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Top Taleban commander 'arrested' A top Taleban leader, Mullah Dadullah, has been captured in Afghanistan, Afghan officials have told the BBC. He has a reputation for being one of the Taleban's most brutal commanders.

Sandi Dubowski, who won the Teddy gay and lesbian award in 2001 for his controversial doc "Trembling Before G-d," may cause an even bigger stir with "In the Name of Allah," which explores the struggles of homosexual Muslims. Gay Indian Muslim helmer Parvez Sharma is directing the pic, which looks at gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims across the Muslim and Western worlds. "The world right now needs to understand Islam, and these are the most unlikely storytellers of Islam," Dubowski said, who is producing 'Allah.' -snip-

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday announced it was giving $20 million in direct aid to the Palestinian Authority to help it through a financial crisis. A senior Bush administration official said it hoped the aid would encourage additional donations from other countries "at a time when the Palestinian Authority is in desperate need of budget support to pay its bills, maintain stability and allow it to focus on the larger question of governing." The Palestinian Authority is facing a severe financial crisis due to falling tax revenues during four years of violence which has paralyzed the Palestinian...

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Countering a surge in anti-Islamic bigotry requires urgent action by Muslims as well as non-Muslims, governments, the media and educators, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday. Muslims must condemn and isolate extremists who target and kill civilians in the name of their religion and governments must make good on commitments to protect Muslims from discrimination, Annan told a seminar on Islam and intolerance at U.N. headquarters. At the same time, others must recognize that anti-Western feelings of some Muslims have been fed by a history of colonialism and domination by the West and...

Muslim voices Lisa Fabrizio Lisa Fabrizio December 3, 2004 I usually write my own column, but recent events in the Middle East call for voices from that region to be heard among the mainstream media din. Some Muslims promote Jihad while others support democratic reform. It has long been my contention that — contrary to the caterwauling of the American and European left — the forces of the current Islamist Jihad are limited by their preferred method of combat and by one of their main tenets; opposition to democratic institutions. The first is a fact of nature: A movement whose...

TEHRAN (MNA) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday that Iran is seriously concerned about the rise in human rights violations in Europe and especially the rise in anti-Islamic sentiments and the treatment of minority groups. Asefi made the remarks in response to a question about the decision of the European Union to lodge a protest with Tehran expressing concern about the human rights situation in Iran. “The issue of human rights is on the agenda of Iran-EU talks and this is not something one-sided, and we have also some criticism about their (human rights) situation,”...

Washington -- The county council of Howard County, Maryland -- a suburb of Washington and Baltimore -- made headlines recently when it passed legislation prohibiting the scheduling of public hearings on the two Eid holidays, the most holy days in Islam. Although Howard County's action is unusual, it does reflect a growing trend toward official recognition of Muslim holidays in the United States, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which informally tracks such developments. Especially since the attacks of September 11, 2001, "more and more Muslims are working to get their communities integrated into U.S. society and have...

This past week, I have received many responses from Muslims concerning my two most recent columns: ''Followers of Islam: Can You See the Blood on Your Hands'' and ''Here Comes the Arab/Muslim Outrage.'' In one breath, some of the writers would call themselves ''intellectuals'' and then accuse me of being a Jew when I put tough questions to them that they could not answer. They maintained that as an American, I just was not intelligent enough to understand Islam. The mistake these ''intellectuals'' made is believing that I have any intention of ''understanding'' Islam.   It has taken me since...

Tripoli, Libya, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Muslim clerics and scholars meeting in Libya from around the world Tuesday denounced attempts to link Islam to terrorism as an injustice to one billion Muslims. A final communiqué, issued at the end of a two-day conference in Tripoli organized by the International Islamic Daawa (Call) organization, called on participants to combat all actions that tarnish Islam and undermine its aspects of love and tolerance. The conferees, some 500 clerics and scholars from 120 countries, condemned all aspects of injustice, enmity and the use of force such as invasions, sieges and wars in violation...

CHICAGO -- When David Kelly -- aka "Capital D" -- raps, he doesn't follow the mainstream mantra of women, cars and jewelry. Instead, the Chicago rapper uses his rhymes to dish out praise for Allah, criticize the war in Iraq and blast corporate America. Kelly is among a new group of Muslim rap artists gaining popularity among Muslim-Americans looking for entertainment that reflects both their mainstream tastes and religious beliefs. "Muslims in the United States are not going away. They're part of the culture, but they're not creating their own culture," Kelly says. "I try to show them that you...

ONDON – Hunched in black robes over his microphone, Sheikh Omar Bakri suddenly heaves himself upright in rhetorical climax and pounds the table. "Embrace capitalism or Christianity, you go to hellfire!" he bellows. The crowd of men seated before him nod in agreement as Sheikh Bakri warns against misplaced sympathy for Western society. "Don't think that because [the unbelievers] give us income support we should have less hate," he continues. "Because we hate not for our sakes, but for the sake of Allah." ... Hard-line Islamists like Bakri have become the bête noire for Britons who question whether the growing...

Last Updated: , 15:31 GMT 16:31 UK Eyewitness: Hostage terrorSurvivors of the Russian school siege have been giving details of their ordeal. A teacher freed by the gang in the middle of the siege estimated there had been about 1,500 captives. One boy who emerged on Friday, looking pale and anguished, told reporters he had been so shocked at his release he was unable to recognise his own parents. Diana, another survivor, said people had had nothing to eat or drink. "We were forced to urinate into bottles and drink our own urine through our shirts that we put over...