John Travolta and Tom Cruise may be just pop-culture icons to you and me, but in Germany their faith in the preachings of science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard is politically taboo; Scientology is deemed not a religion but a suspect movement whose activities verge on the dangerous edges of extremism. Now Germany's stern attitudes are raising something of an international ruckus, fueled in equal parts by the assertive Church of Scientology, Hollywood luminaries and a U.S. government caught with conflicting objectives.
Until last month, only the Scientologists and human-rights observers were paying much attention to what was going on in Germany....
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