Islamic State

An Islamic state in Nigeria at the heart of a polio outbreak declared it would not relent on its boycott of a mass vaccination program that it has called a U.S. plot to spread AIDS and infertility among Muslims. "Kano state will not participate in tomorrow's polio campaign," state spokesman Sule Yau Sule said. U.N. aid agencies are seeking to conduct a door-to-door drive to inoculate 63 million children in 10 African countries.

Muslims and Christians in Egypt made common cause in agitating for the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, but the alliance is fraying. A report by The Times' Jeffrey Fleishman about the country's Coptic Christians — 10% of the population — suggests that they are developing painful second thoughts about the "Arab Spring" now that Islamist parties are in the ascendance. Like other Egyptians, Copts believe that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took control after Mubarak was deposed, has overstayed its welcome.

"Excuse me, Miss, but here in my hand I have a warrant for your arrest," said a middle-aged man with a few days' growth of beard. "Please do not make any noise as you walk calmly to the Mercedes parked at the corner." When the man approached me, I had just left a bookstore. It crossed my mind to resist, but I thought better of it. In the car, I was flanked by two broad-shouldered men in black jackets.

A huge rally Friday meant to symbolize Egyptian unity highlighted instead the deepening splits between secularist and Islamist parties over the direction of a nation convulsed in recent weeks by protests and fears that the revolution for democracy has sputtered. The demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square reaffirmed the power of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations that amassed tens of thousands of supporters. It was a stark display that signaled battles certain to unfold in coming months over the influence of Islamic law on Egypt's new constitution.

Hundreds of former Muslim rebels launched an armed uprising on a southern Philippine island Monday, reneging on a 1996 peace deal and raising a major challenge for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's government. Officials said 55 people--four soldiers and 51 rebel gunmen--were killed in the fighting, which occurred while Arroyo was visiting the United States to appeal for military aid in fighting other groups of Islamic separatists.

Pivotal, distant Afghanistan has become, after neighboring Iran, the world's second proclaimed Islamic state, and its neighbors should pay undivided attention. This is, after all, the country that sounded the death knell of an expansionist Soviet Union. In 1979, Soviet tanks rolled through its mountainous passes south to the capital of Kabul, where a Communist regime was promptly installed.

The "Summit of the Peacemakers" last month in Egypt may have been a great diplomatic success for all concerned, but it perpetuated a most misleading myth about the targets of Islamic terrorists. Tens of thousands of violent Islamists are now active from Morocco to the Philippines, and their attacks large and small are killing thousands of people each year.

Radical guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar offered moderate rebels a compromise Thursday, saying he would accept an interim rebel council that would rule until elections within a year. Hekmatyar, who previously had demanded the immediate establishment of a strict Islamic state, also proposed that neither he nor his bitter rival, Ahmed Shah Masoud, serve on the council.

In March, he was declared captured. In May, he was declared killed, and his purported corpse was displayed on state-run TV. But on Wednesday, Abu Omar Baghdadi, the supposed leader of an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq, was declared nonexistent by U.S. military officials, who said he was a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-run terrorist organization.

Thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets of Baghdad after Friday prayers to protest the U.S. presence in Iraq and demand an Islamic state to take the place of Saddam Hussein's secular government. The protests underscored a significant problem the United States faces here as the country's power vacuum increasingly unnerves a people accustomed to iron rule.

Hundreds of Yemeni and foreign fighters, including members of an Al Qaeda affiliate, are pouring into a provincial capital after government forces fled in chaos, according to a local official and a fighter who described himself as an Al Qaeda member. The situation in Zinjibar, capital of the southern coastal province of Abyan, reflects the paralysis in Yemen's security and political structure as President Ali Abdullah Saleh struggles to remain in power. Saleh, who has faced months of pro-democracy protests, was wounded last week in a rocket attack by clan rivals and is receiving medical treatment in Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed Sharaf Eldin and Ahmed Usama joined the Muslim Brotherhood as young men in the belief that the organization's vision of political Islam was the way forward for Egypt. But as they left their university years behind and settled into adulthood, they took slightly different paths. Eldin, 32, decided that the country's largest opposition group was too constricting; Usama, 33, vowed to reform the movement from within. Both believe in working with secular parties. They both talk of a need for compromise in politics.

No one understands the revolutionary potential of students better than old revolutionaries. That's one reason Iranian security forces fought hard with tear gas, batons and arrests this week to put down university protests across the country. Another is that six months after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection, and despite persistent government efforts to quash the unrest, the protests continue. To these students, the leadership that took power three decades ago in a popular uprising against the repressive government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi is now the repressive establishment.

Federal authorities Wednesday arrested several members of a radical Sunni Islamic group in the U.S., killing one of its leaders in a shootout at a Dearborn, Mich., warehouse, the U.S. attorney's office said. Agents were trying to arrest Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. Authorities also conducted raids elsewhere to try to round up 10 followers named in a federal complaint. No one was charged with terrorism.

An Al Qaeda-affiliated group claimed responsibility Tuesday for the devastating suicide bombings at two government ministries in Baghdad last week, while Iraq and Syria recalled their ambassadors in an escalating dispute over whether Damascus may have aided the attacks. The claim of responsibility came in a statement posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq, the name now used by the Al Qaeda in Iraq organization. The group does not often acknowledge a role in bombings, and the ones it does claim tend to be among the most spectacular.

Hamas government forces stormed a mosque in the Gaza Strip on Friday and apparently subdued a heavily armed group of Al Qaeda-inspired militants whose imam had vowed to impose theocratic rule in the Palestinian territory. Sixteen people were reported killed in fighting that raged for much of the day in the city of Rafah. Residents contacted by telephone said it took Hamas six hours to capture the two-story mosque from a group calling itself Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God. Fighting spread to the nearby home of the imam, who had fled the mosque, and ended early today after an explosion demolished part of the house, witnesses said.

Iraqis are divided over what political framework they want for their new government, but a majority want Islam to play some role in it, according to a new survey in Iraq by the State Department's Office of Research.

Nigeria said it had put down an armed uprising by Al Sunna Wal Jamma, a group seeking to create an Islamic state. Two police officers and at least six militants died in five days of clashes in three towns in predominantly Muslim Yobe state, said Ibrahim Jirigi, a state government spokesman.

Thousands fled their homes in Mogadishu after at least 35 people were killed over the weekend in some of the worst fighting in weeks, while masked Islamic fighters were seen heading to the Somali capital. Residents in northern Mogadishu reported sporadic fighting but there were no immediate reports of casualties. "Some of them do not know where to go. They need urgent help," said Ali Sheik Yasin Fadhaa, vice chairman of the Elman Human Rights Organization. A total of 17,200 people have fled the capital since Saturday, Fadhaa said.

A U.S. citizen convicted of receiving training at a terrorist camp alongside Al Qaeda members in his efforts to help overthrow the Somali government was sentenced in Houston to 10 years in prison. Daniel Joseph Maldonado, 28, a Muslim convert also known as Daniel Aljughaifi and Abu Mohammed, was also fined $1,000.