Two US TV networks have refused to air a controversial advert condemning plans to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York.

either CBS nor NBC, two of the major US television networks, will screen the advert.

On July 13, members of the lower house of the French parliament are expected to vote on a bill that would make it illegal for Muslim women to wear full veils — those that cover all of the face except the eyes — in public places.

Majorities in Germany (71%), Britain (62%) and Spain (59%) would also support a similar ban in their own countries. In contrast, most Americans would oppose such a measure; 65% say they would disapprove of a ban on Muslim women wearing full veils in public places compared with 28% who say they would approve.

A Muslim mob in Jhelum, Pakistan murdered the wife and four children of a Christian last month, but local authorities are too afraid of the local Muslim leader to file charges, according to area Muslim and Christian sources.

Jamshed Masih, a police officer who was transferred 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Gujrat to Jhelum, Punjab Province, said a mob led by Muslim religious leader Maulana Mahfooz Khan killed his family on June 21 after Khan called him to the local mosque and told him to leave the predominantly Muslim colony. Jhelum is 85 kilometers (53 miles) south of Islamabad.

In this predominantly Christian nation, Christians are worried about a Muslim community that is growing in numbers and influence, and they have been vocally backed by U.S.-based Christian groups.

Muslims are wary of the rising power of fundamentalist Christian organizations backed by American Christians.

In a horrific instance of Talibanism, Muslim fanatics in Kerala on Sunday chopped off the right hand of a college lecturer, accusing him of setting a question paper with a derogatory reference to Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

Two men, said to be activists of the Popular Front, a new incarnation of the hardline National Democratic Front, have been taken into custody.

Muslim suicide bombers attacked the heart of liberal Islam yesterday with two deadly blasts at Pakistan’s most revered Sufi shrine, killing 41 people and injuring 175 more in an attack that appeared designed to inflame sectarian tensions.

Lahore is a sort of mecca for Sufism, the liberal, mystical arm of Islam that rejects the concept of jihad and promotes spiritual enlightenment through music and prayer.

Moroccan authorities expelled eight more foreign Christians from the country last weekend, bringing the total of deported Christians since March to 128.

Two foreign women married to Moroccan Christians were included in this third wave of deportations since March, raising concerns that local authorities intend to harass the country’s small but growing Protestant community.

Authorities called the foreigners to police stations across Morocco on Friday and told them they had 48 hours to leave the country on grounds of “threatening public order.”

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em: Saudi Arabia’s religious police, who once used staves to prod people to the mosque at prayer time, are taking the mosque to football fans for the World Cup.

The Islamic morality cops began rolling out prayer carpets this week in front of popular coffee shops on Riyadh’s central Tahlia street, where Saudi men are turning out nightly for the matches broadcast from South Africa.

Indian Islamic hate-monger Zakir Naik is getting set to legally challenge his visa ban by the UK home secretary Theresa May.

He was banned for “engaging in unacceptable behaviour by making statements that attempt to justify terrorists and fostering hatred.”

Over 20 Afghan Christians have been detained in Afghanistan after high-level leaders called for the arrest and execution of converts to Christianity in the Islamic nation.

Britain-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide said the Christians were detained since last week and added that non-Christians with ties to Westerners have also been targeted for interrogation.

“I am still getting threats,” the professor told Compass. “They say, ‘Leave the university or accept Islam – if you don’t convert, we will kill your family.”

Separately, in Danna village in southern Punjab Province, Muslim administrators told three Christian students in the eighth grade to leave the school because they refused to convert to Islam.

Pakistan will start monitoring seven major websites, including Google, Yahoo and Amazon, for sacrilegious content, while blocking 17 other, lesser-known sites it deems offensive to Muslims, an official said Friday.The moves follow a temporary ban imposed on Facebook in May that drew both praise and condemnation in a country that has long struggled to figure out how strict a version of Islam it should follow.

Religious insanity: Men in the Somali capital Mogadishu, have been given 30 days to grow a beard. The order was issued by Moalim Hashi Mohamed Farah, the Governor in the capital. It takes effect on July 20.

Moalim Hashi is a member of Hizbu Islam, led by Sheikh Dahir Aweys, one of the Islamist groups opposing the Transitional Federal Government.

Considering the way Aweys’ beard looks, the facial hair doesn’t need to be all that traditional.

Last year another Islamist group in the same town banned women from wearing bras.

A massive upcoming Islamic conference in Toronto, which was to be headlined by an Indian televangelist until he was recently banned from Canada for his inflammatory statements, features a list of speakers whose past comments against Jews, homosexuals and the West have raised red flags in other countries.

The Journey of Faith Conference — billed as North America’s largest Islamic conference — features such personalities as Abdur Raheem Green, who has advocated “fighting jihad” and who was reportedly invited by the Christmas Day airline bomber to address British students in 2007, and Sheikh Hussein Yee, who once said Jews are the “extremists of the world” and will “go to Hell.”

A Muslim terrorist organisation blamed for carrying out bomb attacks during the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been broken up by Chinese security agencies, according to a spokesman for the Public Security Bureau said.

« Newer — Older »