Muslim

CAIRO - The thousands of ultraconservative Muslims who poured into Tahrir Square on Friday were destined for disappointment. Dressed in the long traditional shirt-like gelabiya, some accompanied by wives shrouded in black except for their eyes, these men were demanding that Egypt's new constitution be based on the rulings of Islamic law, or sharia , including the criminal provisions that the hand of a thief be cut off or a woman be stoned to...

NEW YORK - A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told the Associated Press. Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture.

AMERICAN MUSLIM Zuhdi Jasser is a jihadist. A veteran of 11 years in the Navy and a medical doctor, Jasser is on a jihad for democracy, the American-style democracy he has enjoyed since birth as the son of parents who fled Syria. I believe immigrants - especially those coming to freedom from dark lands of terror and oppression - appreciate America more than most native-born Americans who don't know how good they got it. Jasser was born here, and his parents taught him to honor both his faith, Islam, and America, with its faith in freedom and democracy.

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine President Benigno Aquino III announced Sunday that his government has reached a preliminary peace deal with the nation's largest Muslim rebel group in a major breakthrough toward ending a decades-long insurgency. Aquino said the "framework agreement" - a roadmap for a new autonomous region for minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's south - was an assurance the Moro Islamic Liberation Front insurgents will no longer aim to secede from the country.

It's about time. After a week of anti-American violence in the Muslim world over a video that offends Islam, President Obama finally made a rousing defense of free speech, even if it insults religion. Following the outburst of outrage in Libya and Egypt, American officials repeatedly deplored the video. There should have been more U.S. outrage over a campaign of violence orchestrated by Islamists and abetted by some Muslim leaders. In his annual address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Obama went a good ways toward setting the record straight.

NEW YORK - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appealed Monday to Muslims to show "dignity" and not resort to violence as they protest an anti-Islam film produced in the United States. Speaking at her husband's Clinton Global Initiative before meeting the presidents of Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, and Pakistan on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly, Clinton said the United States would always champion the rights to peaceful protest and free expression even if it deplored the content of the speech.

You don't have to be an Islamophobe to say, "Enough already. " It's time for U.S. officials to stop apologizing for the YouTube video that supposedly sparked recent riots in Islamic countries. The video is merely a convenient pretext for religious radicals and irresponsible politicians to stir up anti-Western anger. They would have found another excuse if it hadn't surfaced. In an effort to avoid violence in Pakistan, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad broadcast ads on local TV showing American leaders denouncing the brief film.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's "Day of Love for the Prophet" turned into a deadly day of gunfire, tear gas, and arson. Thousands angered by an anti-Muslim film ignored pleas for peaceful rallies and rampaged in several Pakistani cities Friday in battles with police that killed 19 people and touched off criticism of a government decision to declare a national holiday to proclaim devotion for the Prophet Muhammad. The film, which was produced in the United States and denigrates the prophet, has outraged many in the Muslim world in the 10 days since it attracted attention on the Internet, and there were new, mostly peaceful protest marches in a half-dozen countries from Asia to the Middle East.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Islamic militants sought Tuesday to capitalize on anger over an anti-Islam video that was produced in the United States, saying a suicide bombing that killed 12 people in Afghanistan was revenge for the film and calling for attacks on U.S. diplomats and facilities in North Africa. The attempt by extremists across the region to harness Muslim fury over a film that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad posed new concern for the United States, whose embassies and consulates have been targeted, and in some cases breached, during riots and protests over the past week.

NEW YORK - Mitt Romney on Friday denounced an anti-Muslim film that is stirring unrest in the Middle East, even as he stood by his condemnation of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for its implied denunciation of the film. Speaking to George Stephanopoulos of ABC's Good Morning America , Romney said he still believed it was "inappropriate" for the embassy to put out the statement, issued as anger rose in Egypt on Tuesday over a film that ridiculed the Muslim prophet Muhammad. He said the embassy should have taken the statement down after protesters breached the embassy grounds.