In the midst of an election campaign where the Mormon faith has been front and center on the political scene, that religion is likely to be brought to the forefront again in a different, sadder context. President Gordon B. Hinckley, the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has died at age 97.

Gordon B. Hinckley, 97, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and an energetic grandson of pioneers who led his denomination during a period of great expansion in membership and facilities, died last night at his home in Salt Lake City, a church spokeswoman said.

In 1995, after many years in leadership posts in what is often called the Mormon church, Hinckley became president. He was the 15th person to hold that post.

The president of the church is held in special regard by the members, who see him as a prophet of God "in the same way they revered the prophets of scripture," according to material posted on the church's Web site.

Hinckley underwent cancer surgery in 2006, but church spokeswoman Kim Farah said last night that "the cause [of his death] was incident to his age."

Despite his age, Farah said, Hinckley had remained active and was coming in to the office as recently as last week.

The church said it did not expect a successor to be formally chosen until after Hinckley's funeral "within the next few days."

One need not be a Mormon to respect the work that this man did on behalf of his church. During his tenure the number of temples around the world more than doubled -- indeed, it is said that Hinckley personally dedicated some 95 of the church's 124 active temples during his lifetime (some prior to assuming the leadership of the LDS Church, due to the age and health of his predecessors).

And yet what I find interesting about this man is the great love for this man held by the young people of his church, a love that I am told was widely reciprocated. When I visited the home of some dear friends who recently married, my wife and I noted that they had a small picture of Hinckley on their wall, along with a large plaque that included a list of several traits for upright living. I didn't make a connection between the two until my wife asked about the latter, and our friend told us that the plaque was a list of traits that Hinckley had advised young people to cultivate in their lives. It was profound in its spiritual simplicity, rather in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi.

1. Be grateful. Express appreciation to everyone who does us a favor or assists us in any way.

2. Be smart. The Lord wants us to train our minds and hands to become an influence for good.

3. Be clean. We live in a world filled with filth and sleaze. We cannot afford to let it touch us. We should not be disrespectful of the body which the Lord has given us.

4. Be true. Let us be loyal to the Church under all circumstances. The authorities of this Church will lead us in paths of happiness.

5. Be humble. The meek and the humble are those who are teachable.

6. Be prayerful. Look to the Lord for understanding and guidance, and walk according to His precepts and commandments.

As I've said in the past, I am not a Mormon and find myself in stark disagreement with much of its distinctive theology. But for all that, I am saddened by the passing of Gordon R. Hinckley, who by all accounts was a good and decent man, and I offer my condolences to his family and the members of the faith he led with great dignity and love.

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Perhaps it is a vain plea, that a thief would return items he has stolen. However, certain items have a value greater than money.

A car burglar made away with a Greek Orthodox bishop's religious items — including a jeweled crown of gold and silver.

Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver, bishop for the Northwest region of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, was dining with others at a restaurant in Arlington on Friday when the break-in occurred. He was visiting Dallas-Fort Worth area parishes.

The bishop, who ministers in many states, including Texas, said the car was parked in a brightly lit spot.

"We came out at 10 o'clock, and the window was smashed," the bishop said.

Someone took his symbolic crown from the back seat, along with his New Testament, veil and cell phone.

Isaiah, who served in the Marines, said a black fabric bag was also stolen. The bag has special meaning, having been given to him years earlier by the widow of another Marine.

He estimated that replacing the crown would cost between $6,000 and $10,000. The bishop offered a four-digit monetary reward if the crown is returned without damage.

"That was the first gift I received as a bishop 22 years ago," he said. "I feel lost without it."

At a vespers service on Saturday night, he was the only priest with no head covering.

"I just hope and pray that those who took it will have a change of heart," he said.

Whoever you are, you did not steal money. You stole something sacred, something loaded with memories for the owner and significance to his followers. Have the decency to return the stolen items to Metropolitan Isaiah. Take the reward if you must -- but the even better choice would be to accept the grace that comes of repentance.

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In the dispute between St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke and St. Louis University basketball coach Rick Majerus, is is clear that someone doesn't understand the First Amendment -- and that person is Majerus, not Burke.

After all, it is the place of a Catholic Archbishop to speak out forcefully and assert Church teachings when a prominent representative of a Catholic institution takes positions contrary to the teachings of the Church.

But Majerus doesn't get that point. Instead, he has said this.

"These beliefs are ingrained in me," Majerus told the paper. "And my First Amendment right to free speech supersedes anything that the archbishop would order me to do. My dad fought on Okinawa in World War II. My uncle died in World War II. I had classmates die in Vietnam. And it was to preserve our way of life, so people like me could have an opinion."

And Archbishop Burke has never argued that you don't have a legal right to your belief. He's never argued that you don't have a right to your opinion. But he does note, rightly, that you don't have a right to use your platform as a public face of a Catholic university to contradict Catholic teaching. You have a right to free speech -- but not to a be basketball coach at a Catholic institution.

After all, the Archbishop is the ultimate teaching and doctrinal authority for the Catholic Church in St. Louis. If you are going to publicly support abortion, expect to receive a technical foul -- and perhaps an ejection from the game -- as a result.

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I donÂ’t know enough about Dutch politician Geert WildersÂ’ politics to know if I would support his policies or not, but I have to agree with this assessment of Islam.

As Dutch police prepared for a weekend of riots and Mr Wilders was told by the authorities that he would have to leave country, he launched a new attack on "intolerant" Islam while announcing that his 10-minute film attacking the Muslim faith would be postponed for two weeks.

"If I had announced that I was going to make a film about the fascist character of the Bible would there have been a crisis meeting of Holland's security forces?" he wrote to the Volkskrant newspaper.

"Would I have received as many death threats as I have done since announcing I was making a film about the Koran? Of course not."

And yet this is the faith that is repeated referred to as a “religion of peace”. Do critics of Judaism have to go into hiding? Do governments attempt to silence such criticism and make concessions to Christian groups to stop expected violence when Christians are offended? Or course not – and because of the necessary differences between the responses of adherents of the two great Abrahamic faiths and the Mohammedan counterfeit we can ascertain that one fails to live up to the standard set by its alleged theological siblings.

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Because Islam has appropriate the prophets of Christianity and Judaism as its own, sharia restrictions have been placed upon pictures of them by Malaysian authorities -- even in Christian materials intended for a Christian audience.

Malaysian authorities confiscated Christian children's books, claiming the illustrations of prophets such as Moses and Abraham violate Islamic Shariah law.

The independent news agency Malaysakini reported the Internal Security Ministry confiscated the literature from bookstores in two cities and one small town in mid-December.

The Malaysian Embassy declined to comment on the news service's Jan. 11 report.

The Rev. Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Malaysian Council of Churches, confirmed the report and accused the government of persecuting Christians.

"The officials have offended the sensitivities of Christians because their publications and depictions of their Biblical personalities have now become targets of unscrupulous Muslim officials bent on curtailing religious freedom in the country," Mr. Shastri said.

"Immediate steps should be taken to amend administrative rules and regulations, especially in the Internal Security Ministry, that give a free hand to enforcement officials to act on their whim and fancies," he said.

Religious oppression of Christians and other religious minorities continues in Malaysia, and has been increasing in recent years. When will the world community get around to denouncing such violations of human rights by the Malaysian government? When will the rights of Christians receive even 10% of the concern that the rights of Muslims receive from international bodies?

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Oh, dear! Is Pope Benedict XVI angling for another fatwa?

POPE Benedict yesterday issued a strong call for religious freedom in Arab countries, saying everyone should have the right to practice their faith openly and to convert to other religions if they wanted.

The Pope, who was addressing Catholic bishops from Arab regions, also said he was concerned that parts of the Middle East risked becoming just "an archaeological site" if an exodus of Christians forced out by violence continued.

"I dearly hope that authentic religious freedom could become reality everywhere and that everyone's right to practice their religion freely, or to change it, should not be impeded," he told the bishops, speaking in French.

"This is a primordial right for every human being."

Indeed, he went even further.

"It is understandable that the circumstances sometimes push Christians to leave their country to find a more welcome land where they are allowed to live more freely," he said.

"But we must encourage and firmly support those who choose to remain faithful to their land, so that it does not become an archaeological site devoid of any church life," he continued.

And I agree with him that it is the duty of every Christian to support these oppressed brothers and sisters. But the problem is that there are too many Muslims, of the Islamist variety and others considered more mainstream, who want to guarantee that their lands are not even archaeological sites with a remnant of Christian history (or the history of other faiths) remaining. Consider the malignant work of the Taliban with the ancient stone Buddhas -- destroyed by repeated shelling with artillery pieces.

Religious freedom is a right with which we are endowed by our creator -- and one recognized under international law. When will the rights of Christians in the Muslim world be protected by the international community?

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After all, a Muslim film producer in a Muslim country has made a blasphemous movie that disrespects Jesus.

A director who shares the ideas of Iran's hardline president has produced what he says is the first film giving an Islamic view of Jesus Christ, in a bid to show the "common ground" between Muslims and Christians.

Nader Talebzadeh sees his movie, "Jesus, the Spirit of God," as an Islamic answer to Western productions like Mel Gibson's 2004 blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ," which he praised as admirable but quite simply "wrong".

"Gibson's film is a very good film. I mean that it is a well-crafted movie but the story is wrong -- it was not like that," he said, referring to two key differences: Islam sees Jesus as a prophet, not the son of God, and does not believe he was crucified

In light of the civilized, peaceful behavior of Muslims in recent years whenever their theological ox is gored, there appears to me to be an appropriate path for we Christians to follow. It seems to me that there needs to be a death sentence issued against Nader Talebzadeh for his insult to Jesus and to those of us who follow him. There need to be demands for an apology from the Iranian government. Mobs need to burn down Iranian diplomatic and cultural buildings around the world, as well as attack and destroy some mosques. Heck, maybe Christians also need to beat and kill a few random Muslims, perhaps by beheading, in order to express the level of offense given by this movie. After all, that is how the Muslim world handles perceived slights against Islam and its false prophet -- Muslims certainly won't object were Christians to respond in kind, would they?

Of course, such evil actions would go against all forms of civilized behavior, and betray Christianity's place as the true religion of peace. There would be universal outrage and condemnation if Christians acted like Muslims in this situation -- or any like it. And that outrage would be merited.

By the way, be sure to read the entire article and see just how much of a blasphemous insult to Christianity the religion of Islam really is. Then ask yourself -- how can Islam demand that Christians respect Muslim religious sensibilities when Islam itself is so offensive to the basic teachings of Christianity?

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Today, of course, is the day that most churches in the Christian tradition marked the Epiphany.

In honor of that, I'd like to offer a favorite of mine -- maybe a little less solemn that it is often presented, but something that reminds us of the joy of the revelation of God in the person of a child, the event that has been part and parcel of the season which now comes to a close.

Guide is to thy perfect light, Lord.

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I wonder who that would be. Perhaps the same folks who have threatened to murder the artist whose works were pulled from an art exhibit in the Netherlands?

THE Dutch were debating the limits of freedom of expression last week after an artist who photographed gay men wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad was forced into hiding and her work removed from a museum exhibit.

Speaking on the telephone from an unspecified location in the Netherlands last week, the artist, an Iranian exile who goes by the pseudonym of Sooreh Hera, said she had been threatened with “execution”. She accused the director of the municipal museum in The Hague of cowardice for caving in to Muslim extremists.

Her story is a reminder of the tensions that have put the Netherlands and other European countries on the front line, sending dozens of people threatened by extremists into hiding since 2004, when a Dutch film-maker was murdered on the street and his collaborator driven into exile.

This leaves Hera, 34, in no doubt that she is in real danger. “They said to me, ‘We’re going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth’,” she said, referring to menacing e-mails.

“They say, ‘Now you are locked in your home and you cannot go out any more’.”

She said that by photographing gay Iranian exiles in masks of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Ali, his son-in-law, she had wanted to expose a “hypocritical” attitude towards homosexuality in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct.

“They condemn homosexuality but in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia it is common for married men to maintain relations with other men,” said Hera. “Works of art can be provocative. It is not an artist’s job just to paint flowers. Art should shine a light on social issues.”

The photographs were part of an extensive collection of images by Hera of mostly Dutch gay men. Another part of her exhibit was a video featuring hard rock music and images of Iranian clerics interspersed with pictures of naked men.

Wim van Krimpen, director of the museum, initially praised Hera’s collection of photographs as “exceptional”. Last month, however, he announced that the masked men could not be included in the forthcoming exhibition because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive”.

Simple question -- Would this museum director have pulled an exhibit of Serrano's "Piss Christ" because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive”?

If not, why does he privilege Islam -- other than the fact that a subset of its followers is likely to engage in murderous violence?

And if such is the case, dare we tolerate Islam, granting it the same rights and privileges as other religions , in our societies and communities?

I know that is a painful, quite illiberal question to ask. But if Islam really is different, is it not essential to a free society that we treat it differently?

For that matter, the same question is quite important to ask of our Canadian neighbors as well. After all, the "human right" of certain groups not to be offended is rapidly displacing the internationally recognized human right to freedom of speech.

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I guess not, given this ruling in Malaysia.

The Malaysian government has reiterated that non-Muslims cannot use the word "Allah," sparking concern Friday among Christians who use it to refer to God in their Malay-language Bible and other publications.

Abdullah Zin, the de facto minister for Islamic affairs, told reporters Thursday that the Cabinet is of the view that "Allah" refers to the Muslim God and can only be used by Muslims, who comprise about 60 percent of Malaysia's population.

"The use of the word 'Allah' by non-Muslims may arouse sensitivity and create confusion among Muslims in the country," Abdullah said.

Do you see that, folks? Allah refers ONLY to the Muslim God, not the God of the Christians and the Jews. That would mean that Muslims themselves are declaring that their Allah and our God are two different beings. And since this is coming not from a government generally seen as extreme, but is usually described as moderate and relatively secular, it cannot be argued that this is a voice of extremists who have hijacked the faith.

Of course, Malaysia has a history of allowing all sorts of atrocities to take place in the name of Islam.

More at Michelle Malkin

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