Islam

Iranian security forces outnumbered demonstrators at a tiny gathering here Thursday afternoon commemorating International Women's Day. The event already had been diminished by an aggressive campaign of detentions in preceding days. In Iran, the period around Women's Day traditionally has been marked by boisterous street demonstrations by human rights activists demanding an end to Islamic laws condemned as discriminatory or sexist.

As a boy in Indonesia, Barack Obama crisscrossed the religious divide. At the local primary school, he prayed in thanks to a Catholic saint. In the neighborhood mosque, he bowed to Allah. Having a personal background in both Christianity and Islam might seem useful for an aspiring U.S. president in an age when Islamic nations and radical groups are key national security and foreign policy issues. But a connection with Islam is untrod territory for presidential politics.

Singled out in next year's State Department budget as its "principal counter-terrorism initiative," the Regional Strategic Initiative is aimed at using "soft power" rather than firepower to counter Islamic extremism. It was developed in response to the president's National Security Strategy released in March 2006, which called for a gradual refocus toward strengthening alliances to defuse area conflicts, and away from military might.

Dave Grimland spent nearly 30 years as a foreign service officer -- "telling the U.S. side of the story," he says -- in Bangladesh, India, Cyprus, Turkey and other nations with large Muslim populations. He wrote ambassadors' speeches, arranged cultural gatherings, and more than once hunkered down as angry mobs gathered outside the embassy to protest American policy.

A cleric said Friday that he had formed an Islamic court to enforce Taliban-style rules in this capital, and he threatened to order suicide attacks if authorities tried to stop him. Thousands of followers of Maulana Abdul Aziz chanted, "Our way is jihad!" and set fire to hundreds of mainly Western DVDs and videocassettes outside the Red Mosque. Students from a seminary adjoining the mosque launched a crackdown this month by threatening shopkeepers selling films and music.

Re "An interpreter of Islam roams Big Sky State with a message," April 1 I applaud the retired Foreign Service officer's efforts to better inform Americans about the nature and beliefs of Islam. However, since 9/11 the voices we should have been hearing were those of the holy leaders of Muslims who eschew violence and the killing of innocents. Such voices united, regularly and forcefully proclaiming this credo, could well over time convince many potential terrorist recruits that it is impermissible for their religion to be the basis of suicide bombings and similar fanatical acts.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said the country's secular system of government faced its gravest danger since the founding of the republic in 1923, in comments seen as a direct attack against the ruling Justice and Development Party ahead of a parliamentary vote next month that could give Turkey its first head of state with Islamist roots.

More than a quarter of a million people rallied Saturday in the Turkish capital to voice secularists' opposition to a run for the presidency by the country's prime minister, who is affiliated with an Islamist party. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to announce soon, perhaps this week, whether he will be his party's presidential nominee.

The ruling party on Tuesday chose Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as its presidential candidate, heading off a potential political confrontation that had starkly illustrated the split between religious and secular Turks. Turkey's more Islamist-minded prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also had weighed a run for the post, drawing sharp protests from the country's establishment, including the army and the outgoing president.

He was barely a teenager when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood. Then in college he embraced communism and "tried to convince myself I was an atheist." Finally, after two decades of struggling with his beliefs, he returned to his Islamic roots.