Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali said Moscow and Beijing’s actions showed the veto system of the Security Council was flawed and the two countries had “misused” their right to block the resolution against Syria.

“Undoubtedly the international community has to reconsider this mechanism of decision taking,” said Jebali.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that “Cold War” logic had prevailed in the Security Council and that Russia and China “did not vote on existing realities”.

On Saturday, Russia and China employed their veto to block a UN resolution against Syria that aimed to end violence there after one of the bloodiest weekends since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad erupted about 11 months ago.

Militants said more than 230 civilians perished under bombardment by Syrian forces in the city of Homs overnight Friday.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Mohamed Amr, said the Arab League would convene in Cairo on Saturday and “evaluate” the situation following the Security Council vote.

“Bloodshed has to stop. This is a tragedy that cannot be allowed to continue in our midst,” he said.

The criticism was not limited to politicians, with the director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, saying the veto had rendered the United Nations “irrelevant”.

Jebali said that in the absence of strong UN action, countries should take their own action by cutting all diplomatic ties with Damascus, as Tunisia has already done.

“We have to expel Syrian ambassadors from Arab and other countries,” the prime minister said.

“The Syrian people do not expect from us today long statements … they are expecting deeds, they are expecting concrete measures … the very least we can do is to cut all relations to the Syria regime,” he added.

Qatari minister of state for foreign affairs, Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah, described Saturday as a “sad day”.

He said Russia and China’s move was a “bad signal to Assad that gives a license to kill, full stop”.

Speaking at the same event, Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkul Karman also called on the international community to expel Syrian ambassadors from their countries and recall diplomats in the wake of the violence there.

“I urge you in the name of the peaceful rebels to expel Syrian ambassadors from your countries and I urge you to call back your ambassadors in Damascus,” Karman said.

With their veto, China and Russia “bear the moral and human responsibility for these massacres”, she said.

US independent Senator Joe Lieberman said that with their actions, China and Russia were “on the wrong side of history” and they could find themselves as isolated as Assad if they refused to budge.

The United States should look at providing weapons and other aid to Syrian rebels if Russia and China refuse to reconsider, said Lieberman.

“We have a range of support we can give them,” he told the panel.

“Some of it is non-lethal, including medical supplies … and then ultimately it is providing them with weapons,” said the senator

news.com.au

The electoral law proposal by the Orthodox Gathering, calls for each sect to elects its own lawmakers to ensure fair representation at the parliament .

“This is the best way to reduce sectarian tensions, which is to allow each sect to feel that it is being properly represented,” Zahra told the Free Lebanon radio station .

Maronite leaders agreed Friday during a meeting at Bkirki to support the Orthodox Gathering’s draft electoral law, and agreed to form a committee to discuss the proposed law with Lebanese officials.

On the other hand Change and Reform bloc MP Alain Aoun said on Saturday that the Orthodox plan on electoral law is a proposal motivated by sectarianism.

“How can we, Christians, be represented appropriately in such a sectarian system in Lebanon ?” Aoun asked during an interview with New TV television.

Change and Reform bloc leader MP Michel Aoun attended the Bkirki meeting

March 14 MP Boutros Harb told the London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat that the Orthodox plan on the new electoral law “practically implements what the National Pact stipulates” regarding the distribution of posts among Christians and Muslims in Lebanon.

The National Pact is an unwritten power-sharing agreement under which the presidency is reserved for a Maronite Christian, the premiership for a Sunni Muslim, and the parliamentary speakership for a Shiite Muslim.

Harb said that the Orthodox plan was approved “out of Christian concerns” for the changes that have swept the region over the past year.

Lebanese politicians are presently debating the electoral law for the upcoming 2013 parliamentary elections.

Sheik Shahat is a leader of the ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis, whose coalition of parties is running second behind the Brotherhood party in the early returns of Egypt’s parliamentary elections. He and his allies are demanding strict prohibitions against interest-bearing loans, alcohol and “fornication,” with traditional Islamic corporal punishment like stoning for adultery.

“I want to say: citizenship restricted by Islamic Shariah, freedom restricted by Islamic Shariah, equality restricted by Islamic Shariah,” he said in a public debate. “Shariah is obligatory, not just the principles — freedom and justice and all that.”

The unexpected electoral success of the Salafis — reported to have won about 25 percent of the votes in the first round of the elections, second only to the roughly 40 percent for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party — is terrifying Egyptian liberals and troubling the West. But their new clout is also presenting a challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood, in part by plunging it into a polarizing Islamist-against-Islamist debate over the application of Islamic law in Egypt’s promised democracy, a debate the Brotherhood had worked hard to avoid.

“The Salafis want to have that conversation right now, and the Brotherhood doesn’t,” said Shadi Hamid, a researcher with the Brookings Doha Center, a Brookings Institution project in Qatar. “The Brotherhood is not interested in talking about Islamic law right now because they have other priorities that are more important. But the Salafis are going to insist on putting religion in the forefront of the debate, and that will be very difficult for the Brotherhood to ignore.”

The Brotherhood, the venerable group that virtually invented the Islamist movement eight decades ago, is at its core a middle-class missionary institution, led not by religious scholars but by doctors, lawyers and professionals. It has long sought to move Egypt toward a more orthodox Islamic society from the bottom up, one person and family at a time. After a long struggle in the shadows of the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, its leaders have sought to avoid potentially divisive conversations about the details of Islamic law that might set off alarms about an Islamist takeover. But their evasiveness on the subject has played into long-term suspicions of even fellow Islamists that they are too concerned with their own power.

The Salafis are political newcomers, directed by religious leaders who favor long beards in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad. Many frown on the mixing of the sexes, refusing to shake hands with women let alone condoning any sort of political activity by them. Although their parties are required to include female candidates, they usually print pictures of flowers instead of the women’s faces on campaign posters. And while the Salafis’ ideology strikes many Egyptians as extreme and anachronistic, their sheiks command built-in networks of devoted followers, and even voters who disagree with their puritanical doctrine often credit the Salafis with integrity and authenticity.

After the first election results last week, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party quickly declared that it had no plans to form any coalition with the Salafis, with some members already ending months of restrained silence by striking back. In an interview after the vote, for example, Dina Zakaria, a spokeswoman for the party, derided the Salafis’ prohibition on women in leadership roles and their refusal to print the faces of their female candidates.

“We don’t hold stagnant positions,” she said, insisting that the Brotherhood’s party favored an evolving understanding of Islam that supported the right of women to choose their own roles. (At campaign rallies, women from the party sometimes underscore the point by saying Muhammad even enlisted women in combat.)

Such debates, however, threaten to knock the Brotherhood off the fine line it has attempted to walk.

In public statements, the party’s leaders have preferred to focus on broader themes of Islamic identity and the bread-and-butter questions that are the more urgent concerns of voters. On the campaign trail, the Brotherhood sometimes even seems to appeal to both sides from the same podium — sounding like Salafis themselves one minute but avowing moderation the next.

“To give your vote for Islamists is a religious issue,” an Islamic scholar, Sayed Abdel Karim, declared at a campaign rally in Giza, across the Nile from Cairo, calling for “the rule of God, not the rule of the people.”

“The revival of Islamic spirit in the region is a direct threat to Israel and the future of the Western civilization, Europe and the U.S.,” he said, asserting that “the enemy media” were already saying that “those who love Jews, the United States and Europe should make every effort to keep the Islamic spirit dormant. Look at the conspiracy!”

But moments later, the main speaker and the top candidate on his party’s list, Essam el-Erian, declared that the party believed only in nonsectarian citizenship for all, that Christians and Muslims should enjoy equal rights as “sons of the nation” in the eyes of a neutral state and that the next constitution should protect free expression. And he pledged warm relations with any nation that respected Egypt’s “independence and culture.”

(Brotherhood leaders have said they support retaining the 1979 Camp David peace treaty with Israel, with some possible modifications, while the Salafis have sometimes talked of putting it to a national referendum.)

“The garrison of religion in Egypt has special characteristics,” Mr. Erian said, “tolerance and moderation.”

Leaders of the Brotherhood’s party have endorsed public commitments to protect individual rights. And its platform strikes a consistent theme of eschewing the quick prod of legal coercion in favor of encouraging private endeavors toward gradual change. Unlike the Salafis, it has not proposed to regulate the content of arts or entertainment, women’s work or dress, or even the religious content of public education. In fact, the party’s platform calls for smaller government to limit corruption and liberalize the economy.

Instead the party proposes to nudge Egyptian society by the power of example. In culture, it would encourage “self-censorship” by asking artists and writers to sign a voluntary “code of ethics.” The government, meanwhile, would support music, films and other arts that extol religious and family values.

For social welfare, the party seeks to institutionalize the obligatory Islamic charitable contribution, known as Zakat, by collecting a mandatory 2.5 percent income tax from all Muslims, which the government would then pass to regulated Islamic charities. It would encourage these Islamic charities to set up their own religious schools and hospitals. And to encourage women to accept traditional gender roles, it would promote family values in entertainment while subsidizing community centers for matchmaking and marriage counseling.

“Do you find anything saying that our party is going to impose any kind of law on the moral side?” challenged Mr. Erian, who is running for Parliament in Giza.

Every major party here — liberal or Islamist — supports retaining the clause in the Constitution stipulating that Islam is the source of Egyptian law. But competing Islamist parties offer conflicting ideas about “activating” the clause.

The most liberal — like the former Brotherhood members in the Center Party and the presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, both breakaways from the Brotherhood — advocate essentially secular-liberal states, arguing that government should not get involved in interpreting Islam.

The Salafis, on the other hand, often favor the idea that a specialized council of religious scholars should advise the Parliament or review its legislation to ensure compliance with Islamic law.

The Brotherhood debated similar ideas as recently as a few years ago.

This year, however, the Freedom and Justice Party has sought a middle approach. Its platform calls for Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court to rule on compliance with Shariah. But that stance is essentially without consequence because the court already had that power under Mr. Mubarak, and the judiciary is a bastion of liberalism whose views of Islamic law are highly flexible, to say the least.

“Religious scholars’ guardianship over political life is completely unacceptable,” Mohamed Beltagy, another leader of the Brotherhood’s party, said in an interview. “Nobody could speak in the name of the heavens or the name of religion. We don’t accept tyranny in the name of religion any more than we accept tyranny in the name of the military.”

His party’s position, he argued, was in reality no different from the Center Party’s, though he acknowledged that his view was considered “debatable” within the Brotherhood.
Photo: The banner reads: “Not Salafism nor Brotherhood, my religion is Freedom” [Reuters]

NYT

The ministry said that the deaths occurred after unidentified armed terrorists attacked the security forces and said foreign hands are behind the incident.( A possible reference to Iran)

New protests broke out in the area following the death of two Shiite protesters .

Demonstrators marched late Tuesday in the towns of Shweika and Awamiya calling on authorities to hand over the bodies of the two protesters killed in clashes with police this week.

In a step apparently aimed to diffuse tension, Saudi authorities have decided to form a commission to probe the death of the two protesters

“The governor of the Eastern Province, Prince Mohammad bin Fahd, has informed us that the Interior Ministry has formed an inquiry commission,” said Sheikh Hussein al-Soweileh.

The cleric was part of a delegation of Shiite dignitaries from Qatif who met Tuesday with the governor – a son of the late King Fahd who died in 2005.

The governor “has asked us to bring calm to the street, mainly as [the annual Shiite commemoration period of] Ashura approaches,” he said.

In October, 14 people, including 11 policemen, were wounded during clashes with security forces and demonstrators in the same area. At the time, the Interior Ministry in the Sunni-ruled kingdom blamed “outlaws” for the violence and hinted at Iranian involvement in instigating the clashes.

Also last March 10 similar protests took place in the same area in support of the anti government protests in Bahrain

The overwhelming majority of the estimated 2 million Saudi Shiites live in Eastern Province,

Shiites claim that they face discrimination in education and government jobs.

They also complain of restrictions on setting up places of worship and marking Shiite holidays, and say Qatif and Al-Ahsa receive less state funding than Sunni communities of comparable size

The Saudi government denies charges of discrimination. King Abdullah Bin Adel Aziz has appointed three Shiites to the advisory Shura council and included Shiite leaders in “national dialogue” meetings.

Qabbani conveyed his good wishes to the Lebanese people on this occasion.

Christians protesting about an attack on a church set cars on fire, burned army vehicles and hurled rocks at military police who they said used heavy-handed tactics against them. It was some of the worst violence since the February uprising.

The violence casts a shadow over the imminent parliamentary election. Voting starts on November 28 with candidates due to begin registering during the week starting Wednesday.

The clashes also added to growing frustration among activists with the army who many Egyptians suspect wants to keep hold of the reins of power from behind the scenes even as it hands over day-to-day government. The army denies this.

“This is a dark day in the military’s history. This is betrayal, a conspiracy, murder,” Magdy el-Serafy wrote on Twitter where he and other Egyptians voiced frustration at the army’s handling of the protest.

The Health Ministry said the death toll had reached 24 with 213 injured, the official MENA news agency reported. It did not identify the dead but state television had earlier reported three soldiers were killed.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf toured the area near the state television building where clashes erupted, MENA said, adding he spoke to those in the area to hear their accounts of events.

“What happened in front of the state TV building is exactly what happened on January 25,” wrote Muslim activist Asmaa Mahfouz, referring to the start of the anti-Mubarak uprising.

Christians, who make up 10 percent of Egypt’s roughly 80 million people, took to the streets after blaming Muslim radicals for partially demolishing a church in Aswan province last week. They also demanded the sacking of the province’s governor for failing to protect the building.

Tensions between Christians and Muslims have increased since the uprising. But Muslim and Christian activists said the violence Sunday was not due to sectarian differences but was directed at the army’s handling of the protest.

‘MALICIOUS CONSPIRACIES’

“Instead of advancing to build a modern state of democratic principles, we are back searching for security and stability, worrying that there are hidden hands, both domestic and foreign, seeking to obstruct the will of Egyptians in establishing a democracy,” Sharaf said on state television.

“We will not surrender to these malicious conspiracies and we will not accept reverting back,” he said in his address.

The cabinet said in a statement that it would “not let any group manipulate the issue of national unity in Egypt or delay the process of democratic transformation” which it said would begin with opening the doors to candidate nominations.

Cabinet spokesman Mohamed Hegazy told Reuters the cabinet would hold a special session Monday to discuss the events.

“The most important thing is to contain the situation, see the way forward and the necessary measures to avoid any ramifications,” Hegazy said, adding a committee of prominent figures from the church and Al-Azhar mosque would also meet.

Presidential candidate Amr Moussa and political groups said they would hold an emergency meeting Monday about the violence.

The army imposed a curfew on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the focus for protests that brought down Mubarak, and the downtown area. It was set from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m., (0000-0500 GMT).

Pictures of smashed faces and dead bodies of what activists said were bodies run over by military vehicles circulated online, with angry comments comparing the violence used by the military to that of Mubarak’s hated police in the uprising.

“What happened today is unprecedented in Egypt. 17 corpses crushed by military tanks,” Hossam Bahgat, human rights activist tweeted from hospital. “I saw bodies missing hands and legs, heads twisted away or plastered to the ground.”

Protesters also took to the streets in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city.

The government appealed for calm. In comments published on his Facebook page, Sharaf said he had contacted security and church authorities about the situation, saying the one ones to benefit were the “enemies of the January revolution.”

Reuters

“He fled Iraq and came here,” said Abu Elias, looking at his friend, who arrived just a year earlier. “Soon, we might find ourselves doing the same.”

Syria plunges deeper into unrest by the day. On Tuesday, government troops attacked the rebellious town of Rastan with tanks and machine guns, wounding at least 20 people. With the chaos growing, Christians visiting Saydnaya on a recent Sunday said they feared that a change of power could usher in a tyranny of the Sunni Muslim majority, depriving them of the semblance of protection the Assad family has provided for four decades.

Syria’s Christian minority is sizable, about 10 percent of the population, though some here say the share is actually lower these days. Though their sentiments are by no means monolithic — Christians are represented in the opposition, and loyalty to the government is often driven more by fear than fervor — the group’s fear helps explain how President Bashar al-Assad has held on to segments of his constituency, in spite of a brutal crackdown aimed at crushing a popular uprising.

For many Syrian Christians, Mr. Assad remains predictable in a region where unpredictability has driven their brethren from war-racked places like Iraq and Lebanon, and where others have felt threatened in postrevolutionary Egypt.

They fear that in the event the president falls, they may be subjected to reprisals at the hands of a conservative Sunni leadership for what it sees as Christian support of the Assad family. They worry that the struggle to dislodge Mr. Assad could turn into a civil war, unleashing sectarian bloodshed in a country where minorities, ethnic and religious, have found a way to coexist for the most part.

The anxiety is so deep that many ignore the opposition’s counterpoint: The government has actually made those divisions worse as part of a strategy to ensure the rule of the Assad family, which itself springs from a Muslim minority, the Alawites.

“I am intrigued by your calls for freedom and for overthrowing the regime,” wrote a Syrian Christian woman on her Facebook page, addressing Christian female protesters. “What does freedom mean? Every one of you does what she wants and is free to say what she wants. Do you think if the regime falls (God forbid) you will gain freedom? Then, each one of you will be locked in her house, lamenting those days.”

The fate of minorities in a region more diverse than many recognize is among the most pressing questions facing an Arab world in turmoil. With its mosaic of Christians and Muslim sects, Syria has posed the question in its starkest terms: Does it take a strongman to protect the community from the more dangerous, more intolerant currents in society?

The plight of Christians in Syria has resonated among religious minorities across the Middle East, many of whom see themselves as facing a shared destiny. In Iraq, the number of Christians has dwindled to insignificance since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, driven away by bloodshed and chauvinism. Christians in Egypt worry about the ascent of Islamists. Christians in Lebanon, representing the largest minority by proportion in the Arab world, worry about their own future, in a country where they emerged as the distinct losers of a 15-year civil war.

This month, Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic patriarch urged Maronites, the largest community of Christians in the country, to offer Mr. Assad another chance and to give him enough time to carry out a long list of reforms that he has promised but never enacted.

The comments by the patriarch, Bishara Boutros al-Rai, prompted a heated debate in Lebanon, which lived under Syrian hegemony for 29 years. A prominent Syrian (and Christian) opposition figure offered a rebuttal from Damascus. But Patriarch Rai, who described Mr. Assad as “a poor man who cannot work miracles,” defended his remarks, warning that the fall of the government in Syria threatened Christians across the Middle East.

“We endured the rule of the Syrian regime. I have not forgotten that,” Patriarch Rai said. “We do not stand by the regime, but we fear the transition that could follow. We must defend the Christian community. We, too, must resist.”

It is a remarkable insight into the power and persuasion of fear that the status quo in Syria these days remains preferable to many. The United Nations estimates that more than 2,600 people have died since the uprising erupted in mid-March in the poor southern town of Dara’a, and, given the desperation of some, even activists warn that protesters may resort to arms. Estimates of arrests run into the tens of thousands.

Some Christians have joined the ranks of the uprisings, and Christian intellectuals like Michel Kilo and Fayez Sara populate the ranks of opposition figures.

An activist in Damascus recalled over coffee at the upscale Audi Lounge how a Christian friend found himself hiding in the house of a conservative Muslim family in a town on the outskirts of Damascus. His friend was marching in a demonstration, along with others. When security forces arrived at the scene, shooting randomly at people, they ran for cover, hiding in the nearest houses and buildings, he said.

When the tumult was over, his new host asked him what his name was. Scared, he thought for a moment about lying, but worried that he might be asked for his identification papers, he told the truth. To his surprise, the host and his family and all those hiding in the house began cheering for him. He had joined their ranks.

The formula often offered of the Syrian divide — religious minorities on Mr. Assad’s side, the Sunni Muslim majority aligned against him — never captured the nuance of a struggle that may define Syria for generations. Even some Alawites, the Muslim sect from which Mr. Assad draws most of his leadership, had joined protesters. When a few came to the central Syrian city of Hama to join huge demonstrations in the summer, they were saluted by Sunni Muslims with songs and poetry.

But while the promise of the Arab revolts is a new order, shorn of repression and inequality, worries linger that Islamists, the single most organized force in the region, will gain greater influence and that societies will become more conservative and perhaps intolerant.

“Fear is spreading among us and anyone who is different,” said Abu Elias, as he greeted worshipers walking the hundreds of stone steps worn smooth over the centuries. “Today, we are here. Tomorrow, who knows where we will be?”

nyt

Tasawar Awan, owner of Magoo's California Pizza, dispalys one of his pizzas in the kitchen of his restaurant in Indianapolis, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. Awan, a Pakistani, has lived in central Indiana since 2006. The restaurant is halal, so it follows Muslim dietary restrictions, but features items like Chicken Tikka Pizza and kabobs. Indiana Muslims have emerged from their mosques and private lives in the 10 years since the Sept. 11 attacks to become more visible members of their communities. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

It was a Tuesday evening in August 2010 when a 21-year-old art student from suburban New York hailed a taxi cab on a Manhattan street, carrying a couple of notebooks, an empty bottle of scotch and a folding knife. After asking the cabbie if he was a Muslim, the student, Michael Enright, muttered “consider this a checkpoint” before slashing at the driver’s neck and eventually fleeing through the car window.

The driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, survived with relatively minor injuries. Enright, who had actually visited Afghanistan earlier that year as part of a group aiming to promote interfaith dialogue, was arrested and charged with a hate crime.

The attack may well have been the most acute example of anti-Islamic sentiment last summer, but it was hardly the only one. For months, a debate raged over the plan to build an Islamic center within several blocks of the World Trade Center site – with critics weighing in from around the country, including some family members of 9/11 victims. In Florida, the Rev. Terry Jones threatened to burn a Quran if the proposed site wasn’t moved. (Efforts to block the center’s approval failed and Jones, though he backed away from his initial threat, went through with a Quran-burning in March after finding the Muslim holy book guilty of crimes against humanity in a televised “trial.”)

In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, American Muslims have had a complicated relationship with their own country. According to a Pew Research Center study, more than half – 55 percent – say it’s been more difficult being Muslim in the U.S. since 9/11, yet almost the same exact number – 56 percent – report being satisfied with the way things are going in the country.

“It’s a mixed bag,” Ibrahim Cooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said.

“Yes, it’s easy to be a Muslim in America as far as religious freedom, but there’s a sense of being under greater scrutiny.”

Just last month, the Associated Press reported that the NYPD, with the help of the CIA, has been aggressively monitoring Muslim communities in New York and beyond, placing clandestine officers in neighborhoods in an effort to glean intelligence about possible security threats- tactics that have drawn accusations of profiling, though they have been defended by city officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In March, Rep. Peter King launched a series of controversial hearings on Islamic radicalism in U.S. Muslim communities – hearings that were characterized by some as a witch hunt, though King, R-NY, defended them as important to understanding threats to Muslim communities and the country at large.

There are also examples from the fringe – Terry Jones’ Quran-burning and opponents of the construction of a Tennessee mosque questioning Islam’s standing as a legitimate religion in court.

Americans largely agree that Muslims face greater scrutiny in the country – a recent CBS News/New York Times poll found that 78 percent think Muslims and Arab-Americans are unfairly singled out.

But the statistics also show just how much of a “mixed bag” life in the U.S. can be for Muslims. According to the Pew study, while 56 percent of Muslims think most other Muslims want to adopt the American way of life, just 33 percent of the general public agrees (51 percent see Muslims as wanting to remain distinct from the mainstream) – highlighting a gap in how American Muslims perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others.

And while, according to the CBS News/New York Times poll, 73 percent of Americans report no negative feelings toward Muslims after 9/11, a sizable and at times vocal minority – 25 percent – do. Thirty-three percent believe American Muslims are sympathetic toward terrorists.

But for however mixed the numbers may be or controversial some of the rhetoric may get, there are positive signs. After hate crimes spiked in the months following 9/11, they’ve dropped by 31 percent from 2002 through 2009, according to FBI data.

And there are encouraging stories of Muslims finding friendship and acceptance in communities throughout the country. In Cordova, Tenn., just outside Memphis, Dr. Bashar Shala began constructing an Islamic center right across the street from Heartsong Church two years ago. The pastor, Steve Stone, put up a sign welcoming them to the community and even made his church available to his new neighbors during Ramadan while their center was under construction.

As reported on “The Early Show,” both sides have built such a relationship that they’re now planning to build a park using property from both sides of the street and host events together like a recent Labor Day party.

Church member Lee Raines is perhaps a symbol of some Americans’ evolving attitudes.

“I was anti(-Islam) at first, big-time,” he admitted. “To me it was a religion of hate. And with 9/11, I just kind of lost it.”

But unlike 20 other church members who left Heartsong, Raines decided to give his neighbors a chance.

“They’re normal people just like me and you,” Raines said. “They have families, they’ve got kids, you know, they’re running around, they enjoy sports just like I did, you know, they do the same things we do.”

CBS

Detectives are searching for the motive that led to the killing of a blind Lebanese imam inside a mosque in north London.

Maimoun Zarzour, 39, an imam at Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park, north London, was found dead in his office at the mosque on Friday morning .

Mosque officials believe Zarzour may have been strangled. Police and mosque officials said they did not think the killing was a hate crime.

Shortly after Zarzour’s body was found, a man gave himself up to police and is the prime suspect. He is believed to be Muslim, and to have asked for an appointment to see Zarzour after early morning prayers, suggesting that he was known at the mosque.

Muslim Welfare House is one of two mosques in the Finsbury Park area. It is moderate and orchestrated the ousting of the firebrand Abu Hamza, who is now in jail.

Worshippers at the mosque, which is known for reaching out to other faiths, had celebrated Eid on Tuesday, one of the biggest Muslim festivals of the year.

A former mosque trustee, Mohamad Kozbar, paid tribute to Zarzour. “He was a well known imam, humble and kind,” he said. “To be killed in this way is a crime, and the person or people who did this should be brought to justice.”

Abdul Abdi, the project manager for Muslim Welfare House, which runs the mosque, said: “It’s tough for the community. He was someone who was dedicated and worked more than his scheduled hours. He accepted anyone to his office at any time, even if it wasn’t a convenient time.

“He was friendly and a man who united the community in this area. During his short time here he became well known and respected.”

In a statement the Metropolitan police said: “Police were called by London ambulance service at 1021hrs on Friday 2 September to reports of a man seriously injured at an Islamic bookshop and welfare centre in Seven Sisters Road.

“Police officers attended. A man – believed to be aged in his 30s – was pronounced dead at the scene. We await formal identification and confirmation that next of kin have been informed. A postmortem examination is yet to be arranged.

“A man – age not known at this stage – was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder.

“Islington police officers are investigating alongside colleagues from the homicide and serious crime command.”

Guardian

“You Christians must hold onto your land, your history and must not sell your land no matter what the circumstances,” Rai said  during a sermon at St. Charbel church in Jiyye, in the Chouf coastal area of Iqlim al-Kharroub.

Rai praised the “roots of faith” in the Chouf region, which had witnessed several wars and significant displacement of Christians at the peak of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 Civil War.

Rai kicked off the first leg of a historic tour in Sidon Saturday, 275 years after a head of the Maronite Church last visited the southern coastal city.

Rai traveled Monday to the Chouf region where he expressed his hopes that a national dialogue develops  into a national conference, laying down a “new social contract between the Lebanese stemming from the National Pact.”

Welcoming him at St. Charbel in Jiyeh were Minister of the Displaced Alaaeddine Terro, MP Mohammad Hajjar and representatives of Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party, Jamaa Islamiya, the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea , MP Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, and Amal Movement