Imam

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.

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.

For many Baltimoreans, Imam Mohamad Bashar Arafat is the public face of Islam. The bearded, thoughtful Syrian native was the first Muslim leader many local political, civic and religious leaders turned to as they scrambled to fathom the intricacies of Islam after the terrorist attacks in September last year. During the past year, Arafat has been in demand, praying next to cardinals, ministers and rabbis, and speaking at dozens of mosques, churches and synagogues. His message: Islam, Judaism and Christianity share ideals of peace, love, mercy and cooperation.

JUST BEFORE sunset last night in the old basilica in Baltimore, with the nation still shattered by ungodly acts of terrorism, an imam sat next to a cardinal who sat next to a rabbi, and they prayed for peace and healing in the face of terror and hate. They did the difficult thing that people expect of them - they tried to use words to restore hope in a week that tested a believer's faith in a merciful God. The beauty lay in the diversity of the voices, the religions - two millenniums of differences dashed by shared beliefs in justice and peace.

For years, Roman Catholic leaders have forged warm and friendly ties with Imam W. Deen Mohammed, leader of the Chicago-based Muslim American Society, the nation's largest body of African-American Muslims. Mohammed has become a friend of Baltimore Cardinal William H. Keeler, who in 1996 escorted the son of the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad to Rome to meet Pope John Paul II. The next year, Mohammed invited Chiara Lubich, founder of Focolare, a worldwide lay spiritual movement of 2 million Catholics, to speak at Harlem's Malcolm Shabazz Mosque.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - When the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamit II opened the first subway here 125 years ago, some of his devoutly religious subjects refused to use it because they feared going underground before they died. Yesterday, with the opening of the city's first new subway since then, the anxieties were rooted in a more mundane concern. Little more than a year ago, the region was rocked by a devastating earthquake that killed at least 17,000 people. Smaller quakes have occurred frequently since that time, and inhabitants of the city's apartment buildings often flee their homes at the slightest tremor.

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.

NEW YORK -- Betty Shabazz, widow of the slain African-American leader Malcolm X, was laid to rest yesterday afternoon with the same Sunni Muslim funeral service that marked his passing 32 years ago.Late yesterday afternoon, her casket was placed atop her husband's in a family grave at Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, a suburb 20 miles north of New York.The outpouring of emotion for Dr. Shabazz seemed to surprise even her family and friends.For a week, the mourning united this fractious city, with the most extreme of Harlem's black nationalist leaders joining the city's Republican mayor in praising her as a civil rights voice and mother of six.Old friends of the family couldn't help but contrast the warm feelings for Dr. Shabazz with the mixed reaction after Malcolm X was gunned down in the Audubon Ballroom in February 1965.

Atlanta -- The 51-year-old Muslim leader who used to be known as H. Rap Brown drives toward the basket against this weedy kid, dribbles behind his back and through his legs and scores with a little jumper that leaves the faithful laughing."

ATLANTA -- The man whose complaint led to criminal charges last week against the Atlanta Muslim once known as H. Rap Brown said yesterday that he did not know who shot and wounded him last month and that the police pressured him into (( making the identification.The complaining witness in the case, William Miles, 22, said in an interview at his home that he had repeatedly insisted to the police that he did not see who wounded him in the leg on July 26. He said it was the police who first presented him with the name and photographs of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the Muslim name now used by the former Mr. Brown, who in the 1970s led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.