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(Reuters) - U.S. officials have met members of the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, a U.S. diplomat said, after Washington announced it would have direct contacts with Egypt's biggest Islamist group whose role has grown since U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was ousted.

Via Daily CallerIn an effort to get closer to the local population, American female soldiers stationed in Afghanistan are being encouraged to wear a Muslim headscarf when interacting with civilians. But some question whether the practice constitutes cultural sensitivity or a form of appeasement that is degrading to U.S. soldiers. Major Kyndra Rotunda, executive director of the Military Law and Policy Institute and AMVETS Legal Clinic, told The Daily Caller that while the women are not being ordered to wear the head scarf, encouragement is tantamount to a demand[...] Retired Col. Martha McSally, whose grievance about being forced to wear...

One of the most effective ways to overturn a culture is not to take it on directly, but to undermine it gradually. If you carry out a full-frontal assault on majority opinion, people become alarmed and fight back. But when you do it slowly, step-by-step, you can make your destruction look harmless... even reasonable. That's exactly what's happening in this country. For the past half century, there has been a slow but unrelenting attack on the Christian foundations of the United States. The evidence is beyond dispute. First, secularists took prayer out of the public schools, because it "promoted religion...

In its devotion to Islamic outreach the Obama Administration has become the first to dispatch a U.S. Attorney General to personally “salute” a Muslim group’s efforts to fulfill the “nation’s promise of equal justice and opportunity.” Addressing a San Francisco-based organization (Muslim Advocates) that urges members not to cooperate in federal terrorism investigations, Attorney General Eric Holder said he is “grateful” to have it as a partner in promoting tolerance, ensuring public safety and protecting civil rights. ... “Muslims and Arab Americans have helped build and strengthen our nation,” he pointed out. They have also been “absolutely essential in identifying...

A University of Colorado student who started wearing hijab after converting to Islam is fighting the Boulder County Jail's insistence that she remove her headscarf for a booking photo, saying that to do so would violate her religious beliefs. Maria Hardman, 19, of Boulder, reported to the jail Wednesday to do the paperwork for a two-day work crew sentence that was supposed to be served this weekend. But when a jail detention officer told her to remove her headscarf for her mug shot, she balked. "It's stated in the Koran in two or three places that believing women should wear...

Developers of the controversial Park51 Islamic community center and mosque located two blocks from Ground Zero earlier this month applied for roughly $5 million in federal grant money set aside for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11th, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The audacious move stands to reignite the embers of a divisive debate that dominated headlines surrounding the ninth anniversary of the attacks this fall, say people vested in the issue. The application was submitted under a “community and cultural enhancement” grant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment...

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma Muslim has filed a federal lawsuit against a state ballot measure that prohibits state courts from considering international law or Islamic law when deciding cases. Muneer Awad, head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma, filed the lawsuit Thursday, saying it is unconstitutional. The ballot question was approved in Tuesday's election with 70 percent of the vote. The lawsuit seeks a temporary retraining order to block the results of the election from being certified on Nov. 9. Joseph Thai, of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, says there is no danger of...

Rocco Landesman is the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Boy, does he know how to spin the official line on offensive art. In a recent interview in Cincinnati, he was asked vaguely about controversy. "The best art taps into deep feelings, sometimes to comfort and sometimes to confront. Art can be very uncomfortable," Landesman said. "That can lead to strong reactions. For some of us, it draws us into the arts over our lifetimes and careers. For others, it creates strong negative feelings." Landesman wasn't being asked specifically about negative feelings over the Loveland Museum Gallery in...

Remarks by the President at a DSCC Dinner in Rockville, Maryland October 18, 2010 8:03 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: ... I want to, before I begin, just say that, Maryland, you are graced with two of the finest senators in the United States Senate in Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin. (Applause.) We are so proud of them. Everything that I've been able to accomplish over the last couple of years has been because I had these great partners. And these are two of the best partners, and they were also wonderful colleagues when I was in the United States Senate....

The Washington Times is reporting that Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, the Army's deputy chief of staff in charge of personnel matters who spoke about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" before several hundred troops at the European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, said: "Unfortunately, we have a minority of service members who are still racists and bigoted and you will never be able to get rid of all of them...But these people opposing this new policy will need to get with the program, and if they can't, they need to get out. No matter how much training and education of...

“When you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life.” - Christopher Hurley That famous quote by Hurley is exactly what many on the Texas school board are afraid of. Will our young people get “a whole new life” that ignores the dangers of Radical Islam? The recent uptick in the culture war over the Islamization of America has led some teachers and school boards to look much more closely at what we are teaching about Islam. A few weeks ago, we at...

My organization, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), just released a video showing 6th graders from Wellesley, MA as they rise from prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to the largest mosque in the Northeast. Teachers did not intervene. Parents have not been told. embedded by Embedded Video YouTube Direkt The video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center – Boston’s controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque – during a Wellesley Middle School social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand....

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has expressed a willingness to ban protesters from burning the Koran as the modern day equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.The Supreme Court has ruled burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.Breyer spoke to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America today:But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater,” Breyer...

The United States government in no way condones such acts of disrespect against the religion of Islam, and is deeply concerned about deliberate attempts to offend members of religious or ethnic groups. The embassy wants to emphasize that we strongly condemn the offensive messages, which are contrary to U.S. government policy and deeply offensive to Muslims especially during the month of Ramadan. President Obama made clear in Cairo in his speech on June 4, 2009 that he considers it part of his responsibility as President to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they occur. And during his recent Iftar...

The Obama Administration’s taxpayer-funded Islamic defense program has been quite busy this week, filing several discrimination lawsuits on behalf of Muslims in different parts of the country and holding Justice Department meetings to discuss prosecuting “anti-Muslim hate speech.”The legal actions come on the same week that the White House and various federal agencies—including the Department of Homeland Security—hosted a special workshop to provide members of radical Islamic groups with direct access to U.S. government funding, assistance and resources. Read all about that here. Now the administration is flexing its legal muscle in its ardent quest to befriend the enemy. A...

Editor's Note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor. By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN In a commentary on the shrill Republican silence in the face of the "Obama is a Muslim" nonsense, Slate’s John Dickerson wrote that "with so much traffic on the low road in American politics, you'd imagine a politician or two might take the high road simply to beat the congestion." Well, New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg continues to take the road less...

DEARBORN, Mich. -- A Michigan high school football team is holding preseason practices in the middle of the night to help its Muslim players practice both faith and football. The predominantly Muslim squad from Dearborn says the nocturnal regimen is a way for players to eat and drink while observing the holy month of daytime fasting known as Ramadan that started last week. The August heat also played a factor in Fordson High coach Fouad Zaban's proposal to reverse the clock for a week of two-a-day practices. Cutting practice wasn't an option at football-crazy Fordson, which is coming off a...

I want to thank everyone who has ever replied to my random questions soon I'll post some actual articles with my ramblings for now another question: The ACLU has always argued that the government needs to stay out of religion. They have sued many times in Florida in relation to that because of school employees praying with students. Democrats also like to argue a whole "separation of church and state" yet the first amendment doesn't say that, last I checked. Now we have this Mosque problem in New York and their mayor, government official, is pushing for it's creation. Does...

SOUTH BRUNSWICK — As a Muslim growing up in East Brunswick, Atiya Aftab missed classes and had to make up school work to be with her family on two important holidays: Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, and Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice. As a mother of three in South Brunswick, Aftab has seen her children go through the same thing. Until now. In a decision that sent ripples of hope across the Muslim community well beyond New Jersey, the South Brunswick Board of Education has approved school closings in the...