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Scientologists, of course, are upset with the criticism. "We reject and, indeed, are outraged by the NMHA's attempt to use false statements to create controversy in the midst of this tragedy," said a church statement. "While thousands of people of good will are uniting to alleviate the suffering, NMHA officials are sowing discord."

Fox News can take some solace that they didn't make the worst mistake on television. That dishonor apparently belongs to the Dutch Muslim Broadcasting Company, which, immediately after the country's three minutes of silence honoring the victims of the attack, started broadcasting threatening texts from the Koran. One such Scripture: "To those who do not believe: their properties and their children will not conciliate Allah. They are but fuel to the fire." The network issued an apology, saying they mistakenly aired an old tape.

Canada is apparently avoiding all such controversies by banning religion from public life, says an editorial in the National Post. "Has Canada become an officially areligious country?" the paper asks. "It looked like it at last week's National Day of Mourning ceremony on Parliament Hill … There was virtually no trace of a deity; no God, no Jehovah, no Allah. There was a 'lament' and a 'musical interlude,' but no hymns." But this official secularist response doesn't accord with the feelings of most Canadians, the paper asserts. "There is no merit in slighting those who worship God in order to avoid the grumbling of a small minority of aggressive and inflexible atheists. The absence of an acknowledgement of God comes at the expense of the majority of Canadians, who naturally contemplate the existence of a higher power at a time when the fabric of day to day life is torn by a humbling cataclysm."

For now, however, public religion is alive and well in the United States. "From public schools and local governments to Congress and the White House, the acts of terrorism on Sept. 11 have caused a remarkable convergence of patriotism and spirituality," reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The paper notes that today's See You At The Pole rallies at schools around the country face much less antagonism than in previous years.

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September (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45