Globalisation constructed as top-down control and the triumph of the powerful needs to be disrupted by a different and gentler logic, says Simon Barrow. But will we choose Pentecost or Babel?

The struggle between good religion and bad religion is at a crucial juncture on te domestic and global stage, says Giles Fraser. He believes the Quilliam Foundation, a new Muslim think tank, can make a positive contribution.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has described his private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican earlier this week as "friendly and informal". They talked for an hour, especially about Christian-Muslim relations.

A delegation led by the Rev Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) has travelled to Syria wishing to learn from the country's long experience of Christians and Muslims living peacefully together.

A new Muslim think-tank, Quilliam, which aims to bring together voices who oppose violence and extremism, and who want to explore Islam in a modern European setting, was launched at the British Museum yesterday.

Migration is a human concern, not a Muslim or a Christian one, and joint action is vital, declared representatives of Lebanon's six most numerous faith communities at a Public Hearing on Migration in Beirut this week.

A Democrat has become the second Muslim to be elected to the US Congress. Indiana Democrat Andre Carson will replace his late grandmother in representing that state's 7th district. Carson is a convert to Islam.

The Cambridge based Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations (CSMJR) is promoting an open letter from leading Muslim scholars to the international Jewish community seeking improved understanding and contact among them.

A small number of fficials from the Vatican and senior Muslims are holding a two-day meeting in Rome this week, with the intention of laying the foundations for a major global Catholic-Islamic exchange later in 2008.

Terrorism, oppression and violence has been declared un-Islamic by around 20,000 Muslim leaders following a scholars' meeting at an Indian madrassa, according to a senior cleric quoted in The Times newspaper in the UK.