Muslim, Islam | featured news

In the years before the Boston Marathon bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence of a new friend, a Muslim convert who steered the religiously apathetic young man toward a strict strain of Islam, family members said.

A court here handed down a suspended 10-month jail term on Monday for Fazil Say, an internationally acclaimed Turkish pianist and composer convicted of insulting Islam and offending Muslims in postings on Twitter.

An actress who appears in a clip of an anti-Muslim film blamed for causing deadly violence in the Middle East says she will continue to press to get YouTube to pull the trailer. A judge denied Cindy Lee Garcia's request Thursday that he order the clip removed. Superior Court Judge Luis Lavin says he rejected the request in part because Garcia hadn't served the film's producer with a copy of a lawsuit demanding its removal.

“Innocence of Muslims” -- the crude and provocative anti-Islam video blamed for a wave of deadly violence against U.S. diplomatic outposts -- was promoted by a small band of anti-Muslim Christian activists, according to reports, but the true identity of its director remained unclear.

Chanting "death to America," hundreds of protesters angered by an anti-Islam film stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Yemen's capital and burned the American flag on Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks on American diplomatic missions in the Middle East.

Half of all Muslim Americans say their leaders have not done enough to condemn Islamic extremism, according to a new poll showing widespread satisfaction with life in the United States, although many reported discrimination.

France's new ban on Islamic face veils was met with a burst of defiance Monday, as several women appeared veiled in front of Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral and two were detained for taking part in an unauthorized protest....

The Muslim cleric behind plans to build a mosque close to the Ground Zero site has blamed politicians such as Sarah Palin for fuelling a rise in Islamophobia.

We already know the numbers. Pew finds that 18% of Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim. A new Newsweek poll, taken after the controversy over the New York mosque, places that figure at 24%. Even if he's not a Muslim, Newsweek finds, 31 percent think it's "definitely or probably" true that Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world."

The developers of an Islamic cultural center that would include a mosque near Ground Zero have rejected Gov. David Paterson's offer to help them find a different site. Paterson said today the group is apparently committed to building in the proposed site.