Muslims in Europe see hope for better relations with Roman Catholicism after the new pope took the name Francis, recalling the 13th-century saint known for his efforts to launch Christian dialogue with Islam.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio chose the name after his election on Wednesday in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, who is revered for his radical poverty and humility. Francis met the sultan of Egypt in 1219 on a peace mission during the Fifth Crusade.

St. Francis crossed enemy lines unarmed to meet Sultan Malik al-Kamil and discuss war, peace and faith. He spent several days with the Muslim ruler, unsuccessfully trying to convert him, and was then returned safely to the Crusader side.   »»» FaithWorld

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A Frenchman who ripped a Muslim woman’s veil off her face as she strolled in a fairground was Wednesday given a five-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to compensate his victim.

The 30-year-old man, who admitted charges of aggravated assault, had justified the September 2012 attack at the time as an attempt by him to uphold a controversial law banning women from wearing niqabs, face-covering veils, in public.

That defence was thrown out by public prosecutors, who accused him of acting as a vigilante and carrying out an assault motivated by his victim’s religious faith.   »»» Islamophobia Watch

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An enraged Muslim crowd attacked a Christian neighborhood in Lahore on Saturday, setting fire to more than 150 houses and 2 churches, in a new display of religious intolerance as Pakistan reels from violent persecution against other minorities.

In Lahore, several thousand people attacked the Joseph Colony, a Christian neighborhood of about 200 homes, after a report that a Christian sanitation worker had blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad.

Blasphemy has acquired a hair-trigger sensitivity across Pakistan in recent years, with an alarming increase in mob violence.

The claims of blasphemy in Lahore, the police said, stemmed from an argument on Wednesday evening between two friends: Sawan Masih, the sanitation worker, and Shahid Imran, a Muslim barber.

On Thursday, Mr. Imran accused Mr. Masih, 28, of blasphemy, sending a shiver of apprehension through the Christian population. People began to leave their homes that evening, and on Friday, the police prepared charges against Mr. Masih.

On Saturday morning, several thousand people, including ethnic Pashtuns who worked in nearby factories, set upon the colony. Some were armed with batons and pistols, the police said.

“They vandalized Christians’ houses, desecrated churches and opened fire on the police,” according to a police spokesman, Multan Khan. Several policemen were hurt as they tried to intervene.    »»» NYTimes.com

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) said that Christians living peacefully in a Muslim country are “protected citizens” and that those who attack such people have attacked him. There is no place in Islam for collective punishment of an entire community. Sadly, in Pakistan, all you have to do to retaliate against a neighbour (Muslim or Christian) is to claim he blasphemed the Prophet. During his own lifetime, the Prophet never took revenge against those who insulted him and never asked others to take revenge on his behalf.

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Just a short hop from the undisputed world capital of gambling, fornication, drunkenness and gluttony is a 10,000-strong Muslim community.

Even for someone indifferent or downright hostile to religion, Friday prayers at a mosque have a haunting sound and beauty, a compelling quality of devoutness and spirituality rare in any other faith and hard not to find deeply affecting. At Masjid-e-Tawheed, the mosque I am visiting on a crisp winter’s morning, there is good reason, perhaps, for the congregation of more than 200 to feel an extra surge of passion for their faith, of feeling that theirs is the right belief system for this flawed world.

For while in one direction from the mosque, the view of barren, rocky mountains shimmering in the desert sunlight could place Masjid-e-Tawheed in any number of locations in the Islamic world, a couple of miles in the opposite direction lies what one would imagine to be the worst place in the world for an even halfway-strict Muslim – something, indeed, not unlike hell.

Masjid-e-Tawheed is a 10-minute drive from Las Vegas Boulevard, the famous Strip – undisputed world capital of gambling, fornication, adultery, prostitution, immodesty, licentiousness, drinking, gluttony, vanity, ostentation and not a little taking God’s name in vain when visitors’ luck runs out in the gambling halls. The sheer amount of sin, as measured by any religion, is unfeasibly high in Las Vegas; for Muslims, it is off the scale.   »»» The Observer (U.K.)

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The headlines this week were full of stories from the Muslim world about Muslims attacking the Muslim religious Right, whether the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Jama’at-i Islami in Bangladesh. The rise of the religious Right in politics is producing a backlash throughout the region. Part of the backlash comes from secularists of Muslim heritage. But a significant part of it comes from believing Muslims, who oppose the sectarian and authoritarian approach of the religious Right parties, or who are uncomfortable with some of their stances toward longstanding Muslim religious practices, such as spiritual visits to the shrines of Muslim saints (a practice condemned by Wahhabism, Salafism, Talibanism, and other religious-right currents).   »»» Informed Comment

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Abubakar Shekau is the leader of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, which has carried out a series of deadly attacks across northern Nigeria. The leader of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram is said to be a fearless loner, a complex, paradoxical man – part intellectual, part gangster.

Fondly called imam or leader by his followers, Abubakar Muhammad Shekau was born in Shekau village in Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Yobe.

Some say he is 34 or 35, others that he may be 43 – the uncertainty adds to the myths surrounding Nigeria’s most wanted man.

Mr Shekau was once thought to have been killed by security forces in 2009 – only for him to reappear in videos posted on the internet less than a year later as Boko Haram’s new leader.

The group’s founder, Muhammad Yusuf died in police custody, and hundreds of others were killed during that massive crackdown – which many blame for making the group even more violent. Mr Shekau has not been seen in public since.

Instead, still images and video clips of him are released from time to time, mostly online, by the group’s faceless “public enlightenment department”.

“He hardly talks, he is fearless,” says Ahmed Salkida, a journalist with such good access to Boko Haram that, at one stage, he was suspected of being a member.

The group has a highly decentralised structure – the unifying force is ideology.

Mr Shekau does not communicate directly with the group’s foot soldiers – he is said to wield his power through a few select cell leaders, but even then contact is minimal.

“A lot of those calling themselves leaders in the group do not even have contact with him,” Mr Salkida says.
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Mr Shekau has neither the charismatic streak nor the oratorical skills of his predecessor – but he has an intense ideological commitment and ruthlessness, say people who study the group.

Mr Shekau issued a chilling message in one of those appearances – which provides a major insight into what his leadership of the group will bring.

“I enjoy killing anyone that God commands me to kill – the way I enjoy killing chickens and rams,” he said in the video clip released just after Boko Haram had carried out its deadliest attack so far, killing at least 180 people in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city.

He is nicknamed “Darul Tawheed”, which translates as a specialist in Tawheed. This is an orthodox doctrine of the uniqueness and oneness of Allah, which is the very cornerstone of Islam.

But Nigeria’s mainstream Muslim clerics do not regard Mr Shekau as a scholar and question his understanding of Islam – and regularly condemn the bombings and drive-by shootings committed by his followers against anyone who disagrees with them.   »»» BBC News

The teachings and actions of Boko Haram and its leader are deviations from orthodox Islam. They are contrary to clear commands of Allah in the Qur’an and the Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him). Imam Shekau says he “enjoys killing” people he believes he is commanded to kill. However, Islam teaches that ALL life, human and animal is sacred because it is the breath of Allah that brings it into existence. We are allowed to kill animals for food and protection, and in a very few limited situations execute human beings (after due process of law), but we are not to take joy in any of those killings.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) said, “There will come corrupt, tyrannical rulers: whoever confirms their lies and assists them in their oppression is not of me, or I of him, and shall not meet me at my watering place in paradise.”

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The nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization today offered “best wishes” to Pope Benedict XVI following his announced resignation and expressed a desire for continued positive relations between American Muslims and the Roman Catholic Church under his successor.

In a statement reacting to Pope Benedict’s decision to step down at the end of this month, Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said:

“We offer the American Muslim community’s best wishes to Pope Benedict XVI as he leaves his position as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

“In recent years — and despite some passing controversies — relations between Muslims and Catholics have strengthened, particularly on issues related to social justice and family values.

“We look forward to continued and growing positive interfaith relations under the new pontiff as Muslims in the United States and worldwide join with people of all faiths and cultures who seek to make a better world.”    »»» CAIR

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Try as al-Qaida might to encourage them, American Muslims still are NOT committing acts of terrorism. Only 14 people out of a population of millions were indicted for their involvement in violent terrorist plots in 2012, a decline from 2011′s 21. The number of plots themselves numbered only nine.

According to data tracked by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and the U.S. Homeland Security Agency in North Carolina and released Friday, there were nine terrorist plots involving American Muslims in 2012. Only one of them, the attempted bombing of a Social Security office in Arizona, actually led to any violence. No one was killed or wounded in that or any other incident in 2012.   »»» Wired.com

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A Cairo tribunal on Tuesday upheld death sentences passed on seven Egyptian Coptic Christians in absentia for their involvement in a movie that ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed, a judicial source said.

The accused, including the director of the movie that triggered outrage across the Muslim world when it surfaced last September, are currently living in the United States.

Terry Jones, an American pastor based in Florida who is said to have promoted the film and who had also been sentenced to death in absentia, had his sentence reduced to five years in jail by the tribunal.   »»» THE DAILY STAR (Lebanon)

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) NEVER punished those who insulted him and NEVER asked others to punish such people. In the Qur’an addresses the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) and says:

“Hold to forgiveness; command what is right; turn away from the ignorant.” (Q. 7:199)

One commentator explains that verse in this way: “Allah comforts the Prophet and directs his mind to three precepts: (1) to forgive injuries, insults and persecution; (2) to continue to declare the faith that was in him…; and (3) to pay no attention to ignorant fools….”

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Thirty Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders from the United States called for “a bold new US initiative for a two-state peace agreement before it is too late.” They made the call in a statement sponsored by the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East (NILI).

“The current dangerous stalemate, including the legacy of past failed peacemaking efforts, undermines our security and that of others, destabilizes the region, fuels terrorism and extremism, allows continuing Israeli settlement expansion, and prolongs Palestinian disunity,” wrote the leaders. “These realities and the absence of negotiations threaten to kill the prospect of a viable two-state peace agreement, the only realistic solution to the conflict.”   »»» Independent Catholic News

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