Mosques

The Islamic Center of Irvine is a beige stucco building that blends into the rows of office buildings surrounding it. But last week, it became the most publicized mosque in California with disclosures that the FBI sent an informant there to spy and collect evidence of jihadist rhetoric and other allegedly extremist acts by a Tustin man who attended prayers there. The revelations dismayed mosque members like Omar Turbi, 50, and his 27-year-old son who shares his name.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was the guest of honor Friday at a Los Angeles mosque. But it was the spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that held the crowd. "King was a leader who gave his life working for justice," said Muzammil H. Siddiqi, religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, in his sermon during Jumah, the weekly prayer service. "He stood for freedom, justice and equality among all. These are principles that we have to talk about as often as possible."

A report that mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego are under federal surveillance has resurrected fears in the Muslim community about government monitoring and led two civil rights groups Wednesday to call for congressional hearings. The request for public hearings followed a newspaper article last week that cited FBI and Defense Department files pertaining to surveillance of mosques and Muslims in Southern California.

The tiny white mosque in a working-class neighborhood on this city's west side is a muddy shell with a sewage-stained stack of Korans and prayer beads piled nearly 5 feet high out back. For more than seven decades, Muslim immigrants searching for solace and strength have gathered at the Mother Mosque of America, the oldest surviving mosque in North America. Now, the memories have been washed away.

His voice, throaty and full, is as known and intimate to this neighborhood as a mother hurrying her children home. It slices from the minaret, spreading over alleys, piercing the sounds of snapping sheets, whispering schoolgirls, scraping shovels and the bargaining pleas of the broom seller: "God is great. I testify there is no god but God. . . . Make haste toward prayers."

An apparent suicide bombing killed at least 13 people Saturday in this volatile frontier city, a day after a suicide attack killed a bomber and a hotel security guard in the Pakistani capital. It was not immediately clear whether the attack in Peshawar, which came at an event marking the year's most important Shiite Muslim holiday, was an act of sectarian violence or was aimed at police and paramilitary forces guarding the event.

The Iraqi government plans to establish a military unit to safeguard efforts in Samarra to rebuild one of Shiite Islam's most important shrines, a move criticized by Sunni Arabs as provocative and by some U.S. officials here as ill-conceived.

Israeli police raided the grounds of Islam's third-holiest shrine Friday, chained the compound's gates behind them and fired tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of thousands of Muslim worshipers to quell a rock-throwing protest over Israeli excavation work nearby. The clash outside the Al Aqsa mosque set off protests across the Muslim world and led to scattered violence in the West Bank.

Sporadic Palestinian protests, including a rock-throwing attack on a busload of Canadian tourists, broke out in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Saturday over Israel's construction of a ramp leading to a holy site. The demonstrations came the day after Israeli police raided the Al Aqsa mosque compound, firing tear gas and stun grenades at rioters. Protests have spread throughout the world as Muslim leaders accused Israel of trying to damage the Islamic shrines.

On a gray, drizzly day in the mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Karada, one of this capital's last bastions of relative stability, sheepherder Ahmed Jassim Safee reflected on how life has changed in the year since sectarian warfare erupted with the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. "We used to go to sell our livestock in Fallouja, Ramadi and Rutbah," Safee said of Iraqi cities that are now Sunni hotspots practically off-limits to Shiites.