusing not only on religion but also on Turkey and it’s role as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East.  Here is a sampling of the coverage:

The Christian Science Monitor discusses the need for the Pope to mend spiritual fences.

… the original purpose of the trip - an opportunity to heal the 1,000-year-old schism between the Vatican and the Orthodox Church, whose spiritual leader resides in Istanbul - has changed.

Since offending Muslims in a September speech that linked Islam with violence, Pope Benedict’s visit - his first to a Muslim country - is now being billed as a chance for him to heal another East-West divide, that between Christianity and Islam.

The BBC News talks about how the world has changed since Pope John Paul II visited Istanbul in 1979.

The legacy of the defunct Ottoman Empire has receded even further into history; Turkey is knocking at the door of the European Union; Europe is becoming ever more secular; the Christian presence is haemorrhaging away in the war-torn Middle East; and the Roman Catholic Church is now competing vigorously with Islam for converts in sub-Saharan Africa.

And the New York Times writes about the modern balancing act in Turkey between a secular democracy and the pull of the Islamic faith.

Turkey — a democratic Muslim country with a rigidly secular state — is at a pivot point. It is trying to navigate between the forces that want to pull it closer to Islam and the institutions that safeguard its secularism. …

The extremes jostle on Istanbul’s streets, where miniskirts mix with tightly tied head scarves and lingerie boutiques stand unapologetically next to mosques.

“There are two Turkeys within Turkey right now,” said Binnaz Toprak, a professor of political science at Bogazici University.

Turkey is certainly a unique country, with its feet dipped in multiple worlds and cultures, and this week’s visit by the Pope is a great opportunity to take advantage of the increased media coverage and to learn about this ancient and interesting land.

It’s commonly assumed among Westerners that residents of Islamic countries uniformly support the veiling of women.  However, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, some of the most vigorous debates on this issue occur not between the West and Islam, but between different factions inside Islamic countries.  Interestingly, the debate over the veil is as intense within Islam as it is outside the faith.

When former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted last month that female Muslim constituents show their faces when meeting with him, he set off a fiery debate about whether the face-covering niqab should be allowed in Britain’s multicultural society.

But often forgotten amid such controversies in Europe - which tend to center on allegations of “Islamophobia” or the desire of Western nations to control a minority community - is the fact that nowhere is the debate over the Islamic veil older or more heated than in Muslim societies themselves.

From Morocco and Tunisia, to Turkey and Iran, majority Muslim states have at various times restricted, and in some cases banned, women’s head coverings. To varying degrees, such restrictions stem from a view that public exhibitions of religious commitment are a political, not a personal, act - and hence a potential threat to the government.