Islam is a diverse religion with sects ranging from liberal to ultra-conservative. The media often roughly divides Muslims in those who follow a so-called ‘moderate Islam’ from those who condone, promote and/or engage in acts of violence and terrorism on behalf of Islam.
Like other religions Islam also has cults — movements whose teachings violate one or more of the essential tenets of Islam.
The vast majority of Muslims are people who have been born into the religion. Leaving Islam — in favor of another religion or of atheism — is difficult, as those who do so usually are rejected by family, friends and the larger community. In Islam, apostasy is punishable by imprisonment or death.
The Internet enables Muslims to search religious knowledge in the source texts.
German anthropologist Carmen Becker believe that, in the long run, this will undermine the authority of Islam’s religious scholars..
An unexpected twist in the Rimsha Masih blasphemy case appears to have paved the way for her freedom from apparently false charges of desecrating the Quran.
In the meantime, the case has triggered a debate on how Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws are being used to settle personal scores and vendettas.
A Danish court has found four Muslim terrorists guilty for planning a bomb attack on a newspaper for its publication of satirical cartoons of Muhammad.
At a prayer service in Denmark before their arrest, the men were heard on a surveillance tape saying “when you meet the infidels, cut their throats.”
In Nigeria’s Plateau state, Christian leaders said more Christians have died at the hands of Muslim extremists than the 35 that the military reported thus far in May.
The Nigerian president took pointed criticism for the government’s handling of Muslim extremist violence against Christians.
A court in Brussels opened the trial of six people charged in connection with the 2004 murder of a young Muslim woman in a deadly act of exorcism, a practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person believed to be possessed.
The woman was reportedly deceived into believing that she could not have children because she was possessed and that she had to undergo a practice of exorcism.
Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times changed an anti-Scientology speech by Australian Senator Nick Xenophon into an anti-Islam speech by switching the terms.
Amid concerns for his safety, the senator says the paper’s apology is too little, too late.
Christians faced increased hostilities in Sudan over the past few weeks, culminating in an attack on a Christian compound in Khartoum by a throng of Muslim extremists armed with clubs, iron rods, a bulldozer and fire.
Breaking down the compound wall with a bulldozer, the assailants set fire to the Gerief West Bible School and the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) building; they also damaged three other places of worship and other buildings in the same compound.
A recent “reconciliation meeting” between members of a Muslim mob that attacked a Christian-owned school in Egypt and school administrators was nothing less than an attempt at legalized extortion, the director of the school said.
In exchange for peace, members of the sword-wielding mob that stormed the school last month without provocation — and held two nuns hostage for several hours — initially demanded in the meetings that the school sign over parcels of land that include the guesthouse the Muslim extremists attacked.
The mother of a 6-month-old girl has been wrongly jailed for more than a month, as Pakistani authorities have failed to file a charge sheet within the mandatory 14-day period against the young Christian woman falsely accused of “blaspheming” the prophet of Islam, her attorney said.
In a show of partiality to Muslims who go unprosecuted for like offenses against Christianity, a juvenile court in Egypt sentenced a Coptic Christian teenager to three years in prison for allegedly insulting Islam.
The court claimed that he posted cartoons on his Facebook account in December that mocked the Islamic religion and its prophet, Muhammad.