Muslim

For Farheena Ahmed and Zeshaan Rasheed, dating was always out of the question. The custom in their Muslim culture is to seek a mate, not a date, and the introduction of potential partners is commonly done by the parents. In this case, Farheena, 24, and Zeshaan, 25, met on their own in 1998 when both were working in a lab at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. At the time, she was a master's degree candidate at Johns Hopkins (she has since graduated, and is starting law school in the fall)

RE PAT Dougherty's July 10 letter, "Off the Hook on Hate!": I am a Muslim, and I don't hate, nor do I wish to kill anyone. Being a Muslim is about peace, surrender, unity, education and love for one another and everything that's pure. Before she makes statements about something, she should have a clearer understanding about what she's calling ignorant! Shawn Sutton Pa. Department of Corrections

SINCE SEPT. 11, the world has come to know more about the educational systems prevalent today in Muslim countries and their role in promoting hostility toward the West. The educational system of Osama bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia is being criticized in the West, particularly in the United States. The Indian government in December announced an effort to reform the Muslim religious schools known as madrasas, though this is perhaps a mixed blessing given that the same government is using the schools to promote Hinduism as part of its nationalist program.

THIS IS AN open letter to the Muslims in Philly who also happen to be African-American: Now that Islam is in the news every day, why don't we make in extra effort to help promote it in the correct light? To my brothers in Islam: come in off the corners, put the weed and crack down, get rid of the guns, clean yourselves up. Stay out of the clubs, stop the fornicating, stop chasing skirts, find the Muslim wives. Get to the masjid for the salat, turn down Jay-Z and listen to the imams on tape.

Brightly colored hijabs and jilbabs - head scarves and full-length dresses - filled the Valley Forge Convention Center yesterday as Muslims from all over the United States and Canada gathered to explore their heritage and future. "Our Islamic Heritage" organized by the Islamic Circle of North America attracted up to 4,000 Muslims for its 21st annual event. "We are learning how we as Muslims should be living in America," said Tariq Hafeez of Chicago, who was attending the convention for the first time.

Shortly before 1 p.m. on Friday, red and blue prayer rugs and white plastic tarps were unfolded and laid out in the middle of a damp north London street. About 120 faithful, all of them men, sat down on the ground cover outside the Finsbury Park mosque to await the man who would lead them in both prayer and controversy. He arrived deep in the center of a throng of masked security guards, but there was no mistaking him. Abu Hamza al-Masri, a towering man in his mid-40s with no hands and only one eye, has become Britain's most visible - and notorious - Muslim leader, much to the pain of the country's large mainstream Islamic community.

Sheikh M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, spiritual leader of an international Muslim fellowship headquartered in Philadelphia, died Monday of respiratory complications, a spokesman for the fellowship said. Bawa was believed to be more than 100 years old. He is said to have attracted more than 10,000 members to the fellowship's 12 branches around the world and 800 followers to the mosque here. The mosque and fellowship center at 5820 Overbrook Ave. was built by volunteers in 1984. Bawa, a native of Sri Lanka, became a Sufi master and a patron of the Serendib Sufi Study Circle, said spokesman David Freudberg.

RE THE OP-ED "And some guts wouldn't hurt, either" by Michael Graham (Feb. 14): You give two reasons that U.S. newspapers should print those cartoons of Muhammad, now let me tell you one why they shouldn't: As you have seen from the reaction around the world, it is very offensive to Muslims. News organizations have always tried not to offend a particular religion or ethnicity by publishing certain statements or pictures. Would your newspaper ever publish a cartoon that features Jesus or the pope in some negative way?

Host and Guest plays out its tragedy in a remote village in the Caucasus at an unspecified time in the past, but its core themes of the appalling price of ethnic hatred and religious fanaticism are sadly applicable in many parts of the world. Unnumbered words have been expended on this subject, but Host and Guest is at its most effective and telling when nothing is said. This pertinent folk tale, adapted from the work of the Georgian poet Vazha Pshavela by Roland Reed and ably directed by Paata Tsikurishvili, uses sinuously choreographed movement and kinetically staged explosions of violence to drive home the devastation brought on by blind loyalty to a creed and its perceived demands.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Oman and other Muslim nations agreed to support the U.S.-led war against terrorism only after President Bush and his top aides assured them that the United States would not quit until Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network were destroyed. Two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said that while Arab and Muslim leaders publicly warned of the dangers of U.S. attacks on another Islamic nation, privately they wanted assurances Bush would not stop the war the way his father ended the campaign against Iraq a decade ago - with the enemy still standing.

A recent wave of bank holdups and a homicide committed by men dressed as Muslim women has prompted the Philadelphia-area Islamic community to offer a $20,000 reward for tips that lead to the arrest and conviction of the suspects. The Majlis Ash Shura, an organization representing the membership of 71 masajids and congregations in the Philadelphia area, was joined by elected officials at a news conference Tuesday at City Hall. The message from the District Attorney's Office and the Islamic community: zero tolerance.

OSLO, Norway - Anders Behring Breivik shed tears as he went on trial Monday for killing 77 people - but not for his victims. The emotional display came when prosecutors showed his anti-Muslim video. Dressed in a dark suit and sporting a thin beard, the right-wing fanatic defended the July 22 massacre as an act of "self-defense" in his professed civil war, and sat stone-faced as prosecutors described how he killed each of his victims. But he was gripped by emotion when they showed a video warning of a Muslim takeover of Europe and laden with crusader imagery that he posted on YouTube before the attacks.

DETROIT - Some Detroit-area Muslims have been held at gunpoint, handcuffed, and repeatedly harassed about their religion when returning to the United States from Canada, according to a lawsuit that seeks to bar government agents from asking questions about religion. The Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said border agents and the FBI were violating the First Amendment and a 1993 federal law that guarantees freedom to practice religion. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in Detroit.

LAHORE, Pakistan - It was barely 4 a.m. when 19-year-old Rinkal Kumari disappeared from her home in a small village in Pakistan's southern Sindh province. When her parents awoke, they found only her slippers and a scarf outside the door. A few hours later her father got a call telling him that his daughter, a Hindu, had converted to Islam to marry a Muslim boy. Only days later, Seema Bibi, a Christian woman in the province of Punjab, was kidnapped along with her four children after her husband couldn't repay a loan to a large landlord.

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union released records Tuesday obtained from the FBI that it said showed the bureau's San Francisco division used its Muslim outreach efforts to collect intelligence on religious activities protected by the Constitution. Under the U.S. Privacy Act, the FBI is generally prohibited from maintaining records on how people practice their religion unless there is a clear law enforcement purpose. ACLU lawyers said the documents, which the organization obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed violations of that law. After reviewing the ACLU documents, the FBI said the reports that contained notes about religious activity were appropriate because the agents were meeting with members of the Muslim community for law enforcement purposes.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - Dozens of French Muslims are training with the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan, raising fears of future attacks after the shooting deaths of seven people in southern France, allegedly by a man who spent time in the region, Pakistani intelligence officials said Saturday. Authorities are investigating whether Mohamed Merah, the Frenchman of Algerian descent suspected of killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi, and three French paratroopers in Toulouse this month, was among the training group, the officials said.

Pope Shenouda III, 88, the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church who led Egypt's Christian minority for 40 years during a time of increasing tensions with Muslims, died Saturday. The state news agency MENA said that Pope Shenouda died after battling liver and lung problems for several years, and a doctor who treated him several years ago said he suffered from prostate cancer that had spread to his lungs. He died at his residence in the main Coptic Cathedral in Cairo, several figures close to him said.

NEW YORK - An interstate feud escalated Friday when a New York congressman berated New Jersey Gov. Christie for "trying to score cheap political points" instead of saving lives when he complained that the New York Police Department's monitoring of Muslims across the state line was arrogant and secretive. Rep. Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said Christie crossed a line when he mocked Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as "all-knowing, all-seeing," and said the NYPD's intelligence operation in Newark may have been "born out of arrogance.

TRENTON - New York City's Police Department is facing mounting criticism of its secret surveillance of Muslims across the Northeast, with ACLU chapters and other groups demanding an investigation and Gov. Christie accusing the NYPD of arrogantly acting as if "their jurisdiction is the world. " The intelligence-gathering was detailed recently in a series of Associated Press stories that reported that police monitored mosques and Muslims around the metropolitan area and kept tabs on Muslim student groups at the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and other schools in Upstate New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Monday that it has no control over how the New York Police Department spends millions of dollars in White House grants that helped pay for NYPD programs that put entire American Muslim neighborhoods under surveillance. In New York, the police commissioner said he wouldn't apologize. The White House has no opinion about how the grant money was spent, spokesman Jay Carney said. The Associated Press reported Monday that the White House money has paid for the cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance on Muslim neighborhoods and paid for computers that stored even innocuous information about Muslim college students, mosque sermons, and social events.