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American Muslims are slamming a draft law in the northwestern state of Oregon to ban teachers from wearing religious dress such as hijab at public school.
“This legislation forces Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and others to choose between their faith and entering the teaching profession,” Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a press release.

The Oregon state legislature has passed a bill banning teachers from wearing religious dress at schools and will be signed by the Oregon governor into law.

In a new bid to prevent the opening of a Muslim school in the area, the New South Wales government is seeking to put its hand on a Muslim-owned land, tearing down a two-year dream of having a new school to serve 1200 Australian Muslim pupils.
“I did deliberated long and hard on this decision,” Education Minister Verity Firth told ABC on Friday, July 17.

Firth issued a decision to buy back a plot of land owned by Al Amanah College, arguing the land would be used to build a special school for children with disabilities.

Founded in Geneva, Switzerland in 1863, the International Committee of the Red Cross is an “impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance.” It also tries “to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles.”

Tehran, July 18: In a sign of endurance for Iran’s protest movement, demonstrators clashed with police Friday as one of the nation’s most powerful clerics challenged the supreme leader during Muslim prayers, saying country was in crisis in the wake of a disputed election.

One is not sure what had been the context of William Gladstone’s prophetic warning that justice delayed is justice denied. But it’s as though the British politician had India’s Liberhan Commission in his mind and the charade it has unleashed on an unsuspecting country when he proffered that much worn-out advice.

Egypt has finally decided to fight the rising phenomenon of sexual harassment on its streets, choosing mosques as the launching pad of its war against stalkers.
“Harassment has reached very dangerous levels,” Sheikh Saad al-Takky, a senior Ministry of Religious Endowments official, told IslamOnline.net.

“There must be some serious action to curb it and our ministry has decided to take this action.”

Having the country’s second largest oil producer, a versatile economy and located as a buffer zone against hot spots, resources-rich, Muslim-majority Xinjiang province is vital to China’s economic and geopolitical interests.

“It is China’s northwest frontier, and like Tibet, is absolutely vital to the country’s security,” Wenran Jiang, a China expert at the University of Alberta, told.

“Beijing will not compromise in any way on these regions.”

Spanning over 1.6 million km2, Xinjiang makes up about one sixth of China’s territory.

A 14-year-old boy, Irfan, was crossing the road near his house in Delhi when a Tavera car screeched to a halt near him, he was bundled into the car and pinned down under the heavy feet with pistol kept to his head.

The mother kept searching for the boy. Had it not the car’s numberplate and the judiciary’s help, the boy may not have been tracked and released in ten days, from a secret Abu Gharaib-like torture cell in faraway Gujarat where he underwent such torture which even the adults can’t even dream to endure.

War for supremacy is on in Pakistan between President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Army-ISI, and the Opposition led by Mian Nawaz Sharif.

Although Iranian authorities were quick to condemn the killing of a Muslim Egyptian woman by an alleged racist in a German courtroom last week, allowing protesters to organize a demonstration and hurl eggs at the German Embassy in Tehran, they’ve been less than compassionate about scores of Muslims killed in western China.

Conservationists have expressed concern over the decision to allow free entry to the Taj Mahal for three days from July 19 when the annual Urs pilgrimage of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan starts.

“The ‘carrying capacity’ of the monument, which has exercised both the experts in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Supreme Court in the past few years, is not a laughing matter,” said Surendra Sharma, president of the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society.

Historian R. Nath has also expressed concern about the safety of the monument from increasing human load.

The inhabitants of the Arabian Gulf have enjoyed the use of perfumes for several centuries. Arabian perfumes date back to before the era of Islam and their use is encouraged in Islam. The Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) encouraged believers to wear perfume, especially on Fridays for the “Jumaa prayer” (Friday noontime prayers).

In the gulf region a woman’s beauty has always been associated with perfume and Emirati men and women both use perfumes on a frequent basis.

THE EVENTS of that night are only too well known, they are etched in the nation’s conscience. That night, on 26/11, terror unfolded, step by step and went something like this — ten well-armed terrorists got off a dinghy and walked ashore in the posh Gateway of India area and broke up into pairs. Trained to navigate the high seas and wage high-tech urban jehad, each pair had been tasked to separate locations. The first bullet rang out at Colaba’s popular Leopold Café, just after 9.30.

A Muslim center in Australia can no longer hold Friday prayers in Cannington, Perth, a court ordered Tuesday, citing complaints that the faithful jam the neighborhood on a weekly basis and exceed the center’s designated limit.

The court complained Muslims attending the congregational prayer, held once every week, exceed their numbers and take over all parking spots in the industrial neighborhood in Perth,western Australia,where the Daawah Association of Western Australia prayer center is located.

As the latest inquiry into Israel’s war on Gaza hears the harrowing testimonies of Palestinian survivors, Edward Platt exposes the obstacles in the way of truth and a fair trial

Where political leaders have failed to come up with a plan to save the planet from global warming, religious leaders have succeeded. On July 6, Islamic leaders from over 50 Muslim countries, including heads of states of Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, will meet in Istanbul to sign an agreement on environment conservation.

An announcement is expected on Haj pilgrimage becoming green from next year and environment studies being included in religious schools. Already, a mosque in Leicester, Britain has become the world’s first green mosque.

The day US President Barack Obama reached out to Muslims around the world through his speech at the Turkish Parliament, saying the United States “is not and will never be at war with Islam,” Muslim Americans described what looked like a war on their community in the US. The American Muslim Taskforce (AMT) on Civil Rights and Elections, a coalition of major national Islamic organizations, discussed their concerns at a briefing at the National Press Club on April 6.

American Muslims are distributing thousands of free copies of the Noble Qur’an to US officials and policymakers as part of a wider campaign to educate Americans about Islam.
“Educating our nation’s leaders about Islam and the Qur’an is the American Muslim community’s responsibility,” Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement e-mailed to IslamOnline.net.

The “Share The Qur’an” campaign includes distributing 100,000 free copies of Qur’an among local, state and national officials.

Jerusalem, July 03: Amnesty accused Israeli forces on Thursday of war crimes in Gaza, saying they used children as human shields and conducted wanton attacks on civilians, in a report rejected as “unbalanced” by Israel.

The London-based human rights group also accused Hamas of war crimes, but said it found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Gaza’s Islamist rulers used civilians as human shields during Israel’s massive 22-day offensive.

Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader.

“Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran,” FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction.

He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said.

US cruise missiles lit up the skyline of the Iraqi capital with fire. Special operations commandos from the US Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities Division from the Northern Iraq Liaison Element had entered Iraq and directly called for the air strikes. The US had invaded Iraq. Why? In the words of an American soldier who was interviewed a day after the invasion, “I wanna take revenge for 9/11.”

I am Hindu,” quips nine-year-old Sikander Kathat, swinging between the chairs on which his parents are sitting at their dhaba in Beawar, 50 kilometres from Ajmer. “Ask him if he can read the namaaz,” says his father Mithu Kathat, a tad flustered.

The child, a student of standard two, nods a ‘yes’. His mother Shanti Devi smiles and adds, “Only recently, we got him circumcised.

He is Muslim. Aren’t you?” Sikander just tilts his head in a half nod.

Iran’s political crisis would end pretty quickly if the opposition went toe-to-toe with the security forces – and no matter how courageous and determined the demonstrators are, the likelihood of them toppling the regime on the streets right now is pretty remote.

Although at least 17 and perhaps many more opposition supporters have been killed and hundreds have been arrested, the regime has used only a fraction of its capacity for violent suppression, and its security forces show no sign of wavering or splintering.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s comments on burqa created a storm. Normally, what France, or for that matter any other country, decides on dress code should not be anyone else’s business, but the debate on burqa is of great relevance to India, given that we have the second-largest Muslim population in the world.

A large number of Muslim women in India do not wear the burqa unless required by tradition or pushed by families, and their number is swelling. Therefore, Sarkozy’s decision has reverberations here.

Michael Jackson’s sudden death at age 50 provoked an outpouring of emotion from Muslims and Arabs who paid tribute to the pop star whose conversion to Islam and brief residence in the Gulf helped cement his popularity among a global fan base.