Even Obama’s fiercest admirers admitted that his best work for peace occurred at lecture podiums, where the new president offered more of the soaring, idealistic words that helped him rise to power. Nobel judges, in particular, had to be thinking about his June 4 address at Cairo University, in which he promised an era of improved relations between America and the Muslim world.

It’s crucial, he said, for Americans and Muslims to realize that their cultures “overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” Muslims and Americans must, for example, find ways to work together to defend religious liberty.

“People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, heart and soul,” he said. “This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive. … The richness of religious diversity must be upheld — whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt. …

“Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.”

The Cairo speech — which included quotes from the Koran, the Bible and the Talmud — was the year’s most important religion story, according to a poll of mainstream reporters who cover religion news. The role of Obama’s liberal Christian faith in the White House race topped the 2008 Religion Newswriters Association poll.

Religious-liberty issues will continue to test the Obama team, as illustrated by the sobering numbers in a new “Global Restrictions on Religion” study released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. It found that citizens in a third of all nations — representing 70 percent of the world’s population — are not able to practice their religion freely, due to government policies or hostile actions taken by individuals or groups.

Among the world’s most populous nations, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan and India had the most intense restrictions on religion, especially limits on the rights of religious minorities.

The nations offering the greatest freedoms on religious practice were the United States, Brazil, Japan, Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Here’s the rest of the RNA top 10.

(2) Faith groups were at the center of debates over health-care reform, which was the hottest topic in Congress for most of the year. The U.S. Catholic bishops consistently opposed the use of tax dollars to fund abortions, thus clashing with other religious groups that supporting an expanded government role.

(3) The role of radical forms of Islam in terrorism hit the news once again, due to the disturbing history of statements and actions of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused gunman in the massacre of 13 people, including a pregnant woman, at Fort Hood.

(4) George Tiller, an outspoken specialist in performing late-term abortions, was shot while ushering at his Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in Wichita. The antigovernment radical charged with the murder, Scott Roeder, had in the past supported the views of writers who argue — see ArmyofGod.com — that violence against abortionists is morally justified.

(5) Mormons in California were attacked by some gay-rights supporters due to their lobbying efforts on behalf of Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage. Anti-Mormon protests led to vandalism at some Mormon buildings.

(6) President Obama was granted an honorary degree in law from the University of Notre Dame, despite protests that this violated a U.S. bishops policy urging Catholic institutions not to honor those who openly oppose church teachings on the sanctity of human life.

(7) The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to ordain gay and lesbian pastors who live in faithful, committed, monogamous relationships, leading some congregations to start preparations to form a new denomination.

(8) The national recession forced budget cuts at a wide variety of faith-related groups — houses of worship, publishing houses, relief agencies, colleges and seminaries.

(9) Leaders of the Episcopal Church voted to end a moratorium on installing gay bishops, ignoring a request from the archbishop of Canterbury and many other leaders in the global Anglican Communion. The Diocese of Los Angeles then elected a lesbian as a new assistant bishop.

(10) President Obama’s inauguration rites included a controversial invocation by the Rev. Rick Warren, a controversial benediction by the Rev. Joseph Lowery and, at a celebration beforehand, a prayer by New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay, noncelibate bishop.

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As a rule, religious words are safer than religious actions.

Consider these numbers from a new Ellison Research study that shows surprising support — on the left and right, among believers and skeptics — for freedom of expression when it comes to words and symbols.

An overwhelming 90 percent of adults agreed that faith groups should be allowed to rent public property, such as a school gyms, if laws gave non-religious groups the same right. Asked about allowing a moment of silence in public schools, 89 percent said that was fine. Another 88 percent said teachers should have the right to wear jewelry, such as a cross or a Star of David, in public-school classes.

“There is a lot of unity out there about these kinds of issues,” said Ron Sellers, president of the research firm in Phoenix. “But the specifics do matter. Wearing a cross on your lapel is not the same thing as showing up a school wearing a t-shirt with a big cross on it and the words, ‘Believe in Jesus or you’re going to hell.’

“There’s no way to say that approving one thing is the same as approving another, even though the same principle is at stake.”

The key is that religion is bad if it makes large numbers of people uncomfortable.

For example, 83 percent of the survey participants said it should be legal to put nativity scenes on public property, such as city hall lawns, and 79 percent supported the posting of the Ten Commandments in court buildings. But that number fell to 60 percent when they were asked about Muslim displays on public property during Ramadan.

This study asked another crucial question linked to a religious liberty issue that is affecting a wide variety of faith groups, especially in higher education.

The researchers asked if respondents agreed that it “should be legal for a religious club in a high school or university to determine for itself who can be in their membership, even if certain types of people are excluded.” The result was a stark divide, with only 52 percent agreeing that religious groups should be able to enforce their own doctrines among their own members.

“People might respond differently if you asked the same question, but were more specific,” said Sellers. “I think most Americans believe that a Jewish student union should have the right to say, ‘No, you’re Muslim. You cannot join our group.’ But what if it’s a conservative Christian group that says, ‘No, you cannot join our group because you’re gay’? American aren’t sure what they think about that, right now.”

The trend is clear. Vague talk is safer than clear action. Personal beliefs are good, but not if these doctrines lead to actions that indicate that some beliefs are right and others wrong.

Seeking is good, but finding is bad.

Judging is even worse.

For example, a new survey by the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Research team found that 72 percent of “unchurched” Americans who rarely if ever attend worship services believe that “God, a higher or supreme being, actually exists.” However, 61 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the God of the Bible is “no different from the gods or spiritual beings depicted by world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.”

The researchers found that 78 percent of the respondents claimed that they would be “willing to listen” if a Christian wanted to share talk about their beliefs. Then again, 44 percent agreed that “Christians get on my nerves.”

“There is a sense in our culture that is acceptable to believe in anything spiritual, as long as it makes you a better person and helps you find peace,” said Ed Stetzer, leader of the LifeWay Research team. “One’s faith only becomes a problem when that belief actually makes claims that contradicts the faith of others.”

In an age of “I’m OK, You’re OK” spirituality, he added, “American spirituality has glorified ‘searching’ for spiritual meaning, but de-emphasized ‘finding.’ In other words, it is good to be looking for spirituality, but it is intolerant to actually believe you have found a right faith. … Intolerance is defined to mean actually believing that your faith is the correct one.”

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There was a killer virus on the loose and all you had to do to catch it was answer a call from an infected number. The virus didn’t hurt cellphones, but would — eyewitnesses confirmed this — cause users to drop dead. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was forced to issue a denial telling users that it was safe to turn their phones back on.

Then there were messages claiming that Israeli trucks were carrying a million HIV-infected melons to Arab consumers in a new biological-warfare plot. This was not to be confused with other urban legends about a “Western-Zionist conspiracy” to use polio vaccines and other medical means to sterilize the next generation of Muslims.

“The contemporary Muslim fascination for conspiracy theories often limits the capacity for rational discussion of international affairs,” argued Husain Haqqani of Boston University, at a conference in Istanbul entitled “Fact vs. Rumor: Journalism in the 21st Century.” This recent gathering of journalists and scholars was organized by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life.

Haqqani stressed that the “Muslim world’s willingness to believe rumors is not a function of the Islamic religion. Like other Abrahamic faiths, Islam emphasizes truth and righteousness. The Koran says: ‘O ye who believe! Fear Allah, and (always) say a word directed to the Truth.’ And one of the sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad … specifically forbids rumormongering: ‘It is enough to establish someone as a liar that he spreads what he hears without confirming its veracity.’ “

Nevertheless, these rumors roll on, creating a cycle of fear and bigotry. The result is a climate of confusion and cynicism that prepares millions of people to believe the next round of rumors, often with violent consequences in an age in which ancient prejudices and modern technology merge seamlessly.

The results can be seen in recent WorldPublicOpinion.org surveys in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan and Indonesia, said Haqqani, who is an active Muslim. As a rule, participants had positive attitudes about globalization, freedom of religion and democracy. Yet roughly three out of four surveyed said that Muslim nations should strictly enforce Sharia, or Islamic, law as part of efforts to reject sinful “Western values.” Large majorities affirmed the belief that the United States is trying to “weaken and divide” the Muslim world and slightly smaller majorities said America’s goal is to “spread Christianity in the region.”

The impact of the rumors can, perhaps, be seen in another paradox seen in these surveys, said Haqqani. Large majorities in Egypt, Indonesia and Morocco (results were mixed in Pakistan) agreed that violent groups that kill civilians are guilty of violating the “principles of Islam.” However, less than a quarter of those polled believed that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Many Muslims seem to believe that 9/11 was a great achievement, but that Osama didn’t do it,” he said. “They are confused by all the rumors.”

Leaders in the West must understand that almost half of the world’s Muslim population is illiterate. Meanwhile, the 57 Organization of the Islamic Conference nations contain about 500 colleges and universities, compared with more than 5,000 in the United States and 8,000 in India. That is one university for every three million Muslims.

Yet this painful fact is not the only source of this predisposition to embrace conspiracy theories, said Haqqani. After all, the digital consumers who use their cellphones to spread ridiculous text messages are not illiterate.

“What we are seeing is not just a crisis rooted only in religion or education,” said Haqqani. “This is a culture-wide crisis of politics and economics and technology and education and it is easy to see the role of religion because of the powerful role that faith plays in the lives of millions of people.

“The greatest fear of most Muslims is that their societies will be over run by the Western world. … They believe that modernity equals Westernization, Westernization equals promiscuity and licentiousness and all of that equals a loss of faith. We cannot change that overnight. It is a project of a century or more, in which millions of people must learn that the modern world is built on values, laws and tolerance, not just highways, airplanes and cellphones.”

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Baha’is also embrace alcohol, pork, gambling and adultery.

Human rights activists are studying this new wave of hate for one reason — the Islamic Republic of Iran runs Kayhan. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei picks the managing editor. So there’s more to these headlines than ink and paper.

“When Iran has a new enemy, it never takes long for them to connect that enemy to us,” said Kit Bigelow, external affairs director for the Baha’i faith in the United States. “It used to be Russian and Britain, then it was Israel and the Zionists. Now, it’s the United States. … We can see certain dots being connected right now in Iran, even though we can’t say for sure that we can see cause and effect. It’s foreboding.”

Here are some of the dots the experts are connecting.

Iranian officials recently arrested 54 Baha’is and their supporters involved in a UNICEF community service project in Shiraz, even though the young people obtained a permission letter for their project from the local Islamic Council. Last week, 51 of them were released on bail, although they have not been formally charged with a crime.

The three young people still in jail “were not the leaders, in any sense of the word” and no one knows why they have been singled out, said Bigelow. Other arrests during the past year have followed this pattern — mysterious arrests, demands for bail and no formal charges. Meanwhile, Iranian police also raided six Baha’i homes and collected computers, books, notebooks and other documents.

“We think this is part of a strategy to keep the Baha’i community off balance, to keep us on tenterhooks,” said Bigelow.

But nothing alarmed Baha’is more than the disclosure this spring of a confidential 2005 letter sent to the Iranian Ministry of Information, the Revolutionary Guard and police. It said the “Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, had instructed the Command headquarters to identify persons who adhere to the Baha’i faith and monitor their activities,” according to a statement by Asma Jahangir of Pakistan, Special Rapporteur on religious liberty for the United Nations. The letter asked the “recipients to, in a highly confidential manner, collect any and all information about members of the Baha’i faith.”

Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman connected the dots and detected what he believes is a horrifying pattern.

“These actions … are reminiscent of the steps taken against Jews in Europe and a dangerous step toward the institution of Nuremberg-type laws,” said Foxman, a Holocaust survivor. “This clear attempt to step-up persecution of the Baha’i community in Iran sets a dangerous precedent” and has raised the historic persecution of Iran’s largest religious minority “to the next level.”

These strong words may provide little comfort, since Iranian leaders already claim the Baha’is are agents for Zionism.

Part of the problem is that the Baha’i faith, which proclaims the unity of all religions, also has unique ties to Islam and Iran. The faith began with a leader known as the Bab, who claimed a direct lineage from Muhammad. He predicted the coming of a new prophet, but was executed in 1850 in Tabriz.

Baha’is believe this new prophet — the successor to Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and others — was Baha’ullah, who was born in 1817 in Tehran. He was persecuted and repeatedly banished to Baghdad, Constantinople and, finally, Palestine. He died in 1892 and his tomb, and the Bab’s tomb, is in a shrine near the Baha’i headquarters in Haifa.

Thus, Iran insists that Baha’i believers are both apostates and heretics, Thus, the faith is a sect that does not deserve the recognition and rights that the Islamic republic grants to Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.

“They believe that the Baha’i faith is not a valid, independent world religion in its own right,” said Bigelow, who is a convert from Christianity. “And, of course, our holy shrine is located in what has become the modern state of Israel. So when Baha’is around the world, including thousands of Baha’is in Iran, send money to help support this shrine and our work they are sending money to Israel. You can imagine what the current leaders of Iran think of that.”

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They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.

One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.

A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don’t. In fact, a whole lot of the time you don’t get to see them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

I want to show you an an example — a case study, if you will — of what I am talking about, a ghost in a set of stories that is related to this blog — www.GetReligion.org.

But first let me introduce myself. My name is Terry Mattingly and I am journalist who covers religion news. For the past 15 years I have written the national “On Religion” column each week for the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C. I also teach at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Palm Beach County, Fla., where my title is Associate Professor of Mass Media & Religion.

I will be writing for this blog pretty much every day. The actual editor of the site is my colleague Douglas LeBlanc, another veteran journalist who has covered religion in the mainstream and religious press. In recent years, he has been best known as an associate editor of the respected evangelical news magazine Christianity Today.

Between the two of us, we have been covering religion news in secular and sacred media — or trying to convince editors to pay us to do so — for almost 50 years.

We write religion stories and we read religion stories. Lots of them. That’s how we start our days and often that’s how we finish them. We see all kinds of things and so do our many friends out there in the blogosphere.

Here’s that example I was going to tell you about from a few months ago.

Like many people who live far from New York City, my morning email includes the digital newletter version of The New York Times. So I was scrolling along and ran into this.

***

November 12, 2003

Survivors of Riyadh Bombing Pick Up Pieces

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 11 They were neighbors and newlyweds, and late on Saturday night they bumped into each other by chance outside the obstetrician’s office.

That is how Dany Ibrahim and Houry Haytayan found out that the blushing couple who lived next door were also expecting their first child.

***

It was your basic, solid symbolic person story, a snapshot from the age of terror. I was especially interested in finding out who the authorities thought planned and executed this bombing and why.

The details were, of course, sketchy. But the newspaper of record had to find the pattern that would help readers make sense of this.

“Of the 17 dead, 13 have been identified. A Saudi police investigator at the scene on Tuesday said one of the four unidentified bodies might have been that of a suicide bomber inside the sport utility vehicle.

“Mr. Ibrahim, the young Lebanese husband, lived in Beirut through the 1970’s and 1980’s when it was racked by civil war. Somehow this is different. He specifically picked this compound to move into six months ago, after the suicide bombings in May against Western compounds, because he thought it would be safer to live in a place that was almost entirely Arab and Muslim.

It was safer to live in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Arab and Muslim. But it was not safe.”

Note: Arab and Muslim.

This is one of those strange combinations of words. Not all Arabs are Muslims and many Muslims are not Arabs. This strange combination of ethnic and religious identifications puzzled me.

After all, the terrorists themselves keep saying that these bombings target “infidels.” There are, in fact, “infidels” who are Arab. There are even “infidels” who are Muslims. What exactly were we dealing with in this case? Who are the “infidels” and where are they in this story?

So I kept reading and, latter, I found this.

***

Christian Arabs possible attack targets

By ESTANISLAO OZIEWICZ

From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail

POSTED AT 5:40 AM EST Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003

Nina Jibran had everything to live for. The Lebanese school teacher was recently married, pregnant and living in a comfortable compound in Riyadh.

There was even talk of her moving to Canada with her husband, an engineer who worked for a multinational advertising agency.

But then, shortly after the couple returned home from an obstetrician’s appointment last Saturday, a suicide bomber ripped through the gates of their residential area, shredding their lives and sparking outrage in Saudi Arabia. Ms. Jibran was among the 17 dead, and her husband, Eliyas, among the more than 120 injured.

***

Scanning down, I found this newspaper’s version of the crucial, defining paragraphs:

“As details emerge about the victims of last weekend’s bombing, many observers believe their profile made them targets for the suspected al-Qaeda attack. Ms. Jibran, like her husband whom she married in July of 2002, was Christian. According to Arabic-language news reports, they had also received documentation to move to Canada.

“Elias Bijjani, a Toronto-based member of the Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council, said many of the couple’s neighbours were also Lebanese Christians. He speculated al-Qaeda was targeting Christian Arabs, rather than Muslims.”

In fact, the evidence seemed to be that the victims were Arabs, but they were Arab Christians.

The wording in the New York Times story did not eliminate that possibility, but it also did not provide that specific information. In fact, it would turn out that it was hard to explain the location of the attack in any terms other than an attempt to kill a specific form of “infidels” — Arab Christians.

Why was that information missing? What was the origin of this ghost?

I immediately did what I do several times a day. I sent pieces of these stories and the URLs around to a circle of friends — journalists, human rights activists, politicos, etc. You know, the usual cyberspace circles. We all have these private circles, right? Mine just happen to care a great deal about religion and the news.

Before long, an interesting thing happened. One of these cyber-colleagues — Dr. Paul Marshall of Freedom House, which studies religious liberty issues — took an interest in these two stories. Then he took this case study to another level.

The result was this essay for The Weekly Standard.

***

Misunderstanding al Qaeda

What you weren’t told about their targets in Saudi Arabia.

by Paul Marshall

12/01/2003, Volume 009, Issue 12

AMERICAN REACTIONS to the recent bombing of a foreign workers’ compound in Riyadh reveal multiple misreadings of the Arab world and — more dangerously — of both al Qaeda and the Saudis.

The media seem to equate Arab with Muslim and, along with some in the administration, think that al Qaeda’s war is against Americans and Westerners per se, rather than against all “infidels,” a group al Qaeda defines idiosyncratically and expansively as anyone who is not a strictly observant Muslim. Both mistakes are compounded by reliance on the Saudis’ distorted account of the attack.

The November 8 bombing took place in a Lebanese Christian neighborhood of Riyadh, and of the seven publicly identified Lebanese victims, six were Christian. Lebanon’s newspapers are replete with photographs of Maronite Catholic and Greek Orthodox victims. Daleel al Mojahid, an al Qaeda-linked webpage, praised the killing of “non-Muslims.” The Middle East Media Research Institute quotes Abu Salma al Hijazi, reputed to be an al Qaeda commander, as saying that Saudi characterizations of the victims as Muslims were “merely media deceit.”

If so, the media fell for it.

***

Marshall and I had seen the same ghost. He chased it down and captured it in print.

And that is what we hope to do with this blog. It is an experiment by Doug LeBlanc and myself and, we hope, our friends and new readers. We want to slow down and try to pinpoint and name some of these ghosts.

But I don’t want to sound like we see this as a strictly negative operation. There are many fine writers out there — some believe the number is rising — who are doing an amazing job of taking religion news into the mainstream pages of news, entertainment, business and even sports. We want to highlight the good as well as raise some questions about coverage that we believe has some holes in it.

Most of all, we want to try to create a clearning house of information and opinion on this topic. This is what blogs do best.

So this is why Doug and I are starting this experimental blog. We hope it grows. We hope it forms links with other sites that are digging into the same issues, each with their unique viewpoints and resources. We will point some of those out as well and include them in our links page.

Let’s begin.

NOTE FROM TERRY MATTINGLY: This item ran at www.GetReligion.org on Feb. 1, 2004. I am adding it to the www.Tmatt.net site for a simple reason. Due to a technical error, the copy desk at the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., did not receive my column this week. Thus, it will run a week late. Rather than leave a gap here at the Gospel Communications Network site, I am sharing this opening essay from another web project. I hope you enjoy it.

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Visitors enter through a door secured by a guardhouse, locks and a metal-screening device. They cannot enter the Phanar’s main gate because it was welded shut in 1821 after the Ottoman Turks hanged Patriarch Gregory V from its lintel. The black doors have remained sealed ever since.

A decade ago, bombers who tried to open this gate left a note: “We will fight until the Chief Devil and all the occupiers are chased off; until this place, which for years has contrived Byzantine intrigues against the Muslim people of the East is exterminated. … Patriarch you will perish!”

The capital of Byzantium fell to the Turks in 1453. Yet 400,000 Orthodox Christians remained in greater Istanbul early in the 20th century. That number fell to 150,000 in 1960. Today fewer than 2,000 remain, the most symbolic minority in a land that is 99 percent Turkish. They worship in 86 churches served by 32 priests and deacons, most 60 or older.

What the Orthodox urgently need is an active seminary and patriarchate officials are convinced the European Union will help them get one, as Turkey races to begin the formal application process. At the top of the list of reforms sought by the EU are improved rights for non-Muslims.

Thus, during the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit, President George W. Bush held a strategic meeting with Istanbul Mufti Mustafa Cagrici, Armenian Patriarch Meshrob Mutafyan, Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yusuf Cetin and Patriarch Bartholomew.

“The European Union here is not focused so much on religion as it is on basic human rights,” said Phanar spokesman Father Dositheos, through an interpreter. “For us this means hope. Any attention to the rights of minorities has to be good for us in the long run. Here, a little bit of religious freedom would go a long way.”

But hard questions remain, as terrorists compete with Turkish reformers for headlines.

Western politicos are anxious for Turkey to serve as a bridge between East and West, between secularized Europe and the Muslim world. But others worry that decades of work by Turkey to mandate secularism on its people will have the opposite effect — creating fertile soil for the growth of radical forms of Islam.

The Greek government now backs the entry of its once bitter rival into the European Union. But one of the most outspoken critics of this move is the Orthodox archbishop of Greece.

“Turkey is not a European country and, while its culture is worthy of our respect, it is not compatible with our European culture,” said Archbishop Christodoulos, during an interview in Athens. “This is not a matter of prejudice. … Our European culture has a sense of unity that comes from the spiritual traditions and the common spiritual roots of these countries.”

But officials at the Phanar disagree and hope to verify reports that Turkey will take concrete steps to demonstrate its acceptance of some Western values — such as religious liberty. The Orthodox and other religious minorities are anxious to have more control over their finances, to be able to grant work permits to foreign clergy, to freely elect their own leaders and to build and rebuild sanctuaries.

During his visit, Bush said he was satisfied that Turkey will soon let the Orthodox reopen the Halki seminary on Heybeliada Island, which was closed in 1971 under laws strictly controlling all religious education. In addition to training new clergy, this might strengthen two surviving monasteries. This is crucial since, under Turkish law, any monk who is elected Orthodox patriarch must be a Turkish citizen.

But change is slow and uncertain in this ancient city. The gate to the Phanar was been sealed for many generations.

“We hear rumors. The government officials say Turkey will allow us to reopen the seminary if the church will reopen the gate,” said a church official who asked not to named. “The church says it may reopen the gate if the Turks allow the seminary to be opened. The government says it will allow us to reopen the seminary if we open the gate. We are used to this.”

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That may not sound bad. But this is the network that enforced the Taliban’s codes for clothing, grooming, family life, prayers and myriad other details of daily life. It used beatings, torture, imprisonment, discrimination and other forms of terror.

On the evening news, the Taliban is defeated and on the run. But the reality on the ground may be different. If the office for the “Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” is alive, the Taliban’s heart is still beating.

“Significant numbers of former Taliban officials or supporters appear to be in the process of attaching themselves to the new power structures,” according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Many elements of the victorious anti-Taliban forces also have past records of human rights abuse, including religious intolerance and restrictions of the rights of women.”

Far from the diplomats and satellite dishes in Kabul, the Taliban’s version of Sunni Islamic law may rule — with summary public executions for murder, amputations for theft and stoning and lashing for adultery.

Nobody really knows. The commission thinks somebody needs to find out.

In a report this week to the White House and Congress, it urged the expansion of an international security presence beyond Kabul, with more attention focused on the actions of local commanders and tribal leaders. It is crucial — since religion is at the root of this crisis — that someone promptly be assigned to the Kabul embassy to defend religious liberty.

“If the United States government is not prepared to send such a person, our commission is,” said commissioner Felice Gaer, of the American Jewish Committee.

Gaer repeated this pledge a half dozen times during one press briefing. The commission will decide on a course of action by the end of June.

It may seem strange to place such an emphasis on religious liberty for minorities in a land in which Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews and Christians may number only in the hundreds. But there also have been atrocities committed by the Sunni Muslims — 85 percent of the population — against Shiite Muslims.

“Some people have the view, ‘Well, what do you need religious freedom for?’ because this is a country that is 99 percent Muslim,” said commissioner Nina Shea of Freedom House. “There are many difficulties with that. Under the Taliban we saw how a harsh interpretation of Islam was imposed on everyone, whether they wanted that interpretation or not. This is a concern for the individual rights of Muslims as well as for minority religious groups within Afghanistan.”

The commission report’s bottom line is that “a future Afghanistan that respects human rights, including freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” is much less likely to be a staging ground for terrorism. But there is another reason to stress issues of faith and tolerance — it is crucial that religious charities and relief groups are able to safely resume their work.

But who decides who is a relief worker and who gets jailed as a missionary? Ask Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer if this question matters in Afghanistan.

The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

This implies that all kinds of people — from atheists to evangelists — can speak their minds and strive to change other people’s minds. But Afghanistan remains a land in which converting to another faith can be fatal. Inviting someone to convert to another faith can be fatal, as well.

The goal right now, said Shea, is to focus on issues of security and the rule of law.

“This report,” she said, “is not about making Afghanistan safe for Christian missionaries to go in and convert the country. … We are talking about basic rights of religious freedom that have been violated, probably more severely in Afghanistan than in almost any other country in the world in recent years.”

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