In Muslim-majority Kosovo last week, as the fasting month of Ramadan came to an end and families prepared for the reopening of public schools, the parliamentary Assembly of the Republic rendered its judgment on a controversy that has agitated the country for more than a year: It voted not to permit the Islamic headscarf (hijab) or any religious instruction in public schools.
We previously noted that a petition against the Bashar al-Assad regime's repressive action has been circulating Syria, signed by a leading group of sheikhs. We've obtained the full text and translated, and are here publishing the petition:
House Homeland Security Committee chair Pete King (R-N.Y.) held the latest hearing on the threat of homegrown radicalization of Muslims this morning, focusing specifically on radicalization in American prisons. Law enforcement experts testified that a small but dangerous group of convicts are converting to radical Islam within state and federal prisons, threatening America’s security.
President Obama, the Wall Street Journal reports, is preparing a speech that “will ask those in the Middle East and beyond to reject Islamic militancy in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and embrace a new era of relations” with the United States.
As we look ahead to Easter—Christianity’s greatest feast day, and the celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead—there is much to pray for. We pray for those affected by economic strife, and those harmed by natural disasters and war. But let’s not forget the Christians suffering around the world for their beliefs.
I confess that I'd never heard of Pakistani actress Veena Malik until I saw this video of her tearing into an Islamic cleric for his hypocrisy and twisted moral oppression. She's awfully attractive to begin with, but her courage somehow makes her irrisitable:
Perhaps the most basic measure of a country’s character is whether people, when given the chance, flood into the country or risk life and limb to escape from it. By this measure, Muslims are flourishing in America. Meanwhile, though Christianity predates Islam by centuries in the Middle East, intensifying persecution has prompted a mass Christian exodus from that region.
While its former “partner” and ruler from the other side of India, Pakistan, contends with--and often appears to accommodate--the aggression of the Taliban, Bangladesh (population 160 million, almost entirely Muslim), has quietly adopted a more vigorous policy of legal action to curb Islamist radicals.
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