---

Islam

---

Protestant Christians in Pakistan’s Punjab province were searching for a place of worship Wednesday, February 3, after angry Muslims apparently attacked their partly constructed church, injuring scores of worshippers.

Christians are a minority in Islamic Pakistan and rights investigators say there has been an increase in anti-Christian violence, with at least 130 Christians killed last year.
» Full Story

Geert Wilders, the radical anti-Muslim Dutch politician, will seek to test free speech in Britain next month when he makes a second attempt to visit the House of Lords to screen a controversial film equating Islam to Nazism.

Lord Ahmed, a Muslim peer, has promised to mobilise 10,000 Muslims to block Mr Wilders from entering the House of Lords.
» Full Story

The agreement between Rifqa Bary and her parents to settle their conflict through counseling has ended without a single meeting between the parents and their daughter, according to a motion filed in Franklin County Juvenile Court.

The parents – Mohamed and Aysha Bary – are withdrawing their consent to resolve the case. The girl turns 18 on August 10.
» Full Story

Islamic extremists shot the leader of an underground church to death outside the capital city of Somalia this month and have threatened to kill his wife, his tearful widow told Compass.

Having learned that he had left Islam to become a Christian, Somali militants from the Islamic extremist al Shabaab murdered 41-year-old Mohammed Ahmed Ali at about noon on Jan. 1, Amina Ibrahim Hassan said.
» Full Story

A daring protest and a high-profile funeral here on Monday (Jan. 25) for a 12-year-old Christian girl who died from torture and malnourishment has cast a rare spotlight on abuse of the Christian poor in Pakistan.

In an uncommon challenge in the predominantly Muslim nation, the Christian parents of Shazia Bashir Masih protested police unresponsiveness to the alleged violence against their daughter by Muslim attorney Chaudhary Muhammad Naeem and his family and his attempt to buy their silence after her death. The house servant died on Friday (Jan. 22) after working eight months in Naeem’s house.
» Full Story

At least 14 Christians have been detained in Iranian prisons for weeks without legal counsel in the past few months as last year’s crackdown has continued, sources said.

In the southwestern city of Shiraz, seven Christians were being detained as of Jan. 11, another source said, and most of them may face charges of apostasy, or leaving Islam.
» Full Story

PARIS — A parliamentary panel will recommend on Tuesday that France ban face-covering Muslim veils in public locations such as hospitals and schools, but not in private buildings or on the street, the group’s president said.

The decision appeared to indicate that the 32-member, multiparty panel had heeded warnings that a full ban of the all-encompassing veils would be unfair, possibly unconstitutional, and could even cause trouble in a country where Islam is the second largest religion.

A 2004 law already bans Muslim headscarves in classrooms.
» Full Story

A young Christian shopkeeper was sentenced to a life term in prison and fined more than $1,000 last week following a dubious conviction of desecrating the Quran, according to Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace.

A conviction for blaspheming Muhammad (Section 295-C) is punishable by death under Pakistani’s notorious blasphemy laws. Widely condemned by the international community as easily invoked to settle personal enmities, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have come under review in recent months, but to no avail.
» Full Story

Muslim groups reacted angrily Wednesday after it emerged that the U.S. military is using combat rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.

Army officials have said they will investigate whether a Michigan defense contractor violated federal procurement rules by stamping references to Bible verses on the gun sights used by American forces to kill enemy fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan.
» Full Story

Americans are more than twice as likely to express prejudice against Muslims than they are against Christians, Jews or Buddhists, a new survey found.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they have little or no knowledge of Islam. Still, a majority dislike the faith.
» Full Story

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders is due to appear in an Amsterdam court on Wednesday on charges of religious insult and anti-Islam incitement.

The prosecution claims his 2008 short film “Fitna“, as well as statements made in interviews and speeches, incite hatred against Muslims. Wilders has called Islam a “backward” culture and the Koran a “fascist book that incites people to violence.”
» Full Story

Over 40 people have been killed in the Nigerian city of Jos in the country’s Plateau State, after around 200 Muslim youths attacked Christians near a Catholic Church sparking retaliatory violence, Christian rights investigators said Monday, January 18.

According to one observer the apparent refusal by authorities to prosecute those responsible for previous attacks against Christians contributed to Sunday’s clashes.
» Full Story

Islamists burned and looted a Protestant church in northern Algeria in an attack that was fueled by violence against Christians elsewhere in the Muslim and Arab world, church officials.

Churches and rights groups say there has been a crackdown on Christian converts in this mainly Muslim nation since 2006, when a controversial law was passed demanding non-Muslim congregations seek permits from regional authorities.
» Full Story

Christian leaders in Malaysia refused Tuesday to stop using the word ”Allah” for God despite attacks on churches in a religious crisis that has raised concerns about the erosion of minority rights in the Muslim-majority country.

Nine churches have been attacked over the past few days, triggered by a Dec. 31 High Court decision that overturned a government ban on the use of ”Allah” by Roman Catholics in the Malay-language edition of their main newspaper.
» Full Story

The Islamist group Islam4UK, which planned a march through Wootton Bassett, and its “parent” organisation, al-Muhajiroun, are to be banned under new legislation outlawing the “glorification” of terrorism.

The decision to proscribe the two organisations, which will have to be endorsed by parliament, will make it a criminal offence punishable by a prison term of up to 10 years to be a member of either organisation, or to attend or address their meetings
» Full Story

Infuriated by an alleged anti-Islamic comment by a mentally ill man, more than a dozen Muslims attacked his Christian family here last week, beating his 20-year-old sister unconscious and breaking her leg.

The woman’s father, Aleem Mansoor, said his daughter Elishba Aleem went unconscious after being struck in the head with an iron rod in the Dec. 28 attack. Mansoor said a Muslim known as Mogal beat him and his daughter with the rod on the street in front of their apartment home after falsely accusing his 32-year old son, who suffers from schizophrenia, of blasphemy.
» Full Story

The attack on a Danish political cartoonist “runs totally against the teachings and values of Islam,” the umbrella organization representing Muslim countries has said.

If the attack was a reaction to Kurt Westergaard’s drawing of the Muslim prophet Mohammed with a turban shaped as a bomb, “then it should be rejected and condemned by all Muslims,” the Organization of the Islamic Conference said in a statement Sunday.
» Full Story

A Muslim terrorist armed with an ax and a knife tried to enter the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban sparked Muslim outrage — and outrageous behavior — throughout the world when a Danish newspaper published it in 2005.

Westergaard is one of 12 cartoonists whose drawings of the Muslim prophet were first published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
» Full Story

As Western Europe is plunged into a new bout of anxiety over the impact of post-colonial Muslim immigration — reeling in varying ways from the implications of a recent Swiss vote to ban minarets altogether — some scholars see a destructive dynamic, with assimilation feeding a reaction that, in turn, spawns resentment, particularly among young Muslims.
» Full Story

Mali remains proudly moderate, and most people here dismiss extremist ideology as too foreign and brutal to be accepted. But Mali in some sense has become a test case as its government has accepted tens of millions of dollars in American aid intended to stave off what U.S. officials say could be a growing threat of radicalism in parts of Africa where Muslims make up the majority.
» Full Story

A Muslim chef who lost a claim of religious discrimination against Scotland Yard after complaining he was forced to cook sausages and bacon faces a legal bill of more than £75,000, the Daily Mail reports.

(Guess why he lost his claim…)
» Full Story

In response to a Swiss vote banning the construction of new mosque minarets, a group of Muslims this month went into a church building in eastern Turkey and threatened to kill a priest unless he tore down its bell tower, according to an advocacy group.

The threats may reflect a larger and well-established pattern of anti-Christian attitudes in Turkey.
» Full Story

While Muslim leaders criticized the Nov. 29 vote in Switzerland that banned construction of minarets, they don’t support Christians who want to build churches in some Islamic countries.

Restrictions in Egypt have exacerbated sectarian violence and discrimination, say Copts, a 2,000 year old denomination that comprises about 10 percent of the population.
» Full Story

Lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church urged a court Monday to let Christians use “Allah” as a translation for God and overturn a government ban that has become a symbol of religious grievances in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

In 2008 The Herald, a weekly magazine circulated among the country’s 850,000 Catholics, nearly lost its publishing licence for using the disputed word.
» Full Story

BERN, Switzerland – Around 700 Swiss Muslims peacefully protested against their country’s minaret ban on Saturday, with speakers denouncing what they called a hate campaign against Islam.

The protest in the capital, Bern, was not supported by the country’s main Muslim organizations.
» Full Story

---

Islam Research Resources

---

Our Islam news feed with only items about Islam

Books about Islam

Apologetics Research Resources on Islam

---

Factlet

---

---

Advertisement

---

---

About Religion News Blog

---

Religion News Blog (RNB), published by Apologetics Index, highlights news items and other resources on world religions, cults, religious sects, new religious movements, alternative religions, abusive churches and - to a lesser extent - related issues (e.g. ethics, human rights).

The information is provided for research and educational purposes.

RNB's non-profit news clipping service is used by - among others - Christian apologists, countercult professionals, anticult organizations, cult experts, teachers, religion professionals, reporters and other researchers.

Categories / News Trackers:
Samples of the hundreds of religious news subjects covered in Religion News Blog include (click links for respective news trackers): the Alpha Course, Alternative Healing, Catholic Church, Christianity, Cults, Falun Gong, Hate Groups, Interfaith issues, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism / Mormon Church, Polygamy, Religion Trends, Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, Unification Church, Wicca / Witchcraft, and many more.
[More info : How to link]

---

Most Read about Islam

---

1. Michael Jackson Confirms Conversion to Islam
2. Muslim Woman Gives Sex Advice on Arab TV
3. Cartoons editor sent on leave
4. Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are.
5. Barack Obama's Background Crosses Religious Boundaries
6. Netherlands Islamic community to hit 1 million in 2006
7. Ex-Muslim turns her lens on a taboo
8. John Hagee warns against radical Islam
9. Women protest Sheikh's comments with bikini march
10. The veil is banned in UK hospitals

---

Headlines by Email or RSS

---

RNB's RSS feed | What is this?

Subscribe by Email | What is this?

---

Use Our Headlines

---

Free: Place RNB Headlines on your website! It's easy: just copy and paste