Bharat Rakshak

Al-Jazeera, Salon and The Guardian have launched scathing attacks on the New Atheists because of their criticisms of Islam. Are Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins being unfairly labeled as bigots?

An American peace activist tells Press TV that the US-backed Salafi terrorist groups operating inside Syria represent an anti-social and anti-human interpretation of Islam.

The leader of the foreign-backed al-Nusra militant group fighting against the Syrian government has pledged allegiance to the al-Qaeda chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Meanwhile, former leader of Syria’s opposition National Coalition Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib tried to distance the bloc from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front following Baghdadi's statement, saying, “There has never been and there will never be a decision at the command level to coordinate with al-Nusra.” The foreign-sponsored unrest in Syria began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The documentary, directed by Faris Kermani, details seven pilgrims’ journeys to Mecca as well as describing seven of the most significant holy sites in the Muslim faith: the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, the Imam Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, the Mosque of Djenné in Mali, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and the Kaaba in Mecca.

The film also discussed the five pillars of Islam, the concepts on which the entire faith is founded upon, and the historical impact of Islam, in both the eastern and western world.

Tying in a personal, emotional journey, with the major symbols, and ideologies of Islam, the film paints a factual, yet sympathetic portrait of Muslim culture.

What’s the most important take-home message for readers?

For the Muslims at the center of this book — and all those who identify with Zaytuna’s purpose — America is home.

The April 4 agitations of the breast-baring iconoclasts serve few Muslim feminists. Many of us are pro-women and pro-Islam and we insist on that fusion.

"International Topless Jihad Day"--organized in several European capitals on April 4 by the feminist group Femen--was a setback for women in the Muslim world.

All it did was give religious extremists a good reason to denounce feminism as an importation of the West that insults cultures and religions.

But Femen's leader, Inna Schevchenko, seems intent on ignoring that message. In an April 8 retort to her Muslim female critics in the Huffington Post U.K., Schevchenko only intensifies a culturally tone-deaf narrative that says Islam is oppressive, Muslim men are violent and Muslim women are voiceless.

Here's a sample of what Schevchenko writes in the piece: "So, sisters (I prefer to talk to women anyway, even knowing that behind them are bearded men with knives). You say to us that you are against Femen, but we are here for you and for all of us, as women are the modern slaves and it's never a question of color of skin . . .You say you live the way you want. Being fifth wife in harem the maximum you can be is the favorite wife . . . Right? You say we talk about you because we are irritated only by bearded men who pray five times per day."

She goes on to say: "Sisters, we don't care how many times your men are praying, but we care a lot what they do in between. We care a lot about violence and aggression, we care a lot when your fathers, brothers and husbands are raping and killing, when they call to stone your sisters, we care a lot when they burn embassies etc, and all that for Allah!"

Femen, based in Kiev, Ukraine, and founded in 2008, disserves feminism if it chooses to ignore what many Muslim women say. That in itself is a form of silencing. Many Muslim female social activists don't question Islam. Instead, we say a proper interpretation of Islam respects women's rights.

Islamophobic Protests
It's also legitimate to denounce the group as Islamophobic based on what happened on April 4, when activists in Paris, Berlin, Kiev and as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil demonstrated in solidarity with the Tunisian Femen activist Amina Tyler, who has been in hiding since March 8, the day she posted pictures of herself topless on Facebook's Femen Tunisia page.

In an April 3 demonstration in Paris, on the eve of International Topless Jihad Day, three Femen activists--two French and one Tunisian--burned the Islamic flag in front of the Grand Mosque. That flag contains the declaration of the belief in the oneness of God and acceptance of Muhammad as the prophet of God. Burning it is blasphemous for Muslims.

Targeting Islamic Symbols
The group's reckless Islamophobia is impossible to deny after this April 4 broadside attack on symbols of Islamic culture. In addition to favoring mosques as demonstration sites, many Femen activists -- who are known for protesting topless with slogans written across their chest -- wore turbans and beards. Some drew the Islamic crescents on their nipples, shown in a photo that was on the group's website against a background of green, the color of Islam, until yesterday.

Organizers also appropriated the term "jihad," which is used in the Quran to mean two types of "struggle": one that is spiritual and one that is physical (Holy war).

This crude attack on the Muslim world uses women as a shield. But it does nothing to seriously address the problem of religious extremism that restricts women in all societies.

If Schevchenko were a true feminist, she would respect what many Muslims are saying.

Since April 4 our message has been loud and clear: Muslim women don't need to be liberated by Femen.

The hashtag #MuslimahPride went viral on Twitter on April 4 to denounce Femen's campaign. The Facebook page "Muslim women against Femen . . . Muslimah Pride Day" launched on April 6. "We as Muslim women, and those who stand with us, need to show Femen and their supporters that their actions are counterproductive and we as Muslim women oppose it," wrote the page's authors. "So please post pictures of your beautiful selves, whether you wear hijab, niqab or not. This is an opportunity for Muslim women to get a say and show people that we have a voice too, that we come in many different shapes and sizes, that we object to the way we are depicted in the West, we object to the way we are lumped into one homogenous group without a voice of agency of our own."

Public lashings. Religious extremists seizing power. A gay blogger with his throat slashed. Few of the million annual visitors to the Maldives will recognise the hellish side of these heavenly islands

Although his parents are white, Brother Ali, a muslim since the 1990s, says he “had elder, black teachers who taught me how to arrive at a sense of dignity and self-worth.

“Hip hop became, the way I understood it, a voice for people who were not allowed to have a voice in a public space.

“Jazz proved that black people were intelligent and blues music proved that black people were complex and deep and hip hop brought all of that together. Before I rapped, in school I used to break-dance. Hip hop became a way for people to engage me beyond being a freak.”

Three of five Ohio inmates sentenced to death for an historic prison riot plan a hunger strike starting on the uprising's 20th anniversary Thursday to protest the state's refusal to allow them sit-down media interviews on their cases.

The state has had two decades to tell its side of the story and the inmates known as the Lucasville Five should have their chance, Siddique Abdullah Hasan said in an exclusive telephone interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"We have been suffering very torturous conditions for two decades," said Hasan, formerly Carlos Sanders. "We have never been given the opportunity completely to speak about our cases, to speak to the media _ because the media has an enormous amount of power. They can get our message out to the court of public opinion."

Twelve staff members were taken hostage on April 11, 1993, Easter Sunday, when inmates overtook the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Hasan was convicted for helping plan the murder of Corrections Officer Robert Vallandingham, among 10 who died during the 11-day uprising, the longest deadly prison riot in U.S. history. Hasan denies he was involved in planning or carrying out the killing.

Hasan, Keith LaMar and Jason Robb, all sentenced to death after the uprising, will take their last meals Wednesday evening ahead of their protest at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, Hasan said. Also participating will be Gregory Curry, a participant in the rebellion sentenced to life in prison....

The United States boycotted as “inflammatory” a meeting on international justice on Wednesday organized by a Serbian politician who heads the U.N. General Assembly - a session some nations say was intended merely to complain about the treatment of Serbs in war crimes tribunals.

The meeting and panel discussion were set up by former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, who is serving as president of the 193-nation assembly. Some U.N. diplomats have privately accused Jeremic of using the General Assembly to promote his own career and his home country.

European and other Western nations have said Wednesday's session on international justice was a thinly veiled attempt to attack the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which Serbia has criticized. Jordan and Canada joined the United States in boycotting the debate.

Jordan's U.N. Ambassador Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein told a small group of reporters that Serbia's approach to the session on international justice was “almost an impeachable offense” - ostensibly referring to Jeremic's largely ceremonial post as the head of the General Assembly.

Jordan, Britain and others complained that the victims of Srebrenica had no voice in Wednesday's debate.

Carl wrote:Serbian politician's UN session boycotted

The United States boycotted as “inflammatory” a meeting on international justice on Wednesday organized by a Serbian politician who heads the U.N. General Assembly - a session some nations say was intended merely to complain about the treatment of Serbs in war crimes tribunals.

The meeting and panel discussion were set up by former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, who is serving as president of the 193-nation assembly. Some U.N. diplomats have privately accused Jeremic of using the General Assembly to promote his own career and his home country.

European and other Western nations have said Wednesday's session on international justice was a thinly veiled attempt to attack the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which Serbia has criticized. Jordan and Canada joined the United States in boycotting the debate.

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Mauritania (AP) — A young Canadian man {Asian convert} who headed to North Africa to study the Quran is now serving two years in a Mauritanian prison after authorities say he was recruited to train at an al-Qaida camp in northern Mali, an official said Thursday.

'A Blessed Appeal for the Mahdarah (School) of Shaykh Muhammad bin Salik bin Fahfu (may Allah safeguard him)', was launched with the delivery partner, Muslim Hands, in the presence of al-Habib Kazim as-Saqqaf and Syed Lakhte Hassanain Shah (the Chairman of Muslim Hands) at the Objectives Matter Conference on 26th of Jumada al-Awwal/7th April 2013.

The Mahdarah of Shaykh Muhammad (known to the world as Murabit al-Hajj) is situated in the Tuwamarat Village, which is located in the Tagant Region of Mauritania. This Mahdarah has benefited thousands of students throughout the years and from those known to the Western World are the likes of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Ustadh Yahya Rhodus and Ustadh Ibrahim Osi-Efa.

Currently, the Mahdara, which accommodates approximately 250 students of knowledge, is in great need of both immediate and long-term assistance. The Trust, with the help of Muslim Hands, have identified four phases of support and through your generous donations we hope we can fulfil the needs of those at the Mahdarah.

For more information regarding the Mahdarah and the Appeal, please view the official Blessed Appeal documentary "A Blessed Appeal - Serving the Awliya - Mauritania " at http://vimeo(dot)com/63510045

The Appeal

Phase One: The construction of a fully concrete Ground Water Well having a depth of around 70 metres down into the mountain and a diameter of 1.5 metres - £31,500

Phase Two: The purcase and installation of Two Solar Panels; one for the existing borehole to replace the damaged and costly diesel generators there and the second one for the new ground water well to pump water from the wells to the surface - £11,000 (£5,500 each)

Phase Three: Construction of Student Accommodation Block (each block measures 5 x 6 metres, thus providing 30 square metres of floor space, and would house eight students) - £5,500

Phase Four: Student Support & Maintenance Grants - £240 per student per year
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Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it. The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain's population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe's Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys' names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza. Europe's low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society. The altered population mix has far-reaching implications for education, housing, welfare, labour, the arts and everything in between. It could have a critical impact on foreign policy: a study was submitted to the US Air Force on how America's relationship with Europe might evolve. Yet EU officials admit that these issues are not receiving the attention they deserve. Jerome Vignon, the director for employment and social affairs at the European Commission, said that the focus of those running the EU had been on asylum seekers and the control of migration rather than the integration of those already in the bloc. "It has certainly been underestimated - there is a general rhetoric that social integration of migrants should be given as much importance as monitoring the inflow of migrants." But, he said, the rhetoric had rarely led to policy. How dramatic are the population changes? Everyone is aware that certain neighbourhoods of certain cities in Europe are becoming more Muslim, and that the change is gathering pace. But raw details are hard to come by as the data is sensitive: many countries in the EU do not collect population statistics by religion. EU numbers on general immigration tell a story on their own. In the latter years of the 20th century, the 27 countries of the EU attracted half a million more people a year than left. "Since 2002, however," the latest EU report says, "net migration into the EU has roughly tripled to between 1.6 million and two million people per year." The increased pace has made a nonsense of previous forecasts. In 2004 the EU thought its population would decline by 16 million by 2050. Now it thinks it will increase by 10 million by 2060. Britain is expected to become the most populous EU country by 2060, with 77 million inhabitants. Right now it has 20 million fewer people than Germany. Italy's population was expected to fall precipitously; now it is predicted to stay flat.

My cousin and I are staring outside the window… we are looking at the garden where my male cousin and his friends are playing… this is the garden where we used to play together… they used to be our friends once upon a time… these are the boys we used to play with… what happened? Why are we prisoners at home, while they play ball outside with all freedom… what did we do? Did we grow older? Did our bodies change? Did we become an object of temptation that needs to be covered from people’s eyes? Aren’t those the boys we knew since we were children? What changed? Why are we strangers? Why do I run and hide whenever I hear one of their voices? Is it just because the pitch of his voice changed? Is that why we aren’t friends anymore? Are we supposed to act differently towards one another? Different to how we acted just yesterday? We started to act shy and anxious whenever we’d speak… we stopped playing with one another… My cousin and I began spending our spare time watching Mexican soap operas, as if we were in our 50s…

I am at university… I see some people distributing a small religious book… “Temptations of a Woman”…Her hair… her feet… her eyes, and “thus, a woman must cover one of her eyes as both of them together are tempting”…I swear this is what I read in this book!... it’s as if there is nothing left in this world to talk about and scrutinize other than a woman and how she is a temptation…I decided to observe men’s looks…I wanted to know which women would attract men with her temptation… in front of me walks a woman wearing a tight Abaya (long black cover)… aha!.. I found her… she is an object of temptation… I continue watching… in front of me walks a woman with a baggy Abaya, however, with an uncovered face…the man stares at her… aha! So her face is also a temptation… a third woman walks in front of me... her face is covered and she is wearing a baggy Abaya from top to toe… the man is staring at her! Huh? I don’t understand… what is so tempting about a black Abaya? No eyes, no feet… What is this man staring at? At that moment I realized that clothing has nothing to do with it… men would stare on all occasions… however, he, with his broad shoulders and his hair, eyes and lips isn’t considered an object of temptation, even if all the women in the world started at him… he is a man…he shouldn’t hide in his home… no one calls him a jewel... at that moment I wished I wasn’t a jewel. I wished to be a free man…

And so the days went by…

I am in a Western country... women are walking around me…one is wearing pants... the other is wearing a short skirt…another wears shorts…men and women are walking side by side… it is strange... no one is staring… why don’t I see the looks of men I saw in my country? Those looks that made a woman feel naked… those looks that I hated… the ones that made me hate being on this earth, and hate being born a woman… those looks that deny me my humanity…why don’t I see those looks here? All the women are dressed up… why don’t I see those looks even though all the women are attractive here? I saw one women run and laugh… I remembered that I wasn’t allowed to run once I hit puberty… I remembered my aunt’s window… I remembered I was an object of temptation that must be covered… I remembered that a man in my country wears white, while I am covered in black… I asked myself, why don’t men wear black? Why don’t men cover their faces? And I couldn’t find the answer…

And so the days go by…

Babek says he was jailed and beaten in Iran for Christian preaching

Increasing numbers of Iranians are settling in the former Soviet state of Georgia. Some say they are being forced to move because of Iran's poor economy, hit hard by Western sanctions. Others blame persecution by the authorities in Tehran.

The weekly magazine Aryana may be printed in Georgia but it is written in Farsi. That is because it is catering to the growing number of Iranians moving here - since its launch seven months ago, its circulation has quadrupled.

...

Its editor and owner, Sara Ghazi, says that people in Iran are struggling to cope with rampant inflation. And she feels, as a journalist, restricted.

"I could never work there because I like to write what I think. And that's not free in Iran. They control what to write and how to think. That's not me."

Georgia is an attractive option for many: It is close to Iran, the economy is growing and Iranians do not need a visa...

Dollar-driven
For Iranian toy manufacturer Babak Amin, leaving Iran is an economic necessity.

I met him at a new consultancy in Tbilisi, called the Georgian-Iranian Business Centre, which gives advice to Iranians about how to open a business here. Consultants see up to 15 Iranians a day, who are looking to open a company or buy property in Georgia.

THE green movement is now sweeping nations that have finally opened their eyes to the detrimental effects of human behavior on the planet and the erratic climatic changes that have occurred as a result of human activities. This trendy movement calls for green buildings, green schools, water conservation, and using public transportation to reduce the number of cars on the road and thus reduce the harmful vehicle emissions that contribute to air pollution.

Environmental preservation, respecting the Earth and its resources, and going green is not new in Islam but Muslims have lost their connection with Islamic traditions and have forgotten their bond to the Earth.

MEND, operating from Nigeria's south, says it will attack Muslims to protect Christians in Nigeria.

Starting May 31, Nigeria's oil militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said it will target mosques and Islamic institutions, in a new terror campaign, "in defence of Christianity."

Calls from some legislators to ban American Muslims from following Islamic law are born of a "bogeyman fear" that Muslims will try to impose their way of life on others of different faiths, an imam and author of books on Islam said Sunday at Congregation Beth El in Voorhees.

"It's illogical. It's a fear tactic. It's stupid," Imam Sohaib Sultan told more than 100 people who attended "Islamic Sharia Law: Myths and Facts," an interfaith event hosted by Jewish Catholic Muslim Dialogue of Southern New Jersey.
...
Sultan, the Muslim life coordinator and chaplain at Princeton University and author of The Koran for Dummies, said proposals such as the one in Tennessee violate Muslims' First Amendment rights.

"Let it be clear in this room and beyond this room: When people talk about regulating and imposing bans on sharia, they are regulating and imposing bans on Islam itself," he said.
...
As he defended the code, Sultan also said it had been misconstrued by some Muslims who invoke sharia when "in reality, they are discriminating against the rights of women," he said. "There are too many instances of societies that do that."

Addressing reports of accused adulterers being stoned to death in Islamic countries, Sultan said, "The question becomes: Is this really sharia?"

"Well, yes and no," he said.
...
The Quran describes Jews and Christians in honorable terms, as fellow "people of the book," Sultan said.

He said Shia-Sunni violence had to be viewed in a political and historical context rather than as a product of Islam.

As for the violent protests in response to depictions of Muhammad, "a lot of disenfranchised Muslims" feel their traditions and culture are under attack, Sultan said. "You have to understand the psychology of people living under broken nation-states."

Circumstances in Egypt will not improve unless Sharia is applied, Jihad Movement Mufti Sayed Imam said.

Imam said the Afghanistan’s Taliban model and Somali Islamic rule are the best systems and most able to protect society from “thuggery” and rape.

BANGKOK: A shadowy anti-Muslim movement known as 969 is spreading throughout central Myanmar, threatening the country's historic democratic transition.

Pamphlets, stickers, DVDs and internet postings are spreading hatred towards the country's Muslim minority following violence last month that left 43 people dead and turned Muslim neighbourhoods in central Mynamar to ashen ruins.

The surge in so-called Islamophobia has emerged as a major challenge for Myanmar's reformist government with President Thein Sein calling for his country to learn from the violence and instability during a speech marking the start of Myanmar's four-day New Year festival.

Muslims who account for an estimated four percent of Myanmar's 60 million people have mostly lived peacefully alongside Buddhists for generations.

But Nyunt Maung Shein, president of the country's Islamic Affairs Council, said all Muslims are now worried their future.

“How can we live in a Buddhist society? Why are we so miserable that our men and woman, children and students are brutally killed?” he said.

“Muslims are scapegoats in this transition period from the brutal junta.”

Buddhists led by influential monks are behind the apparently well organised movement which encourages Buddhists to boycott the businesses of Muslims.

Radical monks who were at the forefront of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement are widely viewed with reverence in the country.

The three numbers refer to various attributes of the Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood.

One of the movement's leaders is Mandalay-based monk Wiseitta Biwuntha – better known as the Venerable Wirathu – who has branded Muslims as the “enemy” and accused them of being responsible for Myanmar's crimes.

The Venerable Wirathu, who describes himself as a “Burmese bin Laden,” was jailed for 25 years in 2003 for instigating anti-Muslim riots but was freed last year in an amnesty with hundreds of other political prisoners.

“We have a slogan: When you eat, eat 969, when you go, go 969, when you buy, buy 969,” he told a journalist last month.

The Venerable Wirathu began giving a series of controversial 969 speeches four months ago but has not been stopped by Burmese authorities.

“My duty is to spread this mission,” he said.

The 969 stickers are increasingly visible in shops windows, taxis and homes in the country's biggest cities Rangoon and Mandalay which have Muslim minorities of up to 20 percent, according to residents.

The Venerable Wirathu said the aim of the group is the encourage Buddhists to support one another's businesses and to marry within the faith.

“For Buddhists, it has to be this. I just work for the people who believe in Buddhist teachings,” he said.

The apparent trigger for the latest violence was a quarrel between a Muslim gold shop owner and Buddhists in the town of Meiktila.

Soon afterwards a monk was killed by Muslims.

Three Muslims who were involved were swiftly jailed for 14 years.

The violence followed clashes last year between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in western Rakhine state that forced tens of thousands of people into squalid refugee camps.

The United Nations has described the Rohingya as among the world's most persecuted people.

Despite the fact that they have lived in Rakhine state for centuries most Burmese see them as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

In recent months thousands have taken to unsafe boats to try to reach Malaysia where there is a large Rohingya population.

Mr Thein Sein said in his New Year address on Sunday that his government had not expected the “shocking and saddening” events, adding “during this long road to democracy, we have to sustain our successes and take lessons from the losses and be prepared to face the challenges ahead.”

In a an earlier televised address he vowed a tough response to those behind attacks.

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has indicated support of allowing women there to drive.

He says that would help the kingdom’s campaign to cut down on the number of foreign workers.

few realise that in the religious schools dotted among their hotels, modern-day slaveholders are abusing and starving thousands of West African children who are forced onto the streets to beg for their unscrupulous masters.

At least 50 000 boys known as talibes - the vast majority aged between four and 12 - are forced to beg in Senegal's streets most of the day, every day, by often brutally abusive Qur’anic teachers known as marabouts.

In the Muslim-majority nation where these religious leaders wield enormous social and political power, children have long been entrusted to marabouts who educate them in residential Qur’anic schools, called daaras.

Let's face it, all monotheist believers run the risk of discriminating other religions. How can you not, when you believe there's only one God as against other religions?

What non-Muslims in Malaysia fear most are the extremists who use the name of Islam like Ibrahim Ali, Hasan Ali, Ridhuan Tee Abdullah, etc, who are following Umno's brand of Islam to discriminate other races and religions and use the house of God, the holy mosques, to promote their political objectives and condemnations during holy sermons.

Say's tweets included: "You say the rivers will flow with wine, is heaven a tavern? You say each believer will receive two women, is heaven a brothel?" according to the indictment. {This is a quote from Persian poet Omar Khayyam}

In another, Say joked about the short duration of a cleric's traditional Islamic call to prayer. The tweet asked a rhetorical question to the chanting cleric: "What's the hurry? Lover waiting?" the indictment said.
Say also was convicted of retweeting allegedly offensive posts, such as, "I am not sure if you have realized it, but where there is scum, a lowlife, a thief or a fool, s/he is always an Allahist. Is this a paradox?"

Faruk Logoglu, deputy international affairs chairman of the nation's main opposition party, CHP, called the sentence a "new link in the long chain of assaults on the freedom of expression and freedom of conscience in Turkey."

"This is shameful for Turkish democracy," he said.

Say won't have to serve his sentence as long as he doesn't commit a similar crime within the next five years.

DETROIT—A judge has finalized a $700,000 settlement between McDonald's and members of Michigan's Muslim community over claims a Detroit-area restaurant falsely advertised food as prepared according to Islamic law.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Kathleen Macdonald gave the OK at a hearing Wednesday. She's overseen the case and refereed objections from outside groups since a preliminary deal was announced in January.

Ahmed Ahmed, the Dearborn Heights man who represents plaintiffs in the class-action, claims he bought a chicken sandwich in September 2011 at a Dearborn McDonald's but found it wasn't halal.

The settlement calls for distributing the money to Ahmed, a Detroit health clinic, Dearborn's Arab American National Museum and Ahmed's lawyers.

A recent court decision showed these pieces of fabric still have the same power to inflame public debate. Is it a feminist issue? A secular issue? Or just plain bigotry?

A new exhibition aims to celebrate the role 70 Muslims played in saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

The Righteous Muslim Exhibition is being launched at the Board of Deputies of British Jews in Bloomsbury, central London.

IN RECENT decades the milestones passed by Egypt’s ancient but long-dwindling Jewish community have mostly been sad ones. Before the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 Egypt’s Jews numbered nearly 100,000. An eclectic mix of Mizrahis or Eastern Jews, Sephardim from around the Mediterranean and Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe, they included an Arabic-speaking working class indistinguishable from other Egyptians as well as a polyglot upper crust of bankers, industrialists, entertainers, parliamentarians and cabinet ministers.

Xenophobic nationalism exacerbated by the birth of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent wars in 1956 and 1967, prompted an inexorable exodus. By the 1970s every Jewish school, hospital and club had closed. Egypt’s few remaining synagogues, under heavy police protection, struggled to achieve a weekly minyan, the quota of ten male worshippers required for a communal service. Vandals and squatters invaded Jewish cemeteries. The rich Jewish contribution to Egyptian life was all but forgotten.

In recent years things had improved a bit for those Jews, numbering well below 100 and most of them elderly women, who remained. This was despite the coming to power of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose rhetoric has often veered into anti-Semitic diatribes. Among educated Egyptians there has been a revival of interest in the country’s 20th-century past, or perhaps more accurately, of nostalgia for what is now seen as a more genteel, cosmopolitan age. Unthinkable to generations of Egyptians weaned on imagery of Israelis and Jews in general as villains, Cairo cinemas last month drew full houses with the screening of a documentary called "The Jews of Egypt", featuring interviews with elderly exiles pining for their lost homeland.

“A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds that they were too handsome and that the Commission (for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices) members feared female visitors could fall for them,” the newspaper reported.

Saudi Arabia is a deeply religious and conservative society, which forbids women from interacting with unrelated males.
The UAE released an official statement indicating that the religious police were anxious over the unexpected presence of an unnamed female artist in the pavilion.

Boston bombing: How an Indian-American family was dragged through hell by reckless cyberjunkies …………….

To others who were worried that the Boston bombing would be tied to Islamist extremism, he was a "Hindu brahmin." One cyberwarrior tweeting under the handle @DrAQ_Khan gloated: "The alleged suspect for Boston bombings was a Hindu Sunil Tripathi. We urge Western media to now showcase all Hindus as Terrorists." ……………………………………

More than 18,000 have embraced Islam since the Centre’s establishment in 1993

A fatwa published this week by Morocco's higher council of religious scholars (CSO) calling for the death penalty for Muslims who renounce their faith has sparked fierce controversy in the country.

The scholars, who represent official Islam in Morocco, said in their edict, published in Tuesday's edition of Arabic-language daily Akhbar al-Youm, that Muslims who reject their faith “should be condemned to death.”

The fatwa, which has provoked strong reactions, dates back to April 2012 when a legal report was being prepared by the government, but it was not published at the time, according to local media.

Mahjoub El Hiba, a senior human rights official in the government, denied in a statement to the official MAP news agency having requested any such fatwa from the council of Islamic scholars, as Akhbar al-Youm had claimed.

“What was published in the document attributed to the CSO does not concern our government and commits us to nothing,” Hiba told AFP.

“I am not authorised to request advice or fatwas from the CSO. I do not have to comment on what a constitutional body like this does,” he added.

The CSO is the only institution entitled to issue fatwas in Morocco.

The ministry of Islamic affairs declined to comment on the issue.

Morocco's penal code does not explicitly prohibit apostasy, which is illegal in most Muslim countries, and punishable by death in some states such as Saudi Arabia, although in practice people are rarely executed for renouncing their faith.

But Moroccan law states that “anyone attempting to undermine the faith of a Muslim or convert him to another religion” risks six months to three years in prison. - Sapa-AFP

arun wrote: With the emergence of the link, attempt by some Mohammadden to deflect blame for the terrorist attack onto a “Hindu Brahmin” comes to naught:

Boston bombing: How an Indian-American family was dragged through hell by reckless cyberjunkies …………….

To others who were worried that the Boston bombing would be tied to Islamist extremism, he was a "Hindu brahmin." One cyberwarrior tweeting under the handle @DrAQ_Khan gloated: "The alleged suspect for Boston bombings was a Hindu Sunil Tripathi. We urge Western media to now showcase all Hindus as Terrorists." ……………………………………

Singha wrote:http://www.grandestrategy.com/2009/06/r ... er-is.html

We all know of the ancient prophesy of the black flags of khorasan...

India is the only country offering a future in terms of what the nation state would be and how to accommodate languages, races and religions with all the difficulties that go with that. As a Muslim, i found it fascinating that this is the only place in the world where Muslims exert influence without fear. Muslims are better equipped in India than in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

liberals across the world have abdicated this responsibility, indulging in what i call left-wing Orientalism. Islamo-fascism is not the result of economic deprivation. It is an ideological war, based on a death cult — you can't use conventional socio-political wisdom to address this.

Unfortunately, the liberal Left, including socialist parties in America and India, doesn't admit they don't have it right. But they're making an error in thinking Islamo-fascism is linked with economic deprivation. Such thinkers should go on a sabbatical to Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Aligarh — they'd be in for the shock of their lives.

I put harsher responsibility on Indian Muslims because they are free, living in a democratic society. If they want to know what it's like to live under Islamic rule, they can see what`s happening in Pakistan.

Indian Muslims have the Islamo-fascists feeding on the culture of victimhood who do not want it to be solved. If the discrimination that they perceive ends then the Islamo-fascists have no fodder to feed on. So they want to make it worse for the Muslims by telling them not to integrate. I would ask a question: Why would Muslim parents not name their children after indigenous Indian names? Why do they have to constantly borrow from the Arabs or the Persians?

If the FBI was warned about Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his ties to radical Islam, Fox & Friends‘ Brian Kilmeade stated on Monday, why wasn’t he stopped before the attack? Pete Hegseth, of Concerned Veterans for America, joined Kilmeade to discuss the “poison” that is political correctness. It’s not about discrimination, he argued, but simply going after the root of the threats.Some, such as Rep. Peter King, have already called for increased surveillance of the Muslim community, asserting that to be the root of many such threats and attacks.“Political correctness is a poison to our security and defenses,” Hegseth contended. “It imposes a willful blindness, both at the macro level when unwilling to engage with radical Islamism or whatever you want to call it — if you’re not willing to call it what it is — and at the micro level, at the street level. When you’ve got a question, someone looks suspicious, you’re not sure if you should act — and then you add another layer, of, ‘Well, they look like they could be Muslim, I don’t want to offend them.’”It’s not just based on faith or race, he clarified, but on threat signs. Kilmeade recalled a Pakistani professor who said he didn’t mind being profiled at the airport because he wants to be safe. “Why can’t we go through that model in order to narrow down who the perpetrators might be?” he asked.Hegseth said Boston should result in a lesson learned, pointing to the suspect’s links to “radical ideology” and controversial mosques. We should know who’s there and what they’re talking about, he added, “because those have been the epicenters of this type of activity. Shame on us if we don’t now again learn our lesson.”It’s not discrimination, he reiterated. It’s A + B = C.