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

The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people in the world practice Islam, according to a report Wednesday billed as the most comprehensive of its kind.

These findings on the world Muslim population lay the foundation for a forthcoming study by the Pew Forum, scheduled to be released in 2010, that will estimate growth rates among Muslim populations worldwide and project Muslim populations into the future.
» Full Story

Two controversial films about Radical Islam have aired around the world, but never in the United States until now.

A cable network plans to air the films despite the objections of North Texas Muslims who say the movies present a narrow view of their world. But does it? Watch an abridged version of one of the movies — The Third Jihad — right here. [video]
» Full Story

Sabri Husibi, a former Muslim who is now an atheist, says he has been ostracized and threatened with death since publication of a Tulsa World article Saturday in which he was critical of Islam and all other religions.

One caller offered Husibi’s young Muslim wife $10,000 to leave him and return to her native Syria, he said.
» Full Story

A Danish caricaturist is making his first tour of the United States since the 2005 publication of his cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked fury across the Muslim world, according to a Danish press freedom group that is promoting the trip.

Muslims throughout the world rioted in anger at the cartoon — and 11 eleven others — and the artist became the target of a terrorist plot.
» Full Story

Several mayors of French towns faced with growing demands from Muslim residents say they fear a proposed ban on head-to-toe burqa and niqab veils could not be enforced and might even prompt more women to cover up.

All mayors said some Muslim residents were increasingly making religious demands on municipal services, such as halal school meals or women-only hours in pools.
» Full Story

A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.

Abdul Mouti Bayoumi said supplying the item was akin to spreading vice in society, a crime punishable by death in Islamic Sharia law.
» Full Story

If wearing a burqa prevents a woman from getting a job she should also not expect to receive benefits.

So says Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen in an interview with Dutch-language newspaper Trouw.

He is not calling for a ban on the burqa.
» Full Story

Islamic leaders in Australia are working to break down misconceptions about dogs after a spate of complaints that Muslim cab drivers are banning guide dogs.

Guide Dogs Queensland (GDQ) threw open its doors to a group of clerics from the Imam Council of Queensland (ICQ) in Brisbane, in an Australian and possibly world first to promote the value of dogs to vision-impaired Muslims.
» Full Story

The legal battle over teen runaway Fathima Rifqa Bary continues. The Ohio teenager fled to Florida fearing an “honor killing” for converting from Islam to Christianity.

Rifqa’s father has filed a criminal complaint against the Orlando pastors who helped shelter Rifqa for more than two weeks before the state intervened.
» Full Story

Iranian police have warned shopkeepers not to display female mannequins without a hijab, or showing bodily curves, Irna news agency reports.

Display of bow ties and neckties, and the sale of women’s underwear by men are also banned, the police said.

“Un-Islamic behaviour” has been targeted since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first election in 2005.
» Full Story

Islamic militants have shot and killed a long-time underground Christian in Somalia after finding Bibles in his possession.

The man arried 25 Somali Bibles he hoped to deliver to an underground congregation, Christians said.
» Full Story

One of the most powerful figures in the Anglican Church believes that Africa is under attack from Islam and that Muslims are “mass-producing” children to take over communities on the continent.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, 56, was elected Primate of Nigeria last week and his elevation could exacerbate tensions at a time when Anglicans are working to build bridges with Muslims, The Times writes.

“They come to Africans and say, ‘Christianity is asking you to marry only one wife. We will give you four!’ ” Archbishop Okoh described this as “evangelism by mass-production”.

He said: “That is the type of evangelism they are doing: mass-production, so if you have four wives, four children, sixteen children, very soon you will be a village.”
» Full Story

The Swiss-born thinker, who was denied a visa to teach in the U.S., says he is a reformist interested in a ‘post-integration discourse’ to explore the ways Muslims in the West can contribute.

Liberal Muslim or closet fundamentalist? Peaceful intellectual or militant in sheep’s clothing?

Tariq Ramadan has been called all these things — and more — by his friends and foes. Whatever the truth, the Swiss-born Oxford University professor ranks among the most influential thinkers in the Muslim world, the Los Angeles Times reports.
» Full Story

In most Islamic countries, gay men and women are ostracized, persecuted and in some cases even murdered. Repressive regimes are often fanning the flames of hatred in a bid to outdo Islamists when it comes to spreading “moral panic.”

More than 30 Islamic countries have laws on the books that prohibit homosexuality and make it a criminal offense.
» Full Story

A man accused of beheading his wife at the Muslim-American television station they founded is likely to pursue a psychiatric defense in the murder case.

Muzzammil Hassan is the founder of Bridges TV — an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes.

Hassan was charged with second-degree murder after police found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassan.
» Full Story

Tensions remained high Thursday, September 17, in Pakistan’s Punjab province after police dispersed angry crowds protesting against the death of a young Christian prisoner, who was held for allegedly desecrating the Koran, viewed as a holy book by Muslims.

The National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), a Catholic-led advocacy group, called the man’s an “extra-judicial murder” and demanded an investigation, Pakistan media reported.
» Full Story

The end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan this weekend could see Islamic authorities in Malaysia carry out the country’s first caning sentence on a woman, a punishment that is fast gaining support among the country’s Muslim population.

Negative news reports regarding Islam’s growing influence has bruised Malaysia’s image as a moderate Muslim state with some commentators highlighting what they see as undesirable Islamic influences in their own countries, Reuters reports.

In our opinion, Islamic law has no place in modern, civilized society, and should not be tolerated in any form.
» Full Story

A group of ex-Muslims who converted to Christianity were preparing Wednesday, September 16, for an upcoming court hearing in Iran on suspicion of “apostasy”, after they were temporarily released on bail from one of the country’s most notorious prisons, BosNewsLife learned.

They were among 25 individuals arrested by security forces while attending a Christian gathering in Tehran.
» Full Story

The world’s first “Islamic orientated” internet search engine, which flags content that might be considered “haraam” – or forbidden – by Muslims, has been hailed a success by its creators after it attracted more than 500,000 users in its first two weeks on the web.

ImHalal.com has been designed to “help Muslims explore the internet in a safe and clean environment”, according to Reza Sardeha, the 20-year-old business management student who runs it.

The site works by assigning the search terms that are plugged in by users a “haraam level”, which indicates the likelihood of the results they bring up touching upon things forbidden under Islam.
» Full Story

Malaysian authorities captured a Muslim sect leader who claimed to be God’s prophet and was on the run for three years, an official said Thursday.

Abdul Kahar Ahmad was charged in 2006 in an Islamic law court with spreading false teaching, blasphemy and violating religious precepts, said Muhamad Nazri Basrawi, a prosecutor in the Islamic Religious Department in central Selangor state.

Abdul Kahar, 59, pleaded innocent to the charges and later went into hiding to evade trial, Nazri told The Associated Press.
» Full Story

Sudanese Christians have urged fellow believers around the world to pray for them as armed groups are kidnapping and killing church leaders and other Christians, an advocacy group with close knowledge about the situation told BosNewsLife Tuesday.

Christians, who comprise just about 18 percent of Sudan’s mainly Muslim population of nearly 39 million people, are increasingly in the crossfire as many of them abandoned Islam, rights groups say.
» Full Story

Christian sources in Ethiopia said that, contrary to Ethiopian law, 39-year-old Bashir Musa Ahmed has not been formally charged since his arrest on May 23 in Jijiga, capital of Somali Region Zone Five, a predominantly Muslim area in eastern Ethiopia.

Zonal police arrested him after he was accused of providing Muslims with Somali-language Bibles bearing covers that resemble the Quran, the sources said.
» Full Story

Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.

“It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,” he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.

Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi’s group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.

So reports The Guardian.

Question is: what reputation does Abu Hamizi think Islam has build up over the centuries? Surely he and the fellow members of his hate group must at some point realize that while Islam claims to be a ‘religion of peace’ his actions represent the kind of barbarism that gave Islam the nickname ‘religion of the sword.’

Islamism has no place in modern, civilized society.
» Full Story

A Chinese clothing manufacturer probably thought it was on to a winner by exporting jeans bearing the Islamic expression “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful” to Iran.

But an otherwise sound marketing ploy was undone by one embarrassing flaw: the phrase (Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim in Arabic), which graces each of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters, was prominently displayed on the pockets of the jeans’ backsides, something likely to be seen as disrespectful by devout Muslims.

Incidentally, Buddhists have been similarly unamused at the use of their religion by merchants. So have Hindus.
» Full Story

Women dressed in white have gathered outside the Iranian embassy in London as part of a prayer vigil to highlight the plight of two female Christian converts from Islam who have been held at Evin Prison in Tehran “without charge” for the last six months, organizers said.

In Iran, Muslims who convert to another religion, often face arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention and other human rights abuses, rights groups say.
» Full Story

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