Free Republic

An Italian bishop has clashed with a pair of priests who want to invite Muslims to pray inside their churches in a bid to promote tolerance in a diocese in Tuscany. “The deserved, necessary and respectful welcome of people who practice other faiths and religions does not mean offering them space for prayers inside churches designed for liturgy and the gathering of Christian communities,” Bishop Fausto Tardelli of Pistoia said in a statement reported on Saturday (March 19). “They can very well find other spaces and places,” Tardelli said. The bishop was responding to pledges by two local priests, the...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Two Minnesota women accused of going door-to-door to raise money for al-Shabab knew the Somali-based group engaged in terrorism and "rejoiced" when they heard about its victories in their war-torn homeland, a prosecutor said Tuesday. However, an attorney for one of the women told jurors during opening statements that Amina Farah Ali, 35, was just trying to help her fellow Somalis and didn't know the U.S. considers al-Shabab a terrorist group. Prosecutors have said Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, 64, were part of a "deadly pipeline" that routed money and fighters from the U.S. to Somalia. The...

NEW YORK – The lunar calendar that Muslims follow for religious holidays is creating a potential for misunderstandings or worse in a year when American Muslims are already confronting a spike in assaults on their faith and protests against new mosques. Eid al-Fitr, a joyous holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, this year falls around Sept. 11. Muslim leaders fear that their gatherings for prayer and festivities could be misinterpreted by those unfamiliar with Islam as a celebration of the 2001 terrorist strikes. The Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group based in Los Angeles, is...

Federal authorities say a leader of what they describe as a nationwide radical Sunni Islam group has been fatally shot during an FBI raid in the Detroit area. The U.S. attorney's office in Detroit says Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah refused to surrender during an FBI raid Wednesday and was killed in an exchange of gunfire. Abdullah and 10 others were charged in a complaint with conspiracy to commit several federal crimes, including illegal possession and sale of firearms and theft from interstate shipments. Authorities say an FBI dog also was killed during the raid.

At his massive annual press conference on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed his earlier statements that if Kosovo were to be granted independence, he would support applying the same principle to separatist states in Georgia. Under the argument that "principles have to be universal" the president said independence for Kosovo could justly be used as a model for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He had first commented on the "universality" of the Kosovo model a day before at a Russian governmental meeting and instructed his foreign minister to pursue this policy. On Tuesday, he made his point even clearer by...