Author: Richard Ford

Source: The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3708850.ece

Muslims convicted of sex offences could opt out of treatment programmes intended to stop them offending because open discussion of their crimes is against their religion.

Ahtsham Ali, the prison service’s Muslim adviser, said that there was a “legitimate Islamic position” that criminals should not discuss...

Author: T. KEUNG HUI

Source: The News Observer

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1030288.html

A former Enloe High School teacher who sued after he was punished for inviting an anti-Islamic speaker to school will not receive any money nor have his personnel record cleared as part of a tentative settlement with the Wake County school system.

Under the agreement, released by the school board Tuesday, Robert Escamilla will drop his lawsuit...

Author: Eileen E. Flynn

Source: American-Statesman

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/08/0408razi.html

Members of Austin's religious community are rallying around a Muslim cleric who is being detained in West Texas and may be deported to Pakistan.

Imam Safdar Razi, who led a Northwest Austin mosque for six years before taking a job in Dearborn, Mich., in 2006, was arrested on immigration...

Author: Audrey Hudson

Source: The Washington Times

http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080408/NATION/282481717/1001

Religious, minority and civil rights activists are asking Homeland Security officials to screen their own airport screeners using video cameras to check whether passengers are being subjected to bias or profiling.

"We believe such controls are critical to ensuring that our...

Author: Caryle Murphy

Source: The Pew Forum/Religion News Service

http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=15348

A group of visiting Japanese scholars was making a routine courtesy call recently on King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz when the monarch raised a subject that, as he put it, had "obsessed me since two years ago."

Distressed by what he described as disintegrating family ties, a rise in atheism and "an imbalance of reason, ethics and...

Author: MARYAM ALI

Source: Southern California InFocus

http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/20862/514/

Last December when Kimberly Kanan was invited by her children’s school to discuss the Muslim holiday of Eid during the school’s study of traditions and cultures from around the world, she happily accepted the offer. But Kanan, an active parent of four, three of whom attend the same school where the presentation took place, did not...

Author: John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed

Source: The Daily Star

Author: Imad Shehadeh

Source: Christianity Today

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/aprilweb-only/115-22.0.html

The media in the East and West have recently been reporting the denunciation of evangelicals by the council of the Catholic and Orthodox bishops in Jordan. The bishops' denunciation was in support of the government's deportations of foreign missionaries, pastors, seminary students, and teachers. Some evangelical...

Author: Michael Drakulich

Source: Southtown Star

http://www.southtownstar.com/news/881002,040708ellison.article

The first Muslim elected to U.S. Congress shared some of his experiences as an elected official with those who hope to follow in his footsteps one day.

Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) was keynote speaker at the Muslim Youth Leadership Symposium, hosted by the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: The International Herald Tribune

Wire Service: AP

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/07/news/Netherlands-Quran-Film.php

A Dutch lawmaker who sparked protests across the Muslim world with a film criticizing the Quran is entitled to express his anti-Islamic views, a court ruled Monday, rejecting a request to muzzle him.

The court ruled that the views...

Author: Edmund Sanders

Source: The Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-census7apr07,0,7968192.story

Census-takers will soon fan out across Sudan's vast and famously inhospitable terrain in the first nationwide head count in 25 years.

But the checklist of questions won't include two hot issues that lie at the heart of this nation's recent history of conflict: religion and...

Author: Sharmila Ganapathy

Source: The Edge Daily

http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_26f94486-cb73c03a-1582a7c0-f1f015ea

Public outcry over an anti-Islam film “Fitna” and the ensuing boycott of Dutch products could strain bilateral business and economic relations, said the Netherlands’ ambassador to Malaysia Lody Embrechts.

...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7333344.stm

Vandals have desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest WWI cemetery, officials have said.

A pig's head was hung from one headstone and slogans insulting Islam and France's Muslim justice minister were daubed on other graves.

President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the attack as a "hateful act" and the "most inadmissible kind of racism".

Author: JULI S. CHARKES

Source: The New York Times

Author: Alexa James

Source: Times Herald-Record

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080405/NEWS/804050321/-1/NEWS

The male cadets join the Muslim men in the mosque's main foyer. Shoulder to shoulder, they bow to the east, as the Imam recites the Friday prayer.

The female cadets listen from a balcony two floors up, where the Muslim women pray. Their heads wrapped in white, they crowd...