Muslim

NEW YORK - New York's mayor served notice Friday that his police department would do everything in its power to root out terrorists in the United States, even if that means sending officers outside the city limits or placing law-abiding Muslims under scrutiny. "We just cannot let our guard down again," Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned. He laid out his doctrine for keeping the city safe during his weekly radio show after a week of criticism of a secret New York Police Department effort to monitor mosques in several cities and keep files on Muslim student groups at colleges in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Upstate New York.

Reacting to a recent report that New York City police monitored a Muslim student group at the University of Pennsylvania among groups at more than a dozen schools, Penn students plan to meet at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Graduate Student Center to "air concerns. " The report, published Sunday by the Associated Press, said detectives routinely trawled Muslim student websites and blogs at universities including Penn, Rutgers, Yale, and Columbia to keep track of groups that could be ripe for infiltration by terrorist recruiters.

NEWARK, N.J. - A coalition of New Jersey-based Muslim and civil rights groups is asking Gov. Christie to investigate reports that the New York Police Department conducted secret surveillance of Muslim communities in New Jersey. Sixteen organizations have signed a letter asking the governor to investigate the extent of the surveillance in New Jersey and whether local law enforcement agencies were involved. Christie suggested Thursday through a spokesman that it would not be "appropriate" for his office to conduct an investigation and he would instead forward the request to the state Attorney General's Office.

TAMPA, Fla. - A Kosovo-born Muslim man was charged with plotting to attack crowded places around Tampa - including nightclubs and a sheriff's office - with an assault rifle, car bomb, and other explosives, federal authorities said Monday. According to a federal complaint, Sami Osmakac, 25, recorded an eight-minute video shortly before his arrest explaining why he wanted to bring terror to his "victims' hearts" in the Tampa Bay area. Osmakac is a naturalized American citizen born in Kosovo, which was then part of the former Yugoslavia in eastern Europe.

TRENTON - A federal appeals panel on Wednesday upheld the convictions and sentences of five Muslim men accused of planning to attack Fort Dix or other military bases, though it threw out a charge against one defendant. The main issue was prosecutors' use of wiretaps obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The recordings were a major part of the 21/2-month trial for the five men, all Muslim immigrants who grew up in South Jersey. Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and brothers Dritan, Eljvir, and Shain Duka were arrested in May 2007.

MADALLA, Nigeria - Women returned to clean the blood from St. Theresa Catholic Church yesterday, and one man wept uncontrollably amid its debris as a Nigerian Christian association demanded protection for its churches. At least 35 people died at St. Theresa and dozens more were wounded as radical Muslim militants launched coordinated attacks across Africa's most populous nation within hours of one another. Four more people were killed in other violence blamed on the group known as Boko Haram.

Osama bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is reeling, Middle East dictators are deposed seemingly every other Tuesday, and yet, in the fevered and delirious minds of far too many of our elected leaders, the United States is forever on the verge of becoming just another province in the ever-expanding Muslim caliphate. Never mind that the last actual caliph lost that title back in 1922, when the Ottoman Empire dissolved. Or that most estimates put the Muslim population of the United States at less than 1 percent.

CAIRO - Partial results Wednesday showed the Muslim Brotherhood emerging as the biggest winner in Egypt's landmark parliamentary elections, and leaders of the once-banned Islamic group demanded to form the next government, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with the ruling military. The generals who took power after the February fall of Hosni Mubarak have said they will name the government and the parliament would have no right to dissolve it. They have also sought to wrest from the new parliament the more long-reaching and crucial role of running the process for writing the new constitution.

NEW YORK - There's a new reality show star on the tube Sunday night. Suehaila Amen doesn't drink, prays daily, and wears a head scarf in public to preserve her modesty. I don't think we're at the Jersey Shore anymore, Snooki. Suehaila is one of the cast members of TLC's new series All-American Muslim . While most of the women on the show, set in Dearborn, Mich., choose to wear the hijab (traditional scarf), there are some startling exceptions. Glamorous blonde Nina Bazzi, for instance, appears to have wandered over from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills set by mistake.

A prepared foods clerk at Whole Foods Market, the natural food supermarket chain that made its reputation on taking the high road in diversity, employment engagement, and high-quality food, said managers at an area Whole Foods store fired him because he is Muslim. "I guess they thought I was some kind of extreme guy, but everybody loved me," said Glenn Mack, 24, of Philadelphia's Overbrook section, who was fired in February. " "While we don't give out details about current or former team members, we can say that we deny such allegations, we value and celebrate diversity, and we have a zero-tolerance discrimination policy," said Whole Foods spokeswoman Robin W. Rehfield.