Florida pastor Terry Jones will undoubtedly offend and infuriate many people around the world if he follows through on a plan to burn Muslim Qurans at his church this weekend.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution will protect him, in the same way it allows the Ku Klux Klan to burn crosses and for protesters to torch the American flag.

Jones, pastor of about 50 followers at Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, has drawn condemnation from the White House, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the Vatican, Muslim groups, military veterans and interfaith religious organizations for his plan to burn Qurans this Saturday on the ninth anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks.

Jones remains undeterred, saying he wants to dramatically emphasize his belief that the Quran is evil because it promotes violence and radicalism.

Muslims consider the Quran the sacred word of God and insist it be treated with the utmost respect, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad.

Yet under U.S. court decisions, burning Qurans to make a point probably isn’t illegal.

Our view: nobody can deny that the Quran does promote violence and that many — though not all — Muslims resort to violence for a wide variety of reasons. That said, Jones’ planned bonfire is deliberately provocative and his plan says more about him than it says about Muslims.

Meanwhile radical Muslims have a difficult choice to make: act reasonably and protest peacefully, or engage in the kind of behavior that rightly leads people to criticize Islam as a religion of violence.

More than 160 Muslims have enlisted the federal government in two discrimination lawsuits against JBS Swift meatpacking plants, where they allege blood and bones were hurled at them, bathroom walls were covered with vile graffiti and company supervisors disrupted their efforts to worship during Ramadan, ultimately firing many Islamic employees.

The two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuits filed last week allege a pattern of religious and national origin discrimination and a hostile work environment at two plants – in Greeley, Colo., and Grand Island, Neb.

The cases may rank among the largest Muslim discrimination lawsuits since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, unleashed a backlash against Muslims in the United States, government officials said.

In the last five years through fiscal 2009, religious charges have grown 44 percent overall, and 58.4 percent for Muslim workers, according to EEOC data.

European Christians must have more children or face the prospect of the continent becoming Islamised, a senior Vatican official has said.

Italian Father Piero Gheddo said that the low birth rate among indigenous Europeans combined with an unprecedented wave of Muslim immigrants with large families could see Europe becoming dominated by Islam in the space of a few generations.

The priest blamed Christians for failing to live up to their own beliefs and helping to create a “religious vacuum” which was being filled by Islam.

He predicted that Islam would “sooner rather than later conquer the majority in Europe“.

“The fact is that, as a people, we are becoming ever more pagan and the religious vacuum is inevitably filled by other proposals and religious forces,” he said.

A Utah judge will ask Warren Jeffs to sign a waiver that would extradite the polygamous church leader to Texas to face criminal charges.

Jeffs is the 54-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The southern Utah-based religious cult practices polygamy in arranged marriages that have sometimes involved underage girls.

Texas authorities have charged Jeffs with bigamy, aggravated sexual assault and assault related to alleged incidents with girls at a church ranch near Eldorado.

For nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, many American Muslims made concerted efforts to build relationships with non-Muslims, to make it clear they abhor terrorism, to educate people about Islam and to participate in interfaith service projects. They took satisfaction in the observations by many scholars that Muslims in America were more successful and assimilated than Muslims in Europe.

Now, many of those same Muslims say that all of those years of work are being rapidly undone by the fierce opposition to a Muslim cultural center near ground zero that has unleashed a torrent of anti-Muslim sentiments and a spate of vandalism. The knifing of a Muslim cab driver in New York City has also alarmed many American Muslims.

“We worry: Will we ever be really completely accepted in American society?” said Dr. Ferhan Asghar, an orthopedic spine surgeon in Cincinnati and the father of two young girls. “In no other country could we have such freedoms — that’s why so many Muslims choose to make this country their own. But we do wonder whether it will get to the point where people don’t want Muslims here anymore.”

The 460 Army, Navy and Air Force chaplains deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are prohibited from carrying weapons, counting on their assistants and the troops around them for protection. It can be a perilous calling. On Monday, Chaplain Dale Goetz, 43, of White, S.D., and four other soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar. Capt. Goetz is the first Army chaplain killed in action since the Vietnam War.

Army chaplains represent 130 religions and denominations, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. The military says it’s common for assistants to be of different faiths from the chaplains they support, or of no faith at all.

“They don’t have to be religious,” says retired Navy Capt. Randy Cash, who served 30 years in the Chaplain Corps and now is its historian. “They have to be able to shoot straight.”

A pastor who owes thousands of dollars in unpaid wages to former teachers at his private Christian academy also stands accused of not paying a Lutheran church that allowed him to lease classroom space until May.

Leaders of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church are trying to collect more than $34,000 from the Rev. Jeff Davis, the pastor who runs New Way Ministries in a Chicago suburb.

Davis self-published several books, including “The Man Who Wins,” “Po to More” and “Blingonomics,” which warns against “being preoccupied with making money in business instead of delivering a service or product that people gladly pay for.”

The Vatican raised the possibility Sunday of using behind-the-scenes diplomacy to try to save the life of an Iranian widow sentenced to be stoned for adultery.

In its first public statement on the case, which has attracted worldwide attention, the Vatican decried stoning as a particularly brutal form of capital punishment.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Catholic church opposes the death penalty in general.

It is unclear what chances any Vatican bid would have to persuade the Muslim nation to spare the woman’s life. Brazil, which has friendly relations with Iran, was rebuffed when it offered her asylum.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of adultery. In July, Iranian authorities said they would not carry out the stoning sentence for the time being, but the mother of two could still face execution by hanging for adultery and other offenses.

Our view: the death penalty is a barbaric form of punishment that should be rejected by all civilized nations — as should the Shariah. Islamic law is incompatible with Western civilization.

Dozens have filmed and posted clips for My Faith My Voice, telling viewers about their sports teams, hometowns or families. The grassroots effort aims to show that ‘Muslims are like everyone else.’

The videos, which American Muslims are invited to record and upload onto the campaign’s website, mostly follow a script: The speakers introduce themselves, give an “interesting fact” about themselves and then launch into a prewritten message about Islam‘s teachings. They say that Muslims do not want to impose their religion on others and should not be feared.

The grassroots campaign, called My Faith My Voice, grew out of conversations among a number of Muslim professionals about what they felt was a recent rise in anti-Muslim sentiment.

Firefighters have said that it was an “absolute miracle” no-one was killed in an explosion at a Hare Krishna temple.

The blast rocked the building after cylinders of gas powering a large cooker leaked during a festive meal.

About 30 people escaped from the temple in Leicester when the organiser raised the alarm just seconds before the explosion yesterday. A third of the building in Thoresby Street was destroyed in the blast.

Worshippers had been cooking in the kitchen area during the afternoon for a religious festival.

The festivities were organised by Iskcon Leicester – the International Society for Krishna Consciousness – to mark Lord Krishna’s “Appearance Day”.

Note to big companies hoping to tap into France’s lucrative but long-neglected Muslim consumer market: Pitfalls may await, and not only in the form of complaints from the far-right.

As of this week, 22 outlets of popular French fast food chain Quick are serving burgers it says respect Islamic dietary law. And while many Muslims are delighted, the powerful main Paris Mosque complained Thursday that Quick’s criteria aren’t all-encompassing enough, and that the operation is meaningless.

Quick’s meat is certified as halal, but Cheikh Al Sid Cheikh, assistant to the rector of the Paris Mosque, said the burger chain should have had the other ingredients checked as well, from its mustard to buns to fries.

“The rest must be validated too, or else there’s no point,” he told The Associated Press. Quick responded that it has no intention of making any of its restaurants halal through-and-through — beer is still served there, for example, said spokeswoman Valerie Raynal.

Do we really want an intolerant religion to dictate what we eat and drink?

Geert Wilders, the maverick Dutch politician, denounced a Australian Muslim leader’s call for his beheading for denigrating Islam.

Mr Wilders, who lives under perpetual death threat and is the country’s most heavily guarded politician, demanded assurance from the country’s Interior Ministry that the message was been treated seriously.

Sydney-born Feiz Muhammad — a hate criminal — posted a speech on an Internet site in which he condemned Mr Wilders as “this Satan, this devil, this politician in Holland” and called on his followers to “chop off his head” because Wilders “denigrated” Islam.

A report in De Telegraaf newspaper said Muhammad declared that anyone who talks about Islam like Wilders does should be executed by beheading.

Muhammad has gained notoriety for, among other things, calling on young children to be radicalised and blaming rape victims for their own attacks.

Our opinion: anyone who talks about critics of Islam like Feiz Muhammad should be imprisoned and/or committed to a mental hospital. People like Geert Wilders would have no need to talk about Islam if Muslims like Feiz Muhammed did not act like deranged hate criminals.

Bottom line: the inability of hate-filled Muslims to allow others freedom of religion and freedom of speech makes Islam incompatible with modern civilization.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has dismissed the conclusion by Stephen Hawking, the retired Cambridge scientist, that the Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to create the Universe.

In his latest book, The Grand Design, Prof Hawking claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he wrote.

“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

But in an extract of an article in Eureka magazine, which is published in The Times, a series of a religious leaders fight back against the claims.

By the way, while his leap of faith may sell some books, Mr. Hawking fails to answer an important question: “Who created the law of gravity?”

One of the Scientology cult’s most vocal critics, Tampa lawyer Ken Dandar, is in a pickle.

Six years ago, he settled a wrongful death case against the church on behalf of the family of Lisa McPherson, who died in 1995 after 17 days in the care of cult members in Clearwater.

Part of the settlement agreement, approved by a judge in state court, required Dandar to never again represent anyone suing the Scientology cult.

But last year, Dandar took on another wrongful death case against the church’s Flag Service Organization — in federal court.

Subsequently Senior Circuit Judge Robert Beach in June 2009 ordered Dandar to withdraw from the new case.

But on April 12, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday told him he cannot get out of it. The reason: No other attorney wants to take on Scientology. It is, after all, a cult known for its hate- and harassment campaigns against critics.

So Dandar is stuck between a state judge telling him to leave Scientology alone and a federal judge telling him he can’t.

A judge wants to review more information before deciding whether to dismiss charges against four missionaries accused of inciting a crowd while videotaping themselves evangelizing at the Dearborn Arab International Festival in June.

Judge Marks Somers of 19th District Court in Dearborn heard arguments Monday after Robert Muise, attorney for the missionaries, filed a motion questioning the constitutionality of the charges. If the motion is denied, a trial is to be held Sept. 20.

“My clients should not stand trial for exercising their First Amendment rights,” Muise said.

Nabeel Qureshi of Virginia, Negeen Mayel of California and Paul Rezkalla and David Wood, both of New York, were charged in July with disorderly conduct after police said they received a complaint from a Christian volunteer working at the festival who said he was harassed by the group. Mayel also was charged with failure to obey a police officer’s order.

The missionaries, members of a Christian group called Acts 17 Apologetics, said they did not harass anyone.