Author: Meg Kinnard

Source: The South Carolina State

Wire Service: AP

http://www.thestate.com/2010/10/13/1510127/police-sc-islamic-center-defaced.html

An Islamic center has been defaced as someone spelled out “PIG CHUMP” in bacon strips, police in Florence said Tuesday.

Sometime between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday, someone placed the bacon in foot-high...

Author: Kirsten Grieshaber

Source: WTOP

Wire Service: AP

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=383&sid=2077440

Ahmed Sami spoke only Arabic when he moved from Morocco to Germany eight years ago to work as an imam. During his Friday prayer services at a mosque in western Germany, he soon noticed that many of the listeners could not understand him.

"The children and teenagers don't speak a lot of Arabic anymore,"...

Author: Abhishek Raman

Source: The Washington Post

http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/eboo_patel/2010/10/with_this_partition_its_now_ti.html#more

I can still recall the night of December 7th, 1992, when I witnessed human suffering and death for the first time. Streets around New Delhi were deserted due to the curfew imposed by the military. I sat with my parents at the dinner table and...

Author: John Lauinger

Source: The New York Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/10/11/2010-10-11_staten_island_teens_charged_with_hate_crime_for_attacking_muslim_classmate_over_.html?r=news

Four Staten Island teens are facing hate-crime charges for taunting a Muslim classmate because of his faith, calling him a "terrorist"...

Author: Brock Parker

Source: The Boston Globe

http://archive.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/10/10/school_system_to_get_muslim_holiday/

Author: Eleanor Beardsley

Source: NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130440036

New York is not the only city divided over the building of a mosque. In the French Mediterranean port of Marseille, construction of a large mosque is being hotly debated. Even though the cornerstone has already been laid, the project is far from being accepted by everyone.

The controversy reflects the deeper tensions...

Author: Marc Champion

Source: The Wall Street Journal

http://topics.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703298504575534102839883556.html

Turkey is quietly resolving an issue that has come to symbolize the country's bitter divisions and nearly toppled its government two years ago: Slowly, women are being allowed to wear Islamic headscarves on university campuses.

The head of Turkey's Higher Education Board...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/10/07/france.burqa.ban/index.html?hpt=T2

France's law banning the burqa and other Islamic face coverings in public places is legal, top constitutional authorities in France ruled Thursday, clearing the final hurdle before the ban goes into effect.

The ban passed both houses of the French legislature by overwhelming margins earlier this year, and...

Author: Huma Imtiaz

Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/world/asia/08pstan.html?_r=1&ref=religion_and_belief

A nearly simultaneous double explosion that may have been the work of suicide bombers struck a crowded Sufi shrine in Pakistan’s main port city of Karachi on Thursday evening, killing at least 7 people and wounding 65, officials and rescue workers said.

It was the first...

Author: David Abel

Source: The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/10/adl_president_d.html?p1=News_links

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, was confronted at the organization’s annual meeting today in Boston by members who suggested his opposition to a proposed Islamic center near the site of the terrorist attacks in New York has sullied the...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: The Baha'i World News Service

http://news.bahai.org/story/795

Britain's most prominent heads of religion have called for the release of the seven Baha'i leaders serving prison sentences in Iran.

A statement by the United Kingdom's religious leaders – describing the sentencing of the seven as a "gross violation of the fundamental human right to freedom of religion" – was signed by, among others, the...

Author: Paul Vitello

Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/nyregion/08zero.html?ref=religion_and_belief

Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.

Concerned residents staged...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: The Asian Image

http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/united_kingdom/8435902._It___s_not_race__it_s_faith_____says_Muslim_and_Sikh_interfaith_project/

Discrimination against different faiths is more of a problem than racial discrimination, said members of a new interfaith project in West London.

Racial differences once formed...

Author: Mary Fitzgerald

Source: The Irish Times

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1006/1224280471825.html

Inside the imposing five-storey meditation hall shaped like a lotus and covered with more than 1,000 marble petals, there are representations of several Hindu deities, but none as prominent as that of Lakshmi, a goddess of wealth and prosperity.

Every year, millions come here to the sprawling...

Author: Judith Sudilovsky

Source: ENI

http://www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=4467

The Council of the Religious Institutions of the Holy Land has expressed "grave concern" over the 3 October burning by militant Israeli settlers of a mosque in the West Bank village of Beit Fajar near Bethlehem.

"The CRIHL strongly condemns these and similar acts of vandalism and arson which have taken place in the past year," said the council in a...