@wraillantclark tweet on 'Mabus' case

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with science blogger, William Raillant-Clark in Montreal about the case of alleged Twitter spammer, Dennis Markuze, aka “Mabus”. Markuze was arrested this week and charged with making death threats to scientists, including Raillant-Clark.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: A Canadian man appeared in a Montreal court today.  He’s charged with two counts of making death threats.  The man’s name is Dennis Markuze, but he uses the name Mabus online.  And it’s online where he’s accused of having threatened the lives of certain science writers for years now.  Markuze is a Christian and atheists, especially scientists rub him the wrong way. There’ve been plenty of formal complaints about these threats, but the Montreal police did not act on them until a science blogger, William Raillant-Clark, wrote about the case.  He learned about the death threats in the course of his work.

William Raillant-Clark: I monitor Twitter and other social media to know what science journalists are interested in.  And I discovered that rather than talking about research they were talking about threats that they’d been receiving.

Mullins: So this came to your attention and you took some action last week.  What did you do?

Raillant-Clark: I wrote a blog article because I was very angry with the Montreal police that they had not acted on complaints that they’d received from these people mostly in the US.  And following the publication of that blog article I myself received a threat.  As a Montrealer being threatened by somebody else in Montreal I took the complaint to the police department and it was pretty rapidly acted upon with the help of some pressures from the traditional media.

Mullins: I want to talk about that pressure, but what was the threat that you received and how did you get it?

Raillant-Clark: The threat came to my personal email account which means that he had to look up my contact details.  And it was a long, rambling, crazy kind of text that really didn’t make any sense, but there were really nasty snippets throughout it.  For example, we’re gonna come and cut your head off; die atheist, die; and you know, just a lot of really psychotic ranting.

Mullins: How do you know that the person who is appearing in court today is the same person who wrote those threats to you?

Raillant-Clark: Some of the people that he has been attacking are extremely intelligent.  And some of them are even involved directly in computer security.  By firstly looking at the technical aspect, but also by looking at the content of the messages he was sending, it was pretty easy to line up.  And in fact, when he came to a conference here in Montreal in October, when he physically attended, people were able to recognize him and even take a photo of him.

Mullins: There was also the involvement of someone online from San Francisco, so this kind of crossed the border in terms of what you guys were doing, these investigators.  What happened there?

Raillant-Clark: It all kind of happened at about the same time.  When I went down to the police department to file my complaint, at about the same time a man in San Francisco organized an online petition asking the police to take this issue seriously.  And the fact that that petition received 5,000 signatures within 48 hours demonstrates in my opinion quite aptly just how many people had been targeted by this guy and just how much frustration there was by the situation.

Mullins: So, you credit that kind of pressure from social media with prompting police to act?

Raillant-Clark: I think there’s a number of factors involved, and I think this case demonstrates quite well the difficulties police have responding to this kind of situation.  When I first went to file my complaint you know, the response from the officer who took it was that if I went looking for trouble on the internet that I was sure to find it, and that he was very busy and the file might not be looked at for one, two, or even three months.  So, I definitely think the social media side of it, the petition in particular, really helped in making sure my formal complaint was treated promptly and quickly.

Mullins: All right, William Raillant-Clark, public information officer at the University of Montreal, where he blogs about science matters.  Thanks, William.

Raillant-Clark: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

By Gerry Hadden

How to integrate Muslims into France’s secular state? That’s a seemingly endless debate these days. And it’s causing an uproar. But Mariame and Kadija Tighanimine, French Muslims of Moroccan origin would rather go shopping. Or at least promote it, on their webzine Hijab and the City. The name is a riff off a television show you probably know.

“We’re businesswomen,” said Mariame in a recent interview in Paris. “Hijab and the City is our webzine where we talk to our audience about shopping and other normal things. The political debate is just noise for us. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Mariam and Kadija are attractive twenty-something sisters. They consider themselves French, who happen to be Muslim. Although their religion is important to them, both wear the hijab, or headscarf that covers the hair and wraps around the shoulders. But as the webzine’s name says, the hijab isn’t everything.

“The hijab in the name doesn’t mean we only want to attract practicing Muslim women,” said Kadija. “It just a reference to Mariam and me. The city part of the name reflects our urban spirit. These two elements come together on the webzine. Islamism and city life.”

Hijab and the City has over 90 thousand subscribers, mostly women, from all walks of life, Muslim and non-Muslim. It has a popular shopping guide, a beauty section and a forum for discussions that range from single life to dating to politics. And they hold brunches here in their little office. Brunches, they say, that do a lot more for French society than the political debate on Islam versus secularism.

The website also has a popular video. Each week the sisters drape a presidential sash over someone’s shoulders and ask, What would you do if you were president?

In one video a 25 year old lawyer named Nassima says the first thing she’d do is fix France’s housing shortage. The sisters then ask where she’d live as president, and who’d be her ‘first man.’

“I’d choose someone who gives France a good image,” she said. “Because I can’t say that our politicians are very handsome! He’d have to have class. A bit like Matt Damon.”

Matt Damon in the Elysee Palace is hardly journalistic hardball, but that’s just fine, says Mariam. They want to show that women are women first, regardless of their politics, or religion. It unites them, Kadija said, despite what politicians might have you believe.

“We shouldn’t take the French for imbeciles,” she said. “People know what’s going on. They know when the politicians are manipulating them.”

Perhaps, but anti-Muslim sentiment has risen in France in recent years. And far right politicians used the issue yet again to make gains in last month’s local elections.

“We can’t just sit in a corner like victims,” said Kadija, “waiting for someone to extend a helping hand. Fighting online is really the way to go.”

Fighting by being perfectly normal, she said. Muslim and French. Religious and at home in a secular state.

The following video is in French

• Hijab and the City
• Islamic headscarves and France’s new burqa ban

The father of political Islam in Turkey has died. Former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan was 84. During his career, Erbakan fought to bring Islamic political parties to power in Turkey. The leaders of Turkey’s current Islamic governing party all learned politics at his knee.

Necmettin Erbakan was a mechanical engineer by training. But as a political figure, he challenged Turkey’s secular state for more than 40 years. Judging by the size of the crowds at his funeral in Istanbul on Tuesday, he made a deep impression.

Ali Erdem, a civil servant who came out for the funeral, said that Erbakan was really a man of the people.

“He did great things for Turkey’s Muslims. He has also helped Muslims all over the world who are oppressed and tired of being pushed around. He gave them a voice,” Erdem said.

Part of what Erbakan did was combine Turkish nationalism, anti-western sentiments and Islam. And he kept to that message, said Dr. Sakir Guce, who was also at the funeral.

“What made him different was that he said the same thing three days before he died, that he did when he started 40 years ago. He always stayed true to himself,” Guce said.

When Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk” abolished the Ottoman sultanate in 1923 and created a modern republic, Islamic groups languished in the margins. Erbakan was the first to win power for an Islamic party — through the ballot box.

Sebnem Gumuscu Orhan, a political scientist at Sabanci University, said that Turkey’s governing AK party wouldn’t be in power today had it not been for Erbakan.

“I wouldn’t say the political agenda is inspired by him but they learned a lot about politics from him,” Orhan said.

In 1996, Erbakan became the first devout Muslim to serve as prime minister in modern turkey. The following year, Turkey’s secular military forced him from power, and his Islamic party was subsequently banned.

But Turkey is a very different place today. While the governing Islamist party is led by former Erbakan disciples, their politics are very different. They are pro-European Union and pro-US and they’re enthusiastic about free markets.

And now Turkey is being talked about as a democratic model for political Islam in other countries in the Middle East.

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More than 50,000 Pakistanis rallied in Karachi in support of te blasphemy law (Photo: Asjad Jamshed)

Over 50,000 demonstrators rallied in Pakistan’s teeming port city of Karachi yesterday. They were protesting against any amendment to Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

That law allows the death penalty to be imposed on anyone found guilty of defaming the prophet Mohammed.

Yesterday’s protest followed in the wake of the murder last week of Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s most populous province, Punjab. The political turmoil first began when a poor Christian labourer, Aasia Bibi was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death.

At the rally, ubiquitous placards proclaimed support for Mumtaz Qadri, the elite security force guard who admitted to killing Taseer. Qadri claimed he killed the governor for his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Many at the rally proclaimed Qadri a hero. Omar Faitan is a lawyer. He said he supports the blasphemy law the way it is.

Faitan said that Taseer tried to circumvent the proper legal procedures and the will of the people.

“Once the death sentence was imposed, he needed to appeal to the high court,” Faitan said. “But he met with her [Aasia Bibi] in jail and said that he’d have her pardoned. This was wrong.”

When the confessed killer entered court, lawyers showered him with rose petals and offered to fight his case for free.

Supporters of the blasphemy law, known as “Section 295C,” said the law is simply implementing God’s will. Awais Noorani is vice-chairman of a local Islamist political party. He said the law is made by a man, but according to the Qur’an and Sunnah.

And that speaking against the blasphemy law therefore, is also blasphemous.

“This law cannot be discussed,” Noorani said. “Why does the government want to discuss it? When the Qur’an says there’s no way you can make any change.”

And that’s how Islamist proponents of Section 295C have raised it to the status of God’s law — and put it beyond the pale of discussion. The problem isn’t simply fuzzy thinking.

Many supporters are not ignorant, provincial or under-educated. Noorani lived and went to school in the United States for fourteen years before returning to Pakistan. And he’s an American citizen.

Zaheer Kidvai runs a multimedia and educational technology company in Pakistan. He said post 9/11 politics have a lot to do with what’s happening now in Pakistan.

Kidvai said the kids he talks to harbor resentment about their treatment as Pakistanis and as Muslims abroad.

“When you talk to them the ones who’ve come back from overseas, they insist on saying this is the way we are treated there, this is the way the police treated us and I don’t think those are the right answers 7.19 but that’s the answer they’ve got in their mind,” Kidvai said.

In short, it’s identity politics. Disgruntled Pakistanis condemn anyone who they view as attacking Islam — even if it’s another, secular Pakistani like Governor Salmaan Taseer.

In this context, secular forces have a tough, uphill battle. Ali Ahmad started a group to support a parliamentary bill that would amend the blasphemy law and remove capital punishment. For his views, Ahmad now receives death threats via text messages, phone calls and Facebook.

He said the threats stymie public debate.

“I just posted that blasphemy law has to go and after my comment there was a comment by a guy who was saying ok, if this blasphemy law has to go, you have to go as well, just like Salmaan Taseer,” Ahmad said.

This is how the Islamist supporters of the law are able to silence the opposition — making it difficult to know what the average Pakistani thinks.

People feel caught between the extreme, militant views of the law’s supporters and the secular attitude of its detractors. And many more just feel left out of the political game.

A waiter at a Karachi restaurant called politics a game that’s above the heads of average residents.

“I don’t have enough education. I’m busy with my own rat race. No one asks anything of people like us, what I think, don’t think. This is our condition,” he said.
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German video report on the play:

• Theater Regensburg (German)
• Catholic Church sex abuse scandals around the world

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Germany has been shaken by new allegations against Catholic clergy.  Four Priests and two Nuns in the Bavarian city of Regensburg are accused of molesting students in the 1970′s.  Regensburg happens to be the former Diocese of Pope Benedict XVI who is facing a growing clergy abuse sandal across Europe and the U.S.  It’s also where an intense play that tackles the subject of pedophile Priests has been showing since February.  The play is called The Confession.  Susan Stone caught a recent performance and sent this story.

SUSAN STONE:  In Regensburg a small, 88 seat Turntheater, a many clutching a sleeping young boy bursts onto the stage.  The character’s name is Martin.  As a child he was molested by a Catholic Priest.  Now he started abusing his own son, Sebastian.  Martin’s decided the only way out is for both of them to die, after he confronts his one time comforter and tormentor, father Eberhard.  In a line that provokes a gasp from the audience, the Priest declares that many children have experienced this and grown up to be perfectly normal adults.  I ask myself what’s so terrible about it, he says, and offers to help with the boy.  The suggestion does not sit well with Martin.  Throughout the performance, the two men spar verbally and physically, climbing over a giant wooden cross that bisects the stage.  It’s an intense, uncomfortable hour.  For audience members like 29-year-old Thomas Rother.  Rother is Catholic and he has been thinking a lot about his church.  He is not happy with it’s response to new allegations of abuse.

INTERPRETER:  What I find difficult is the cloak of silence.  It seems like they’d rather cloak the whole issue in silence than find out the truth.

STONE: The timeliness of this topic has brought audience and attention to Theater Regensburg.  Die Beichte, The Confession, was written by an Austrian, Felix Mitterer, inspired by events in Ireland.  It was first performed in 2003 as a radio play.  Theater Regensburg decided a year ago to schedule its production.  The Confession premiered here in early February, around the same time as a series of new abuse revelations came to light.  Miko Greza plays Father Eberhard.

INTERPRETER:  That the right play came at the right time is for us, of course, in terms of our work, a stroke of luck that rarely happens in the theater.  That at exactly this point in time, both nationally and internationally people had the courage to come forth and say this has happened.  This has happened to me.

STONE: Greza has received letters from theater goers who say they appreciated his performance, but were too stunned at the end of the show to applaud.  The theater’s neighbors haven’t had much to say though.  Mikhael Haake, who plays Martin, points out the large church that sits just across the street.  He says maybe you noticed the cathedral.  It’s very close.  You can almost reach out and touch it from here.  It’s hard to escape religion in Regensburg.  Churches are everywhere and a symphony of bells plays out several times a day.  Stories of abuse are almost as inescapable right now.  Sigrid Grabmeier’s church reform organization Wir Sind Kirche, we are the church, has been concerned with these issues since 1995.

SIGRID GRABMEIER:  Never before has sexual abuse and everything around been such a theme in public, and speaking about what happens with the victims.  It has never been such a theme.

STONE: In 2002, Wir Sind Kirche started a hotline for victims of Priest abuse.  So far, 400 people have called, 100 in just the past 6 weeks.  Grabmeier says media coverage, and to some extent, the staging of the play have focused attention on stories that some would prefer to keep hidden.

GRABMEIER: If our society needs this pain then this play may be hurtful and helpful.  And I hope that in many stages in Germany they play it.  Not only here in Regensburg.  I think that all the Bishops and a lot of people should see it.

STONE: The Confession ends its scheduled run tonight.  But those Bishops and others will have one more chance to see the play.  Theater Regensburg will do a special performance during the Bavarian Theater Festival in June.  For The World, I’m Susan Stone, Regensburg, Germany.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

You might expect arguments over street names in Israel/the occupied territories and South Africa: these are places with profoundly traumatic recent histories. But wherever there are streets — or other things to name — there are heated debates over what to call them. Why, some ask, name a new federal government building after Ronald Reagan, a small-government president whose administration tried to prevent such statist expansionism?

Also in this podcast, a conversation with Bob Creson, President and CEO of what appears to be the world’s largest Bible translation organization, Wycliffe Bible Translators USA. According to Wycliffe, about two hundred million people lack access to the Bible in their native tongue. So, with the help of technology and donations, Wycliffe has set itself a deadline: it aims to have at least started translating the Bible into every language by 2025. Nearly all the languages that Wycliffe is currently working on are oral languages only: Wycliffe’s field translators must first design a writing system for any of these languages before committing a translation to paper. So in those cases, the Bible will likely be the first book to appear in that language, and that culture. The act of introducing the written word and an outside religion to a group of people who hitherto knew neither is, depending on how you look at it, freighted with promise or fraught with peril. More on this in future podcasts.

Wycliffe, by the way, is named after 14th century theologian John Wycliffe, who translated parts of the Bible from Latin into Middle English.

Finally, language journalist Michael Erard makes the case for using only artisanal, locally grown and sustainably packaged words. His satirical essay first appeared in web magazine The Morning News. Download MP3

By Bill Marx

On the cover of Robert Bresson: A Passion For Film, director Martin Scorsese argues that “we are still coming to terms with the peculiar power and beauty” of Robert Bresson’s films, classifying the French filmmaker as “one of the cinema’s greatest artists.” Bresson’s artistic peculiarity has grown into an undeserved reputation for thorny austerity, a forbiddingly minimalistic sense of the ethereal reinforced by his use of non-professional actors, attraction to religious themes, and the suggestions of moral judgments in his work. Compounding the misunderstanding is that that a number of his films are still not available on DVD.

This compelling volume is the most comprehensive effort in English yet to celebrate and analyze the thirteen features Bresson (1901-1999) made over a forty year period, a lineup that includes such masterpieces as The Trial of Joan of Arc, The Devil Probably, and Au hasard Balthazar. Author Tony Pipolo is a Professor Emeritus of Film and Literature at the City University of New York and former co-editor of Millennium Film Journal. He is a practicing psychoanalyst as well, and brings a sophisticated respect for the life of the mind to what is obviously a labor of love. I sent Pipolo some questions via email about the history of his appreciation of Bresson’s art, the director’s relevance to cinema today, and his influences on international culture.

World Books: When did you first discover the films of Robert Bresson? And how have your responses changed over the years?

Pipolo: The first Bresson films I saw were Diary of a Country Priest and Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, shown as a double feature at the Bleecker St. Cinema, a repertory theater in lower Manhattan, in either 1965 or 1966. I remember being intrigued, but I don’t think I sensed his uniqueness because these were early works that resembled other French films of the mid Forties/early Fifties that I had seen. My feelings about both films, especially Diary, have deepened considerably over the years.

It was not until 1970 when Au hasard Balthazar was commercially released in the U.S. and opened at Dan Talbot’s New Yorker Theater that I was struck by Bresson as a name and a phenomenon to be reckoned with. I was then and remain in awe of that film. As a student in the Graduate Cinema Studies program at New York University around the same time, I took a course in Bresson and Dreyer given by P. Adams Sitney. By then I had seen everything of Bresson’s up to 1969. From the 70s through the 90s, I also screened several of the films in my graduate and undergraduate classes and taught a graduate seminar devoted to his work. The more intimate I became with the work, the more my commitment and interest grew.

It first occurred to me to write a book about Bresson’s work in the late 80s for a series published by Cambridge. Although the series was discontinued before I finished, my ongoing training as a psychoanalyst also presented a temporary obstacle. Not because of time pressures, but because I found it difficult to reconcile my thinking about psychoanalysis with what I felt about the films and how they worked. This was a real challenge, but over the next fifteen years it seemed less and less of a problem to integrate psychoanalytic ideas sensibly and sensitively into comprehension of the films. This realization enabled me to move forward and complete the book.

Through all of this, my estimation of the films never faltered. Even those I had not felt strongly about initially–Trial of Joan of Arc, Four Nights of a Dreamer, and Devil Probably–grew in stature. The deeper and more complex my understanding of them, the more a psychoanalytic approach seemed appropriate.

World Books: For those new to the films of Bresson, which would be the best to begin with? And why?

Pipolo: The films that I think are immediately accessible and that I have gotten reinforcing feedback about from people who have asked this question are A Man Escaped, Diary of a Country Priest, and Mouchette. The first works so well as a suspenseful prison escape drama that one need know nothing of Bresson to enjoy it. I have not found this to be so with his subsequent film Pickpocket because here Bresson’s conception of the “model” is more overt and the film’s minimal “acting” style can be an obstacle.

I recommend Diary because it is a moving and eloquent study of a young priest that makes effective use of such familiar features as dramatic scenes, powerful acting, and psychological characterization.

Although filmed later, Mouchette seems to grip viewers immediately because of its heartbreaking story, although, in truth, many students found it too depressing.

A scene from Robert Bresson's 1971 film Four Nights of a Dreamer

World Books: Reviewers of Bresson inevitably comment on the austerity, not the passion, of his films, from Diary of a Country Priest to A Man Escaped and Pickpocket. In what ways do you want to complicate or amend that approach?

Pipolo: The passion of my book’s title refers, first of all, to the all-consuming investment of Bresson himself and his tireless efforts to hone the craft of filmmaking and distill its effects into an instrument of clarity, precision, and great beauty. His is as passionate a commitment as one can find in the history of the medium.

This passion can also be said to describe many protagonists–certainly the novice Anne Marie in Les Anges du peche, the priest in Diary of a Country Priest, the prisoner Fontaine in A Man Escaped, Michel in Pickpocket, and Joan in Trial of Joan of Arc. All of these are creatures possessed, fixated on a specific goal that determines every gesture and action they perform.

Bresson shows us their passion through the continued evidence on the screen of the singularity of their focus through his meticulous attention to shots, framing, and editing–in other words through cinematographic means rather than via an actor’s performance. This is the essential difference between Bresson and conventional filmmakers. Passions are converted into the visual and audio properties of the medium, into actions that define character and are propelled through space and time. This is the heart of his cinema and the reason he preferred “models” over actors, whose studied repertory of techniques he believed alien to the scrutinizing eye of the camera.

In this sense, his films ask us to re-evaluate the nature of passion, directing us to its inner sources and the way it builds and shapes a character’s outward behavior. If we only recognize passion via dramatic rendering by good actors, our range of comprehension is limited indeed. What hidden passions lie in the heart of an autistic child?

For me, Bresson’s art is more genuinely passionate because its passion is not amorphous and indiscriminate but slowly and incrementally induced in the viewer without being filtered through the actor. “Identifying” with actors, allegedly the traditional route by which we become emotionally involved, is in fact, more artificial, imposed from the outside, mediating between the viewer and whatever underlying force and passion is in the work as a whole. This is not something most viewers accept, but then the whole idea behind Bresson’s cinema is to renounce facile immersion and, as Susan Sontag once said, to discipline our emotions.

Bresson’s films belong to that tradition in art, which holds that underplaying emotion and expressivity ultimately leads to a building up of inner feelings that result in greater emotional release. This said, it is also true that the austerity many refer to is less of a problem than it once was. Many European narrative filmmakers of the last two decades have acknowledged Bresson’s influence in their minimalist approach to acting, dialogue, and tight editing structures.

World Books: You write that the “question of God’s existence and everything that ensues from it bears directly and pervasively on Bresson’s thematic preoccupations, on his overall philosophy of life and behavior, on the stylistic rigor of his films, and even on his use of models rather than professional actors.” How do you reconcile that mode of appreciation with your background as a psychoanalyst?

Pipolo: A good part of the book is devoted to addressing this question and coming to terms with its seemingly paradoxical thrust through a detailed discussion of each film. One important strand of the book’s argument is that the entire body of Bresson’s work can be seen as a psychological profile of him. Psychoanalytic investigation, in that sense, is about seeing the work and its preoccupations as direct and indirect manifestations of the psychology, beliefs, and doubts of the artist. What makes this legitimate is Bresson’s obsessive need to control every aspect of his work, something he himself acknowledges and to which every film testifies.

The key word in the quote is “question.” From first film to last, Bresson’s work is consumed by this question, which only seems to be rhetorical in the first few films while growing in importance with the later ones. I think there is more ambiguity, more ambivalence in the films from Balthazar to L’Argent, but questions of God’s existence, of the Christian ethic, and the possibility of redemption are never abandoned. The very shift in the tone and thrust of the work that this suggests, therefore, speaks to a personal conflict in the artist who created it, and it is that conflict–moving, variable, and eloquent–which can be illumined by psychological investigation.

A scene from Robert Bresson's 1977 film The Devil Probably

World Books: How does Bresson’s controversial opposition to professional actors, to acting itself, contribute to his value in a celebrity-driven culture?

Pipolo: Since Bresson’s work, by definition, ignores the appeal of stars and was never made for mass consumption, it is unlikely to be valued by a celebrity driven culture. The very idea seems fanciful. He never sought such a thing and the proof of how intact his art is and how removed his films are from such a concept is testimony to the uniqueness and integrity of his approach to the medium.

The very disparity between his work and a celebrity-driven culture is instructive. Namely, that just as his entire approach to film was to “chasten” it as an art form, to rid it of its excesses and its flamboyant and theatrical tendencies, one might say that seeing and studying his films in such a culture as ours is a sobering, chastening experience that can function as a corrective to the idle, fleeting, and superficial aspects of celebrity, drawing our attention to what really matters and what is most important in the human journey.

Of course there are other serious but more audience-friendly filmmakers of the present day who also refuse to kowtow to celebrity culture. I don’t see this as a bad thing. We should not expect everyone to embrace Bresson anymore than we should expect everyone to be moved by the music of Schoenberg or the cantos of Ezra Pound.

Another, perhaps minor point can be made here. Many films once thought immortal because of memorable performances by stars suffer terribly when seen decades later, the style of its acting being so out of sync with contemporary views of what constitutes the “real” and the credible. Professional acting and star quality in this sense are often victims of time. Of course, there are wonderful exceptions. I believe that Bresson’s renouncing of actors and acting in the conventional sense escapes this judgment. The dated quality we cannot ignore in many movies of the 30s and 40s does not seem to affect the way we perceive the behavior of the “models”–Bresson’s preferred term–in his films. In fact, consistent with his principles, we tend to look more closely at the film as a whole rather than at the actor.

World Books: You claim that Bresson is a highly moral artist. But my personal favorite among his films, Au hasard Balthazar, doesn’t offer a moral message, besides the patient resilience of a donkey mistreated by the “moral infirmity” of a succession of masters. What kind of positive ethical value does Bresson offer us given that you argue in your book that he has doubts about his faith?

Pipolo: I would go further and argue that none of Bresson’s films offers a moral “message” in any overt sense. The morality is implicit in his pre-occupation with the same issues–e.g., good and evil, the existence of God, the relationship between free will and design–that absorbed his literary mentors Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Georges Bernanos. That several protagonists–in Les Anges du peche, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, and Pickpocket–have to cleanse themselves of pride in order to be redeemed or redeem others is a profoundly moral idea.

In interviews, Bresson said that the array of character types in Balthazar was modeled on the seven deadly sins–pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. Given how he endows Balthazar with the opposing virtues and associates him with Christian iconography and symbolism, the film does seem to be a moral parable about the corrupt way of the world and the cruelty and indifference with which it treats one who embodies patience, fortitude, and virtue.

To my mind, it was never Bresson’s purpose to proselytize. The darkness of his work derives largely from his lack of faith in human nature, not a lack of belief in the existence of a greater scale of values. That he may have ceased practice as a Catholic does not preclude the fact that this view of life was molded by Catholic doctrine and is not incompatible with that of such thinkers as Aquinas and Augustine.

Despite greater ambiguity in the later films, the battle between despair and possible redemption still exists. The widow in his last film, L’Argent, is the epitome of one who lives a Christian existence rather than simply preaching it–the very philosophy espoused by the older Tolstoy. Bresson expands on the relationship between her and the murderer Yvon beyond what it is in the Tolstoy source story. In doing so, he suggests at the end that the woman’s good works haunt and affect Yvon and prompt him to surrender. The doubts that preoccupied Bresson compete with even deeper convictions. In answer to a question about his view of the world, he quoted the writer Bernanos, to wit, “There is not a kingdom of death and a kingdom of life. There is the kingdom of God and we are in it.”

World Books: Are there some countries that are more receptive to Bresson than others? For example, how is he appreciated in the Middle East?

Pipolo: Bresson’s films have more affinity with cultures based in the Judeo/Christian tradition. I have no hard knowledge of how they fare in the Middle East although a student once observed that although the films are saturated in Christian imagery and doctrine, their adherence to moral culpability and a strict standard of ethical behavior would not be incompatible with non-Christian cultures.

World Books: What cultures outside of France do his films draw on?

Pipolo: If I understand this question, it’s about the sources and/or subjects of the films other than French. Bresson has a strong affinity with Russian literature. Although he transferred the settings of two Dostoevsky novellas from 19th century St. Petersburg to Paris of the late 60s/early 70s, his characters still manifest the eccentric, mercurial nature of Dostoevsky’s. And though he did not credit Crime and Punishment or The Idiot as sources of Pickpocket and Au hasard Balthazar respectively, the moral atmosphere of those novels is something that deeply affected Bresson’s world. His last film L’Argent is adapted from Tolstoy’s “The Forged Coupon.” But just as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were at their best bringing Russian character and society to life, Bresson’s films, whether set in Paris or the provinces, are unmistakably French in spirit and tone.

Another scene from Robert Bresson's 1977 film The Devil Probably

World Books: You do not talk a lot about the political context of Bresson’s films. What do his films say about the times in which they were made?

Pipolo: Most of Bresson’s contemporaries in the film world thought of him as a being apart. The director Erich Rohmer said he was beyond categories. He infuriated the Left because his films seemed more concerned with universal conflicts and values irrespective of specific social or political contexts. The seeming exceptions to this are A Man Escaped and The Trial of Joan of Arc, but there as well Bresson’s overriding concern is with the journey of a soul through fire to personal triumph and with the way protagonists of undaunted courage and faith can inspire and give hope to others.

One could say that the very essence of a Bressonian journey requires a leap over political and social specificity to the ground on which the individual battles to preserve the integrity of his or her soul. This does not mean that one could not construe a political or social context but my feeling is that it would be strained and possibly beside the point. When Godard, himself a politically-engaged filmmaker for most of his career, referred to Au hasard Balthazar as “the World,” he captured the essence of this topic. Balthazar is no more defined and limited by its image of disaffected youth of the 1960s than the struggle of Anne Marie to convert Therese in Les Anges du peche is restricted to the confines of a convent.

In this sense, Bresson’s work of the 40s and 50s is worth examining in the context of existentialism, probably the strongest post-war philosophy to engage intellectuals, which also sought to restore a system of values in the wake of the devastations of the Second World War.

World Books: In what ways has Bresson influenced filmmakers that followed him? What do his films have to offer contemporary directors at a time when his minimalist approach is so out of fashion?

Pipolo: First, I disagree with the premise here. As the work of a long line of European filmmakers from the mid-70s to the present attests, Bresson’s minimalism has had a profound influence. In some form or other, the films of Chantal Akerman, Olivier Assayas, Laurent Cantet, the Dardenne Brothers, Claire Denis, Bruno Dumont, Jean-Luc Godard, Eugene Green, Michael Haneke, Benoit Jacquot, Aki Kaurismaki, Gaspar Noe, Erich Rohmer, and Andre Techine have all reflected the presence of Bresson in their adoption of a sparer use or elimination of expository dialogue, low-key acting styles, elliptical editing, and careful attention to sound. This late 20th century European style has become so familiar that it may be difficult to discern Bresson’s impact.

For the rest, I would say that the clarity, economy, and brilliant cinematography of Bresson’s films remain an achievement and a corrective to the mindset that holds that overkill, thrills, and special effects are what define the cinema. I strongly believe that viewers in the not too distant future will find Avatar boring, silly and overwrought while Bresson’s work, for those who seek it out, will retain its place as the product of a singular, idiosyncratic artist of moral conviction and passionate commitment to the art form he called “cinematography.”

• New York Times story
• Vatican website

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The Catholic Church in Rome is struggling to deal with multiple sex abuse controversies.  The latest involves allegations that church officials, including the current Pope, sought to keep secret a sex abuse scandal in Wisconsin.  The Vatican today denied a cover up in the case, but the controversy comes just after similar allegations emerged in Germany and after Pope Benedict XVI’s apology to church abuse victims in Ireland.  John Allen covers the Vatican for the National Catholic Reporter.  He says the Vatican sex abuse problem is now global.

JOHN ALLEN:  When this exploded in the United States almost a decade ago in 2002 there was a tendency in some quarters in Rome to see this largely as an American problem, or at least a problem that was sort of regionally limited.  Subsequent experience, particularly, of course, the scandals that are now erupting all across Europe and in other parts of the world have made it crystal clear that this is in fact a global problem, one which the Catholic Church and the Vatican will probably be dealing with for some time to come.

WERMAN: Is it a global problem or is it a European and American problem?  I know the Catholic Church has a lot of their flock in China right now.  Could you see this extending to Asia?

ALLEN: Well look, I mean of the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world today, two-thirds of them live in southern hemisphere, that’s Latin American, Africa and Asia.  By mid century, that’s going to be about three quarters.  Now if we assume that he patterns that we have seen in the way the church has handled cases of sexual abuse, which is that even though they have very tough policies, in decades past they tended to cover them and try to handle them internally.  If we assume that pattern is a global pattern, then what that tells me is that these scandals have yet to reach two-thirds of the Catholic world.  In other words, as bad as it has been to date, it actually could get a lot worse.

WERMAN: So what is the significance of this for the church as a whole, as an institution?

ALLEN: Well I think it means in the first place, that the church is probably going to be tied, and this Pope in particular, will probably be tied down trying to put out these fires for some time to come.  And, of course, all of the energy that is devoted to trying to clean up this mess is energy that is not devoted to bringing the church’s voice and its moral authority to bear on other contemporary human problems, whether they’re poverty or the arms race or abortion or whatever the issue may be.

WERMAN: What do you think this means for the Vatican and for the Pope himself, Pope Benedict?

ALLEN: Well I think the new dimension is this; the Vatican has always been criticized for its sort of corporate response to the sexual abuse crisis.  But the new piece of the puzzle is the Pope’s own past on this issue, that is his personal history, is now being called into question.  Both from the five years, three decades ago when he was a Diocesan Bishop in Munich, Germany, and his more than 20 years of service in the Vatican as a senior official.  Now the Vatican will insist that much of that criticism has either been exaggerated or is simply grossly unfair.  They will say that prior to 2001 he actually was not involved in handling cases of sexual abuse, and after that when he was given that responsibility by John Paul II, he became very aggressive, certainly by historical standards, and a much more aggressive response than we had seen previously from the Vatican.  But the point is that whether it’s fair or unfair, the practical reality is that this growing scrutiny about the Pope’s record for the first time calls into question his personal moral authority to lead the church out of this mess.

WERMAN: Do you think, John Allen, that the Pope could fall?  Are there mechanisms to actually remove a Pope?

ALLEN: No there is no mechanism in church law to force a Pope to go.  There is an article of church law that provides for a Pope to voluntarily resign.  But it has been invoked only a handful of times in more than 2,000 years of church history.  The last time was in the early 15th century and that was sort of down the barrel of a gun to heal a major schism.  So I think this is the longest of long shot scenarios that Benedict the XVI would resign.  I think the more realistic scenario is that at least on this issue, that is the sexual abuse crisis; his papacy might be effectively paralyzed for some time to come.  The deeper question will be for all of those Catholics all over the world who just don’t know what to make of this, will it increasingly be the case that they question their confidence, not just in the church in a generic sense, but in this Pope particularly.  When the dust settles and when fair minded people look at the Pope’s record, is it going to withstand scrutiny and I think that’s the question that is up for grabs at this moment.

WERMAN: John Allen with the National Catholic Reporter thank you very much for your time.

ALLEN: You’re welcome.

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• BBC coverage
• Religion coverage on The World

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MARCO WERMAN: It’s been one month since the murder of a Russian Orthodox priest in Moscow but investigators still don’t know who did it. The priest was a high profile critic of Islam and so suspicion has fallen on Muslims. That’s raised tensions between the Russian Orthodox Church and leaders of the Islamic faith in Russia. The World’s Laura Lynch reports from Moscow.

[SINGING]

LAURA LYNCH: The faithfuls still gather at Saint Thomas’, a small Moscow church perched on the edge of a ravine that looks more like a log cabin than a house or worship. They pray just steps away from the spot where Father Daniil Sysoyev was shot dead as he finished his service.

[BABY CRYING]

Roman and Jana Ackbayrov’s one-month old, Margareta, squirms as baptismal water is dribbled on her tiny forehead.

ROMAN ACKBAYROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

LYNCH: Father Daniil baptized me and my wife, Roman says, and he married us. We wanted him to baptize our daughter. I can’t believe he’s not here now.

Sysoyev was without a doubt a controversial priest driven my missionary seal.

[SYSOYEV PREACHING]

LYNCH: The 35-year-old posted sermons like this one on YouTube and focused his efforts on Muslims. He claimed to have converted 80 of them. He also wrote books warning Christians not marry Muslims and was fiercely critical of Islam. Father Ioan Papadinetz, who has taken over much of Sysoyev’s ministry, says Sysoyev moved easily among the many Muslim immigrants who lived in this working class neighborhood spreading his uncompromising message.

IOAN PAPADINETZ: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

TRANSLATOR: Islam, I’ll quote Sysoyev, there’s no other truth than Christianity. This is what our holy church professes and what every Christian believes. We have no quarrel with Muslims but we believe Islam is not the true faith.

LYNCH: Father Sysoyev himself knew the risks of preaching such views. He once said his life had been threatened 14 times. That’s why many in Russia suspect a Muslim is responsible for his murder. Even though no one has been arrested the case has stoked tensions between the two faiths. Sergei Filatov has studied the development of religion in post Soviet Russia for 20 years.

SERGEI FILATOV: We can see a great level of distrust on the level of the believers and local religious leaders as imams and priests.

LYNCH: In fact6 distrust and wariness increasingly lie just below the public veneer of mutual respect. In these post Soviet days the Russian Orthodox Church has again become central to Russian national identity. But in spite of that it feels threatened by a growing Muslim minority. There are around 20 to 25 million of them mostly in the eastern regions of Russia.

[SINGING]

On a frigid night in Moscow a few hundred Muslims gather in one of the city’s five mosques to pray. That there are only five serving a population of two million is cause for complaint among Muslims. But a greater concern, according to Supreme Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov, was Father Sysoyev. Ashirov doesn’t condone his murder. In fact Moscow’s Islamic leadership was quick to condemn it. But long ago, Ashirov had labeled Sysoyev Russia’s Salman Rushdie.

MUFTI NAFIGULLA ASHIROV: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

TRANSLATOR: He allowed Islam and Islam sacred values to be offended and this of course concerned us greatly. We turned to the church’s leaders to ask them not to allow one of their clerics to attack other faiths in that way.

LYNCH: But Ashirov says the church did nothing. In fact the head of the church, Patriarch Kirill, presided over Sysoyev’s funeral which many took as an implicit endorsement of his work. But in the absence of any arrests the patriarch has warned people not to single out Muslims for blame. Still religion expert Sergei Filotov is concerned about what might happen if a Muslim man is arrested.

FILITOV: I think it can be a great threat if and when the killer will be caught because if it will be a Muslim the situation will be very volatile.

LYNCH: For his part Mufti Ashirov says he too worries about a backlash against Muslims.

ASHIROV: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

TRANSLATOR: Of course because an increased tension between the peoples of the Russian Federation is a very dangerous factor that can lead to unpredictable outcomes. And so we as representatives of the faith, whether it’s the Russian Orthodox Church or Islam, it’s our duty to be responsible in both our actions and our words.

LYNCH: Ashirov is careful to add he still enjoys good relations with the Orthodox leadership and that he believes that Father Sysoyev with his anti-Islam views was an exception.

[SINGING]

Surveillance cameras are now posted outside the church of Saint Thomas around which hundreds of bunches of flowers have been placed in memory of Father Sysoyev. Father Ioan Papadinetz now spends long hours leading services here. He says in spite of the murder there are others ready to step into Father Sysoyev’s shoes.

PAPADINETZ: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

TRANSLATOR: There are many people left here that he educated who gave that missionary zeal to and they will carry on his work. There’s a whole missionary school here, young people not priests, who will continue with re-doubled effort that work that he began.

LYNCH: If that’s true it’s unlikely to help lower the tensions that were building even before Father Sysoyev died on the floor of his own church. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in Moscow.

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• BBC coverage
• Women of the Wall homepage

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  There are new tensions at Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall.  But these tensions are not between Israeli’s and Palestinians.  Instead, a group of women is challenging ultra-Orthodox control of the site, as Linda Gradstein reports.

LINDA GRADSTEIN:  A group of Finnish tourists listen carefully as their guide explains the history of the Western Wall.  Nearby, a group of junior high school students seem more interested in each other than in the Wall, the only remnant of the second temple in Jerusalem that was destroyed almost 2,000 years ago.  As you approach the craggy limestone bricks of the wall itself, the men and women’s prayer areas are separated by a tall fence.  Women are asked, sometimes politely, sometimes not, to dress modestly and given skirts to cover their legs if they are wearing shorts.  It was at this part of the site that an Israeli medical student, [SOUNDS LIKE] Nofrat Franco, was arrested during an early morning women’s prayer service.  Her crime, wearing a talis, a fringed prayer shawl usually worn by men and carrying a Torah scroll, a handwritten Old Testament read during prayer.  Traditionally, women did not wear the prayer shawl or read from the Torah scroll.  Anod Hoffman is the chairperson of the group called Women of the Wall, which organizes monthly women’s prayer services at the wall.

ANOD HOFFMAN:  We opened the bag, took the Torah out.  Nofrat marched with us a little bit and in a second, two men from the Foundation for the Preservation of the Wall came and very brutally, two thugs actually, told us to stop this immediately and before we could turn around, police showed up and the policemen, Vitale, started pushing Nofrat who was wearing a talis, a prayer shawl, holding the Torah, the Torah scroll in her hands, starting pushing her away from the group.

GRADSTEIN:  Franco was questioned for two hours and released.  She is not allowed to approach the wall for two weeks.  Rabbi Schmwell Rabinowitz who is in charge of the site, says the women were being deliberately provocative.

SPEAKER:  This is something that will get people all stirred up.  It will lead to disagreements.  The wall doesn’t belong to the Orthodox or to the secular, it belongs to everyone.  We’re trying to find a way that everyone can pray there without insulting anyone else.

GRADSTEIN:  In the early 1990’s, Women of the Wall appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court for permission to wear prayer shawls and read from the Torah scroll at the site.  After several years of deliberations, the court ruled 5-4 that they were not permitted to read the Torah at the wall itself.  But the court ordered the authorities to find an alternative site.  For years now, the women have started their monthly service at the wall itself and then moved to the alternative site known as Robinson’s Arch.  Anod Hoffman says she’s not happy with the compromise.

HOFFMAN:  It  really is insane that on the one side of the partition every man facing the wall was wearing a prayer shawl and we are disturbing the peace for doing the very same thing when according to Jewish law, absolutely no prohibition on a woman wearing a prayer shawl.  So yes, we were pushing the envelope, so to speak.

GRADSTEIN:  This is not the first time the women have sparked controversy.  In the past, they have been screamed at and had chairs and bottles thrown at them, often by ultra-Orthodox women praying nearby.  Hoffman says they will be there every month, pushing the envelope, until they are allowed to pray the way they want, at Judaism’s holiest site.  For The World, I’m Linda Gradstein in Jerusalem.

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[MUSIC]

MARCO WERMAN: Sikh musicians welcomed a group of religious leaders from around the world this week. The priests, rabbis, imams, and others gathered at Windsor Castle in England. They met to collaborate on an issue that the world’s governments are having a hard time agreeing on – climate change. The conference came just weeks before a global summit on climate change in Copenhagen. The World’s religion editor, Jane Little, was there in Windsor.

[MARCHING BAND]

JANE LITTLE: It’s not everyday that you see an army of black, white, red, and orange robes processing up the cobbled hill to Windsor Castle. But these religious men, and women, are on their way to lunch with Prince Phillip, the Queen’s husband, and the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon both of whom have thrown their weight behind religious efforts to tackle climate change. Ban addressed the assembled.

BAN KI MOON: Together the major faith groups have established, run, or contributed to over half of all schools worldwide. You are the third largest category of investors in the world. Your potential impact is enormous.

LITTLE: That’s why the UN is helping to fund an array of plans developed by members of nine world religions from Muslims and Christians to Bahais and Sikhs. The organizers at Windsor say that between them the religions represented here claim more than 85 percent of the world’s population. That’s convinced long time secular environmentalists that they’re vital allies. Patrick Holden is a leader in the organic food movement.

PATRICK HOLDEN: I think the power of four billion people, if it is that, ought to drive change especially because faith communities think long term. They have fantastic communication networks and they’ve got resources. Should not be underestimated.

LITTLE: The meeting marks a significant evolution in the relationship between many religious traditions and environmentalism. Martin Palmer is head of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

MARTIN PALMER: I think the real problem for Christianity, and to some extent for Judaism and Islam as well, was fear of paganism. They saw respect for nature as being tantamount to worship of nature. And all sorts of deep barrier to theological traps kind of went bing, bing, bing when the environmental movement came into being.

LITTLE: Palmer adds that many American Evangelicals were resistant because they saw environmental destruction as a necessary prelude to the end times when Christ would return.

[PRAISE HIM PSALM 148]

But the presence here at Windsor of many Evangelicals including a choir from the Baltimore New Psalmist Baptist Church reflects a significant conversion. Many have been moved to look again at their bibles and encouraged to see that respect for nature doesn’t mean worship of it. Creation care has become a new buzz term. Perhaps the most ambitious initiative announced here was the Muslim’s seven-year action plan. Sheikh Ali Goma’a, the influential Grand Mufti of Egypt, spoke of protecting the earth as a religious duty. The plan calls for the construction of so-called green mosques and even cities as well as a TV channel for Islam and the environment. Goma’a also announced the greening of pilgrimage cities including Medina in Saudi Arabia.

ALI GOMA’A: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

TRANSLATOR: First they will increase the green area. Second they will work very hard to create a natural balance for the carbon. Third replace everything that’s being wasted in friendly environmental way.

LITTLE: Millions of Korans will also be published on sustainably sourced paper. Meanwhile Jews from America and Israel pledge to try to cut meat consumption among their communities in half by 2015. Livestock production is a major source of greenhouse gases. And Shintos in Japan and Daoists in China will convert thousands of temples to green energy. It’s an ambitious agenda perhaps. But Martin Palmer says the goals announced here are achievable. Maybe more so than what political leaders are attempting at the UN’s climate summit in Copenhagen next month.

PALMER: I’ve been asked a number of times; do you think the governments of the world will take this seriously? And my answer’s been the same every time. I really don’t care. Because the religions are going to do this anyway.

LITTLE: And he adds if governments can’t come through at Copenhagen religions will just have to show them the way. For The World this Jane Little, Windsor.

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There’s a religious debate taking place in Canada. Some Muslims there say they want the country to set some limits on freedom of religion.The Muslim Canadian Congress is lobbying to ban burkas or any other kind of Islamic face covering. Anita Elash reports from Toronto.

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MARCO WERMAN: Another type of religious debate is taking place in Canada. Some Muslims there say they want the country to set some limits on freedom of religion. The Muslim Canadian Congress is lobbying to ban burkas or any other kind of Islamic face covering. Anita Elash reports from Toronto.

[PRAYER]

ANITA ELASH: Friday afternoon at the Umar Bin Khatap Mosque in downtown Toronto. About 100 people have gathered in the basement of a grey brick building on a street that’s filled with shops selling halal pizza and East African sweets. The men are kneeling at the front of the hall. The women are at the back hidden behind black office partitions. Most are wearing multi-colored shawls, floor-length skirts, and headscarves that cover their hair. But some are fully covered revealing only their eyes. Salehah al Shehri came here from Saudi Arabia two months ago. Outside the mosque I tell her that some people in Canada want to ban what she’s wearing – the niqab – which covers her face and reveals only her eyes. She says she doesn’t speak English very well so her husband translates.

SALEHAH AL SHEHRI: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

HUSBAND TRANSLATING: She said I’m so sorry to hear this because what we hear that this is a country of freedom. If she’s not doing something bad to the people around her, so why she’s not right to have her freedom.

ELASH: The niqab and the very similar burka are still rarely seen in Canada. But the Muslim population is growing fast and so is the number of women covering their face. And some Muslims are arguing that those women are hurting Canadian society and themselves.

TAREK FATAH: They cannot use religion to hide their identity. This is an insult to my faith, to my community … .

ELASH: Tarek Fatah is the founder of the Canadian Muslim Congress. His group has long opposed face coverings for Muslim women. So when the influential Islamic scholar Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi said the burka should be banned in Egypt the CMC called on the Canadian parliament to ban it in public places here. Fatah says the practice is a threat to public safety. Several banks have been robbed by men wearing burkas. And he says it’s a threat to women’s rights in a democracy.

FATAH: Anyone who propagates this has one objective – to make sure that the women in their family become unemployable and therefore dependent on them and therefore pose no economic, social, or political threat to their power structure within the family or the community.

ELASH: Fatah says he’s concerned the growing number of women who do cover their face is a sign that Canadian Muslims are becoming more radical. The Muslim population here is diverse and well educated. But some experts say that many Muslims feel disenfranchised by discrimination and high unemployment and may be easy targets for radical leaders looking for new recruits. Even so constitutional law expert David Schneiderman says Canada has strong human rights laws and an official policy of multiculturalism. So there’s little chance it would ever ban the burka.

DAVID SCHEIDERMAN: I think the guiding principle here is that governments are expected to accommodate rather than ban forms of religious expression. And governments are expected to abide by those human rights commitments and probably no government wants to be seen to be trampling on charter rights and freedoms.

[PRAYER]

ELASH: Back at the Umar Bin Khatap mosque one young woman says that calls to ban the burka might actually encourage the radicalization opponents are worried about. Samiya Muselem is 18 and wears only a black hijab that frames her olive-skinned face. But she supports the right of other to veil.

SAMIYA MUSELEM: It really angers me and it makes me like question the society like how far are you going to go? And when you do that kind of stuff to people they think that you’re breaking them down but little do you know you’re making them more stronger because they’re going to hold onto it more better instead of like vice versa – taking it off.

ELASH: She adds that many of her young friends have recently donned the burka to let people know they’re Muslim and proud of it. For The World I’m Anita Elash in Toronto.

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