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Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asked Muammar Gaddafi to underwrite CAIR's efforts in the United States during a September 2009 audience with the Libyan dictator. According to an account of the meeting in a Libyan news website, Awad was joined by two other leading CAIR officials in praising Gaddafi's leadership and asking him to help underwrite a program to distribute 1 million copies of the Quran to government officials and the general public in America and to help start up a new foundation Awad was trying to launch

Cambridge University has been given £8 million by a Saudi Arabian prince to establish an Islamic studies centre. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, ranked in the top 20 richest men in the world, with a fortune of about £10 billion, has donated the cash to the university to fund a centre in his name for the study of the role of Islam in the Middle East and globally. The gift has been recommended by the university's general board and is expected to be announced in June. advertisement The grandson of King Ibn Saud and nephew of King Abudllah, the prince counts...

The family of Laleh Bakhtiar, a 68-year-old Chicago-based academic, fears for the safety of the Christian-turned-Muslim following her publication of the first English translation of the Quran by an American woman and one that challenges the widespread belief that Muhammed granted husbands the right to beat their wives. Bakhtier, who converted over 30 years ago, is releasing "The Sublime Quran" on April 10, a translation that is "universal, inclusive" and "with no parenthetical expressions," according to an interview she gave the American Muslim. "The translation has internal consistency and reliability," she said. It also reverts translation of the Arabic word...

1st International Congress on Islamic Feminism During the Congress, a woman led Islamic prayers in public to a mixed audience On the afternoon of the 29th, the Chairwoman of the Catalan Women's Association (Institut de la Dona), Marta Selva, and the Chairman of the Unesco Centre of Catalonia, Enric Masllorens, closed proceedings of the first International Congress on Islamic Feminism, which for three days assembled over 400 delegates. Junta Islàmica Catalana organised this meeting with the intention of internationally disseminating the emergent movement of Muslim women for human rights, known as the "gender jihad". Another priority of the Congress was...

More than 3,000 satellite dishes have been confiscated in Iran as the government cracks down on what they're calling "trouble makers" in the country's capital city. More than 12,000 "social polluters" have been arrested and hundreds have been sentenced in recent days. While it's illegal to have satellite dishes in Iran, many people have them, allowing Iranians a glimpse at the outside world. SAT-7, Christian satellite television for the Middle East and North Africa, is concerned about the most recent crackdown. SAT-7's Debbie Brink says, "They're trying to prevent sources of information coming into the country that the government considers...

[JURIST] Leading Tuesday's states brief, the ACLU filed a lawsuit [ACLU news] today against North Carolina asking the court to rule that a "holy scripture" suitable for oath administration includes the religious texts of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and other non-Christian faiths as well as the Christian Bible. Last month, two state judges in Guilford County ruled that an oath on the Koran was not a legal oath under a state law which allows a witness to take their oaths either by laying a hand over a "holy scripture" or by saying "so help me God" without a religious book. The...

A Saudi woman has defied the country's ban on female drivers to save her husband after he collapsed at the wheel, a Saudi newspaper has reported. The couple were driving from the city of Dammam to Riyadh when the man suffered breathing problems and passed out, the al-Watan newspaper said. His wife grabbed the wheel and drove 15km (10 miles) to a petrol station where he was treated and recovered. The man had reportedly taught his wife to drive during trips to the desert. The kingdom imposes severe restrictions on women, including barring them from voting or going out in...

Despite Newsweek's retraction of the Quran-in-the-toilet story, the official North Korean news agency yesterday blasted the U.S. for violating the human rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. "American soldiers flushed holy Qurans down toilets in a bid to wrest concessions from prisoners at the Guantanamo POW Camp," claimed the North Korean story.

A LONG way from shellbursts in mountain gorges, Pakistan is waging another battle crucial to the country’s existence. In Pakistan’s Supreme Court yesterday Islamabad’s finest lawyers jostled with Islamic fundamentalists in a test case to decide if Pakistan’s 21st-century economy should be run according to a 7th-century sacred text, the Koran. At issue is whether interest should be banned as un-Islamic, the demand of religious parties seeking to Islamise the country’s financial system. The outcome, if it goes against the Government, would be to ban interest rates, wiping out all attempts to rehabilitate an economy stricken by decades of corruption,...