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In prayer, Jews face Jerusalem but Muslims face Mecca Victor Sharpe  Sunday, May 29, 2011 The late Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren Sounds the Shofar (Ram’s Horn) upon the Recapture in June, 1967 of Jerusalem’s holy Jewish site, the Western Wall, from Jordanian Muslim occupation Jerusalem Unification Day has again been celebrated in Israel and throughout the world with the exception of that 7th century alternate universe: the Muslim world.It marks 44 years since the amazing and miraculous event took place when the Jewish people’s 3,000 year old capital city was restored to the Jewish state in the 1967 Six-Day War....

Jihad Returns to America By: Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 04, 2009 Jihad came once again to American soil on Monday, when an American convert to Islam, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, began shooting at soldiers who were standing outside the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Muhammad murdered Pvt. William Long, 23, and gravely wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18. Muhammad was charged with capital murder and – in a departure from authorities’ practically reflexive dismissal of terrorism as a factor in virtually any act of violence by a Muslim -- sixteen counts of committing a terrorist act. Rather curiously,...

BERKELEY, Ill. — Safoorah Khan had taught middle school math for only nine months in this tiny Chicago suburb when she made an unusual request. She wanted three weeks off for a pilgrimage to Mecca. The school district, faced with losing its only math lab instructor during the critical end-of-semester marking period, said no. Khan, a devout Muslim, resigned and made the trip anyway. Justice Department lawyers examined the same set of facts and reached a different conclusion: that the school district’s decision amounted to outright discrimination against Khan. They filed an unusual lawsuit, accusing the district of violating her...

I’m still here in Israel on an Act For Israel media fellowship. After many days, packed with meetings, yesterday we visited the Golan Heights. On our way from there, we stopped at Yardenit, a site on the Jordan River where, in honor of Jesus’ baptism near there, some are baptized into the Christian faith.While there, a young woman was wearing a white robe indicating she was to be baptized. I overheard a conversation she was having with someone else. She said she was going to be baptized but “not really” as she’s not very religious and just wanted to...

The federal government sued a suburban Chicago school district Monday for denying a Muslim middle school teacher unpaid leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca that is a central part of her religion.

Barack Obama's Kenyan grandmother has said she prayed for the US president to convert to Islam, according to reports. Sarah Omar, 88, who was on hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, told the Al-Qatan Saudi daily: "I prayed for my grandson Barack to convert to Islam". The paper said that Ms Omar was in Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage along with her son, Mr Obama's uncle Saeed Hussein Obama, and four of her grandchildren. Ms Omar told the newspaper that she could only discuss hajj matters and would not comment on Mr Obama's politics.

Obama's grandma 'prays for him to convert to Islam' during Mecca visit London, Nov 26 : US President Barack Obama's grandmother has admitted praying for him to convert to Islam while she was on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, has always maintained he is a 'committed Christian'. But the news of his grandmother Sarah Omar's wish to convert to Islam follows a poll, which found one in five believes he is a Muslim. During her visit, she reportedly told a Saudi newspaper, "I prayed for my grandson Barack to convert to Islam," reports the Daily...

US President Barack Obama's Kenyan grandmother says she prayed during a hajj pilgrimage to Mecca for the American leader to convert to Islam, a newspaper revealed on Thursday. "I prayed for my grandson Barack to convert to Islam," said Sarah Omar, 88, in an interview with Al-Watan Saudi daily held in Jeddah after she had performed hajj. The paper said that Omar was in Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage along with her son, Obama's uncle Saeed Hussein Obama, and four of her grandchildren.

Saudi Arabia has reassured Muslims worldwide that there will be no shortage of Zamzam water as more than two million pilgrims prepare to converge on Makkah, Islam’s holiest shrine, local newspapers reported on Friday. “The water level of the Zamzam Well at the Grand Mosque has increased,” they quoted Yousif Al-Wabil, Assistant Deputy President for Affairs of the Grand Mosque, as saying. “This has happened because many private wells dug by citizens are no longer draining water from the Zamzam Well.” Al-Wabil said the previous homeowners in Al-Shamyia neighborhood in the holy city had dug these wells in their houses...

Non-Muslims are barred from entering the cities of Mecca and Medina — not merely barred from building synagogues or churches, but barred, period, because their infidel feet are deemed unfit to touch the ground. This is not an al-Qaeda principle. Nor is it an “Islamist” principle. It is Islam, pure and simple.

A giant clock on a skyscraper in Islam's holiest city Mecca began ticking on Wednesday at the start of the fasting month of Ramadan, amid hopes by Saudi Arabia it will become the Muslim world's official timekeeper. The Mecca Clock, which Riyadh says is the world's largest, has four faces measuring 43 metres in diameter. It sits 400 metres up what will be the world's second-tallest skyscraper and largest hotel, overlooking the city's Holy Grand Mosque, which Muslims around the world turn to five times a day for prayer. "The Holy Mecca Clock started with the order of King Abdullah...

For centuries, an astronomy observatory in Greenwich, London -- the namesake of Greenwich Mean Time -- has been the reference point for lines of longitude, ships' navigation on the world's seas and the time zones used today. But Saudi Arabia wants to change that. It's building what it calls the largest clock in the world, atop the second-largest skyscraper in the world, in the Islamic holy city of Mecca -- in hopes of replacing GMT with "Mecca Time." The clock dwarfs London's Big Ben, with four huge faces each about 130 feet in diameter and inscribed with the Arabic words...

Giant Mecca clock seeks to call time on Greenwich For more than a century, a point on the top of a hill in south-east London has been recognised as the centre of world time and the official starting point of each new day. But now the supremacy of Greenwich Mean Time is being challenged by a gargantuan new clock being built in Mecca, by which the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims could soon be setting their watches. Due to start ticking on Thursday as the faithful begin fasting during the month of Ramadan, the timepiece sits atop the Royal Mecca Clock...

Muslims around the world could be setting their watches to a new time soon when the world's largest clock begins ticking atop a soaring skyscraper in Islam's holiest city of Mecca. Saudi Arabia hopes the four faces of the new clock, which will loom over Mecca's Grand Mosque from what is expected to be the world's second tallest building, will establish Mecca as an alternate time standard to the Greenwich median. The clock is targeted to enter service with a three-month trial period in the first week of the holy month of Ramadan on or about August 12, according to...

The Mecca Synagogue and Jewish Cultural Center, a 13-story Jewish cultural center proposed for a site two blocks from Mecca, an Islamic holy site, cleared its likely final hurdle when the Mecca and Medina Landmarks and Preservation Commission voted 9-0 to deny protected landmark status to the building currently occupying the site, a "I Hate The Jews" t-shirt stand. The decision is believed to be the last legal impediment to the project going forward. The commission, whose 11 members are all appointed by Saudi King Abdullah, held its meeting yesterday morning in lower Mecca, in the shadow of the Masjid...

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — People in the world's most populous Muslim nation have been facing Africa — not Mecca — while praying. Indonesia's highest Islamic body acknowledged Monday it made a mistake when issuing an edict in March saying the holy city in Saudi Arabia was to the country's west. It has since asked followers to shift direction slightly northward during their daily prayers. "After a thorough study with some cosmography and astronomy experts, we learned they've been facing southern Somalia and Kenya," said Ma'ruf Amin, a prominent cleric of the Indonesian Ulema Council, or MUI. "We've revised it now...

Indonesian Muslims told to change prayer direction JAKARTA, July 16 — Indonesia’s Muslims learned today they have been praying in the wrong direction, after the country’s highest Islamic authority said its directive on the direction of Mecca actually had people facing Africa. Muslims are supposed to face the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia during prayer and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) issued an edict in March stipulating westward was the correct direction from the world’s most populous Muslim country. “But it has been decided that actually the mosques are facing Somalia or Kenya, so we are now suggesting...

MAKKAH: A Saudi woman who is seeking a divorce from her husband has claimed that a judge has refused to listen to her complaints at five scheduled hearings because she came to court without a male legal guardian each time. “The court at Al-Jumoum outside Makkah city set five hearings in my case, but each time I went the judge refused to see me or listen to my case because I had no male guardian with me,” said the woman, Um Hasan. She and her estranged husband have been married for 17 years during which time they have had six...

FORMER boxing champion Mike Tyson, who converted to Islam while in jail in the 1990s, is visiting the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina on pilgrimage.Tyson, who was world heavyweight champion from 1986 to 1990, arrived on Friday in Medina with the Canadian Dawa Association for the umrah, or minor pilgrimage, the newspaper Okaz said. From Medina he will travel on to Mecca and plans to visit other Saudi cities, it reported. Tyson, 44, converted to Islam while serving a 10-year prison sentence, later commuted to three years, for raping a US beauty queen in 1991.

Would Muslims surrender Mecca? Should Catholics give up the Vatican? These may seem like ridiculous questions. The answer to both by any sane person would be "of course not." Why on earth would the answer to "Would Jews ever surrender Jerusalem?" be any different? The answer is simple. It shouldn't. With the exception of a seven year period in the sixth century when the Persians restored Jewish sovereignty, the Jewish people were denied a homeland from 70 C.E. until 1948. During that time the Jewish people suffered pogroms, expulsions, mass murder, persecution, and assorted other forms of denial of basic...