This is Religion News Blog's news page on Islam. See our front page for more religion news.

An American imam who once led the mosque attended by Nalid Malik Hasan, the man suspected of shooting 13 people dead at the Fort Hood military base in Texas, has said the army major did not seem to be an extremist.

But a former aremy colleague quoted Hasan as saying Muslims should “rise up” and attack Americans in retaliation for the US war in Iraq.
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MILAN — An Italian judge says he has convicted 23 Americans of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in a CIA extraordinary rendition, AP reports.

The American suspects — all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents — are being tried in absentia and are considered fugitives.
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An epic film about Islam’s Prophet Mohammad backed by the producer of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Matrix” is being planned with the aim of “bridging cultures”.

Movie producer Barrie Osborne told Reuters, “The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam.”
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The Dutch are marking the fifth anniversary of the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim fanatic, a brutal killing that continues to shape politics in the Netherlands, AP writes.

Watch the movie Van Gogh was murdered for.
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A demonstration of Muslim hardliners calling for sharia law to be imposed in Britain was cancelled in London over the weekend amid planned counter-protests by democratic Muslims.

Anjem Choudary, leader of the radical Islamic group Al Muhajiroun, said that organisers of the Islam4UK demo had cancelled the march from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square on 31 October 2009 because of security concerns.

The Islamic Society of Britain, which was planning to join other organisations in staging a “dignified, non-violent” counter-demonstration, hailed the cancellation as a “great success”.
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A Coptic Christian blogger in Egypt entering his second year of prison without charge is being pressured to convert to Islam in exchange for his freedom, his attorneys said.

On Oct. 3, 2008, Hani Nazeer, a 28-year-old high school social worker from Qena, Egypt and author of the blog “Karz El Hob” (“Love Cherries”), was arrested by Egypt’s State Security Investigations (SSI) and sent to Burj Al-Arab prison.

Although police never charged him with any crime, Nazeer has been detained for more than a year under Egypt’s administrative imprisonment law.
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A Detroit imam shot and killed Wednesday in a gunfight with federal agents belonged to a Muslim separatist sect led by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, better known as 1960s militant H. Rap Brown, according to a federal complaint filed Wednesday.

The FBI says the dead man was an imam, or prayer leader, of a local faction of Ummah, a group that seeks to establish an Islamic state within the U.S
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Two Chicago men have been charged in what officials said was a plot to attack employees of a Danish newspaper that in 2005 published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that offended many Muslims, according to criminal complaints unsealed Tuesday in federal court in Chicago.

One of the men had initially targeted a building occupied by the Danish newspaper, Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen.
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Two Christians in Gojra, Pakistan who allegedly fired warning shots as an Islamist mob approached that burned seven Christians to death on Aug. 1 told Compass they were tortured after police arrested them.

From his jail cell, Naveed Masih told Compass that he and his brother were taken to the Police Training Centre in Choong, where they were kept in illegal detention for 18 days and were tortured “in so many ways ruthlessly and in inhumane ways.”
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Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Ohio teenage runaway whose story of Muslim-to-Christianity conversion and charges of family abuse sparked debates about personal freedom, is going back to her home state.

Meanwhile a taped interview has been released in which the girl told Florida investigators about her religious conversion, explained how and why she ended up in Florida and detailed a fearful life with her Muslim family, including the fact she was supposed to be in an arranged marriage.
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A couple blackmailed a Muslim girl by threatening to show her family pictures of her in Western dress.

The woman, in her 20s, wore a veil in public in line with her parents’ strict beliefs.

But she changed into a T-shirt and jeans for an “innocent” but secret seaside day trip with Emal Ismaeli and Joanne Richards.

Asylum seeker, Ismaeli 34, and ex-wife Richards, 22, claimed she owed £7,000 they lent during their friendship. They threatened to show the photos to her family and fiancé unless she paid them back, Wolverhampton crown court was told.

The pair, from Lye, West Mids, admitted blackmail. Ismaeli was jailed for 15 months. Richards got 12 months.
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A “miracle” baby has brought a kind of mystical hope to people in Russia’s mostly Muslim southern fringe who are increasingly desperate in the face of Islamist violence.

From hunchbacked grandmas to schoolboys, hundreds of pilgrims lined up this week in blazing sunshine to get a glimpse of 9-month-old baby Ali Yakubov, on whose body they say verses from the Koran appear and fade every few days. [video]
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Dalia Mogahed, a Muslim, is one of 25 people President Obama tapped to advise him on faith issues. She may have met the president exactly once, but to Muslims, she’s a celebrity — thanks to the headscarf, or hijab, she wears every day.

Muslims everywhere see her voluntary appointment as a backstage pass to the White House. She hears everything from “My father is in jail, and I want you to ask Obama to pardon him” to “I need a visa,” she says.

What Mogahed actually does for the president is work on his faith-based council. They’re supposed to come up with ideas on how the American government can partner with communities and social groups. What she brings to the table is research from her polling of Muslims at her day job with Gallup.

Mogahed says she’s not there to represent Islam.
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A Malaysian Islamic court sentenced a Muslim sect leader to 10 years in prison and six lashes of a cane Wednesday for spreading false teachings and claiming to be God’s prophet.

The man claimed he was appointed by God under the same circumstances as the Prophet Muhammad.
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Muslim hate preacher Anjem Choudary — considered an ‘extremist nut’ by moderate Muslims — has sparked controversy by asking for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to convert to his faith.

In relation to the upcoming UK elections the extremist also said: “Britain does not need a new leader, it needs a revolution – an Islamic revolution.”
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In a letter sent to the Christian community in the northeastern city of Sargodha, Taliban militants said Christians should convert to Islam, pay an Islamic tax imposed on religious minorities, known as ‘Jizya tax’, or leave the country.

If Christians refuse to accept these choices, Christians “will be killed, their property and homes will be burnt to ashes and their women treated as sex slaves,” said the letter.
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A hardline Islamist group in Somalia is publicly whipping women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a “deception”, it was claimed yesterday.

Gunmen from al Shabaab have been rounding up any women with a “firm bust” and whipping them, say residents in the capital Mogadishu.

One woman said: “They first introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.”

The group has also banned movies, football, musical ringtones and dancing at weddings.

The group’s hardline interpretation of Islamic law has shocked many Somalis, who are traditionally moderate Muslims.

Naturally Religion News Blog files these type of items under the category, ‘religious insanity.’
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Radical Muslim group Islam4UK has launched a campaign to impose sharia law on Britain, starting with a rally in London, according to a report.

The hate group — an offshoot of the banned Al-Mahajiroun extremist sect — says “we have had enough of democracy and man-made law and the depravity of the British culture.”

Tory MP Philip Davies replies, ““The simple solution is for these people to move to a country which already has sharia law.””

Meanwhile a spokesman for the Islamic Society of Britain said: “99.999 per cent of Muslims despise these people. This only serves to fuel racial ­tensions.”
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In Indonesia, a series of attacks on followers of the Ahmadiyah sect by fanatical Muslims — who consider the movement to be a cult of Islam — continues to draw criticism.

Alfred C. Stepan, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University in New York, an expert in religion and democracy urging the government to exercise its authority when there are violations of human rights.
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Manila – An Irish Catholic priest abducted by unidentified gunmen in the southern Philippines appeared to be injured, a military commander said Wednesday.

Major General Ben Dolorfino said Columban missionary Michael Sinnott was seen by military informants ‘with blood on his head.’

Dolorfino said the military was coordinating with the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) amid reports that the 78-year-old priest has been turned over to a commander of the rebel group.
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A Florida judge says he plans to order the teenager who ran away from Ohio to Florida because she feared physical harm for converting from Islam to Christianity sent back to Ohio.

The judge says Rifqa’s family must product legal documentation of their U.S. citizenship and proof she can continue her education in Ohio. [video]
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A mainly Muslim non-league French side said they could take on rivals consisting of gay players after all, four days after snubbing them in what the former on Saturday insisted was a “misunderstanding”.

Paris Foot Gay (PFG) were set to play fellow Creteil side Bebel, who are composed of mainly Muslim players last week but Bebel cried off a day beforehand, sending an email in which they regretted they could not honour the match as doing so was “against their principles”.
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There have been demonstrations by women students in Cairo after a leading cleric backed moves to ban the wearing of full women’s veils, known as the niqab, in classrooms or dormitories. The BBC’s Christian Fraser has been hearing both sides of the argument.
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MOSCOW, October 7 (RIA Novosti) – Italian lawmakers are set to consider a ban on the public wearing of Islamic burqas- clothing covering the entire face and body – by women, local media said.

Members of Italy’s second-largest Northern League party have drafted a bill amending the 1975 law that prohibits people from wearing clothing that makes their identification impossible.

Italian parliamentarians aim to extend the ban to garments “worn for reasons of religious affiliation.”
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A Canadian Muslim group wants the federal government to ban two kinds of garments, the burka and the niqab, worn by some women.

The Muslim Canadian Congress said the garments, which cover the face, have no basis in Islam.

The group’s spokesperson, Farzana Hassan, said the practice of wearing the burka and niqab is more rooted in Middle Eastern culture than in religious teachings. She added that there is nothing in the Qur’an that stipulates women must cover their faces.

She said the issue is one of public safety. “To cover your face is to conceal your identity,” she said.

The burka is a veil that generally covers the entire body, with only a mesh screen left to see through. The niqab covers virtually all of the face — with a slit generally left open for the eyes.

The proposed ban would not extend to the hijab, the head scarf that leaves the face uncovered.
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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

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