Muslim

In the article "I Won't Be Home for Christmas" (Dec. 23), The Times' writer Kim Murphy describes a Christmas Eve she spent in Cairo with an "occasionally devout Muslim" named Khalid. Well, she must have caught him during one of his least devout periods. He not only spent time alone with her in her apartment (they being neither in a state of blood relationship or marriage), but he drank champagne, possessed a good luck charm and sang "Silent Night" with her. If Kim Murphy thinks that these are the actions of an "occasionally devout Muslim," I think The Times would be best served by transferring her to another area of the world having a culture she understands.

A UC Berkeley senior who majors in social welfare and has been active in student government and Mideast issues is expected to become the next University of California student regent, joining the board that sets policies for the 10-campus system. A special regents committee has nominated Sadia Saifuddin, 21, of Stockton to be the student regent in 2014-15. Confirmation by the full Board of Regents is expected next month. For the next year, Saifuddin would be a regent-designate, able to participate in all discussions but without voting rights until her one-year term as a fully empowered student representative begins in July 2014, officials said.

Mansoor Ijaz (Commentary, April 20) argues that we need to get Muslims in Western Europe and the U.S. on our side in the war on terrorism by reaching out to them and including them in Neighborhood Watch programs, improving community outreach and appointing them to "sensitive defense, intelligence and foreign affairs postings." They aren't with us because they don't feel "included." Pobrecitos! Sounds decent and humane, but under the circumstances, when virtually all the terror in our world is being perpetrated by radical Muslims of various nationalities, isn't that like putting the cart before the horse?

NEW DELHI - A watchdog group Tuesday called on Myanmar's government to immediately revoke a population-control policy that blocks members of the minority Rohingya Muslim community from having more than two children, saying the newly revived measure is discriminatory, violates human rights and endangers women's health. The Rohingya, who account for about 1 million of Myanmar's 60 million people, are deeply unpopular among the Buddhist majority, who do not consider them citizens even though many Rohingya families have lived in the country for generations.

Forget voter ID laws. What this country needs are laws to keep stupid people from voting. Now, I'm not talking about folks who can't recite the preamble to the Constitution, or who can't tell you what the 1st Amendment covers, or how many Supreme Court justices there are. I'll even exempt those poor souls who don't know who the first president was, or can't name the two houses of Congress, or don't know the name of their representative. But, if you were to show up at the polls in November, and the poll worker were to ask you “Is President Obama a Muslim or a Christian?

The letters TLC, regarding the cable network of that name, originally stood for the Learning Channel but now seem to represent, or seem to want to be seen to represent, something closer to the old Tender Loving Care. The network has made something of a specialty of series that focus on unusual families — that is to say, different from the families of most of the people who watch TLC. Maybe there are more wives than usual; often there are many more children. Little people, big people: The message is that we're all the same, but different, but the same.

Re "My Fight Against American Phantoms," Commentary, Dec. 21: Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar with outstanding academic credentials, should understand America's predicament that many Muslim scholars have not rejected the 7th century ideologues of jihad, holy war and martyrdom. He claims that he believes in pluralism and equality, but he has failed to condemn the sayings of the holy text that there is no god but Allah, women are half of men, and friendship with non-Muslims is forbidden.

Re "A suicidal epidemic," editorial, Feb. 10 I don't find myself saying this too often, but The Times makes an excellent point, albeit a week late. Two mentally disabled women were strapped with explosives and sent into a crowded market, and you correctly ask, where is the outpouring of disgust from the Muslim world? Perhaps we'd see that outrage if, instead of killing and maiming dozens of innocent Iraqis, the women with Down syndrome had picked up a crayon and drawn a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad.

The Good Muslim A Novel Tahmima Anam Harper: 297 pp., $25.99 Maya Haque is one of the century's most interesting characters: prickly, passionate, tender, selfless, headstrong, devoted, belligerent, idealistic, naive, wise. "The Good Muslim" is Maya's story, rooted in her devotion to nation and family and particularly to her brother, the tormented Sohail Haque. What is it about Bengali anthropologists? First we have feted novelist Amitav Ghosh from West Bengal and now Tahmima Anam from East Bengal.

After years of battling false claims and viral e-mails alleging that he is a Muslim, President Obama hasn't gotten far among Republican voters in Alabama and Mississippi - about half still believe he is Muslim and about one in four believe his parents' interracial marriage should have been illegal, a new poll shows. The automated survey by Public Policy Polling, conducted over the weekend in advance of Tuesday's GOP primaries in both states, showed Republicans Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich locked in a fierce, three-way battle for votes.

WASHINGTON - In his early teens, Jude Kenan Mohammad was a familiar sight in his middle-class section of Raleigh, N.C., riding around on his bike to deliver groceries to elderly Muslim neighbors. But with an American mother and Pakistani father, Mohammad felt caught between two worlds, friends recalled. As he grew older, the mild-mannered young man criticized the U.S. war in Afghanistan and believed that he was a target for discrimination in post-Sept. 11 America, the friends said.

Writer-director Michael Singh's documentary "Valentino's Ghost" connects the United States' Middle East foreign policy agenda to the American media's often negative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims. It's a provocative, absorbing - and at times dicey - study. Using film and TV clips plus archival news footage, the India-born Singh ambitiously tracks the on-screen depiction of Arabs starting in the 1920s when Rudolph Valentino melted hearts as "The Sheik" and Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckled his way through "The Thief of Bagdad.

CAIRO - His phone doesn't ring and his charts are gloomy. But every day Mostafa Ismail, a financial broker with a hangman's demeanor, steps into the Egyptian stock exchange hoping for positive blips. They are rare in a nation where revolution has brought two years of political instability and turned "investor confidence" into a quaint phrase from a more prosperous era. "The market has declined as far as it can go," said Ismail, his tie loosened, a string of numbers before him. "There's no one to trade or buy or sell with.

NEW DELHI - At least 58 people were missing and feared dead Tuesday after a boat capsized off Myanmar while residents tried to flee an approaching cyclone, United Nations officials said. The boat was carrying about 100 Rohingya Muslims, many of whom lived in camps in low-lying areas to escape Buddhist-Muslim violence, officials said. The boat apparently ran into rocks off Pauktaw township in the western state Rakhine and sank late Monday as people were evacuating, said Aye Win, spokesman for the U.N. Information Center in Myanmar, based on preliminary information.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried in a Muslim cemetery in Virginia, Boston officials said on Friday as they released the official death certificate for a suspect in the bombing of the Boston Marathon. Officials said earlier this week that Tsarnaev's remains had been entombed, but gave no indication where. The remains were interred at Al-Barzakh Muslim Cemetery in Doswell, Va., outside Richmond. At least four local cemeteries as well as the cities of Boston and Cambridge, had refused to take the body of the 26-year-old man. The body had been kept at a funeral home in Worcester, Mass., during the dispute over how to deal with Tsarnaev's remains.

CAIRO -- President Mohamed Morsi reshuffled his Cabinet on Tuesday, strengthening the Muslim Brotherhood's hold on power and angering the opposition amid Egypt's economic turmoil and political unrest. The naming of nine new ministers underlines the nation's troubling schisms and how powerless the opposition is in stemming the Brotherhood's grip on the government. Morsi ignored opposition demands for a consensus Cabinet and the removal of Prime Minister Hisham Kandil. Two of the new appointments -- Amr Darrag as planning minister and Fayad Abdel Moneim as finance minister - will preside over a sagging economy and critical negotiations for a $4.8-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Melvin Bledsoe, speaking in his deep Tennessee accent at a long-awaited House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the domestic radicalization of U.S. Muslims, said his son Carlos "was captured by people best described as hunters" after he converted to Islam. "He was manipulated and lied to," Bledsoe said, recalling the events that preceded his son's arrest in an attack on an Army recruiting station and the death of a soldier. His testimony that his son was radicalized by Muslims in Tennessee bolstered assertions by committee Chairman Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.

Joel Pett's "Non-prophet cartooning" (Current, Feb. 12) continues to make the same incorrect assertion that the Danish cartoons caused "riots throughout the Muslim world." In fact, the demonstrations (not always riots) took place in a handful of locations that were already patently anti-Western. I have seen nothing about any demonstrations in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Libya, Bangladesh or numerous other predominantly Muslim nations.

The remains of Tamerlan Tsarnaev , one of the men suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon, has been turned over to a funeral parlor in Worcester, Mass. for proper Muslim funeral rites. Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a gun battle with police days after the April 15 bombing at the marathon finish line. His body was sent to the Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester, the second funeral home involved with Tsarnaev's remains. Peter Stefan, owner of the funeral home, confirmed to reporters on Friday that he will handle the funeral arrangements.

In Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries across the globe, most Muslims support making sharia , or Islamic law, the official law of the land, according to a sweeping survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. But sharia means different things to different Muslims, according to the study. Some supporters believe it should apply only to Muslims. Some want it used in only some kinds of cases. And many Muslims disagree on the morality of divorce, polygamy and birth control.