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Somali Muslims warned of death 06/07/2006 11:36 - (SA) Mogadishu - Somali Muslims who fail to perform daily prayers will be killed in accordance with Qur'anic law under a new edict issued by a leading cleric in the Islamic courts union that controlled the capital. The requirement for Muslims to observe the five-times daily ritual under penalty of death was announced late on Wednesday and appeared to confirm the hardline nature of the increasingly powerful Sharia courts in Mogadishu. Sheikh Abdalla Ali, a founder and high-ranking official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, said: "He who does not perform...

More than 50,000 people attended the funeral Saturday of a Pakistani student who died while under arrest in Germany for allegedly planning to attack a newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. About three dozen people were injured in a stampede when crowds tried to enter the family's home in the Pakistani village of Saroki to see Amer Cheema's face, police and witnesses said. Mourners chanted "God is great!" and "We are slaves of Prophet Muhammad!" Some congratulated Cheema's father, kissing his hand and calling his son a martyr. German police say Cheema, 28, hanged himself in his Berlin...

This past week has provided two glaring examples of the pitfalls of allowing that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam,” as per the new constitutions of the vox populi elected governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. With major input from the U.S. State Department, both constitutions installed Islam as the official state religion and made ancient Islamic religious law, Shari’a, a primary guiding source for these legal systems. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted, the constitutions, …also contained some human rights provisions, which is what…enthusiasts said we should be focusing...

Afghan Man Prosecuted for Converting 24 minutes ago An Afghan man who allegedly converted from Islam to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday. The defendant, Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family went to the police and accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told Associated Press in an interview. Such a conversion would violate the country's Islamic laws. Rahman, who is believed to be 41, was charged with rejecting Islam when his trial started last week, the judge said. During the hearing, the...