Free Republic

PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit is reviewing a religious discrimination complaint against a community for denying a zoning change request to allow construction of a Muslim school. The Michigan Islamic Academy wants to build at a 26-acre site in Washtenaw County's Pittsfield Township. "We are reviewing the matter and whether to proceed with a formal investigation," Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Levy told The Detroit News (http://bit.ly/soyS41 ) for a story Tuesday. On Oct. 26, the township board rejected the request, following an earlier rejection by the township planning commission. School officials say the 200-student school...

Over the past decade, attacks and plots by homegrown US terrorists have increased, the work of extremists from across the political spectrum, says an analysis by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) based at the University of Maryland. Key finding from the analysis are published in the Global Terrorism Database and include: * Between 2000 and 2010 there were 213 terrorist attacks in the United States. Seventeen of these, including the four 9/11 attacks, were fatal. * Since Sept. 11, 2001, 32 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in the United States....

Relations between the Muslim community and Greater Manchester Police are being strained after officers infiltrated mosques. Some Islamic groups have told the BBC Asian Network that they are angry about undercover tactics used in recent counter terror operations. Police deny relations with the community have deteriorated. The North West Counter Terrorism Unit carried out an investigation which involved officers posing as Muslims. They attended prayer meetings and services at a dozen unnamed mosques in Manchester after they befriended four Muslim men for more than a year. Three of the men, Munir Farooqi, 54, Israr Malik, 24, and Matthew Newton, 29,...

The Justice Department is launching an inquiry into the decision of a Los Angeles suburb to deny a local mosque’s planned expansion. Federal officials are looking into whether or not Lomita, California city council members violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act when they rejected the construction plans almost two years ago, according to the Daily Breeze, a local newspaper. City Attorney Christ Hogin told the newspaper that the investigation started in July. The city council denied that religion played a role in their decision, which they said was influenced by concerns over traffic and parking. But the...

Protests against new mosque construction have made headlines from New York City and Chicago to Los Angeles and Nashville. But despite the push-back in some communities, one new academic study shows the number of mosques in the U.S. continues to grow — especially in the Chicago area. It's demographics that drive this story. An estimated 400,000 Muslims live in the Chicago area, many in wealthier suburbs. But some observers see something else going on here: a lesson in good old Chicago politics. Abdulgany Hamadeh is a pulmonologist who moved here from Syria 30 years ago. First a county board turned...

DETROIT, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Leaders of a national Muslim civil rights group have warned mosques in Michigan to beef up security in light of a Christian prayer summit next week. Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Michigan,believes a Christian prayer summit, "The Call," at Ford Field Tuesday will promote anti-Muslim sentiments, The Detroit News reported. "There's a bigger force or movement behind this prayer summit and how they're literally demonizing Muslims," he said. Metro Detroit pastors involved in the event insist the gathering is meant to help Detroit, not attack Muslims. "I don't know...

American tax-payers learned recently that the US State Department is funding mosques all around the globe, including one in my native Bulgaria: To support the restoration of the Kurshum Mosque in Silistra. Although it is located in the center of town, damage has been caused by centuries of neglect and earthquakes. The mosque was built in the 17th century when Silistra was an important port city on the Danube River ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Research shows that it has nothing to do with Islam, but with ecotourism. According to a local report the restoration of the mosque and...

A Turkish woman set fire to a man in a mosque in southern Germany on Saturday. She says she acted out of revenge after the man raped her. The 36-year-old poured petrol over the 38-year-old man in a mosque in the city of Reutlingen, in Baden-Württemberg, before setting him alight. The woman was taken into custody on Sunday, on charges of attempted murder, according to the state prosecutors office and the police. ... On Saturday afternoon, according to the police, the woman’s husband and the later victim got into a fight in a room in the mosque. People attending the...

The same morning that radical Islamic terrorists destroyed the twin towers, the Islamic Leadership School in the Bronx opened its doors for the first time. "I don't remember much," said student Ameena Drammeh, 14, who was just 3 years old on Sept. 11, 2001. "I just remember everyone running around [the school]. I remember all the phones ringing." As New Yorkers mourn the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the only Islamic school in the Bronx will mark a decade of promoting goodwill between Muslims and non-Muslims. "Because we opened on 9/11, we know 100% that Allah wants us to be a...

A member of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is calling for a ban on marriages at Christian churches if they refuse to also perform same-sex unions. “As long as religious groups can refuse to preside over ceremonies for same-sex couples, there will be inequality,” wrote Mike Weatherley, the Conservative MP for Hove and Portslade, in an August 21 letter to Cameron. While Weatherley’s proposal is currently a “minority view,” it “could quickly become a main stream point of view,” warned Neil Addison, national director of the U.K.‘s Thomas More Legal Centre. The U.K.‘s 2004 Civil Partnership Act, which legalized...

German police say they have detained two men in Berlin on suspicion of obtaining chemicals that could be used to make a bomb. Thomas Neuendorff, a spokesman for Berlin police, said officers were searching the apartments of the men, a 24-year-old German of Lebanese descent and a 28-year-old from Gaza, early Thursday. Neuendorff said the two men, who were not identified, were suspected of planning a "violent criminal act". He said police were also searching an Islamic cultural centre where the two men spent time. They were searching for "chemical substances that can be used to make an explosive device,"...

In France there are more Islamic mosques being built, and more frequently, than Catholic churches, and there are more practicing Muslims than practicing Catholics in the country. Nearly 150 new mosques are currently being built in France, home to the largest Islamic community in Europe. The projects are in various stages of completion, according to Moahmmed Moussaoui, President of the Muslim Council of France, who provided this data in an interview on August 2 with RTL radio.The total number of mosques in France has already doubled to exceed 2,000 in the last ten years, according to a research entitled: "Building...

ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department reached a settlement Friday with the Georgia city of Lilburn over claims that it discriminated against a Muslim congregation's request to build a new worship center. Federal attorneys announced the agreement after filing a complaint in federal court in Atlanta that claimed the Atlanta suburb violated federal law when it blocked the congregation from expanding its place of worship. "The city of Lilburn twice failed to approve rezoning permits to allow building a mosque, and the complaint alleges that the rejection was because the applicants are Muslims," said U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates....

Members of a Scarborough mosque have expressed shock and disbelief that their “nice” and “humble” religious leader has been charged with a string of sexual assaults. Mohammad Masroor, the imam at the Baitul Mukarram Islamic Society on Danforth Ave., faces 13 charges involving sexual offences and death threats relating to five alleged victims. Police said Masroor, 48, travelled the world before settling in Toronto in 2008, and believe there could be more victims, here and abroad. Abdur Rouf Tarafdar was one of more than a dozen people who vouched for Masroor’s pious character as he left afternoon prayer on Wednesday....

Ideology and Practices Would you allow a murderer to teach your children? What about their friends who support their actions, would they make good teachers? What if the actions these people support involved sex with minors or the mutilating of women? How about the killing someone because they’re gay, is that acceptable? What if we go through and kill all the Atheists, Jews, Christians, Mormons, Muslims, and maybe all the Liberals, Conservatives, Communists, and Capitalists, just to be safe? Does that sound like a good plan? So who is left? Pretty much no one except the animals. We live in...

A debt plan passed that doesn’t cut debt or spending and now the Standard and Poors has lowered the US credit rating because they believe the plan failed to accomplish what was needed. The President continues to talk about increasing taxes on the wealthy and other politicians are looking at cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. All the while, the US State Department, headed by Secretary of State Hillary ‘Spendem’ Clinton is spending hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to repair and rebuild mosques in the Middle East. They are also providing internet service to Islamic Imans as seen...

DUSHANBE -- Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has signed a law that bans most children under the age of 18 from attending regular Friday Prayers in mosques, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports. The controversial law, which was proposed by Rahmon in December and adopted recently by parliament, holds the parents of underage children attending Friday Prayers legally responsible for allowing them to do so. The law does allow children and teenagers who study at state-run religious schools to attend mosques and join religious associations. But other teenagers may pray at mosques only on religious festivals and at funerals. Officials have said the...

Muslim countries in the Persian Gulf and North Africa are funnelling large sums of money to radical Islamic groups in towns and cities across Spain in a competing effort to exert control over the estimated 1.5 million Muslims in the country. A newly leaked secret report prepared by Spain's National Intelligence Center (CNI), excerpts of which were published by the Madrid-based El País newspaper on July 31, says the Spanish government is struggling to stop the flow of tens of millions of dollars to Islamic groups in Spain from Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and above...

Herman Cain says voters across the country should have the right to prevent Muslims from building mosques in their communities. In an exchange on "Fox News Sunday," the Republican presidential contender said that he sided with some in a town near Nashville who were trying to prevent Muslims from worshiping in their community. "Our Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state," he said. "Islam combines church and state. They're using the church part of our First Amendment to infuse their morals in that community, and the people of that community do not like it. They disagree with it." Asked...

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Sunday that communities have a right to ban Islamic mosques. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," the former Godfather's Pizza CEO said protests and legal challenges to a planned mosque in Tennessee city are an example of local residents pushing back. Cain said his view doesn't amount to religious discrimination because he says Muslims are trying to inject Shariah law into the U.S.