Free Republic

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Pakistani police on Sunday arrested pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad, who brokered a peace deal between the government and militants in the Swat Valley that has since faltered. Muhammad negotiated a truce with the government in February that imposed Shariah, or Islamic, law in Swat in exchange for an end to two years of fighting. But it was widely seen as an acquiescence to Taliban control of the valley. The deal collapsed in April when the Taliban advanced into neighboring districts, triggering a military offensive that prompted a spree of retaliatory attacks by militants in the northwest and...

A top Iranian cleric says some of the detained Iranian staffers of the British Embassy in Tehran will be put on trial. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who is close to Iran’s supreme leader, has made the announcement in a Friday prayer sermon. He says the detained staffers “made confessions.” Jannati does not say how many staffers will be tried or on what charges. Earlier Iranian officials said all but one of the eight embassy personnel arrested on June 27 had been released, but European Union officials said they believed more than one was still being held. Jannati is the head of...

A hardline Iranian cleric called on Friday for the execution of leading rioters to teach a lesson to the thousands who have protested against the June 12 presidential election result. I want the judiciary to ... punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson, Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran University. Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, said the judiciary should charge the leading rioters as being mohareb or one who wages war against God. They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely, he said. Under Iran's Islamic law, punishment for people convicted...

(IsraelNN.com) Extremist Moslems have not dropped their allegations that Pepsi Cola is essentially the code name for a Zionist plot. MEMRI has released an English transcript of an address given by a Muslim religious leader in Egypt this past February, in which he explains that PEPSI is actually an acronym for "Pay Every Penny to Save Israel."

MEMRI: Special Dispatch | No. 2234 | February 8, 2009 Egypt/Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Al-Zughbi Draws Lessons from the Battles of Early Islam, Prays for the Annihilation of U.S., European Leaders Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian cleric Muhammad Al-Zughbi, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 12, 2009: To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2012.htm. TO VIEW THIS CLIP AND OTHERS, YOU MUST LOG IN/REGISTER FOR MEMRI TV, AT http://subscriptions.memri.org/content/en/member_registr_tv.htm. REGISTRATION IS FREE OF CHARGE "The Accursed Europe Stood By The Accused Jews... The Pulverized United States - I Pray That Allah Destroys It...

NAJAF, Iraq – Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on the Iraqi resistance Wednesday to stage "revenge operations" against American forces to protest Israel's Gaza offensive. The statement issued by his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf came as criticism is mounting over civilian deaths in Gaza. The State Department dismissed al-Sadr's calls, describing them as "outrageous."

Muslims should take advantage of the global financial crisis to build an economic system compatible with Islamic principles, influential Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi said on Sunday. "The collapse of the capitalist system based on usury and paper and not on goods traded on the market is proof that it is in crisis and shows that Islamic economic philosophy is holding up," said the Egyptian-born, Qatar-based cleric. "The Western system has collapsed and we have a complete economic philosophy as well as spiritual strength," he said at Sunday's opening of a conference on Jerusalem. "All riches are ours... the Islamic...

The 27-year-old daughter of radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed has admitted to pole dancing in London bars in defiance of her family's strict Muslim beliefs, the Daily Mail reported Friday. Yasmin Fostok left Bakri’s home four years ago because she did not share her father’s opinions. "I don't get on with my dad. I don't agree with his views,” Fostok told the Daily Mail. “I just get on with my life and that is it.” She currently lives with her 3-year-old son in South East London, whom she had with her ex-husband after their arranged marriage. Fostok performs a...

A entity called Group XP placed a video of comedian Bill Maher making fun of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and his advice to the Shiite faithful, as well as posting messages on the site.

A Moslem cleric, Sheikh Salih al-Fawzan, a senior Islamic preacher, has said that all TV fortune-tellers (which the BBC Monitoring service translates as “sorcerers”) should be executed. Sheikh Salih al-Fawzan is quoted as saying that if these people appearing on many Arabic TV channels prove to be sorcerers, “they will be committing a sin and violating the Holy Book, the Sunnah and the consensus of Muslims”.

Mickey Mouse is a corrupting influence and must die, a Muslim cleric has declared. Sheikh Muhammad Munajid claimed the mouse is "one of Satan's soldiers" and makes everything it touches impure. But he warned that depictions of the creature in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, and Disney's Mickey Mouse, had taught children that it was in fact loveable. The cleric, a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, said that under Sharia, both household mice and their cartoon counterparts must be killed.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia ordered shops to close in some Baghdad neighborhoods on Monday in what they said was the start of a "civil disobedience campaign." The show of force by the feared militia, which the U.S. military once called the greatest threat to peace in Iraq, alarmed residents, but leaders of Sadr's political bloc in parliament stressed that it was a peaceful protest. The militia has kept a low profile since Sadr called a ceasefire last August and extended it last month, a move U.S. commanders say has helped to sharply reduce...

RIYADH, March 15 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's most revered cleric said in a rare fatwa this week that two writers should be tried for apostasy for their "heretical articles" and put to death if they do not repent. Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak was responding to recent articles in al-Riyadh newspaper that questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that adherents of other faiths should be considered unbelievers. "Anyone who claims this has refuted Islam and should be tried in order to take it back. If not, he should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam," said the...

Iranian clerics face a backlash over good life By Kay Biouki in Teheran and Gethin Chamberlain Last Updated: 2:05am GMT 24/02/2008 The Ayatollah Khomenei brought millions on to the streets of Iran to overthrow the decadence of the Shah. Now the late leader's grandsons and other Iranian clerics face a backlash over their families' fondness for fast cars, big houses and hot tubs. A website linked to radical elements of Iran's regime last week attacked the lifestyle of Ayatollah Khomenei's grandson, Hassan. " Driving a $100,000 BMW and relaxing in his uptown villa in north Teheran, is Hassan Khomenei actually...

LONDON (Reuters) - A British court ruled Thursday that radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri could be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges including trying to set up an al Qaeda training camp in Oregon. Egyptian-born Hamza, 49, serving a seven-year jail term in Britain for inciting his followers to murder nonbelievers, is wanted by U.S. authorities on 11 charges. The U.S. indictment accuses Hamza -- who had a hook in place of a missing hand -- of attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, from 1999 to early 2000, and also providing...

To be a "good" Muslim References -  'Palestinian' child abuse -  Evil 'Joy' -  'Blessing' Hitler -  Mourning the wicked -  Australia - Muslim land -  Jihad on all Buddhists -  Spain - Muslim land -  Europe - Muslim land -  Arabs DON'T care about 'Palestinians' -  72 virgins - Loyalty -  'Pallywood' -  (use of) Ambulances for terror -  (use of) Women for terror -  Human Shields -  Middle east background -  September 11 terror plot on London -  Myth on: 'Terrorists are desperate' -  Beheadings -  Ilan Halimi [an example of monsterous wild prolonged torture motivated by hate only] -  Muslims attacking Jews in France -  Ahmadinejad ' Islamic Hitler' -  Cutting -  'Honor killing' -  Jews & Christians as "Apes & Pigs"? - ...

UK terror threat never greater: Security Minister http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1973312.htm ABU FARUK: We're not from a group, we're just Muslims come together because my Lord tells me to (inaudible) the good from the evil. Because my Lord tells me that even if you help them, even you're allied with them, the Jews and the Christians, they'll never ever be happy with you.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A radical cleric whose besieged mosque sought to impose strict Islamic morality on the Pakistani capital was killed Tuesday after refusing to respond to troops who demanded his surrender, officials said. About 50 militants and eight soldiers died when the military stormed the sprawling Red Mosque compound. Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the public face of the pro-Taliban mosque that challenged the government's writ in Islamabad, had vowed to die rather than give himself up. An army official said Ghazi had received bullet wounds and when he was told to surrender, he gave no reply. Commandos then fired another...

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Fresh clashes and blasts rocked Islamabad early Saturday after a Pakistani cleric besieged in a mosque in the capital vowed that he and his followers would prefer death over surrender. But in a blow to the hardline cleric, police seized control of Jamia Faridia, a separate Islamic seminary affiliated with the Red Mosque. "Police stormed into Jamia Faridia and arrested dozens of students and shifted them to an unknown place," a senior security official told AFP. Authorities feared that male students from the Faridia seminary, two miles (three kilometres) from the Red Mosque, would open another front...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani cleric holed up in an Islamabad mosque said on Thursday he and his student followers were willing to surrender, after three days of violence in which 19 people have died. But authorities rejected his offer, saying his attempt to attach conditions was unacceptable and insisting he release women and children human shields. Violence erupted outside the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, in the capital on Tuesday after a months-long stand-off between the authorities and the Taliban-supporting clerics and their thousands of followers, some of them armed. There were intermittent clashes and several loud explosions through...

Cleric: 'Al-Qa'eda leader told me of bomb plot' By Nicole Martin and Sophie Borland Last Updated: 2:52am BST 04/07/2007 A British cleric in Baghdad last night claimed that an al-Qa'eda leader warned him that "the people who cure you would kill you" months before the terrorist bomb plots in Glasgow and London. Canon Andrew White, who runs the Iraqi capital's only Anglican parish, claimed that he met an unnamed al-Qa'eda leader on the sidelines of a religious reconciliation meeting in Amman, Jordan. "He told me that the plans were already made and they would soon be destroying the British," Canon...

LONDON - The United States argued Thursday for the extradition of a radical Islamic cleric imprisoned in Britain, accusing him of involvement in a global conspiracy to wage terrorist attacks on the U.S. and other Western countries. Abu Hamza al-Masri has been charged in the United States with trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon, conspiring to take hostages in Yemen and facilitating terrorist training in Afghanistan. He is serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for fomenting racial hatred and urging his followers to kill non-Muslims. "He advocated the defense of Islam through unlawful, violent and armed aggression,"...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday told insurgents fighting his U.S.-backed government to accept an olive branch or face a security crackdown that will cover "every inch" of Iraq. The U.S. military said it would set up a security outpost in the Shi'ite militia stronghold of Sadr City "in the very near future" in what will be a test of Iraqi and U.S. determination to tackle the most politically sensitive area of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted patrols in Sadr City on Sunday but a large-scale push promised by American commanders has yet to happen....

Reid wins battle to deport cleric By Philip Johnston and Joshua Rozenberg Last Updated: 5:47pm GMT 26/02/2007 The Home Office has won a key legal victory in a five-year battle to eject a suspected al-Qa’eda terror leader from Britain. Abu Qatada arrived in Britain illegally in 1993 A court ruled that Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric described as Osama bin Laden’s spiritual representative in Europe, can be deported to his homeland. Qatada, a London-based imam, has been fighting Government efforts to remove him to Jordan since 2002 claiming he faces torture or death. His lawyers argued that under human...

Vatican City - Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, grand sheik at the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, has agreed to meet Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, the Vatican said Tuesday. The sheikh is described as a moderate and is regarded as the highest spiritual authority for nearly 1 billion Sunni Muslims worldwide. His decision to accept the pope's invitation was made public by the Vatican press office after a visit to Cairo by Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Vatican's commission on relations with Muslims. A date for the meeting has not yet been announced. Benedict has been working hard to improve relations...

A Muslim cleric freed from prison in Egypt on Sunday four years after he was grabbed in a Milan street in a suspected CIA kidnapping says the ordeal had made him a wreck. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, has alleged that Egyptian guards tortured him with electric shocks, beatings, rape threats and genital abuse. He said after his release he had no plans to return to his former home in Italy to give evidence, as a judge considers indicting 26 Americans on charges related to the kidnapping. "I've been reduced to a wreck of a human...

4 February 2007 EXCLUSIVE: COPS SEIZE SECRET FILM OF MOSQUE RANT http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=-a-real-hero-of-islam-is-he-who-separates-a-soldier-s-head-from-his-shoulders---follower-of-anti-west-muslim-cleric-ijaz-mian-&method=full&objectid=18573349&siteid=62484-name_page.html By SIMON WRIGHT, MICHAEL DUFFY & SUSIE BONIFACE POLICE holding the Birmingham terror suspects have seized secret TV footage of an Islamic preacher praising the death of a British Muslim soldier in Afghanistan. The mystery cleric - now being urgently hunted by detectives - ranted about the dead serviceman at a meeting in a Birmingham mosque. He said: "There was an individual killed in Afghanistan recently. Do you know what was written in a newspaper? Hero of Islam! The hero of Islam is the one who separated his...

Radical cleric may face US terror charges By Sally Peck and agencies Last Updated: 2:20pm GMT 31/01/2007 The jailed radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza could face terror charges in the US after a judge today rejected his attempt to overturn his UK convictions. Hamza, 48, was jailed for seven years in February last year for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. Abu Hamza was the head preacher at London's Finsbury Park mosque In the US he faces charges including trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon, conspiring to take hostages in Yemen and facilitating terrorist training in Afghanistan....

Fury at Australia cleric comments Inter-faith relations have been strained by the remarks The Australian government has condemned a Muslim cleric for making offensive comments in videotaped lectures. Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Sydney, urged children to become martyrs for Islam and mocked Jewish people as pigs. Police are said to be investigating the tapes, which were exposed in a British TV documentary earlier this week. Top Australian Islamic cleric Sheikh Hilali also sparked controversy, with remarks on women and white Australians. Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, who has spent the past year living in Lebanon,...

Hilali Calls Westerners "Liars" In Latest Rant“Sydney, Australia (AHN) - Controversial mufti Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali has again angered both Muslims and Australians by speaking out about his faith and current homeland. Sheik Hilali participated in an Egyptian television interview where he made claims that his people have more entitlement to Australia than those with a convict heritage and continued to express his disdain towards westerners. He said, "The Western people are the biggest liars and oppressors and especially the English race." ” http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7006113351

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Assailants gunned down a Muslim preacher known for his anti-Hamas views on Friday, witnesses said, moments after he exited a mosque where he delivered a sermon criticizing the Islamic group's role in a wave of Palestinian violence. The slaying came as thousands of mourners marched through Gaza City carrying the bodies of seven Fatah men killed in a standoff with Hamas. Thursday's gunfight was the bloodiest single battle in weeks of factional fighting, and Fatah said it was suspending talks with Hamas until the assailants are brought to justice. There was no claim of responsibility...

To be a "good" Muslim References 'Palestinian' child abuse -  Evil 'Joy' -  Australia - Muslim land -  Spain - Muslim land -  Europe - Muslim land -  Arabs DON'T care about 'Palestinians' -  Loyalty -  'Pallywood' -  (use of) Ambulances for terror -  (use of) Women for terror -  Human Shields -  Middle east background -  September 11 terror plot on London -  Myth on: 'Terrorists are desperate' -  Jews & Christians as "Apes & Pigs"? -  Non Muslims as "Cows" -  Early history -  Early terrorism -  Muslims & WW2 -  World domination & Caliphate -  'Palestinians' in Lebanon -  Jordan - Black September -  Syrian Crimes -  Lobbies -  Excuses -  Global conflicts Respond violently to anyone that says, writes, draws that...

TEHRAN, Iran - Elder statesman Hashemi Rafsanjani, a mercurial cleric who has played both sides of Iran's reformist-conservative divide, is rising again as a key challenger to Iran's president after local elections show deep discontent with the president's hard line. Last week's elections for local councils in towns and cities across Iran were seen as a referendum on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 18 months in office, and results so far were showing widespread victories for his opponents. Since taking power, Ahmadinejad has escalated Iran's confrontation with the United States and the West on multiple fronts, in particular drawing the threat of...

The head chaplain for New York City jails has been suspended while the city investigates claims he made incendiary statements last year in Tucson, including a comment that the "greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House." The New York Post reported Thursday that Umar Abdul-Jalil made the remarks at a conference sponsored by the Muslim Students Association in Tucson. It said the Investigative Project, a Washington organization that tracks extremist Islamic groups, recorded the speech, in which he also allegedly said that Muslims jailed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were "tortured" in the Manhattan Correctional Center. Abdul-Jalil,...

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000920.php Mufti of Australia: this was Muslim land Mufti of Australia: this was Muslim land - Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Al-Din Hamed Abdallah Al-Hilali, is claiming that Australia was originally Muslim land, settled by Afghans. The Aborigines are their descendants: this is a key element of the claim to Israel put forward by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The same claim has been advanced, by the way, for America...

Hamza 'paid £220,000 for house while on legal aid' By Duncan Gardham (Filed: 12/10/2006) Abu Hamza, the radical cleric, bought a house for £220,000 in cash and let it out while receiving legal aid, it was claimed yesterday. An investigation by the Legal Services Commission has led to a freeze on the sale of the four-bedroom property in Greenford, west London. Abu Hamza and the property in Greenford, west London Hamza has been claiming legal aid for his fight against allegations of incitement to murder, for which he received a seven-year jail sentence this year. The bill is thought to...

The beloved founder of Human Life International, Fr. Paul Marx, was not known to mince words when it came to what he called the "conspiracy of silence" from the pulpits of our Church on the issue of contraception, but his insights of twenty and thirty years ago were right on target and remain true to this day: "Future generations," he said, "will wonder why so many Catholic bishops and priests in the West didn't see contraception as a seminal evil and the chief cause of the Church's swift decline." There is the core issue. Priestly silence about contraception is deadly...

Pakistani Militants Decapitate Cleric Wednesday August 30, 2006 6:46 PM By BASHIRULLAH KHAN Associated Press Writer MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan (AP) - Militants decapitated an Islamic cleric and an Afghan refugee accused of spying for U.S. and Afghan authorities in northwestern Pakistan, an intelligence official said Wednesday. The men's beheaded bodies were found early Wednesday in two villages near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature of his work. Notes written in the local Pashtu language were left on the bodies accusing the...

Cleric who urged jihad to be freed from prison Jamie Doward, home affairs editor Sunday August 20, 2006 The Observer (UK) An Islamic cleric who influenced at least one of the 7 July bombers and whose videos may have been seen by several of the terror suspects arrested earlier this month, is to be freed from prison in weeks. Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal encouraged Muslims to attend training camps so they could wage jihad on the West. He was jailed in February 2003 for nine years, reduced to seven on appeal, after being convicted of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred....

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces strike the Baghdad base of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — but his gunmen hold their fire. U.S. soldiers kill 15 of al-Sadr's followers, drawing little more than a few perfunctory complaints. That's a dramatic departure in style for the youthful firebrand, who launched two major uprisings against the American-led coalition two years ago when U.S. authorities closed his newspaper and pushed an Iraqi judge into issuing an arrest warrant against him. If anything, al-Sadr is more powerful today than he was then. But that power is also a restraint: al-Sadr has more...

Hardline cleric takes charge of Somali militiamen By Mike Pflanz, East Africa Correspondent (Filed: 26/06/2006) Islamic militia in control of much of southern Somalia yesterday appointed a hardline cleric on Washington's most wanted list as its supreme leader. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys was named as the head of the Islamic Courts Union's "consultation committee", replacing the more moderate Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. Mr Ahmed, a former teacher who led the alliance in taking control of Mogadishu earlier this month, is being given a lesser role. Mr Aweys's elevation raises doubts about a deal negotiated last week with the interim government, based...

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Richard M. Mason II, an assaultman for 2nd Platoon, K Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, sights down range with his rocket launcher. Nicknamed the "Rocket Man," he has effectively fired 24 rockets using the Shoulder-Launched Multi-Purpose Assault Weapon or SMAW during combat ops in Ramadi. (U.S.M.C. photo by Cpl. Joseph DiGirolamo) An assault team from B Company, 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 5, prepare to enter a possible suicide vehicle bomb workshop in Fallujah, Iraq. The Marines are searching the vacant garage after receiving intelligence that the owner might be supporting...

LONDON (AFP) - Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical Egyptian Muslim cleric who was jailed here for seven years in February, falsely claimed to have fathered a child after moving to Britain, a newspaper said. Abu Hamza, who was sentenced for inciting racial hatred and soliciting murder, claimed on a birth certificate in October 1980 that he was the father of a daughter born to his first wife, Valerie Traverso, The Times said. Four days after her birth, Hamza told his lawyers to write to Britain's Home Office to apply for permission to stay in the country, saying that he had...

A Pakistani cleric offered a 1.5 million rupee (€28,000) reward and a car for anyone who kills the cartoonist who drew Prophet Mohammed. Another Islamist leader was put under house detention, amid fears of more deadly demonstrations today, officials said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani cleric announced a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew the Prophet Muhammad caricatures, as thousands rallied across the country Friday and authorities arrested scores of protesters. Police put another Islamist leader under house detention amid fears religious radicals would incite more deadly demonstrations after Friday prayers. Five people have been killed in Pakistan this week during protests, but most demonstrations Friday were peaceful. n Denmark, where the prophet drawings were first published in September, the government said Friday it had temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan following the violent protests this week.

> Protests have continued throughout the Muslim world over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. (And thousands of other iterations.)

The Danish Islamic scholar who brought cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad to the attention of Muslim leaders around the world says he was only trying to boost his campaign to get an apology from the Danish newspaper that first published them. INDEPTH: Muhammad cartoons: A timeline Danish Islamic scholar Ahmed Akkari, right, and Carsten Juste, editor in chief of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, which published cartoons depicting the Prophet, before a debate on Danish television, Sunday, Feb. 5. (AP Photo/POLFOTO, Carsten Snejbjerg) "I guess we took the illustrations to influential people so they could help," Ahmed Akkari told CBC News...

LONDON - A British jury convicted radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri on Tuesday of fomenting racial hatred and inciting his followers to kill non-Muslims. Al-Masri, 47, the former imam at London's Finsbury Park mosque, also was convicted of possessing a terrorist document and threatening or abusive recordings. Al-Masri, Britain's best-known Islamist orator, could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison. The jury of seven men and five women found al-Masri guilty on seven of nine charges of soliciting murder. He also was convicted on two of four charges of stirring racial hatred. Though asked to stand for the...

The British Muslim cleric whose North London mosque was the centerpiece of some of the most important terrorism cases of the last decade was sentenced to seven years jail on Tuesday for inciting murder in his sermons. Egyptian-born Abu Hamza al-Masri, 47, was the highest-profile Muslim cleric tried in the UK since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The followers who worshipped at his Finsbury Park Mosque included convicted "shoebomber" Richard Reid and "20th hijacker" Zacarais Moussaoui.

Don't work with men, Muslim clerics tell Indian women Randeep Ramesh and Sanjay Jha Friday February 3, 2006 The Guardian (UK) Muslim women should not work with men or go shopping in areas where they could mix with strangers of the opposite sex, according to an edict issued by the influential All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which claims to represent the nation's 140 million Muslims. Maulana Syed Nizamuddin, the board's general secretary, said the decision to ask Muslim women not to work in call centres and avoid any kind of job which involves interacting with men was part of...