Sunday, May. 11, 2003

TIME Highlights

TIME Cover: Missionaries Under Cover: (p. 36) A growing number of evangelicals are trying to spread Christianity in Muslim lands, possibly inspiring more backlash than belief, TIME’s David van Biema reports in this week’s cover story. The number of missionaries to Islamic countries nearly doubled between 1982 and 2001 from more than 15,000 to somewhere in excess of 27,000, according to figures from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Approximately 1 out of every 2 is American, and 1 out of every 3 is evangelical. Its army is weaponless and has no actual connection with the U.S. government (except possibly to unintentionally muddy America’s image). But in the past few months, its advance forces have been entering the still-smoldering battlefield of Iraq, as intent on molding its people’s future as the conventional American troops already in place. Charles Kimball, a Baptist minister who was director of the National Council of Churches’ Middle East office in the 1980s, tells TIME: "Sincerity isn’t the issue, or commitment to one’s faith. It is just that the region is at a pivotal and volatile juncture, and it is arguably not the time for groups coming in, like someone with a lighted match into a room full of explosives, wearing Jesus on their sleeves."

Story is online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460157,00.html

WAR ON TERROR: The Triple Life of a Qaeda Man (p. 28) Soon after Iyman Faris agreed to cooperate with FBI agents, he was brought to a safe house in Virginia where agents directed and monitored his every communication, including cell phone and e-mail messages to his bosses, TIME’s Daniel Eisenberg reports. "He was sitting in the safe house, making calls for us," says a Justice Department official. "It was a huge triumph for law enforcement." Dangling both an offer to move his extended family in Pakistan out of harm’s way and avoid al-Qaeda retaliation and a threat to declare him an enemy combatant (possibly facing years of pre-trial detention) like accused dirty-bomber Jose Padilla, FBI agents persuaded Faris to cooperate sometime in March, according to law enforcement officials, TIME reports.

Story is online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460158,00.html

IRAQ: The Postwar War (p. 30) Even Saddam Hussein’s sons needed recently captured Abid Hamad Mahmud’s permission to meet with their father, a source close to the family told TIME. Mahmud is one of the likeliest figures to have remained in contact with Saddam after he disappeared two months ago. U.S. officials last week were more confident than at any time since the end of the war that they may soon snare their main prey, TIME’s Romesh Ratnesar reports from Baghdad. "Our operations throughout the region are making it very difficult for him to sleep at night, if he is still alive," General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told TIME in his first interview since taking charge in Iraq. Even if Mahmud’s interrogation sheds no light on Saddam’s whereabouts, it might be useful to the U.S. in other ways, TIME’s Scott MacLeod reports. "He holds the key to all the locked doors," including details of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program, says a businessman who has met repeatedly with Mahmud in recent years. This source believes Mahmud represents a real danger to Saddam—and an asset to the Americans—because he "likes to talk too much."

Story Is online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460159,00.html and interview with the maid is at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460164,00.html

SUPREME COURT: How Rehnquist Changed America (p. 20) If Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist steps down soon, don’t expect a bipartisan buddy system to play much of a part in choosing his successor, TIME Supreme Court Correspondent Viveca Novak reports. But whenever Rehnquist departs, he can do it in the knowledge that the court he led is likely to be remembered as one of the most influential in American history—and not just because of the 5-4 ruling in Gore v. Bush that effectively gave the 2000 election to the man who lost the popular vote. Rehnquist has spent more than 31 years on the high court, 17 of them as chief. That has been time enough to see the court, and much of the nation, come around to the conservative views that once made him so isolated that he was called the Lone Ranger because he wrote so many solitary dissents, TIME reports.

MEDIA: I Want My Gore TV! (p. 59) As first reported on TIME.com, former Vice President Al Gore has been exploring the idea of creating a cable-television network, as well as helping Chicago venture capitalists Sheldon and Anita Drobny start a liberal talk-radio network, TIME’s Karen Tumulty reports. The initial challenge is not political but economic. Gore and Friends have to convince potential backers that there’s a market. Said a Hollywood source familiar with Gore’s original TV proposal: "When it first came around, people were, like, ‘How is this thing going to make money?’ These are Democrats, but they’re business people first." Tumulty also reports on a lunch meeting between media magnate Rupert Murdoch and Democratic Senators in June where they were supposed to discuss the effects that looser media-ownership rules would have on consolidation and competition. Instead, the Democrats spent an hour venting about Murdoch’s enormously successful Fox News Channel. They complained that the cable network, whose slogan is "fair and balanced," shuts out and even mocks anything but right-wing views. California’s Barbara Boxer told Murdoch his network’s only balance is between the right and the far right, and suggested a new tag line: "Fox News: the right slant," Tumulty reports.

ANDREW SULLIVAN – The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage (p. 76) Conservatives have long rightly argued for the vital importance of the institution of marriage for fostering responsibility, commitment and the domestication of unruly men, TIME contributor Andrew Sullivan writes in his essay. Bringing gay men and women—a group previously marginalized in society—into this institution will surely change the gay subculture in subtle but profoundly conservative ways. Many heterosexuals, I suspect… find it hard to conceive how deep a psychic and social wound the exclusion from marriage and family can be.

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