Traditional boxers in a Malaysian state ruled by a conservative Islamic party have been ordered to ditch their skimpy shorts and good-luck talismans, in accordance with religious rules.

Women in Kelantan have previously been targeted with various campaigns discouraging them from wearing sexy outfits, lipstick or high heels, but it is the first time that men have been told to cover up.

“We want them to cover their ‘aurat’,” Abdul Fattah said, referring to Islamic rules which in Malaysia require men to cover the area between their navel and knees. Women must cover their entire body except the face and hands.

Islam is the official religion of Malaysia, where more than 60 percent of its 28 million population are Muslim Malays, living alongside ethnic Chinese and Indian communities.

Halal meat is being routinely served at some of Britain’s most popular sporting venues, pubs, schools and hospitals without the public’s knowledge, it has emerged.

All beef, chicken and lamb sold to fans at Wembley Stadium has been secretly prepared in accordance with strict Islamic law.

And hundreds of pubs and restaurants in Britain, as well as top racecourses, schools and hospitals, now only serve chicken that has been ritually slaughtered according to Sharia Law.

Under Muslim laws, animals are slaughtered by having their throat slit to allow all the blood to drain out. Animals often die a slow painful death because religious slaughter houses are exempt from laws that require animals to be stunned before killing.

Last night there were growing concerns that members of public were unwittingly supporting a cruel form of butchery.

Although most of Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority are Muslims, they have generally been secular.

But experts are now seeing an increasing radicalization in pockets of the country’s Islamic community, particularly after armed groups from the ethnic Albanian minority, which forms a quarter of the population of 2.1 million, fought a brief war against Macedonian government forces in 2001.

The French parliament passed a law Tuesday prohibiting wearing a full-face veil in public, meaning a ban will come into force early next year if it is not overturned by senior judges.

The Senate passed the bill by 246 votes to one. The bill already cleared the lower house in July, and will now be reviewed by the Constitutional Council, which has a month to confirm its legality.

A Muslim Frenchman cited by officials as a reason behind a crackdown on polygamy has been charged with aggravated rape, the state prosecutor said Sunday.Xavier Ronsin said Lies Hebbadj, who lives in the Nantes region of western France, was charged with aggravated rape based on a complaint from a former companion.

Indonesian police have arrested the controversial Muslim preacher Abu Bakir Bashir on terror charges.

Officials said they had proof he was linked a training camp recently discovered in Aceh, West Sumatra.

Another mob attack on Christian worshipers in Bekasi on Sunday has led to renewed calls for police and national leaders to crack down on the apparently swelling tide of religious violence.

About 20 members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church in Pondok Timur Indah were chased and beaten with sticks by a mob believed linked to the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) after they tried to conduct Sunday services at a field in Ciketing, Bekasi.

Muslims nationwide have condemned the hard-line Islamic organization for an attack on a church group on Sunday, saying the incident had tarnished the image of Islam.

Around 300 Muslim protestors and 300 police officers surrounded members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan or HKBP) on Sunday (Aug. 1) as they worshiped in an open field in Ciketing, Bekasi, local sources said.

“There were many police on guard, but the attackers were able to get very close to the congregation,” Theophilus Bela, president of the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum, said in a statement to international government and advocacy groups. “We are afraid that they will attack the church again next Sunday.”

Two Christian women in Bangladesh’s northern district of Jamalpur said village officials extorted relatively large sums of money from them – and severely beat the husband of one – for proclaiming Christ to Muslims.

Johura Begum, 42, of Pingna village said a member of the local union council, an area government representative and the father of a police officer threatened to harm her grown daughters if her family did not pay them 20,000 taka (US$283).

Three people were allegedly injured and houses damaged when clashes broke out between an angry mob and members of Islamic sect Jamaah Ahmadiyah in Kuningan regency, West Java, on Thursday.

The Ahmadiyah sect, with 500,000 followers in Indonesia, believes that its founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the final prophet and not Mohammad, contrary to the central tenet of mainstream Islam, which says Mohammad is the last prophet.

Syria’s education minister has issued a decree banning women on university campuses from wearing veils that cover their faces.

The minister’s decree follows a decision last month to dismiss 1200 Syrian school teachers who wear the face veil in class. Education officials, at the time, stressed that Syria was a “secular society,” and that extremism is “unacceptable.”

Suspected Muslim militants shot and killed two Christian men who were due to appear in court on charges of blasphemy against Islam in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Brothers Sajid Emmanuel, 30, and Rashid Emmanuel, 32, were assassinated by masked gun men Monday, July 19, inside a district court building in the city of Faisalabad.

A British lawmaker is refusing to meet female Muslim constituents who wear face-covering veils and has proposed a law banning the practice altogether, he said on Saturday.

The MP, Philip Hollobone, says “God gave us faces to be expressive. It is not just the words we utter but whether we are smiling, sad, angry or frustrated. You don’t get any of that if your face is covered.”

A Swedish court convicted two brothers of trying to burn down the home of an artist whose Prophet Muhammad depiction infuriated some Muslims, and sentenced each of them Thursday to more than two years in prison.

The attempted arson attack was motivated by a controversial 2007 sketch by artist Lars Vilks that depicted Muhammad as a dog, the Helsingborg District Court said. The defendants, aged 19 and 21, were not identified by name due to Swedish privacy rules.

An anti-Islam lawmaker in the Netherlands is forming an international alliance to spread his message across the West in a bid to ban immigration from Islamic countries, among other goals.

Geert Wilders told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday he will launch the movement late this year, initially in five countries: the U.S., Canada, Britain, France and Germany.

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