Security forces patrolled the streets of the eastern Pakistan city of Gojra on Sunday, one day after seven people were killed and 20 injured when Muslim demonstrators set fire to houses in a Christian enclave and fighting broke out, authorities said. Police said Muslims were enraged over an alleged desecration of pages in the Quran at a Christian wedding last Saturday, and held a rally to protest such an act. The Quran is the Muslim sacred text. Shehbaz Bhatti, federal ...

Some 700 people have been killed in clashes with Islamic militants in Nigeria, a military commander told CNN. The fighting in the northeast Nigerian town of Maiduguri began with attacks by the Muslim militants on police and government targets, starting a week ago. Col. Ben Ahonotu, commander of the operation to combat Islamic militants, gave the new total. Previous reports said at least 400 rebels, troops and civilians had died in the region, including Borno, Yobe, Kano and Katsina states. ...

When Bryant Neal Vinas spoke at length with Belgian prosecutors last March, he provided a fascinating and sometimes frightening insight into al Qaeda's training -- and its agenda. Vinas is a young American who was arrested in Pakistan late in 2008 after allegedly training with al Qaeda in the Afghan-Pakistan border area. He was repatriated to the United States and in January pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, ...

The chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir tendered his resignation Tuesday after he was accused of being involved in a 2006 sex scandal, his adviser said. Omar Abdullah, 38, delivered his resignation to the state governor after opposition member Muzaffar Hussain Beigh accused Omar of a connection to the prostitution scandal during a session of the state legislative assembly. Muzaffar served as the deputy chief minister in the previous government, when several top pro-India officials were arrested on charges they misused ...

Iran's supreme leader warned the political opposition Monday not to "direct the society toward insecurity." "You are being tested. And failing this test will not only mean your failure, it would also mean your fall," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his remarks to leaders, according to text released by the government-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Khamenei has stood by the official results of last month's presidential election, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. In his ...

A U.N. tribunal convicted two Serb cousins Monday of having burned alive more than 100 Muslims in what the presiding judge called a part of the "wretched history of man's inhumanity to man." Milan Lukic and Sredoje Lukic were convicted of crimes dating back to the early 1990s, during the bitter ethnic conflict that ravaged the former Yugoslavia. The crimes include two incidents in which Muslim men, women and children were forced into homes that were then set on fire ...

Whatever the end result of the current electoral crisis in Iran, the dramatic rise of national politics has already cast a long and enduring shadow over the geopolitics of the region. No country can go back to business as usual. The climate has changed -- for good. (CNN) -- Whatever the end result of the current electoral crisis in Iran, the dramatic rise of national politics has already cast a long and enduring shadow over the geopolitics of the region. ...

China acknowledged Sunday that security forces shot dead 12 people during ethnic riots in the northwest earlier this month. Officials also said Sunday that the death toll from the violence in the Xinjiang region had risen to 197. The government had previously said the fighting killed at least 184 people and wounded more than 1,000. Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xianjiang regional government, said police officers in the capital Urumqi shot 12 "mobsters" after failing to deter them by firing ...

A militant leader whose group has links to al Qaeda denounced Chinese treatment of Uyghur Muslims in western China and threatened to seek "revenge." The leader of the Turkistan Islamic Party, in a video that appeared on Islamic Web sites, blames the Chinese for "genocide" against people in East Turkistan -- what some Uyghurs calls the region of Xinjiang province in western China where they live. Earlier this month, Uyghurs demonstrated in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital, to protest the killing ...

U.S. President Barack Obama and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband both said they "strongly condemn" Friday's deadly hotel attacks in Jakarta, Indonesia. The German government also voiced its condemnation as nations began sharing their grief and anger. Indonesian authorities believe two suicide bombers checked into the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta and carried out coordinated bombings Friday morning, killing at least six people and wounding more than 50. Police said no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks on the ...