Word: koran
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...free speech in the Netherlands. Others would disagree. Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, is in court this week to face five counts of inciting hatred and discrimination for describing Islam as a fascist religion and Moroccan youths as violent and for calling for the banning of the Koran. The trial, which resumed Wednesday, Feb. 3, after a two-week break, is seen as a test of the limits of free speech and the famously tolerant country's commitment to protecting minority rights...
...Rumors that U.S. soldiers had desecrated the Koran sparked a violent protest in the southern province of Helmand last week. Rioters turned their fury on the local offices of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), whose intelligence officers then fired on the crowd, killing eight. The Americans were blamed - just a few hours after the event, many residents claimed to have seen U.S. soldiers alongside the NDS officers who fired on the crowd. The U.S. military says none of its personnel were present at the scene. Most likely, the local Taliban shadow governor promulgated the rumors of a desecrated Koran...
Even more important, as the spiritual leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's biggest Muslim organization, Wahid fought against the fanatics who he said "pervert Islam into a dogma of intolerance, hatred and bloodshed." He could quote the Koran by heart as he defended the right of all people to follow their conscience in matters of religion, and he constantly spoke up for persecuted minorities, even at the risk of his own popularity. He said he wanted his tomb to read here lies a humanist. That he was. He was beloved by millions, Muslims and non-Muslims alike...
...like the way they lived." But at some point, al-Awlaki must have had something of a spiritual awakening. After graduating in 1994, he set aside civil engineering and applied to be imam of the Denver Islamic Society. He got the job because of his grasp of the Koran and his ability to preach in English. "The people there liked his translations," Belgasem says. Two years later, he moved to San Diego to run the larger al-Ribat al-Islami mosque and enrolled in a master's program in education at San Diego State University. It was in San Diego...
...fluent English, he has become that rare specimen: the jihadist cleric who can communicate effortlessly with audiences in the West. His tone and his message can appear seductively conciliatory. Most of his sermons have nothing at all to do with radical ideology; they are simple translations from the Koran and stories about the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Awlaki appeals to Muslim immigrants who worry that their English-speaking children are unable to connect to their faith. "He's lived amid such people, and he understands their dilemmas very well," says Jarret Brachman, author of Global Jihadism: Theory...