Muslims

The mourners carried her severed body inside the white brick mosque on a frosty morning before the sun rose, before the children arrived for school. Removing their shoes, wives and mothers shrouded in black passed through the women's prayer area, cordoned off from the men's with white drapes, and made their way to the washing room.

During the last days of Ramadan, Ahmad Chaudhry Nuruddin shut himself inside a small cubicle at the Bait ul Hameed Mosque with only a mattress, a chair and a few religious books. The slightly stooped 79-year-old strung a white sheet over the entrance to perfect his isolation. For the next few days, Nuruddin would follow the Islamic custom of I'tikaf, in which believers become virtual hermits, secluding themselves from the world to focus on the divine. "You spend your time remembering that God Almighty has created the world for the benefit of its people," he said.

When Aatif Sharieff was growing up in a Maryland suburb, none of the other kids in his elementary school knew about Ramadan. Each year, as the Muslim month of fasting came around, Sharieff had to explain to fellow students why he couldn't eat lunch with them or drink from the water fountain. "Everybody would ask," he recalls. "It became like a broken record, 'I'm fasting, I'm spiritual.' " These days, Sharieff finds himself explaining to Muslims and non-Muslims alike why he no longer observes the traditional dawn-to-dusk fast.

After helping deliver the District of Columbia's first baby of 2009, Dr. Kashif Irfan boarded a flight to Orlando, Fla., with his wife, three children and other relatives to participate in a weekend retreat on the peaceful practice of Islam. But instead of taking off as scheduled, Irfan and his family were suddenly ordered off the plane, detained in the airport and refused passage by the airline after they were cleared by the FBI.

American Muslims have never been much of a presence in the Los Angeles Police Department, accounting for less than 1% of its nearly 10,000 officers. But now, with department leaders eager to improve relationships with local Muslims, top brass have named the force's first Islamic chaplain: a Pakistani-born spiritual leader who has spent much of the last decade trying to build bridges between law enforcement and Los Angeles County's diverse Muslim communities.

A study of Muslim Americans released Monday presents a portrait of an often misunderstood community -- one that is integrated socio-economically but culturally alienated; that succeeds in the workforce but struggles to find contentment. The numbers suggest economic and career success among Muslim Americans -- they have a higher employment rate than the national average and are among the nation's most educated religious groups. Yet only 41% described themselves as "thriving."

Indonesia's most powerful Islamic scholars weren't looking for a debate when they handed down their latest fatwas on how to be a good Muslim. But they still got an argument and, perhaps worse, a chorus of "Who cares?" after decreeing that it is haram, or forbidden, to smoke in public, or for children and pregnant women to have a puff of tobacco anywhere. It didn't matter that the clerics were providing sound health guidance.

To get into character for a play she was doing in L.A., actress May Alhassen wrapped a black pashmina around her thick, dark hair and tied the loose ends into a bun at the back of her head. Then she stepped out onto the street. She stopped for coffee at Starbucks. She purchased a binder at Office Depot. Everywhere she went, Alhassen felt self-conscious and a little on edge. "I think the thing that surprised me the most was how angry and paranoid it made me: Are they looking at me because?

The federal government's crackdown on suspected terrorism financing since the Sept. 11 attacks has violated the rights of American Muslim charities and deterred Muslims from charitable giving, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report Tuesday. An expansion of laws and policies since 2001 has given the U.S.

Tuesday, he became the first president in history to use the word "Muslim" in his inaugural address. From the steps of the U.S. Capitol, President Obama said: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.