Muslim

BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber edged into a crowd of Iraqi officials and U.S. forces gathered for a meeting north of Baghdad yesterday, killing as many as 12 people, including an American soldier. It was one of three attacks nationwide that shattered the peaceful start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which began Wednesday for Sunni Muslims. Shiites begin celebrating the four-day holiday today. The violence underscored what a U.S. official called the "great security threats" still looming in Iraq, threats illustrated by two recent discoveries.

So, what do you call a New York-born, Muslim-raised, self-described "redneck" girl? (She grew up in Georgia.) You call her Noureen DeWulf. You've already probably seen her onscreen in Pledge This! with Paris Hilton and any second, she'll burn up the Cineplex in Ocean's Thirteen with all those guys who are pals of George Clooney. But if you can't wait, pick up Maxim. There's Noureen in skin-tight jeans and a pristine white bra. She wears spiky leather boots in some shots, stiletto platform heels in others.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- He is 59 years old and nearly blind. He speaks passable English, comes from a long line of Muslim clerics and has studied in Egypt, Iraq and Canada.He totters about with a cane, tirelessly preaches religious tolerance and heads the largest Muslim group in the world's most populous Muslim nation.These are some of the spare and more obvious facts about Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia's newly elected president.His policies and political vision are less known, as are any political alliances he might have struck to help win the presidency.

NEW YORK -- It was only a coincidence last week that on the day Hillary Rodham Clinton endorsed Jerusalem as the one true capital of Israel, an American Muslim was kicked off a congressional counterterrorism commission. But you would have to be pretty dim not to notice that in some matters some Americans are more equal than others.Mrs. Clinton was only doing her duty. If you run for office in New York, city or state, you say Jerusalem is the capital. "Eternal and indivisible," she said, which means Arabs need not apply for any shared rule of the city sacred to three religions.

NEW YORK -- Twenty-one Muslim cadets from the Middle East, who said they were harassed and beaten by their classmates at the State University of New York Maritime College, left the college and moved to a hotel Friday night. The students had declined to attend class since Tuesday.The departure of the Muslim freshmen, and the dispiriting circumstances surrounding it, sent ripples of introspection through the barracks in the Bronx.Cadets at Maritime train for careers in the shipping industry in a four-year program that resembles that of the Naval Academy.

Akra Salihi of Towson didn't need television to tell him what was happenning in Baghdad yesterday. He was on the telephone as his family members in a tiny village north of the Iraqi capital soothed their frightened children. In the background, the sounds of the U.S.-British attack."My God, they're hitting us again," his brother told him from Quzabart. The family hunkered down, convinced there was nowhere they could go that would be safe.And so Baltimore-area family and friends of Iraqis are once again horrified at another bombing of their homeland.

CAIRO, Egypt -- At the Al Rahman Mosque on the street of the Pyramids, Sheik Shabain Shalaby preaches to the faithful about terrorists who kill innocent people, those with God in their hearts.Whether the victims work in a factory in Sudan or an American Embassy in Kenya, an act of terrorism is the work of the devil, says the Muslim cleric. "No aim is to be achieved in these attacks," he says, as the call for afternoon prayer rings out.But not all of the Muslims who pray at this corner mosque view the issue as simply as the sheik.

While living in different regions of Algeria as a child, Karima Roudesli was introduced to the geographic variations of the country's traditional dress. The daughter of an oil company manager, Roudesli could afford to acquire brilliantly hued, embroidered dresses and suits for her dowry, a custom that she and other Muslim women adhere to with happy anticipation.Roudesli, 43, a linguist fluent in French, English, Spanish and Arabic, as well as its Algerian dialect, treasures the history behind Algeria's native customs, but she is also a self-proclaimed feminist who has never been one to shy away from snug jeans and a T-shirt.

Recalling FBI harassment, harrowing missionary trips and the spellbinding teaching of Elijah Muhammad, five "pioneers" yesterday recounted their role in the founding more than 50 years ago of the Black Muslim movement in Baltimore.The pioneers, now in their 70s, held forth for nearly three hours before several dozen rapt members who sat listening on the dark green carpet of the Walter Omar Muslim Cultural Center in West Baltimore, a mosque of the American Muslim Society."In the beginning, I was known as Wali 2X," said Wali Abdul Hamid Aquil, 78, who converted to Islam in 1948, two years after the temple was founded in Baltimore.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- For two years, the Muslim community here has been shaken by a small violent Islamic faction, which uses the pipe bomb as its weapon of choice in a vigilante crusade against crime and its critics.When a bomb exploded Tuesday at the Planet Hollywood restaurant, the finger of suspicion almost inevitably and immediately pointed to the radicals.Unusually, much of the finger pointing came from the Muslims themselves, although there is no evidence to prove their suspicions.

The use of Islam to justify killing is "an innovation" in the religion, a Muslim scholar told a Baltimore conference Saturday, and warned: "Most innovations lead to hellfire." "The Satan always has people that he will be able to deceive," Dr. Waleed Basyouni said during a presentation he called "Reclaiming Islam from the Jihadists." Hundreds of Muslims went to the Baltimore Convention Center on Saturday to hear Basyouni and others promote what organizers described as a moderate, modern interpretation of Islam for the United States and the West.

An adult convert to Islam, Ify Okoye spent her first couple of years learning about the religion from books. It wasn't until the Beltsville woman started going to seminars given by the AlMaghrib Institute that she really began to understand her new faith. "I look at my Islam completely as the pre-AlMaghrib phase and the post-AlMaghrib phase," says the 25-year-old Okoye, a student at Bowie State University. "After attending my first class, I see there's such a breadth and depth to the Islamic tradition, and also a real practical intellectual tradition that's vibrant, that can work today, that Muslims in America can use."

CAIRO, Egypt -- He came with good will and pretty sentences, but the question kept echoing: Were they enough? President Barack Obama's long-anticipated speech to the Muslim world Thursday sought to dissolve the mistrust between Islam and the West by highlighting his personal appeal as he called for an end to intolerance and violence and a move toward a shared future. It was a carefully textured blend of history, the president's experience with Islam and the need to quell religious extremism.

They Must Be Stopped Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It by Brigitte Gabriel St. Martin's Press/ 240 pages/ $24.95 Against Us The New Face of America's Enemies in the Muslim World by Jim Sciutto Harmony Books/288 pages/$24.95 On Sept. 20, 2001, in an address to a joint session of Congress, President Bush assured Muslims that Americans respect their religion: "Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme in the name of Allah."

Americans who value the truth know that Sen. Barack Obama is a Christian, not a radical Muslim. Yet that lie had so penetrated the public's consciousness that when surveyed by the Pew Research Center this spring, 8 in 10 said they had heard rumors that he was a Muslim. Now, a satiric New Yorker magazine cover cartoon depicting Mr. Obama and his wife as terrorists in the Oval Office has caused a significant stir among supporters, already worried about a flood of Internet messages and Web postings filled with lies about the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's beliefs and history.

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com. "Emily Hussein Nordling," her entry now reads. With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. Hussein is a family name inherited from his father.

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.

WASHINGTON - A pope's visit to another nation is rarely, if ever, viewed as inconsequential, but Pope Benedict XVI's arrival in the U.S. today comes at a time when consequences loom larger than usual. In only three years as pontiff, Pope Benedict has managed to ignite controversy in an already volatile religious environment, most recently by baptizing the Italy-based Muslim journalist Magdi Cristiano Allam during this year's Easter vigil. Not surprisingly, many Muslims were offended and criticized Pope Benedict for being insensitive.

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.

Barack Obama is not a Muslim. We know this because he has told us so. We know it because there is no credible evidence to suggest otherwise. We know it despite a campaign of lies and whispers from various bloggers, pundits and head cases. Barack Obama is not a Muslim. But what if he was? Same guy, same charisma, same inspirational idealism. But also a Muslim. Not a crazy Muslim. Not a guy prone to strapping bombs to his chest in hopes of meeting virgins in heaven. A Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-type Muslim.