A flamboyant populist and founder of a virulently anti-immigrant political party, Geert Wilders sees himself as a champion of 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 ...

"Why are the Christians claiming Allah?" asks businessman Rahim Ismail, 47, his face contorted in rage and disbelief. He shakes his head and raises his voice while waiting for a taxi along Jalan Tun Razak, a main thoroughfare in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital. "Everybody in the world knows Allah is the Muslim God and belongs to Muslims. I cannot understand why the Christians want to claim Allah as their God," Rahim says as passersby, mostly Muslims, gather ...

When President Barack Obama flew to Cairo two years ago to deliver a speech designed to start an American conversation with the Muslim world, it seemed an almost revolutionary act — and the enthusiasm of his reception was in sharp contrast with the Arab world's widespread hostility towards President George W. Bush. But as Egypt makes revolutionary changes of its own, the prevailing sentiment remains that Obama has been a bitter disappointment. "We were all so hopeful," says Islam Bakr, 52, a security ...

19-year-old Rojeh Reda says he hasn't slept much the past five days. Cairo University literature student and Shakespeare buff says he and his two friends have made it their mission to patrol and monitor the streets of his neighborhood, Imbaba, a poor working-class district in Cairo. Over the weekend, fighting in Imbaba between hundreds of Muslims and Christians left at least 12 people dead, more than 200 wounded and two churches in flames, in the latest ...

It was the day before the Bosnian elections, and in the northeastern city of Tuzla, the popular alternative band Dubioza Kolektiv was playing a get-out-the-vote concert to a packed audience. But even amid the excitement of the young crowd, Damir Dajanovic was not getting his hopes up. As long as the 21-year-old political activist could remember, his fragile country has been paralyzed by postwar ethnic divisions, corruption and a convoluted political system divided among Bosnian Muslims, Croats ...

The last time Syrians took on their ruling Ba'athist regime it was 1982. The protesters then were Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood. Hafez al-Assad was president. And there was no such thing as a camera phone. Assad mercilessly crushed the revolt in the city of Hama, killing perhaps 10,000 , and according to local lore, turning one mass grave into a car park, such being his contempt for those who dared defy him. In 2011, Hafez's son and ...

The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy against dissent, using specific carrots-and-sticks to appease and repress the country's complicated collection of tribal, ethnic and religious interests. But that does not appear to have diminished, on various local levels, the virulence of the rancor against the long rule of the Ba'ath Party and the perceived concentration of wealth and privilege in the hands of a small elite class. Indeed, while the ...

Correction Appended: Sept. 2, 2010 To experience what it feels like to be a Muslim in America today, walk in the shoes of Dr. Mansoor Mirza of Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. It's a February evening, and you're at a meeting of the planning commission of Wilson , which is considering your application to open a mosque in the nearby village of Oostburg. You're not expecting much opposition: you already own the property, and having worked in the nearby Manitowoc ...

For his day, the Prophet Muhammad was a feminist. The doctrine he laid out as the revealed word of God considerably improved the status of women in 7th century Arabia. In local pagan society, it was the custom to bury alive unwanted female newborns; Islam prohibited the practice. Women had been treated as possessions of their husbands; Islamic law made the education of girls a sacred duty and gave women the right to own and inherit property. Muhammad ...

Was the Army psychiatrist who is the main suspect in last week's Fort Hood shooting massacre a disaffected loner who simply snapped on the eve of a deployment to Afghanistan? Or was Major Nidal Malik Hasan a Muslim extremist whose rampage was inspired by terrorist groups overseas? As authorities continue to investigate the deadly episode, they are struggling to understand just what led Hasan to allegedly mow down so many at the Texas military base. And while there is ...