TOKYO, Nov. 30 Kyodo preferableed...

TOKYO, Nov. 30 Kyodo

preferableed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

MR BUSH AND THE ALMIGHTY (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

It is not frequently that U.S. President George W Bush finds himself in concern with his evangelical Christian base. in succession the whole, the president, an avowed Christian of a fundamentalist bent, has won praise from that community for his policies in succession everything from the Middle East to abortion and gay marriage.

During his fresh visit to Britain, however, Mr Bush made a remark at a joint stranges conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair that provok sharp criticism from evangelical Christian leaders in the United States. To many others around the world, in contrast, the remark was the two welcome and reassuring. One felt the same mind of relief on hearing it as single felt after the president's pointedly conciliatory visit to a Washington mahometan temple after the attacks of clan 11, 2001.

Toward the finis of the news conference forward Nov. 20, a reporter noted Mr Bush's often expressed conviction that ''freedom is granted at the Almighty.'' He then asked the president to elucidation on the view held by means of ''some people who share your beliefs'' that Muslims do not worship ''the same Almighty'' as Christians. Palpably in the air were the homely comments of U.S. Lt. Gen William Boykin, who had made headlines not extended before for saying of a Muslim Somalian warlord: ''I knew my the eternal and infinite spirit was bigger than his. I knew that my the supreme being was a real the most high and his was an idol.'' He had also said, with regard to the U.S. mission in Iraq, that ''we in the army of the father in the house of omnipotence kingdom of God, have been raised for like a time as this.''

Mr Bush said nothing distantly like that in London. He did confirm his belief that ''freedom is the Almighty's gift to each person'' but then qualified that fairly predictable opinion with sum of two units surprising statements, delivered almost as afterthoughts. ''Freedom,'' he said, ''is not America's gift to the world. It's to a great degree greater than that, of course. And I believe we [Muslims and Christians] worship the same God''

The latter, of course, was the remark that infuriated the American Christian right, who berated Mr Bush for venturing into the forbidden thickets of theology. Hastening to fix the record straight forward God, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention said that Mr Bush was ''simply mistaken.'' The president of the National Association of Evangelicals added, ''The Christian the creator encourages freedom, love, forgiveness, prosperity and health. The Muslim the maker appears to value the opposite.'' The Muslim god the father values selfishness, poverty and ill-health? That must have flow as news to millions of Muslims observing the Ramadan traditions of charity and penitential abstinence this past month

To nearly everyone other however, Mr. Bush's response was without doubt encouraging. The president has, after all, repeatedly behaved since he assumed office (and especially since the US-l invasion of Iraq) as if he did think freedom was America's gift to the world, and that if the eternal was giving the world anything it was America. It was refreshing to hear him back away from like unwelcome signals.

As for the remark that to such a degree upset his coreligionists, it was perhaps easy for outsiders to miss its real significance. There are a certain of many religious persuasions, who shrug at so statements, as if to say ''Well, obviously.'' The secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America told a reporter, ''It would not issue to the mind of a Muslim that there is a different the godhead that Abraham or Jesus or Mose was praying to.'' (There are, unfortunately, Muslims of whom that is manifestly not constant including Osama bin Laden -- moreover then, his is an utmost Boykin-like brand of Islam.)

And there are others who, not believing in a ''god'' at all make objection as a projection of human confidences and fears, simply dismiss political leaders' invocations of the Almighty reflexively, without stopping to consider their wider implications.

In this case, Mr Bush was reiterating the view that he made in such a manner clear in the immediate aftermath of generation 11, but which has not always been clear since: that America's ''war forward terror,'' whatever else it might be, is not in any thinking principle a war on Islam. In fact, he implied, in the administration's view that the ''evildoers'' in Iraq, Africa, Indonesia, Turkey and elsewhere are as long the enemies of ordinary Muslims as they are of the majority Judeo-Christian populations of the U and Britain, who are leading the ''antiterror'' coalition, and of their non-Christian allies, as it was as Japan, India and Pakistan.

If that have the appearances like a great deal to read into so a brief remark -- ''I believe we worship the same God'' -- just consider if the U president had said the opposite. The single people who would have agreed with him then would have been a not many benighted American evangelicals and a apportionment of very cynical terrorists.