Followers of one of the fastest-growing radical Muslim terror groups are being told to steal, embezzle and seize property – especially from Americans – in order to finance their jihad.

A mother of four was killed for her Christian faith on Jan. 7 on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia by Islamic extremists from al Shabaab militia, a relative said.

Al Shabaab insurgents control much of southern and central Somalia and have embarked on a campaign to rid the country of its hidden Christian population.

Women living in areas controlled by Somalia’s Islamists say they are increasingly the target of more draconian rules meted out by the rebels bent on enforcing their ideologies, Reuters reports.

A court in Pakistan has sentenced a Muslim prayer leader and his son to life in jail for blasphemy.

Salman Taseer’s death provides a parable of why Pakistan, which promised so much, has slipped so far.

More than 50,000 people rallied in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi on Sunday, police said, against the controversial reform of a blasphemy law that was behind the killing of a senior politician.

A group of men arrested in Denmark on Wednesday were about to mount a “Mumbai style” attack on the Danish newspaper that ignited Muslim fury around the world by publishing satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, the head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service said.

The men had been under surveillance for months, and were among 200 radicals identified in a recent Swedish intelligence report, according to intelligence sources in Scandinavia.

The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was responding to what he has described as frequent concerns raised by law enforcement officials that Muslim leaders have been uncooperative in terror investigations.

He cited the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan man and a legal resident of the United States, who was arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subway system. Mr. King said that Ahmad Wais Afzali, an imam in Queens who had been a police informant, had warned Mr. Zazi before his arrest that he was the target of a terror investigation.

“When I meet with law enforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders,” Mr. King said.

Swedish intelligence agency Saepo said Wednesday there were around 200 violence-promoting Islamic extremists in Sweden, days after the country’s first ever suicide bombing missed wreaking havoc among Christmas shoppers.

Some “80 percent of the 200 can be linked to each other,” Malena Rembe, the chief analyst at Saepo’s Counter-Terrorism Unit told reporters, adding they were not part of one big network.

“The radicalisation happens in Sweden,” but “the concrete threat is mainly directed at people in other countries,” Rembe said.

Local Pakistani Christians and the family of a Christian youth are facing potential death threats and the terrorization of “dire consequences” following the elopement and marriage of a Christian young man who has converted to Islam and his young Muslim bride.

A Christian lawyer and minority rights advocate has revealed that homes of local Christians were attacked, women were abused and household items vandalized by Muslim fanatics searching for the youth.

An evangelist is still recovering from burns after six young Muslim men beat him with clubs and belts and set him on fire last month in a village near this Punjab Province city.

Aamir Masih, a Christian elder of the same village, said that the young Muslim men mistakenly regarded verses in the pamphlet describing the resurrection of Jesus as derogatory to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.

“This angered the Muslim men, and they ordered Augustine to leave the village at once and stop preaching the gospel in Village 96-NB immediately or face the consequences,” Masih said.

An Afghan man who helped mutilate his young daughter-in-law after she tried to flee her marriage has been arrested for abetting the crime.

The father-in-law, named Suliman, is being held in an Afghanistan jail, according to Women for Afghan Women, and has confessed to holding a gun to the young girl’s head while her nose and ears were cut off.

Ayesha, the young woman, is safely in the United States where she is undergoing a series of reconstructive surgeries.

Police are still searching for her husband and her brother-in-law, who performed the mutilation.

Once known only as “Bibi,” Ayesha’s story has become an example of the brutality of the Taliban and also the resilience of a young woman.

The plot described by the FBI was horrific: a 19-year-old Somali-born Muslim with a grudge against the West, ready to kill and maim thousands at a busy Portland Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

But while the FBI describes Mohamed Osman Mohamud as a would-be terrorist, there were few hints of that hidden life to Mohamud’s friends, who knew him as “Mo,” a quiet, suburban teen who liked to drink gin and play video games.

The teen who allegedly thought he was going to kill thousands of people the day after Thanksgiving in the name of Islamic radicalism is the same one who, three days earlier, wrote and read a Kwanzaa poem about unity with two Christian college students.

Court documents and Mohamud’s friends describe the slender Somali-American as juggling contradictory lives – that of an immigrant struggling to fit in and a Muslim who had become radicalized and was bent on holy war.

A 17-year-old girl in Somalia who converted to Christianity from Islam was shot to death last week in an apparent “honor killing,” sources said.

Nurta Mohamed Farah, who had fled her village of Bardher, Gedo Region to Galgadud Region to live with relatives after her parents tortured her for leaving Islam, died on Nov. 25.

An Afghan Christian, detained for months for allegedly converting to Christianity from Islam, could face trial as early as next week – and could face a potential death penalty, officials said Sunday.

Said Musa was arrested by Afghan Interior Ministry intelligence authorities near the German Embassy in Kabul because of the allegations, said Qamaruddin Shenwari, director of the Kabul courts’ north zone.

QT: If there is no compulsion in religion, as Muslims claim, why should you not allow someone to convert away from Islam?

• Quran contradiction: Compel them or not? • The punishment from apostasy in Islam

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