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ISLAMABAD—Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered the release on bail Monday of a hard-line cleric who had been detained since shortly before soldiers stormed his mosque in 2007, killing scores of people and energizing the country's Islamist insurgency. Maulana Abdul Aziz was granted bail while the court considers the charges against him in relation to the siege of the Red Mosque in the capital, Islamabad, his lawyer Shaukat Siddiqui told reporters outside the court. Prosecutors were not available for comment. Aziz was arrested as he tried to sneak out of the mosque dressed in an all-covering burqa worn by some Muslim women....

'I Hoped To Be A Glorious Martyr' A woman who was inside Islamabad's Red Mosque when it was stormed by Pakistani troops on 10 July has given the BBC one of the first accounts of the final hours of the siege. Unwilling to be named, the survivor said she was not held hostage by militants inside. More than 100 people died in the army operation - she was one of only 30 women to walk out alive after soldiers went in. Following are excerpts from the interview with Rafia Riaz of the BBC's Urdu service. ..."They asked me to come...

A senior German politician, who backs a national burqa ban, has said that the law should also cover tourists to the country from the Arab world. The Bavarian State Minister of Economic Affairs, Ilse Aigner, was speaking to German newspaper Die Welt after her party congress in Munich recently approved two proposals -- one a burqa ban (the full body covering) and one a ban on the niqab (the face veil). She said: "When I have traveled to Iran, I have obeyed the country's commandments and worn a headscarf. Likewise I expect women from the Arab world visiting this country...

Muslim women can no longer wear the full-body garment in shops, restaurants or public buildings and anyone caught flouting the ban could be struck with a £6,500 fine. The local government of Ticino approved the referendum after the Swiss Parliament ruled that the ban did not violate the country's federal law. Two in three voters in the canton backed the move in an overwhelming result for a referendum, in the wake of heightened terrorist alerts across Europe. The law which MPs voted for only applies to veils which covers the body from head to foot worn by the 40,000 Muslim...

Legislators in China's far-western Xinjiang province have passed a law to prohibit residents from wearing burqas in public, state media reported, in a continued campaign against what authorities view as religious extremism. The new ban in Urumqi was approved by local legislators last month, and given the greenlight by the regional legislature at the weekend. The ordinance name suggests it targets outer garments covering someone's full body including the face, which is called a burqa in some Islamic traditions.

A bomb strapped to a girl aged around 10 years old exploded in a busy market place in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Saturday, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 20, security sources said. "The explosive devices were wrapped around her body and the girl looked no more than 10 years old," a police source said. Maiduguri, the capital of northern Borno state, lies in the heartland of an insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram, and is often hit by bomb attacks

Here’s the mystery woman who ditched her burqa in Afghanistan and sauntered around Kabul with her legs showing — stunning onlookers and scandalizing the country’s mullahs. “I was shocked,’’ the man who took the photo, local journalist Hayat Ensafi, told the BBC. “I know I had to catch this special moment because I never saw a woman here walking down the streets like this.’’ He tried to talk to her, “but she walked very fast and didn’t talk to me at all.’’ He posted the shot on Facebook and it has gone viral. “The whole city of Kabul is shocked,’’...

Muslim Wonder Woman Redesign Puts Diana in a Headscarf Artist flowercrownprincess envisions Wonder Woman as a hijab-wearing Muslim superhero, who is ready to battle evil in both armor and a headscarf.

Woman dies after hijab, hair get tangled in Montreal escalator MONTREAL — A woman in her 30s is dead after her headscarf and hair became caught in a subway-station escalator. A bystander found the woman lying at the base of the escalator at Fabre metro station in east-end Montreal around 9:15 a.m. He alerted transit workers, who called police. When first responders arrived, the woman was unresponsive. "We tried to perform resuscitation on site, but we weren't able to save her," paramedic Bob Lamle told QMI Agency. The exact circumstances of the woman's death weren't immediately clear, but Montreal police...

An important issue in the Muslim world is how women should dress in public. A recent survey from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research conducted in seven Muslim-majority countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey), finds that most people prefer that a woman completely cover her hair, but not necessarily her face. Only in Turkey and Lebanon do more than one-in-four think it is appropriate for a woman to not cover her head at all in public. The survey treated the question of women’s dress as a visual preference. Each respondent was given a card...

First published on FrontPage Magazine. By Enza Ferreri Britain is reaping the fruits of its multi-decennial multicultural policy and of what is euphemistically called “tolerance” - and realistically “bending over backwards” - to Islam. If anyone doubts that Muhammadanism is a supremacist doctrine, this doubting Thomas should take a look at what’s happening in an English school currently in the news. Britain's first Muslim “free school” (namely, government funded but outside local authority control), Al-Madinah School in the city of Derby, underwent a two-day (October 1-2) inspection by officials of the government’s education regulator Ofsted. The school has been...

Burka bandit tries to hold up National City bank, CBS8 San Diego, August 2, 2013 A woman tried to rob a bank in National City, and officials sought the public's help locating her. The attempted robbery occurred at around 6 p.m. Thursday at a Wells Fargo Bank branch at 1199 Highland Ave., according to FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth. "At the time of the robbery, the woman entered the bank and stood in the teller line until summoned by a teller," Foxworth said. "Upon arriving at the teller counter, the woman presented a demand note." The teller read some of...

Afghanistan has some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world, and a high concentration of donkeys. Enter the maternity saddle -- a new invention that promises to carry women in labor across Afghanistan's difficult terrain so they can get the medical care they need. The British charity HealthProm and designer Peter Muckle developed the inflatable donkey saddle to ease the burden on women about to give birth in remote areas of Afghanistan. The lack of suitable transport in mountainous areas leads many pregnant women to opt against heading to health centers in favor of giving birth...

A jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda has threatened to carry out terrorist attacks in Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain that is home to the largest concentration of radical Islamists in Europe. The threats were issued by a group called "Africamuslima" in response to efforts by Catalonian lawmakers to increase surveillance of radical Salafists seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law in Spain and other parts of Europe. Catalonia -- a region of 7.5 million people centered on the Mediterranean city of Barcelona -- is home to the largest Muslim population in Spain. Most of the estimated 450,000 Muslims...

Iran swimmer’s time goes unrecorded: “Her bathing suit was too revealing” An Iranian woman has taken on a difficult challenge: to swim as long as possible in open waters, where she has to wear a diving suit, a full jacket, and a headscarf. However, this was still not enough for the sports authorities, who she claims told her they could not record her latest swim because her outfit was too revealing. In Iran, women swimmers usually compete in all-female pools, and only at the national level, not abroad, to avoid being seen by men. Professional swimmer Elham Sadat Asghari, however,...

A Philadelphia woman was indicted this week, accused of abducting a 5-year-old girl from her school by posing as her mother, raping her and leaving her barely clothed and crying at a playground. Christina Regusters was charged Monday with aggravated assault, kidnapping, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and several other offenses in the January incident that had police searching door to door and parents clutching their children tightly. The little girl's ordeal began January 14 when a woman wearing a burqa -- a head-to-toe covered garment with a slit for the eyes -- went to a West Philadelphia school shortly after...

Here's the question: why wasn't this woman ID'ed when she went into the school and took this little 5-year-old girl? Because she was wearing a burka? Even children are sacrificed in deference to Islam. We see it in Boston media coverage as well. The excuses, the fawning, the "poor wittle jihadis" that blew mothers and children to bits on the streets of Boston. Has America lost her soul? "Philadelphia woman charged with kidnapping girl from school, raping her" CNN, April 30, 2013 (hat tip Pressbox) Philadelphia (CNN) -- A Philadelphia woman was indicted this week, accused of abducting a 5-year-old...

A burqa-wearing man pretending to be a woman is in police custody after an armed robbery and dramatic police chase Friday afternoon. Police say around 3 p.m. Harford County Sheriff’s deputies were called to Third Base Liquors on South Fountain Green Road in Bel Air for a report of a robbery. When officers arrived witnesses told them a man wearing a burqa covering his entire face except for his eyes entered the store and asked the clerk about beer. Police say the man altered his voice to sound like a woman and chose a case of beer. As the clerk...

However, in Lumberton, Texas, this week, high school girls were made to wear burqas as part of a CSCOPE study of Islam. One student quoted the teacher as saying, “We are going to work to change your perception of Islam.” The teacher in the burqa lesson, according to a student, also said, “I do not necessarily agree with this, but I am supposed to teach you that we are not to call these people terrorists anymore, but freedom fighters.” Critics argue that this should not be a teacher’s role, and are concerned that CSCOPE curriculum appears agenda-driven. According to a...

During Hillary Clinton's farewell speech before all employees of the State Department today, it was impossible not to notice the 'burqa lady' employee deliberately positioned behind her: