Recently in Islam Category

"With above-average levels of education and a combined buying power estimated at more than $170 billion, Muslims represent a major untapped niche market, according to a new study commissioned by JWT."

That was from an e-mail from the publicist for JWT, the largest advertising agency in the U.S. The report on their Web site was given the headline, "Traditional American values are thriving among muslims in the U.S."

The study looked at broad sentiments among Muslims, but focused on their feelings about the way they are marketed to:

Massive protests in Turkey yesterday highlighted the growing tension between religious Turks and their secular sisters in the predominantly Muslim country.

Two weeks after three Bible sellers were murdered by Turkish zeoloats, the at least 700,000 secular protesters were concerned about what Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's campaign for presidency would mean for non-religious Turks living in Istanbul and other major cities.

“People here are the real Turkey," one protester told the New York Times:

From Catholic Online:

KOTRI, Pakistan (UCAN) – Sattar Masih was having breakfast attired in his wedding suit as his cousins sang and danced, but their merriment was drowned out by a mob shouting against Christians and demanding his arrest.

Police handcuffed and dragged the Catholic bridegroom from the wedding house, decorated with colorful lights, in the Christian colony in Kotri, Sindh province. The handcuffs contrasted starkly with the mehndi , a colored paste applied to the groom's hands, and gaana, a bracelet of strings on his wrist.

That is what the Vatican's head of interfaith dialogue, French Cardinal Paul Poupard, said Wednesday, via Catholic News Service:

In predominantly Christian countries, it is important that Christian chapels "maintain their character as a place for Christian worship," he told Catholic airport chaplains meeting in Rome April 23-27.

Cardinal Poupard said that working in the world's airports, places where the fear of terrorism is high, the chaplains have an important role to play, "to encourage dialogue and prevent fear and pessimism from damaging relations with persons of other faiths."

Dialogue, he said, is the only nonviolent weapon available for fighting terrorism, "one of the most absurd and painful evils of our age."

It doesn't matter what rhetorical polishing President Bush's team has done to market the "War on Terror." Outside the United States, it's perceived as an effort to undermine -- even attack -- Islam, according to a report by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a research group affiliated with the University of Maryland.

"While US leaders may frame the conflict as a war on terrorism, people in the Islamic world clearly perceive the US as being at war with Islam,” said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

Jawaad Faizi, a journalist for the Mississauga, Ont.-based newspaper The Pakistan Post, was beaten last Tuesday by two men, one armed with a cricket bat, for an opinion column criticizing the leader of their Muslim organization, Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran. From the National Post:

In a column published two weeks ago, Mr. Faizi was critical of Minhajul- Quran, an Islamic group based in Pakistan with offices here in Canada. The group's leader, Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri, has been quoted as saying he can "write the name of Mohammed on the moon with his finger." The Pakistan Post writer has argued that Qadri "is always trying to fool the people."

Following the appearance of Mr. Faizi's column, the paper was subjected to threatening phone calls. On Tuesday, that point was made again, this time by two men who beat Mr. Faizi with a cricket bat and advised him in Punjabi and Urdu to heed their warnings and back off.

Hat-tip: Bible Belt Blogger

"Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?"

Hitler reportedly asked that question of his commanding generals in 1939, as he prepared to rid the world of Jews. Holocaust historians site this quotation when trying to explain Hitler's rational for how his acts would escape world condemnation. And yet, Jews -- who have so much in common with Armenians -- have struggled to embrace Armenians as true kindred spirits, diaspora people like Jews, who, though they did not suffer the Holocaust, suffered a holocaust.

Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the beginning of what most historians call the Armenian Genocide. And though most Western countries have recognized the acts as genocide, the United States and Israel have not. The U.S. has not wanted to offend an important military ally, and Israel has been hard pressed to condemn the founding fathers of the best friend in the Muslim world.

But the tide has shifted.