Free Republic

Germany's Interior Ministry has said it regrets serving pork sausage at a conference on Islam in Berlin earlier this week. The ministry said the food selection had been designed for the "diverse religious attendance" at the German Islam Conference in Berlin. But it apologised "if individuals felt offended in their religious feelings". The event was led by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who in March said Islam "does not belong in Germany". Most of the attendees at the Islam conference were Muslims, local media reported. Under Islamic law, Muslims are forbidden to eat pork. The type of sausage on offer...

Rights activists have long urged Pakistan to reform blasphemy laws A 16-year-old Christian boy has been held on blasphemy charges in the Pakistani city of Karachi. The boy, named by police as Ryan Stanten, is said to have forwarded a text message which allegedly contained offensive material on Tuesday. The following day an angry crowd ransacked his family home, setting fire to their belongings on the street.

A Muslim minicab driver refused to take a blind passenger because her guide dog was "unclean". Abdul Rasheed Majekodumni told Jane Vernon she could not get into his car with the dog because of his religion. Islamic tradition warns Muslims against contact with dogs because they are seen as impure. The case emerged as Jack Straw was embroiled in a controversy over Muslim women wearing veils and the row continued after a Muslim police officer was excused guard duty at the Israeli embassy. Today Mrs Vernon, 39, from Hammersmith, said: "This experience was very upsetting. "I was tired and cold...

The spiritual leader of Lebanon’s Sunnis, the Grand Mufti Sheik Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, said the pope’s remarks emanated either from "Ignorance and lack of knowledge or were deliberately intended to distort Islam." Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said “there should be no controversy; the pope has already explained his true intentions. The religious dialogue and the respect for every religion is a necessity, and religion doesn’t justify violence. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said of Benedict XVI: He is a great pope, with great intelligence. Right-wing politician Roberto Calderoli said “I ask myself some crazy member of the Left...

According to the website Islam Memo, one Christian was killed in Baghdad after the Pope's speech two days ago. The speech created a wave of anger throughout the Islamic world, including Iraq. A poster has been placed in many Baghdad mosques for the previously unknown group, "Kataab Ashbal Al Islam Al Salafi,". This group threatens to kill all Christians in Iraq if the Pope does not apologize in three days in front of the whole world to Mohammed.

Angry protests against Pope Benedict XVI erupted in the Islamic world today as the Vatican struggled to explain a reference by the Pontiff to the Prophet Mohammad’s “evil and inhuman” contribution to religion. The Vatican has tried to defend the Pope after comments he made about Islam and jihad prompted anger in the Muslim world.   The Pope stressed that the controversial words were not his own Muslim clerics from Cairo to Kashmir declared the Pope had revived the spirit of the medieval crusades and the official sermon for Friday prayers in Teheran condemned the Pope as “rude and weak-minded”....

Turkey’s ruling Islamic-rooted party joined a wave of criticism of Pope Benedict XVI today, saying he would go down in history in the same league as leaders like Hitler and Mussolini for remarks he made on Islam. The comments by Salih Kapusuz, a deputy leader of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party, came a day after Turkey’s top cleric asked Benedict to take back recent remarks, escalating tensions before the pontiff’s November visit. The Pope made his remarks on Islam in a speech in which he quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel...

London Muslims urged to shun police LONDON, June 7 (UPI) -- A Muslim convert and political activist in London is urging Muslims to avoid police altogether following a raid last week in which a man was shot in the arm. Yvonne Ridley, a former journalist who converted to Islam after being abducted in Afghanistan by the Taliban, said the Metropolitan Police were "terrorizing" the east London neighborhood where the raid was conducted last Friday, Sky News reported Wednesday. "I don't think the Muslim community should communicate with the police any more until they start showing some respect," Ridley said. Ridley,...

American Muslim News Briefs Thursday, May 25, 2006 KY: High School Prayer Axed After Muslim Complaint Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS SHELBYVILLE - The principal of Shelby County High School said the school will not have formal prayer at graduation exercises next month after receiving a complaint from a student and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. Principal Gary Kidwell met Monday with the Board of Education and a lawyer as residents held a prayer vigil outside. Tuesday, Kidwell said the school will break from the tradition of student-led invocations and benedictions at graduation June 2. The school "will be compliant...

LINCOLN PARK, Mich. (AP) — A chain of fitness centers has put up partitions in response to complaints by Muslim women about a lack of privacy while they work out. Fitness USA agreed to the changes at its Lincoln Park gym after meeting with a concerned Muslim member of the gym and Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Some Muslim members of the gym said they need to work out in single-sex rooms to meet Islam's standards of modesty. They said they joined Fitness USA because it accommodated this need. But the...

MUSLIM students training to be imams at a British college with strong Iranian links have complained that they are being taught fundamentalist doctrines which describe nonMuslims as “filth”. The Times has obtained extracts from medieval texts taught to the students in which unbelievers are likened to pigs and dogs. The texts are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which has a sister institution, the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (ICAS), which offers a degree validated by Middlesex University. The students, who have asked to remain anonymous, study their religious courses alongside the university-backed BA in Islamic...

A fatwa issued by Egypt’s top religious authority, which forbids the display of statues has art-lovers fearing it, could be used by Islamic extremists as an excuse to destroy Egypt’s historical heritage. Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the country’s top Islamic jurist, issued the religious edict which declared as un-Islamic the exhibition of statues in homes, basing the decision on texts in the hadith (sayings of the prophet). Many fear the edict could prod Islamic fundamentalists to attack Egypt’s thousands of ancient and pharaonic statues on show at tourist sites across the country. “We don’t rule out that someone will...

The Saudi fatwa reads as follows: "The Permanent Council for Scholarly Research and Religious Legal Judgment has studied the queries some individuals brought before the Chief Mufti… concerning the topic of the construction of houses of worship for unbelievers in the Arabian Peninsula, such as the construction of churches for Christians and houses of worship for Jews and for other unbelievers and [the question of] the owners of companies or organizations allotting a fixed place for their unbelieving workers to perform the rites of unbelief. "After considering the queries the Council answered as follows: "All religions other than Islam are...

Saudis Bemoan Poor Image in U.S. By JIM KRANE ASSOCIATED PRESS JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - On Sept. 11, 2001, Sonia Puopolo, an American Airlines flight attendant, lost her life when terrorists, four of them Saudis, hijacked her plane and slammed it into the World Trade Center in New York. Last week, Puopolo's daughter Tita Puopolo spoke to a conference packed with Saudi business leaders and asked them to try and repair something else that died in the attacks: the U.S.-Saudi friendship. "Many people ask me, 'Why would you visit Saudi Arabia after what happened to your mother?'" said Puopolo,...

Arab-Americans have contended that bias and bigotry, not security concerns, lie behind the uproar over a deal that would place commercial operations at six US ports in the hands of an Arab company. The furore centres around the $6.8 billion acquisition by UAE state-owned Dubai Ports World of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. P&O which had been running operations at shipping terminals in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami, and Philadelphia. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said on Tuesday that politicians were exploiting fears left over from the September 11 attacks to gain...

AN ISLAMIC campaign group has called for a Catholic primary school to be based on the Muslim faith. The Campaign for Muslim Schools said 90 per cent of pupils at St Albert's Primary, in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow, are Muslim, yet children are having to take part in Catholic rituals like saying the Lord's Prayer and attending mass. Osama Saeed, co-ordinator of the alliance of Glasgow's main mosques and Muslim organisations, said he could see no reason why the main faith of the school should not change. He said: "Clearly the parents of that area find a faith school,...

Airline bans Bibles to avoid offending Muslims Carrier to Saudi Arabia also precluding crucifixes, teddy bears Posted: January 9, 2006 11:20 p.m. Eastern  © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com A British airline banned its staff from taking Bibles and wearing crucifixes or St. Christopher medals on flights to Saudi Arabia to avoid offend the country's Muslims. British Midland International also has told female flight attendants they must walk two paces behind male colleagues and cover themselves from head to foot in a headscarf and robe known as an abaya, the Mirror newspaper of London reported. Teddy bears or other cuddly toys also are not...

Air crew ordered not to wear crucifixes on flights to Saudi By Matt Barnwell (Filed: 09/01/2006) Air crew on the only British airline that flies to Saudi Arabia have been told not to wear crucifixes or St Christopher medals on flights there so as not to offend the country's Muslims. Stewardesses at BMI have also been told to cover themselves in the long abaya robes that Saudi women have to wear in public before they disembark in the capital Riyadh. In some instances, they are also advised to wear a headscarf. The airline insists that the rules are part of...

COPENHAGEN - When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including one in which he is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, it expected a strong reaction in this country of 5.4 million people. But the paper was unprepared for the global furor that ensued, including demonstrations in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, death threats against the artists, condemnation from 11 Muslim countries and a rebuke from the United Nations. "The cartoons did nothing that transcends the cultural norms of secular Denmark, and this was not a provocation to insult...

California Professor: I agree wholeheartedly with President Ahmadinejad. There was no such a thing as the "holocaust" Do you know what America’s young people are being taught in colleges and universities throughout this country? If the statements of Dr. Abdullah Mohamed Sindi are in any way representative of what is being taught then I think many people are in for a big surprise. Dr. Sindi has worked as a professor of political science and international relations at American universities and colleges including the University of California at Irvine, California State University in Pomona, Cerritos Community College, and Fullerton Community College....