Word: islamically
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...overcome both extreme violence and ordinary misunderstanding. True progress, however, is best measured in deeds. The inauguration last week of Qatar's first Christian church - a small Catholic chapel bearing neither bells nor visible crosses - has been hailed as a welcome step forward in relations between Catholicism and Islam. But an even more dramatic development is under discussion just across the border: The Vatican has confirmed that it is negotiating for permission to build the first church in Saudi Arabia...
...Presiding over the cradle of Islam and home to its holiest sites, the Saudi monarchy has long banned the open worship of other faiths, even as the number of Catholics resident in Saudi Arabia has risen to 800,000 thanks to an influx of immigrant workers from places like the Philippines and India. Mosques are the only houses of prayer in a country where the strict Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam dominates. But Archbishop Paul-Mounged El-Hachem, the papal envoy to the smaller countries on the Arabian peninsula, such as Kuwait and Qatar, has confirmed that talks are under...
...reason, and how it might explain religiously inspired violence, included an offensive historical reference to the Prophet Muhammed. But after initial Muslim anger at his remarks cooled - and the Pope made a conciliatory visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul - there have been signs of a productive Catholic-Islam dialogue taking shape. Prominent Muslim and Christian clerics have exchanged messages expressing a mutual desire for better understanding, and Vatican officials last month announced the first in a series of high-level meetings with Muslims next November, which will include an appearance by Benedict...
...little-reported remarks just three months after his controversial speech in Germany, the Pope spoke of the challenge posed to Islam by a violent minority within its ranks. "The Muslim world today is finding itself faced with an urgent task. This task is very similar to the one that has been imposed upon Christians since the Enlightenment," Benedict said in a speech to officials of the Roman Curia. "On the one hand, one must counter a dictatorship of positivist reason that excludes God from the life of the community and from public organizations, thereby depriving man of his specific criteria...
...almost none of tomorrow's holidays actually follows that calendar. All Muslim holy days, for instance, are calculated on a lunar system. Keyed to the phases of the moon, Islam's 12 months are each 29 and a half days long, for a total of 354 days a year, or 11 days fewer than on ours. That means the holidays rotate backward around the Gregorian calendar, occurring 11 days earlier each year. That is why you can have an "easy Ramadan" in the spring, when going without water all day is relatively easy, or a hard one in the summer...