Islamic

BAKERSFIELD - Fernando Jara is something of a star in Kern County - and a mystery. From humble beginnings, Jara founded a program to rehabilitate drug addicts and felons on a five-acre farm. He is completing a master's degree at Claremont School of Theology and will soon begin work on a doctorate and a law degree. The energetic 37-year-old and his wife, a Kern County supervisor and rising political star, attended President Obama's inauguration in January at the invitation of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - For the second day in a row, a bomb blast killed and maimed participants at a campaign rally being held by one of Pakistan's Islamist religious parties, indicating a broadening of targets in the violence that has primarily taken aim at secular parties competing in parliamentary elections scheduled for Saturday. Two bombings Tuesday killed at least 15 people and injured more than 40 at campaign rallies in northwestern Pakistan, including one being held by a religious party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, authorities said.

Nathan Lean wants "society" to take action against those who stand for freedom and human rights against jihad, Sharia and Islamic supremacism, for we "must be stopped. " This is a veiled but clear call for restrictions on our freedom of speech. By publishing it on its Aug. 26 Op-Ed page, The Times is working against its own interests. For my opinions are certainly politically incorrect today, but if Lean succeeds in getting them criminalized, editors at The Times might find one day that they too hold an opinion unacceptable to those in power.

Security in the Forbidden City across the street from the Great Hall of the People was tight last month when Li Keqiang was installed as premier of China. But the uniformed guards weren't armed with automatic weapons. Instead, they were equipped with fire extinguishers to prevent would-be protesters from self-immolating. China these days is consumed with concerns about domestic stability. Notwithstanding this internal preoccupation, the Middle Kingdom's increasing appetite for Persian Gulf oil has sparked unprecedented Chinese interest in the Middle East.

A mediocre book on an important topic always is disappointing. When the treatment also is shallow and vulgarly argued -- as is the case with Bruce Bawer's "Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom" -- this reader is inclined to get up with a sour sense of resentment over time wasted, the sort of feeling that comes from being seated next to a garrulous bore at a dinner party.

The unfortunate choice of wording in the headline of your article ("U.S. Struggles to Deal With Global Islamic Resurgence," Jan. 26) does injustice to the balanced and perceptive treatment of the subject by the writer. While it presses the panic button of those who cannot abandon the medieval mentality of the Crusades, it ruffles the feathers of those who cannot understand how a secular country, like the United States, can turn the Islamic inclination of sovereign peoples and governments into a foreign policy dilemma.

In trying to clarify recent comments from Rick Santorum about President Obama's "phony theology," the candidate's new national press secretary made a gaffe of her own, saying Obama had pursued "radical Islamic policies" (see video below). Alice Stewart, who had worked for Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign before signing on with Santorum earlier this month, made the slip during an appearance Monday afternoon on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports. " The segment focused on the former Pennsylvania senator's line of attack on Obama for his environmental policies, which were guided, Santorum said in Ohio this weekend, by "some phony ideal.

They are, to be sure, ideas that go unexplored in the Koran: Is it a sin to slam dance? Can a person wear his hair in a mohawk, smoke weed like Snoop Dogg and still call himself a devout Muslim under the eyes of God? The micro-budgeted feature "The Taqwacores" ? which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, opened in New York last week and reaches theaters in Los Angeles on Friday ? tackles such issues head-on. FOR THE RECORD: "Taqwacores" review: The Nov. 11 Calendar section review of the film "The Taqwacores" said a character in the film, Yusef, was an Arab American.

“Muslim rage” is the headline, and it's brought the country full circle. To recap: Americans made a grotesque video about Islam, violent protests ensued, and now other Americans have condemned Muslims for reacting poorly. On Monday, Tina Brown's Newsweek released a cover once again intended to provoke, outrage, create buzz and sell copies   of the magazine: "MUSLIM RAGE," the new cover reads in bold font, "HOW I SURVIVED IT, HOW WE CAN END IT. " The text straddles a highly unflattering picture of screaming Muslim men in Morocco.

At the pulpit of an inner-city Chicago mosque, the tall blond imam begins preaching in his customary fashion, touching on the Los Angeles Lakers victory the night before, his own gang involvement as a teenager, a TV soap opera and then the Day of Judgment. "Yesterday we watched the best of seven.... Unfortunately we forget the big final; it's like that show 'One Life to Live,' " Imam Suhaib Webb says as sleepy boys and young men come to attention in the back rows. "There's no overtime, bro. " The sermon is typical of Webb, a charismatic Oklahoma-born convert to Islam with a growing following among American Muslims, especially the young.

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by a foreign government as a "follower of radical Islam and a strong believer" whose personality had changed drastically in just a year, according to the FBI. As investigators considered possible motives for Monday's fatal bombings, U.S. authorities acknowledged that an unnamed government had contacted the FBI to say the 26-year-old ethnic Chechen “had changed drastically” since...

CAIRO - The Mass was celebrated as if from centuries past: A bearded priest veiled in incense chanted for grace in a church along the Nile, near the spot where Christians believe Jesus and his mother sought refuge in an earlier age of bloodshed and uncertainty. Marianne Samir knelt and prayed for the Coptic Christians killed in a spasm of sectarian violence that has further shaken a nation engulfed in economic and political anxieties. "I feel unsafe," said Samir, a high school philosophy teacher with a cross tattooed on her wrist.

PARIS - Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, sits calmly behind a desk in a large, messy office with no sign outside indicating the name of his publication. True, there is a riot police car stationed in the street, but basically, he says, he doesn't see what all the fuss is about. "It just so happens I'm more likely to get run over by a bicycle in Paris than get assassinated," says Charb, the soft-spoken editor of Charlie Hebdo, a left-leaning French satirical weekly, which since 2006 has been sued, threatened and firebombed for its sporadic publication of cartoons mocking the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

AL QASR, Lebanon - Each evening, Ali Jamal and other men in this border town grab their Kalashnikov assault rifles, jump on their motorbikes and ride across the irrigation canal into Syria to protect their homes. The enemies are Sunni rebel "terrorists," he says, who target Jamal and his neighbors because they are Shiite Muslims. "Imagine, these people used to be our neighbors," said the 40-year-old farmer, perplexed by the transformation. "Now they want to kidnap and kill us. " Tensions gripping the villages along the border here between northeastern Lebanon and Syria illustrate the increasingly sectarian nature of the 2-year-old Syrian conflict and the risks it poses for the entire region.

BAKERSFIELD - Fernando Jara is something of a star in Kern County - and a mystery. From humble beginnings, Jara founded a program to rehabilitate drug addicts and felons on a five-acre farm. He is completing a master's degree at Claremont School of Theology and will soon begin work on a doctorate and a law degree. The energetic 37-year-old and his wife, a Kern County supervisor and rising political star, attended President Obama's inauguration in January at the invitation of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

WASHINGTON - The CIA has stepped up secret contingency planning to protect the United States and its allies as the turmoil expands in Syria, including collecting intelligence on Islamic extremists for the first time for possible lethal drone strikes, according to current and former U.S. officials. President Obama has not authorized drone missile strikes in Syria, however, and none are under consideration. The Counterterrorism Center, which runs the CIA's covert drone killing program in Pakistan and Yemen, recently shifted several targeting officers to improve intelligence collection on militants in Syria who could pose a terrorist threat, the officials said.

In their Nov. 12 Times Op-Ed article, "Our enemy is not Islam — it's extremists," Judith Miller and David Samuels wrote regarding the Ft. Hood shootings that "in taking aim at the evasive psycho-babble that dominated early news accounts, the right has engaged in an equally dangerous bias that conflates [Nidal Malik] Hasan's radicalism with the religious beliefs of mainstream Muslims. In their narrative, any Muslim might suddenly 'snap,' as Hasan apparently did, and reveal himself to be the enemy within."

Two years into her marriage, Angie El Sherif found herself drifting from her husband. One-on-one time was scarce, and she felt like the high school sweetheart she married was no longer her best friend. She saw divorce everywhere - in the media, among friends, in her family. Then she found direction from some unexpected sources: the conservative family values of self-help authors such as Laura Schlessinger and Laura Doyle, whose beliefs seemed aligned with her Islamic views on marriage.

VATICAN CITY - With the terrifying grandeur of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" looming over them, senior leaders of the Roman Catholic Church will begin casting their ballots inside the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday to elect a successor to Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years. No one campaigns for the papacy, at least overtly; the surest way for a candidate to disqualify himself for the job is to let it be known that he wants it. But various names crop up repeatedly in discreet conversations as the 115 prelates eligible to vote try to figure out who among them is best placed to lead a historic but troubled institution that claims the allegiance of 1.2 billion people.

NEW DELHI - The Thai government agreed Thursday to hold its first formal talks with Muslim rebels operating along the country's southern border, a potential breakthrough in a conflict that has claimed more than 5,000 lives since 2004. Analysts reacted to the development with some optimism but cautioned that various previous peace efforts had failed. “It looks like good news,” said Kraisak Choonhavan, an ex-lawmaker and the son of former Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan.