Imam

IT'S PURE COINCIDENCE that Drew Leder's book about teaching philosophy in the Maryland State Penitentiary was released yesterday, the day that, according to the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, the number of Americans in prison passed 2 million. Leder got to know a few of these souls in the two years he volunteered at the Pen, coming down from the ivory towers of Loyola College to discuss Socrates, Nietzsche, Foucault and such contemporary thinkers as Cornel West in a weekly seminar with men who earned their time in the state's maximum-security prison by robbing, killing, raping and assaulting.

BASRA, Iraq - The muezzin's call to prayer that sounded from the main mosque carried the same message of God's greatness heard around the Muslim world, but yesterday, in Iraq's second-largest city, all else had changed. For the first time in more than three decades, Shiite Muslims here worshipped without fear that agents of Saddam Hussein were listening. Many gathered outside the Jamia Imam al-Sadiq mosque, itself a potent symbol of repression, having been heavily damaged when Hussein's forces put down a Shiite uprising in 1991.

An article in Sunday's Sun, ("Airline probes removal of 2 imams from flight," May 8) states that an airline removed two imams from a flight because passengers felt uncomfortable with their presence. What the airline should have done was to remove those uncomfortable passengers instead of the imams. John L. Warthen, Catonsville

ARLINGTON, Va. -- In the race to the bottom for votes to win office, or to preserve themselves in office, it would be difficult to outrun Republicans as they pander to the Hispanic vote by refusing to control our southern border against an invasion by millions of illegal aliens. Democrats are trying, and they may soon pass Republicans in their cynical pursuit of political power. At the Democrats' winter meeting, a clergyman was asked to deliver the invocation. He was Husham Al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center, a Shiite mosque in Dearborn, Mich.

LONDON - The government removed Britain's most outspoken Muslim cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri, from his post yesterday as imam at the Finsbury Park mosque, which the authorities believe is an active recruitment center for violent Islamic radicals. The Charity Commission's decision to ban al-Masri from preaching at the northern London mosque was made a day after he declared that the crew of the Columbia space shuttle - six Americans, including an Indian-born Hindu, and an Israeli - represented a "trinity of evil" punished with death by Allah.

An evangelical minister, a rabbi and an imam rent a van. What sounds like the start of a joke is actually a national tour we began together on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, to improve interfaith cooperation and address a rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry now dividing many communities. Our 18-city tour, which stops in Maryland on Sunday at St. Katharine Drexel Roman Catholic Church in Frederick, is based on the simple but powerful idea that if we can get people talking about faith, values and the common good, the differences that too often divide us will prove less daunting than our shared humanity.

ROME -- An Italian court has issued European arrest warrants for 22 CIA operatives accused of kidnapping a radical imam in Milan, expanding the dragnet for the suspects to 25 countries, a prosecutor said yesterday. The abduction is one of several cases causing a furor in Europe in which U.S. intelligence agencies are suspected of using European soil and airspace to imprison or to transport terror suspects to third countries without judicial authorization. These so-called extraordinary renditions are one of the most controversial elements of the Bush administration's efforts to fight terrorism.

Several religious leaders joined Baltimore's mayor and state lawmakers Wednesday in urging new state gun control laws, calling for a wide-ranging package of bills designed to prevent tragedies like the shooting in Connecticut. "The violence is simply too much, the grief is simply too profound," said Rabbi Ron Shulman of Chizuk Amuno Congregation, president of the Baltimore Jewish Council. State Sen. Brian Frosh, a Montgomery County Democrat who chairs the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said that in the coming General Assembly session, he will push for a ban on assault weapons like the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle used in last week's massacre.

MILAN, Italy - They ran up tabs of thousands of dollars at some of Milan's best hotels and restaurants. They chatted on their cellular telephones and gave out passport, frequent flyer and drivers' license numbers when booking flights or renting cars. And now they are fugitives. If Italian authorities are right, a CIA operation has been exposed here that on some levels was brazen and perhaps reckless, even as it successfully spirited away a reputedly notorious Egyptian imam. Italian arrest orders have been issued for 13 CIA operatives, and additional warrants are possible, in what might be the first time an ally of Washington, D.C., has attempted to prosecute its spies.

The An-Nur mosque, located in a former Dodge/Chrysler dealership showroom on Philadelphia Road, in White Marsh, is austere. There's little about it to draw attention from the street outside. The floor of the mosque's main hall is covered with gray carpet, with strips of duct tape to orient worshipers eastward as they pray. The plain, off-white walls are adorned with nothing more than a few book shelves, a couple of wall clocks and some decorative scripts of Quranic passages. “We try to keep it simple.