"..France is moving to create a state-supervised foundation that will channel donations from Muslims overseas and a state university curriculum to educate imams in French language, history and culture.

Although the government denies it, the new measures amount to a sharp break with France?s deeply ingrained tradition of secularism that forbids involvement by the state in religion ?France has long wrestled with how to integrate its growing Muslim population, estimated at 5 million to 7 million people among a population of 60 million. This fall it enacted a law that prohibits wearing religious symbols in public schools- a measure promoted as a broad ban, but that was conceived to keep Muslim girls from wearing headscarves. The state justified the ban by invoking the same secular tradition that it is now subverting, some French Muslim leaders argue.

Further muddling the government?s justification is the fact that France?s church-state separation is hardly absolute: The government and municipalities own-and are responsible for maintaining-Catholic churched built before a 1905 statute erected a wall between the religious and secular sphere.

The new measures are the latest expression of a government campaign to promote a ?French Islam? that is in harmony with France?s republican ideals and devoid of foreign theological influences. France is increasingly worried that poorly trained, mostly foreign imams who preach in mosques and prayer room across the country are spreading a radical brand of Island that can lead to terrorism and alienation from the French society. This year, it deported eight imams on the ground that they were fomenting anti-Western sentiment and violence with their sermons

..In Germany, senior politicians have called for imams to preach only in German, a demand that was amplified after a television crew filmed a Turkish-speaking imam at a Berlin mosque declaring Germans to be malodorous and unkempt infidels destined to burn in hell. The German state has set up a university-level program in Islamic theology meant to train imams?

?As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates.?

?The studio wants alterations because of fears of a backlash from the Christian Right in the United States. The changes are being made with the support of Pullman, who told The Times last year that he received ?a large amount? for the rights.?

"? It's now safer to criticize "Power" than it is to talk about individual instances of the abuse of it. It also tells us something about the dynamics of representing power on screen vs. in books. The mainstream movies can show an aesthetic of totalitarian oppression, but they can't pinpoint it with any historical precision. Historial details still matter, but only in books.?

?In the days followed, people were behaving in pretty strange -- or was that more natural then? -- ways. I could see many friends of mine from the Muslim community keeping a distance from me and other non-Muslims. The behaviour of several of my Hindu friends was even more strange. Many were ecstatic about the destruction that took place in Ayodhya -- several ordinary Hindu teenagers parrotted local RSS hooligans, for a short period though. When our college reopened after a fortnight of bandhs, hartals, strikes, and a general everything-isn't-alright atmosphere, my closest friend confessed to me that though he couldn't justify Gandhi's assassination -- many on the "secular" side were talking a lot about the parallels between the Masjid demolition and Gandhi's assassination ?. As one can see, talking in extremes was the norm?. I found that those who actually work with people and their problems weren't floundering at difficult times, unlike some of the bookish liberal intellectuals. In societal matters, words of those who are willing to make sacrifices, started appealing to me more, than the dull rigour of "academic" logic.?