Fighting blasphemy laws is blasphemy

OXFORD, England -- Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan was not the first Muslim convert to Christianity to be sentenced to death and he will not be the last.

Human-rights activists around the world cheered when -- despite efforts by the post-Taliban parliament -- he was allowed to seek asylum in Italy. Other converts have been less fortunate, facing imprisonment, abuse, torture and death at the hands of state officials or vigilantes in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia and elsewhere.

While Rahman's plight drew waves of prayers, few Western believers noticed a related case last year that was just as important, according to Paul Marshall, of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom.

Journalist Ali Mohaqeq Nasab was jailed for his work with Women's Rights magazine in Kabul. Among his many sins, the liberal Shiite cleric had argued that Muslim apostates should not face execution. Thus, radicals demanded that he face the gallows himself. He repented.

"If it is blasphemous to discuss charges of blasphemy, then you have in effect a totalitarian system," said Marshall, one of my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life. We both took part in a seminar last week for journalists from around the world, focusing on blasphemy and freedom of the press.

"Blasphemy charges mean that you cannot discuss the blasphemy charges. Hence, seeking to remove, minimize or otherwise immobilize legal bans on blasphemy, apostasy, insulting Islam and insulting public religious sentiments is an indispensable first step in creating the necessary political space for debate that could lead to other reforms. Unless you can get this out of the way, you can't discuss other issues."

It's crucial, said Marshall, to realize that Islamists are using laws against apostasy and blasphemy to threaten liberal Muslims just as often, or more often, than against actual converts. When Osama bin Laden issues pronouncements against blasphemy, he reserves his strongest words for Muslims who want to compromise with the West.

There is no law higher for Muslims than Sharia law and no courts higher than those that enforce it. One notorious law in Pakistan says: "Whoever, by words either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished by death."

The ultimate insult is for a Muslim to abandon the faith. So it matters little that the United Nations 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. ..."

In recent years, powerful Muslims in Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere have urged their Sharia courts to restore and enforce traditional penalties for crimes such as apostasy and "blasphemy against the prophet," said Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, who grew up in a primarily Shiite family in Pakistan.

The bottom line is that penalties other than death are viewed as repugnant to Islam. Judges have little room to maneuver and the whole world is watching.

"The question, of course, is whether in a world such as ours -- which is increasingly interconnected -- religions have to be accountable not only to themselves and their followers, but to others," said the bishop. "Questions of personal liberty, of life, cannot be left just to circles of believers."

Nevertheless, it may become harder for moderate Muslims and their allies to avoid these questions, even in the safety of the West. Earlier this year, an organization called "Supporters of God's Messenger" sent out an email threatening to kill 30 or more "atheists," "polytheists" and Muslims who cooperate with "worshippers of the cross" and other believers.

Marshall noted that the message called people by name, including Muslims in America, and included information about their home addresses, their children's schools and times when their wives were alone at home.

"Appeasement of such groups will not work," he said. If Western leaders fail to take a stand, "violent Islamists will accept their victory and move on to demand the next part of their agenda -- the silencing or death of those who reject or criticize their program, including, especially, Muslims. ...

"If even Western democracies cannot provide the political space for Muslims to debate these critical questions concerning the meaning of Islam, then all hope of an Islamic reform movement will be lost."

That other Zion conspiracy

The conspiracy is almost too big for words and its secrets have been protected through the ages by a hidden society around the world.

It has given birth to organizations large and small, from local Lions Clubs to the Communist Party. It has started revolutions and manipulated the world's wars. Using their great wealth, the conspirators control mass media and steer the churches.

No, this isn't part of "The Da Vinci Code."

This is a different Zion conspiracy. This is the great Jewish plot, as described by an early covenant in the Islamist organization Hamas. Where can one learn the truth?

"Zionism scheming has no end, and after Palestine, they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates River," proclaims article 32. "When they have finished digesting the area on which they have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion. Their scheme has been laid out in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' "

Sooner of later, anyone who studies modern anti-Semitism ends up studying this infamous document, with its 24 chapters that claim to reveal the minutes of a vast Jewish network that rules the world. Although its origins are the subject of debate, scholars agree that it emerged in 1905 in Russia and has become a touchstone text for conspiracy insiders around the world.

"Conspiracy theories are, by their very nature, insidiously seductive. It doesn't matter if you are talking about who shot John Kennedy, who blew up the World Trade Center or who is driving up oil prices," said Daniel Greene, curator of a U.S. Holocaust Museum exhibition entitled "A Dangerous Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

"A great conspiracy theory answers all kinds of questions in a very uncomplicated way. It gives you the secret information that you need to know to understand why some people are oppressed and others are powerful. And, of course, if anyone says they have evidence that proves that the conspiracy theory is wrong, then that just proves that they are part of the conspiracy. You can't win."

This conspiracy can be summed up in four words: "The Jews did it."

As could be expected, Nazi Germany produced 23 or more editions of "The Protocols." By this time, explained Greene, Adolf Hitler did not need to quote the text by name, because its ideas had become part of the air he was breathing. There is also evidence that German leaders knew the book was a fake.

"I believe that 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' are a forgery," wrote master propagandist Joseph Goebbels. However, he also said, "I believe in the intrinsic, but not the factual truth of the 'Protocols.' "

The current exhibit, which precedes a larger project about propaganda scheduled for 2008, demonstrates that this text's unique brand of hatred knows no borders -- especially not in the Internet age.

There is a copy of industrialist Henry Ford's 1920 book entitled "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem." There is a Pakistani edition of "The Protocols" that King Faisel of Saudi Arabia offered to foreign diplomats as a gift. There is another another edition in Japanese, which is a mystery to many scholars since there are fewer than 1,000 Jews in Japan, out of a population of nearly 130 million.

An edition recently published in Syria suggests that the 9/11 attacks were planned and executed by Jews, seeking a way to further involve the United States in the Middle East. An infamous Spanish edition is even more cynical. It shows finger puppets representing the U.S. economy, the Masons, the Communists, Christianity and the Nazi swastika -- all being controlled by a palm marked with the Star of David.

Yes, there are anti-Semites who insist that Jews planned the Holocaust as a deadly gambit that would give them the ultimate "victim" trump card in international affairs.

Do they really believe this?

"They may want to believe that it is true because, to them, it feels true," said Greene. "So there is truthiness out there and, from the beginning, 'The Protocols' has been an assault on the very idea of truth. But people are supposed to debate the facts, not what they feel in their gut. If people will use their heads, they will be able to see this kind of hatred for what it is."

A word from Canterbury, finally

Thousands of Episcopalians believe the Sacrament of Marriage should be modernized to include same-sex unions.

Thousands of others across America disagree.

Many regional dioceses have become battlegrounds, with liberal parishes clashing with conservative parishes. At the national level, some bishops have tried, with little success, to convince their church hierarchy to repent after its 2003 consecration of the openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. This war has rocked the 70-million-member Anglican Communion, where traditionalists hold a majority among the world's bishops.

So everyone has been waiting for a sign from the throne of St. Augustine. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has been pulled in both directions, although his progressive views on sexuality are well known.

"What is the current tension in the Anglican Communion actually about? Plenty of people are confident that they know the answer," wrote Williams, in a letter this week to the Anglican primates. "It's about gay bishops, or possibly women bishops. The American Church is in favor and others are against -- and the Church of England is not sure (as usual)."

But this is a conflict inside a global, sacramental communion, he stressed. It cannot be debated in political terms.

Anglicans can even appreciate the role homosexuals have played in church life, he said, yet believe that this "doesn't settle the question of whether the Christian Church has the freedom, on the basis of the Bible, and its historic teachings, to bless homosexual partnerships as a clear expression of God's will. That is disputed among Christians, and, as a bare matter of fact, only a small minority would answer yes to the question."

Thus, Williams believes it's time for Anglicans to write a covenant that would bind the communion together on crucial points of ancient Christian doctrine and practice. Liberal churches that declined to sign would become "associate" members of the communion and remain linked by bonds of history and friendship -- but not "constituent" members at the legal and sacramental levels.

Anglicanism would split, along lines defined by the global majority.

"Some actions -- and sacramental actions in particular -- just do have the effect of putting a Church outside or even across the central stream of the life they have shared with other Churches," wrote Williams. "It isn't a question of throwing people into outer darkness, but of recognizing that actions have consequences -- and that actions believed in good faith to be 'prophetic' in their radicalism are likely to have costly consequences."

What would this look like in practice? The relationship, said the archbishop, would not be "unlike that between the Church of England and the Methodist Church," which broke away from Anglicanism in 1791.

The Episcopal Church posted the Williams letter on its website, without initial comment. However, activists on both sides quickly linked Canterbury's sobering epistle with the decision during their recent General Convention to change the church's name from the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America to the Episcopal Church -- period. This underlined the fact that it already includes small jurisdictions in the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe. Might it soon include Canada, New Zealand, Scotland other churches that reject a doctrinal covenant?

Money will be an issue as Anglican leaders write their covenant.

The older, richer churches control massive endowments, pensions, seminaries, properties and the ecclesiastical structures in their lands. They control the resources of the past and will use them to defend what they believe is the theology of the future.

However, traditionalists in the Third World and in some giant American parishes are thriving in the here and now. They believe they can use the resources of the present to defend the theology of the past.

It's crucial that Williams repeatedly stressed that changes are coming no matter what, said Father David Roseberry, rector of the 4,500-member Christ Church in Plano, Texas. This week, the parish announced that it would leave the Episcopal Church, while striving to remain in the Anglican Communion.

"I'm impressed that Rowan Williams is not willing to sacrifice the doctrine, discipline and worship of Anglicanism in order to accept the doctrine, discipline and worship of the modern Episcopal Church," said Roseberry. "In fact, it appears that he is sacrificing his own personal views in order to preserve the unity of the church. This is exactly what we believe a bishop should do."

Reporters, with blog on their side

Anyone who follows what Ruth Gledhill has to say at her "Articles of Faith" website knows that she has strong religious opinions.

This is especially true when it comes to Anglican battles. Here is her take on the challenge facing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams after U.S. Episcopalians elected Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori as Anglicanism's first female archbishop and then refused to retreat on homosexual issues.

Will the Anglican Communion shatter, with Third World conservatives pitted against modernists in Europe and America?

"All is not lost," wrote Gledhill, just before the end of the American church's 75th General Convention. "A kind of schism might result, but it will not be schism as generally known. Anglicans are great at fudging crises, especially liberal ones. ... All Rowan Williams has to do is apply his formidable intellect to the question of how both sides can be kept at the same communion table, albeit at opposite ends."

Gledhill has a right to her opinions, of course.

But she isn't just another Anglican with a "weblog," one of dozens of "bloggers" who flooded the Internet with news, rumors and opinions during the tumultuous events this week in Columbus, Ohio.

Gledhill is the religion correspondent for The Times of London. Thus, she writes waves of regular newspaper stories, as well as columns that mix traditional reporting with her own analysis. And now, blessed by her editors, she writes thousands of words each week at her "blog" -- ranging from coverage of theological issues that may be too complex for the regular news pages to personal observations about her own parish and her own faith. She isn't alone. The Times offers dozens of blogs by reporters covering everything from politics to fashion footwear, from movies to gay family life.

Many editors want their reporters to blog and many others do not. What happens when journalists who are supposed to write unbiased stories about hot issues start airing opinions online that tell readers what they really think? When is a reporter a reporter and when is a reporter a blogger?

This can lead to confusion. A Church Times columnist recently challenged Gledhill's decision to refer to the Bishop of Chelmsford as an "extreme liberal," calling it a sign of bias.

"This is a difference of opinion," wrote Father Giles Fraser, who teaches philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. "But Ms. Gledhill presents it as if she were seeking a degree of objectivity rather than admitting that she is a campaigner herself. ... It isn't that journalists such as Ruth Gledhill ought to keep their views under wraps. That's why her weblog is so welcome: it is only when we know where people are coming from that we can learn to play their spin. In order to be empowered as a reader or listener, I want to know more about what journalists believe, not less."

Actually, said Gledhill, she used the "extreme liberal" label because of the bishop's role as a patron for Changing Attitude, an important lobby for "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender" causes in the church.

When she first started blogging, said Gledhill, it was tempting to dig deep into her personal beliefs and experiences in an attempt to reach out to readers and to offer a form of writing that was completely different from her regular reporting. But it didn't take long to realize that "this seam was going to run out pretty quick," she said. She has also learned to pay close attention to the feedback she receives from readers, who can respond directly to her online posts.

After nearly two decades on the religion beat, Gledhill said she welcomes a chance to put more and more news and information on the record in The Times of London, even if it is published in pixels rather than ink.

"I?m never bored by the subject of religion, it was a little restrictive just writing news all the time," she said. "There were things I so much wanted to say and there was nowhere to say them. I feel completely re-energized by blogging and am slightly addicted to it. I believe, and hope this is a true belief, that it is making me a better reporter because it is making me more accountable, making me think more deeply about what I am reporting and is also, in a strange way, making me more involved, more compassionate."

A vote for the resurrection

The Rt. Rev. Nicholas Thomas Wright believes in the resurrection.

The bishop of Durham, England, doesn't think the disciples who said they saw Jesus after his death were describing his spirit dwelling in their hearts. The former canon theologian of Westminster Abbey doesn't believe that Jesus swooned on the cross and woke up three days later. He doesn't believe robbers stole his body, leaving the grieving apostles to explain away an empty tomb.

No, the famous New Testament scholar -- author of 30 books, both lofty and popular -- believes that Jesus rose from the dead and talked with his followers, walked with them, touched them and, in one mysterious episode in the Gospel of John, prepared them grilled fish for breakfast.

"None of the disciples dared ask him, 'Who are you?' because they knew it was the Lord," said Wright, speaking at recent commencement rites at Nashotah House seminary in Wisconsin. This simple statement "speaks volumes about the nature of Jesus' resurrected body. It was the same body, yet renewed, transformed into a physical body, now beyond the reach of suffering and death -- yet still bearing the telltale marks of the nails that spoke of that suffering and that death."

Wright's speech received little or no media attention in the days leading up to the 75th General Convention of the U.S. Episcopal Church, which began this week and ends June. 21.

This is no surprise.

After all, the 200 bishops and 850 delegates gathered in Columbus, Ohio, face many hot-button issues -- such as how to respond to demands by Anglican archbishops around the world that they apologize for the 2003 consecration of the openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. This and other issues related to sex and the sacrament of marriage could shatter the 70-million-member Anglican Communion.

Truth is, it isn't controversial when an Anglican bishop says that he believes the resurrection of Jesus actually happened.

But, in this day and age, it also isn't controversial when Anglican bishops, priests and seminary professors quietly suggest that the resurrection was a spiritual, but not historical, reality.

Wright knew that when he stepped into the pulpit.

"Questioning the biblical accounts of the resurrection has been the general direction of liberal British scholarship for quite some time now," said the Very Rev. Robert Munday, dean and president of Nashotah House.

"Given where we are in this church on a wide range of issues, I don't know what would happen if someone proposed a resolution that affirmed that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead," said Munday, after arriving in Columbus. "I'm not sure if that resolution would make it out of committee. I'm sure it would be controversial."

After all, a 2002 survey found that a third of the clergy in the actual Church of England doubt or disbelieve in the physical resurrection of Jesus. The Daily Telegraph reported that only half of the 2,000 clergy in the survey said that faith in Jesus is the only way to salvation.

Conservatives may, said Munday, make another attempt to defend doctrines such as these. In 2003 they offered a General Convention resolution stating that "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man" and that the church must not teach what is "contrary to God's Word written." This failed in the House of Bishops. They may try a new resolution this year.

While Anglicans wrestle with these biblical issues, the public is searching for answers in shopping malls. In fact, "The Da Vinci Code" offers a picture of what faith looks like without the resurrection, said Wright.

According to author Dan Brown and many others, "Jesus was just a good man. He taught people a pathway of inner spiritual self-discovery. The early Christians had no thought of an institutional church or of Jesus as divine, or a savior, or risen from the dead. Jesus certainly didn't think of himself like that," said the bishop.

This multi-media myth of Christian origins has the potential to undercut centuries of doctrine and faith.

Rather than waffling, said Wright, church leaders must face this challenge head on. Otherwise, they will find it all but impossible to preach "a Gospel in which Jesus did actually rise from the dead and, therefore, really is Lord of the world."

Facing the MPAA giant

The Motion Picture Association of America is crystal clear when it describes why its "PG" rating exists -- it's a warning flag.

"The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance," states the online explanation of the rating system. "There may be some profanity in these films. There may be some violence or brief nudity. ... The PG rating, suggesting parental guidance, is thus an alert for examination of a film by parents before deciding on its viewing by their children. Obviously such a line is difficult to draw."

Disagreements are a given. The Christian moviemakers behind a low-budget film called "Facing the Giants" were stunned when the MPAA pinned a PG rating on their gentle movie about a burned-out, depressed football coach whose life -- on and off the field -- takes a miraculous turn for the better.

"What the MPAA said is that the movie contained strong 'thematic elements' that might disturb some parents," said Kris Fuhr, vice president for marketing at Provident Films, which is owned by Sony BMG. Provident plans to open the film next fall in 380 theaters nationwide with the help of Samuel Goldwyn Films, which has worked with indie movies like "The Squid and the Whale."

Which "thematic elements" earned this squeaky-clean movie its PG?

"Facing the Giants" is too evangelistic.

The MPAA, noted Fuhr, tends to offer cryptic explanations for its ratings. In this case, she was told that it "decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions. It's important that they used the word 'proselytizing' when they talked about giving this movie a PG. ...

"It is kind of interesting that faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about."

Overt Christian messages are woven throughout "Facing the Giants," which isn't surprising since the film was co-written and co-produced by brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who are the "associate pastors of media" at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. In addition to working with the megachurch's cable-television channel, they created its Sherwood Pictures ministry -- collecting private donations to fund a $25,000 movie called "Flywheel," about a wayward Christian used-car salesman.

"Facing the Giants" cost $100,000 and resembles a fusion of the Book of Job and a homemade "Hoosiers," or perhaps a small-school "Friday Night Lights" blended with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association movies that used to appear in some mainstream theaters. Sherwood Pictures used local volunteers as actors and extras, backed by a small crew of tech professionals.

The movie includes waves of answered prayers, a medical miracle, a mysterious silver-haired mystic who delivers a message from God and a bench-warmer who kicks a 51-yard field goal to win the big game when his handicapped father pulls himself out of a wheelchair and stands under the goal post to inspire his son's faith. There's a prayer-driven gust of wind in there, too.

But the scene that caught the MPAA's attention may have been the chat between football coach Grant Taylor -- played by Alex Kendrick -- and a rich brat named Matt Prader. The coach says that he needs to stop bad-mouthing his bossy father and get right with God.

The boy replies: "You really believe in all that honoring God and following Jesus stuff? ... Well, I ain't trying to be disrespectful, but not everybody believes in that."

The coach says: "Matt, nobody's forcing anything on you. Following Jesus Christ is the decision that you're going to have to make for yourself. You may not want to accept it, because it'll change your life. You'll never be the same."

That kind of talk may be too blunt for some moviegoers, said Kendrick, but that's the way real people actually talk in Christian high schools in Georgia. Sherwood Baptist isn't going to apologize for making the kinds of movies that it wants to make.

"Look, I have those kinds of conversations about faith all the time and I've seen young people make decisions that change their lives," he said. "The reason we're making movies in the first place is that we hope they inspire people to think twice about their relationships with God.

"So we're going to tell the stories that we believe God wants us to tell. We have nothing to hide."

Connecting Baha'i dots in Iran

Anyone who reads the newspaper Kayhan knows that Baha'i believers are part of a giant conspiracy against Iran that has, at one time or another, included England, Russia, Israel and the CIA.

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."

That Da Vinci sex code

In the beginning, Judaism was a faith built on sacred sex.

At least, that's what Dan Brown told 60 million readers in "The Da Vinci Code," speaking though a fictional Harvard University scholar named Robert Langdon. And while the characters are fiction, the novelist continues to affirm the statement that opens his book: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

One of those "secret rituals" is an eye-opener.

"Langdon's Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he told them that the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less," wrote Brown, in one of many long speeches that explain his iconoclastic plot. "Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses ... with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union."

For most people, the big news in "The Da Vinci Code" story was its message that Jesus was a brilliant and charismatic man -- but not the Son of God -- who was married to St. Mary Magdalene, had a child and tried to start a church built on secret truths and goddess worship. But Jesus was killed and, after a few centuries, powerful men crushed the Gnostic Christians. Meanwhile, the secret bloodline of Jesus lived on in Europe.

That's the side of the book, and now the movie, that makes headlines. But there is a message in the novel that is even more controversial and, for traditional Christians and Jews, more radical, according to philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi, who was born and educated in the diverse religious culture of India.

"The Da Vinci Code" is absolutely right when it states that the Judeo-Christian tradition, through the ages, did everything that it could to suppress sexual mysticism, fertility rites and goddess worship. The early church, he stressed, emerged in a world that was packed with pagan sanctuaries filled with scores of temple prostitutes.

The Judeo-Christian tradition emphasized the holiness of marriage, but never taught that sexual intercourse was -- in and of itself -- a sacred rite in which the spirit escapes the body and is able commune with some all-embracing deity.

"Dan Brown is right about the following: some pagan converts to Christ did bring sexual mysticism into the early church," said Mangalwadi, in a speech he delivered this week at Hollywood (Calif.) Presbyterian Church. In fact, the Book of Revelation condemns two early churches that tolerated believers who "practiced religious sex. It is possible that before becoming Christians these women and men had participated in prostitution in pagan temples. ...

"Given the fact that Christianity was an ascending religious force, they may have found it to their advantage to attract customers in the name of Christ. Some may well have re-written the life of Christ in the light of pagan spirituality to justify their preferred 'religious' practice."

In "The Da Vinci Code" itself, Brown stresses that the use of sexual rituals to create union with the gods and goddesses is older than the Christian faith and could, he claimed, be seen in Judaism. A one point, a central character witnesses a modern ritual in which a couple has sexual intercourse while surrounded by a circle of other members of the secret society that is preserving the true Christianity.

Thus, Brown's alter ego explains: "Historically, intercourse was the act through which male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis -- knowledge of the divine. ... 'By communing with woman,' Langdon said, 'man could achieve a climactic instance when his mind went totally blank and he could see God.' "

The key is that this experience is the "sole means" for transformation. This theme is explicit in the novel, even though the movie does not stress it.

"Dan Brown is promoting a mystic experience in which our mind goes 'totally blank' -- beyond words, thoughts, ideals, beliefs and values," argued Mangalwadi. "This is a non-rational experience. Mystics promote it because the consider the intellect to be the source of ignorance, not a means to gaining knowledge."

Rosenthal refused to remain silent

During his decades as a New York Times correspondent, the late A.M. Rosenthal saw lots of dead bodies in Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Kashmir, India and other troubled lands.

One day in Calcutta he started asking questions: What if some of these people are dying, but not yet dead? Was he supposed to help them? These questions stayed with him when he returned home to become an editor.

"I devoted a great deal of my time and thinking to wondering: When is it a sin to walk past a dying person? What number does God have? Is it one? Is it two?", asked Rosenthal, in a BreakPoint radio interview after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.

What if we know that torture is taking place, but cannot see the evidence with our own eyes or hear it with our own ears? Does God forgive those who don't act? "Is that what God is saying: 'If you can't see them, it's OK to walk away from them?' Or is he saying, 'If you can't hear them?' Suppose you can hear them, but not see them, or they're around the corner. When is apathy a sin?"

Rosenthal kept these questions to himself as his career soared. As a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter he covered the world and, as editor, he caused a journalistic earthquake when he pushed for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. For 56 years Abe Rosenthal helped change the New York Times and, thus, helped shape his times.

After leaving the editor's desk in 1986, he began writing his “On My Mind” op-ed columns in which he championed the human-rights causes that dominated his life -- free speech and freedom of conscience. Rosenthal was a secular Jew and an old-fashioned liberal from the Bronx, but many of his old questions about liberty, sin and apathy began to break into the open and affect his work.

"Abe fought to cure our blind spots and it worked," said Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof, speaking at Rosenthal's May 14 funeral at Manhattan's Central Synagogue. "He did indeed teach us to see."

The healing process wasn't painless, especially when Rosenthal latched onto one particular religious issue. Some human-rights activists are convinced that one of the reasons he lost his column and was forced to leave the Times was because he wouldn't stop writing about the persecution of religious minorities around the world.

Rosenthal couldn't understand why so many journalists just didn't "get" that story. I talked to him several times about this issue, in part because Jewish conservative Michael Horowitz sent him a copy of a 1996 column that I wrote about the slaughter of Christians and animists in South Sudan and the rebirth of the slave trade.

Rosenthal said he asked some newsroom colleagues this wasn?t a big news story. No one had a good answer. He ended up writing -- in one year alone -- 20 columns about the persecution of Christians, Buddhists, moderate Muslims and other religious minorities in human-rights hot spots around the world.

"You don't need to be a rabbi or a minister to get this story. You just need to be a journalist. You just have to be able to look at the numbers of people involved and then look at all the other stories that were linked to it," he told me, at the end of that year. "Why are journalists missing this? ... I am inclined to believe that they just can't grasp the concept of a movement that includes conservatives, middle-of-the-road people and even some liberals. Their distrust of religious people -- especially conservatives -- is simply too strong for them to see what is happening."

With his columns, Rosenthal helped pave the way for the passage of the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act of 1997 and the creation of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Now, that hard-to-label coalition that fought for justice in South Sudan is, with a jolt of Hollywood star power, rallying support for the peace process in Darfur, where Islamists are attacking other Muslims.

Rosenthal refused to keep quiet. After his death, a Time editorial underlined the importance of a key Rosenthal statement about the Pentagon Papers: "When something important is going on, silence is a lie."

That's a great quote, one that perfectly explains why Rosenthal was so driven to write about religious persecution.

When believers are dying, silence is a lie.