More than 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims began on Friday the rites of the annual hajj pilgrimage, leaving the holy city of Mecca for Mount Arafat, where the prophet Muhammad is believed to have delivered his final hajj sermon.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and must be performed at least once in a lifetime by all those who are able to make the journey, and it is a dream that can take years to come true.

Dressed in white, they flooded the streets as they headed towards Mina, around five kilometres east of the holy mosque.

The day is known as Tarwiah (Watering) Day, as pilgrims traditionally watered their animals and stocked water for their trip to Mount Arafat, some 10 kilometers further on.

Many pilgrims took buses, while others set off on foot for a village that comes to life for just five days a year.

Others were using the Mashair Railway, also known as Mecca Metro, to go to Mount Arafat and its surrounding plains where they will gather for the peak Day of Arafat on Saturday.

The Chinese-built railway will operate for the first time this year at its full capacity of 72,000 people per hour to ease congestions and prevent stampedes in which hundreds have been killed in past years.

It will replace 30,000 cars previously used, said project director Fahd Abu-Tarbush.   »»» Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

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Politicians and Muslim leaders have denounced a firebomb attack that destroyed the offices of a satirical French newspaper after it “invited” the Prophet Mohammed as its guest editor.

No one was injured in the fire at Charlie Hebdo weekly in eastern Paris, hours before the current issue hit the news-stands.

“Everything will be done to find those behind this attack,” said Interior Minister Claude Gueant.

One witness saw someone throwing two firebombs at the building and the newspaper’s director, who goes by the name Charb, said a Molotov cocktail was the cause of the fire. He blamed “radical stupid people who don’t know what Islam is,” for the apparent attack.

“I think that they are themselves unbelievers … idiots who betray their own religion,” he said.

The front-page of the weekly, subtitled “Sharia Hebdo,” a reference to Islamic law, showed a cartoon-like man with a turban, white robe and beard smiling broadly and saying, in an accompanying bubble, “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing.”

Previous depictions of the prophet have caused major disturbances in Muslim countries. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favourable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.   »»» timesofmalta.com

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The oldest bialys and bagel store in the country is still on a roll. The sweet smell of bread will continue to waft down Coney Island Avenue, as a landmark kosher bakery in Brooklyn gets a whole new lease on life.

Coney Island Bialys and Bagels, teetered and fell in September, after Steve Ross, whose grandfather began the company 91 years ago, called it quits. In a twist of history — and, one might say, a twist of bread as well — the store has been saved by two Muslim businessmen who leased the space and started a corporation under almost the identical name. They’ll keep the kosher shop’s offerings the same, preserving its history.

“It’s the same bialys…We are using the same recipe, too,” said Peerzada Shah, who now co-owns the business with Zafaryab Ali, who worked with Ross at the bialy shop for a decade. “We want to keep the place on track,” said Shah.

The pair plans to keep the shop’s baked goods and authentic character. None of the signs have changed nor the equipment and the shop will remain kosher.   »»» Forward.com

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Adalet Gigek sat impatiently in a crowded hotel lobby, waiting for the minibus to take her to Mecca’s Grand Mosque for noon prayers as millions of Muslims started arriving in Saudi Arabia before the annual haj pilgrimage which starts on Friday.

She has spent five years hoping for the chance to fulfill her duty as a Muslim by performing haj and knows she will not be allowed to go again because pilgrim numbers are strictly controlled to prevent overcrowding.

“Each year for the past five years I checked with the authorities,” said the 66-year-old mother of eight, a rosy pink scarf framing her beaming face. “When I finally found out I was selected I soared with happiness.”

As one of Islam’s five pillars, the haj is enjoined on all Muslims who are physically able to carry it out, but this year the pilgrimage follows uprisings across the Arab world and growing tensions between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite power Iran.

Home to Islam’s holiest sites, Saudi Arabia regards itself as the guardian of Islam and assumes the responsibility of maintaining a peaceful haj season when Muslims from various sects gather at the same place and time.   »»» Reuters

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After almost 8½ years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has reopened its galleries of Islamic art in a display as appealing to the senses as it is exciting to the mind. Having enlarged the existing Islamic-art section by almost a third, to 19,000 square feet, the museum has created a suite of 15 galleries that can showcase some 1,200 pieces, or about 10% of its massive collection.

For sheer dazzle nothing can beat the wide-ranging collection of textiles, from deep red Ottoman velvets and delicate Mughal weavings to a vast collection of carpets starring the 16th-century Persian “Emperor’s Carpet.” Twenty-four feet long and 11½ feet wide, it is a masterpiece of tightly woven and densely knotted silk and wool in whose decorations animals leap, flowers entwine, vines scroll. But the ceramics are not far behind, a feast of shimmering lusterware, deep turquoise stonepaste, and a plethora of blue-and-white works that include the 14th-century prayer niche—or mihrab—that visitors to the old galleries will remember. Here bands of calligraphy play against complex geometric patterns and vegetal designs to create a sense of both majesty and sacredness. On a more intimate scale, the new galleries offer some 130 selections from the Met’s collection of ninth- to early-20th-century Islamic manuscripts, folios and paintings.    »»» WSJ.com

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Henry Clay Glaspell, 34, of Arlington, Texas, was sentenced by United States District Judge Terry R” Means to 14 months in federal prison, following his guilty plea to a hate crime charge stemming from an arson of a children’s playground at the Dar El-Eman Islamic Center in Arlington in July 2010, the Justice Department announced today.

Glaspell admitted that he set fire to playground equipment at the mosque as part of a series of ethnically motivated acts directed at individuals of Arab or Middle Eastern descent associated with the mosque.

Glaspell further admitted that he stole and damaged mosque property, threw used cat litter at the front door of the mosque and shouted racial or ethnic slurs at individuals of Arab or Middle Eastern descent at the mosque on multiple occasions.   »»» 7thSpace.com

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A French court Thursday cancelled a construction permit for a mega-mosque in the southern city of Marseille that had been touted as a potential symbol of Islam’s growing place in France.

The city’s administrative tribunal ruled the project, which had already been under suspension for 18 months, would have to be cancelled because of failures to meet urban-planning requirements.

It raised particular concerns over the project’s failure to finalise a deal for a 450-place parking lot and to reassure planners that the mosque would fit with the urban environment.

France’s second city is home to an estimated 250,000 Muslims, many of whom flock to makeshift prayer houses in basements, rented rooms and dingy garages to worship.   »»» Expatrica.com

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If the same zoning board had existed in the 12th century, Notre Dame Cathedral would never have been built. The modern state religion of France is secularism (laicité). Many people are like those who during the French Revolution desecrated Notre Dame Cathedral, secularized it and redicated it to the “Cult of Reason”.

Since the September 11 attacks, analysts and public officials have expressed growing concern about the potential of Muslim citizens and residents of the United States to plot attacks within the country’s borders—a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “homegrown” terrorism. To assess this apparent threat, it is necessary to examine what is known about the willingness and capacity of Muslim Americans to execute deadly attacks in the United States.

The results of a report by Risa A. Brooks published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgoy Press should be generally reassuring to those concerned about Muslim homegrown terrorism. On both analytical and empirical grounds, there is not a significant basis for anticipating that Muslim Americans are increasingly motivated or capable of successfully engaging in lethal terrorist attacks in the United States.   »»» MIT Press Journals – International Security

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FIFA vice president Prince Ali Al Hussein will propose that football’s governing body agrees on “general principles” for the use of Islamic headscarfs in the game at the meeting of the Executive Committee in December.

FIFA banned the Islamic scarf covering a women’s neck in 2007 claiming safety concerns.

The proposals will ensure “the safe use of hijab in the game,” satisfy “cultural customs” of female teams from Islamic countries and meet FIFA rules of inclusion, a statement from the Asian Football Confederation said Tuesday.   »»» Yahoo! Sports

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What’s life like as a Muslim-American?

A new eight-part series on TLC cable TV that premieres November 13 will try to answer that question by following the lives of five very different Muslim-American families. The show, “All-American Muslim”, was filmed in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit that’s known for it’s large Arab-American population. It promises to go “inside the rarely seen world of American Muslims to uncover a unique community struggling to balance faith and nationality in a post 9/11 world,” according to a press release.

Producers picked a diverse crowd to profile, from sisters who are polar opposites (one wears a headscarf and prays daily, the other has tattoos — illegal in Islam — and is married an Irish Catholic) to a high school football coach to newlyweds, in order to show people who “share the same religion, but lead very distinct lives that often times challenge the Muslim stereotype.” The series will also address issues such as the post-9/11 life for Muslims and gender roles in Islam.   »»» Huffington Post

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