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Lawyers for an American citizen facing execution in Iraq appealed Friday in U.S. federal court to keep the man in American custody — preventing his death — while another case is being appealed. The citizen, Mohammad Munaf, was convicted and sentenced to death by an Iraqi judge earlier this week on charges he helped in the 2005 kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Baghdad, court papers show. Iraqi-born Munaf, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2000, was working as their translator and guide. He maintains his innocence. In an emergency request filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, Munaf's attorneys...

Hollywood star couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are due to arrive in western India next month for filming of a movie based on the murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl. The movie, "A Mighty Heart," is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Pearl's widow Mariane. Pearl, a US citizen, was beheaded by Islamic militants in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2002. Jolie and Pitt had booked rooms in Aundh, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of India's financial capital Mumbai, to shoot part of the film there, industry sources said. Daniel and...

BAGHDAD, Iraq In America, six-year-olds are usually in first grade. In Iraq, some are being recruited by militias. That's what U-S soldiers say is going on in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, the stronghold of a radical cleric. The militias are assembling gangs of as many as 100 children, some as young as six or seven. Their mission: to throw gasoline bombs and stones at passing U-S convoys. The hope is that the troops will be lured into sniper ambushes. The soldiers say they've seen young men with bandanas covering their faces, talking to kids before such incidents. Sometimes the children...

The country's first Muslim Miss England has slammed Prime Minister Tony Blair, accusing him of fuelling hysteria over terrorism and Islam. Hammasa Kohistani, 19, said government statements since last year's 7 July attacks had created a 'negative image' of Muslims. Ms Kohistani represented England at the Miss World finals in China in December. 'Tony Blair addressed Muslims in particular, telling them that they need to sort out the problem within,' she said. 'That was a huge stereotype of the Islamic community.' She added: 'Even the more moderate Muslims have been stereotyped negatively and feel they have to take actions to...

The Islamic al-Khasba website has published on August 4 a document titled "How to Kill a Crusader on the Arabian Peninsula," The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported. The document details several possible ways to kill western victims and provides tips on selecting them, following them, and finally murdering them. The Islamic guide urges the potential attacker to pray before embarking on his mission so that God leads him in the right path. Assailants are also instructed to change their appearance as much as possible in order to ensure they do not appear to be religious – this includes...

"Young Israelis dream of being inventors, and their role models are the Israeli innovators who made it to the Nasdaq. Hezbollah youth dream of being martyrs, and their role models are Islamic militants who made it to the Next World." — Thomas Friedman, New York Times, August 9 The act of infanticide, the practice of intentionally causing the death of an infant, is rarely practiced today. Yet in the Middle East, it has taken on a new form. Under the direction of some leading Muslim religious figures, some parents in the region are encouraging their children to commit suicide as...

Police in northern India have heightened security around the Taj Mahal after receiving a letter threatening to blow up the monument, officials said Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Sandbag bunkers have been set up outside the towering entrance gates leading to the 17th century monument and soldiers belonging to an anti-terrorist squad have been posted on 24-hour duty, said Ashok Kumar, a senior government official in Uttar Pradesh state where the Taj Mahal is located. Police were investigating a handwritten letter purportedly sent by an al-Qaida supporter, saying the terrorist group planned to carry out blasts at the Taj Mahal. Police were skeptical...

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU 'My goal is to kill Ariel Sharon' Terror leader makes threats during ABC Radio segment -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: October 21, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com In case he wasn't clear enough during an exclusive interview this week with WorldNetDaily in which he said his terror group would target the ranch of Israel's prime minister with rockets, the spokesman for a coalition of three Palestinian terror groups warned on an American radio show the same day his "first and foremost goal" is to kill Ariel Sharon. Listen to ABC Radio's John Batchelor and WND's Jerusalem chief...

CAIRO, May 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – A North Carolina pastor has apologized to American Muslims for posting a sign outside his Danieltown Baptist Church in Forest City that urges the desecration of the Noble Qur'an. "I apologize for posting that message and deeply regret that it has offended so many in the Muslim community," Rev. Creighton Lovelace said in a statement, a copy of which was sent to IslamOnline.net. "When I posted the message on the sign, I did not realize how people of the Muslim faith view the Qur'an that devoted Muslims view it more highly than many in...

Mohammad Hossein, 4, plays with his toy gun, in front of his mother, who is a member of a suicide commandos unit, during a meeting where more than 200 young men and women volunteers prepared themselves for special training to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis, at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday, May 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iraq’s interim President Ghazi al-Yawer said on Saturday that most Iraqis will not vote in Sunday’s elections due to deteriorating security conditions and warned that the poll will not be successful if the Sunnis don’t participate. "What we hope is that everyone will take part," President Ghazi al-Yawer said at a press conference on Saturday. "But if the majority of the Iraqi people does not take part, and we know that the majority will not take part because of the security situation and not because they are boycotting the elections," "There are only very few who will boycott, but the...

The Iraqi people started voting Sunday in their country's first election after ousting the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, as anti-occupation and anti-government rebels, bent on wrecking Sunday’s vote, stepped up their deadly bombing and mortar strikes at several polling stations across Iraq. Rebels killed two people in a string of bomb and mortar attacks across the country Sunday, three hours before the polling stations opened. Casting his vote in Iraq’s first multi-party ballot in half a century, interim President Ghazi al-Yawer called it Iraq's first step "toward joining the free world." Although Iraqi authorities adopted strict security measures, numerous...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A Muslim group plans to slaughter 100 lambs on a farm this weekend as part of a religious rite, but state officials plan to be there with their video cameras to monitor what they consider an unlicensed slaughterhouse. The arrangement is the result of negotiations between the state, the Muslims and father-son farmers Kenneth and Eddie Rowe, who have leased their farm in rural Princeton for use during Eid al-Adha, also known as the Feast of Sacrifice.

A WEDDING party in Saudi Arabia turned violent after a female guest was caught using her mobile telephone to take digital photographs of other women at the celebration, a newspaper reported today. Al-Madineh said a fight broke out as a woman used her mobile to take pictures at the segregated wedding party in Khamis Msheit, about 1000km south-west of Riyadh. "The scuffle spread to the male section of the party. A number of guests were hospitalised," the daily added. Camera-equipped mobile phones are ostensibly banned in the conservative kingdom, where men and women celebrate weddings separately, so that women are...

Sharon, Bush, Chirac are the world's worst 'Islamophobes'of 2004 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, US President George Bush, and French President Jacque Chirac are the world's worst "Islamphobes" of 2004, according to a leading British Muslim rights group. The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) selected the three leaders on Saturday, marking the annual "Islamophobia Awards" to highlight what they described as growing anti-Muslim prejudice. "It is with great sadness that we reveal this year's winners," the commission said in a statement. "Sadly, the competition was extremely tough and we see no signs of this abating in the year to come."...

TOKYO (AP) — Kiss bassist Gene Simmons (news), who sparked outrage in Australia after making comments seen as anti-Muslim, said Friday he was speaking only of "extremists" and that his remarks were taken out of context. "I was asked about extremists," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And that's what I was talking about — only extremists." Simmons sparked outrage when Kiss toured Australia earlier this month with comments seen as attacking Islam. "This is a vile culture and if you think for a second that it's willing to just live in the sands of God's armpit...

TAKI Theodoracopulos sounds like he's ready to go to war for the right of women to strip, and men to watch them. The co- founder of the American Conservative is riled up because he sent "a high-class stripper" to the "downtown dive" where his son John-Taki was celebrating his 22nd birthday. "I rang it, spoke to the barman-owner, got permission and dis patched a high-class stripper to do what strippers do while he was cutting the cake. Everything went hunky-dory until the stripper began to undress. A large, drunk, fearsome-looking man at the bar objected. The boys were polite and...

Terrorists unveil female suicide bomber pictures Hamas has posted photos on its internet site of its first female suicide bomber posing with her two young children. The terror group's move is its answer to Palestinian critics who say the Islamic militant group was wrong to send 22-year-old Reem Raiyshi on a mission that left her toddlers without a mother. The pictures show Raiyshi in camouflage dress holding an assault rifle in one hand while cradling her three-year-old son, Obedia, in the other arm. The boy is clutching what appears to be a mortar shell, and both mother and child wear...

<p>January 15, 2004 -- A 22-year-old Palestinian woman carried out what is believed to be the first homicide bombing by a mother when she blew herself up at a Gaza Strip checkpoint yesterday, killing four Israelis.</p> <p>Reem Riyashi spoke of love for her two young children in a "farewell" video - but also said she had dreamed of turning "my body into deadly shrapnel against Zionists" since she was 13.</p>

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. -- A Grant County man has been charged with trying to kidnap his sister from her Sedro-Woolley home in what police believe was an attempt to punish her for marrying outside her Muslim faith. Khalil Nassar, 21, and a 24-year-old acquaintance, Antonio Cortez, were charged Wednesday with attempted kidnapping, said Robin Webb-Lakey, a Skagit County senior deputy prosecutor. Nassar also was charged with felony harassment. The two men told police they were simply planning to visit Nassar's sister, according to an affidavit signed by Sedro-Woolley Police Sgt. William Tucker and filed in Skagit County Superior Court. Nassar...