Islamic

As we enter into a season of campaigning in which our current wars will be a central issue, the American public needs to understand who its enemy is - in Iraq and elsewhere. Focusing on the deaths of individual terrorist leaders misses the real story of how to fight the jihadists and can leave Americans with a false sense of what the priorities should be in this fight. Last week, Iraqi officials reported the death of the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri. The Islamic State of Iraq, the group through which al-Qaida is operating in that country, soon after issued a statement assuring the mujahedeen that their leader remains alive.

Among social activists and feminists, combating female genital mutilation, or FGM, is an important policy goal. Sometimes called female circumcision or female genital cutting, FGM is the cutting of the clitoris of girls in order to curb their sexual desire and preserve their sexual "honor" before marriage. The practice, prevalent in some majority Muslim countries, has a tremendous cost: Many girls bleed to death or die of infection. Most are traumatized. Those who survive can suffer adverse health effects during marriage and pregnancy.

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- When Turkey's newly elected Parliament convenes for the first time today, it may face its first crisis even before members take their oaths of office.A newly elected deputy from the Islamic-oriented Virtue Party, Merve Kavakci, says she will insist on taking her oath while wearing her head scarf.That could lead to a confrontation with the strongly secular political establishment.The head scarf has become an inflammatory symbol in Turkey. Powerful military and civilian leaders consider it a sign of religious militancy and anti-secular beliefs.

IT IS a year before the millennium and Theresa Nybol Deng is a slave. In May, she was taken captive when the government-armed militia stormed her village in southern Sudan. Soldiers shot the men, looted the village and carted off as many women and children as they could. Theresa is 12 years old. She can be purchased for $50.If her fate is anything like that of tens of thousands of black Africans who have become chattel in Sudan's civil war, Theresa has been sold and bought. She is likely serving a master somewhere in northern Sudan, Libya or the Persian Gulf.

NEARLY 200 years ago, when Russia extended its empire to the Caucasus mountain region, one fortress carried a warning to the rebellious locals. It was called Grozny -- "threatening."Today, invading Russians feel Grozny is so threatening that they are bombing it out of existence. Moscow officials say that once Russian troops retake it, the capital of the rebellious republic of Chechnya will not be worth rebuilding.Russia's decision to retake Chechnya from Islamic separatists has caused terrible suffering and misery.

IT IS a year before the millennium and Theresa Nybol Deng is a slave. In May, she was taken captive when the government-armed militia stormed her village in southern Sudan. Soldiers shot the men, looted the village and carted off as many women and children as they could. Theresa is 12 years old. She can be purchased for $50.If her fate is anything like that of tens of thousands of black Africans who have become chattel in Sudan's civil war, Theresa has been sold and bought. She is likely serving a master somewhere in northern Sudan, Libya or the Persian Gulf.

THE VOTE for president Thursday gives Algeria a chance to end the dreadful murder and strife that have gripped it since the last election was annulled in 1992. The terrorists of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) have not agreed to it, but the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) has. A credible result could create a legitimacy terrorists could not overthrow.President Liamine Zeroual, a general picked by generals, is stepping out 18 months before the end of his term to make the election possible.

WASHINGTON -- A year after U.S. missiles slammed into Osama bin Laden's purported Afghan mountain stronghold, the terrorist kingpin remains alive but cornered, a stalemate that many specialists say suits America's interests better than its stated aim of arresting and trying him.Roving from camp to camp in fear of American missiles, reduced to communicating with minions through hand-carried computer disks, strictly watched even by his Afghan "hosts," bin...

The leader of the nation's largest Islamic body outlined a vision yesterday of self-sufficient Muslim community centers that would improve life in U.S. cities as their residents reach out to people of other races and faiths."

FOR 38 YEARS, Hassan II was a constitutional king of Morocco. He wrote the constitution, but it did not constrain his autocratic impulses. Common sense, shrewdness and a deft political touch did.On balance, he was a force for good. Like his contemporary, King Hussein of Jordan who died in February, King Hassan thwarted assassination schemes, rolled with the punches and knew when to make concessions.His death Friday at age 70 ended a period of progress and stability in his country of 29 million people.

A cold drizzle fell on Ernest Richardson as he stood in line yesterday on a West Baltimore sidewalk. The 58-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran did not seem to mind. Good things in life require sacrifice, he said, and he was waiting for some very good things: free food, blankets and toiletries at the Masjid Ul-Haqq mosque in the Upton neighborhood. "We're having a rough time financially at the moment," he said, referring to himself and his wife, Elaine, also disabled. "This is a blessing."

Saying "I divorce thee" three times, as men in Muslim countries have been able to do for centuries when leaving their wives, is not enough if you're a resident of Maryland, the state's highest court ruled yesterday. Yesterday, the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man's argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband's say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- In separate deadly attacks yesterday, a suicide bomber killed the army's surgeon general and seven other people, and gunmen burst into the offices of a British-based aid group in northwest Pakistan, shooting four local staffers to death and burning down their building. The assaults, both blamed on Islamic militants, were the most serious outbreak of violence since parliamentary elections a week earlier, in which the ruling party affiliated with President Pervez Musharraf was routed by two main opposition parties.

Today is the first day of the Islamic New Year: 1 Muharram, 1429. That assumes the young moon was visible at sunset last night in the Middle East. Closely tied to the lunar cycle, the Islamic calendar slips with respect to the (solar) Gregorian calendar used by most in the West. So the Islamic New Year moves about 11 days earlier each year. If our skies clear, we, too, will soon have a nice view of the slender crescent moon, in the west, just after sunset.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco yesterday handed a major victory to the Bush administration, ruling that a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program could not go forward because of the "state secrets" privilege. In a 3-0 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, which had argued that allowing an Islamic charity's claims that it was illegally spied upon to go forward would threaten national security. In the opinion, Judge M. Margaret McKeown flatly rejected the government's argument that "the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret."

Raanana, ISRAEL -- For anyone who wants to know why there is so much suspicion on the part of Israelis as to the real intentions of the Palestinian people, just listen to Saeb Erekat. Mr. Erekat, who is the chief Palestinian negotiator, this week rejected Israel's position that it be recognized as a Jewish state. The newspaper Haaretz reported that in a radio interview, Mr. Erekat said, "No state in the world connects its national identity to a religious identity." No state, that is, except for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania and a host of other Arab kingdoms, sheikdoms and republics that base their rule on Islam.

On November 5, 2007, ROBEST M. MUHAMMAD, devoted wife of Wali Muhammad. The family will receive friends on Thursday at Masjid Ul Haqq, 514 Islamic Way at 11 A.M. follow by services at 12:15 P.M.

When Osama bin Laden issued his videotaped message to the American people last month, a young jihad enthusiast went online to help spread the word. "America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness," he wrote on his blog. "America is known to be a people of arrogance." Unlike bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents' home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups.

Mallory Terry, who lives on a Northwest Baltimore block in Upton where half the rowhouses are vacant, wasn't expecting to see a throng of people collecting food and clothing outside the Ul-Haqq mosque when she took her two sons for a walk yesterday. After pausing briefly to ask if the bonanza was open to anyone, she collected apples, water, soda, spaghetti, corn and two bags of clothes, blankets and toiletries. Then she graciously thanked several volunteers. Terry, 23, said she isn't in dire straits, but as a mother of two young sons, she takes all the help she can get. "We need more things like this to help the community," she said, before calling out for her 4-year-old son Josiah to return to her side.

2 schoolboys among 5 dead in series of attacks in Somalia MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Bombings and grenade attacks killed two schoolboys and three other people in Somalia's capital yesterday, officials said. Nine people were wounded. Police blamed Islamist insurgents for the attacks. The two teenagers died in a blast in south Mogadishu near a school attended by hundreds of children, school director Mohamed Ahmed Farah said. Sunday is a school day in the majority Muslim nation, where government troops and their Ethiopian allies are fighting Islamic insurgents who vowed to conduct an Iraq-style insurgency after they were ousted by an Ethiopian-led invasion in December.