Muslims

Muslim hiring: An article in Sunday's Section A on efforts to increase the Obama administration's hiring of Muslims said there were an estimated 7 million to 8 million Muslims in America. A study by the Pew Research Center estimated the total population was 2.35 million in 2007.

Re "FBI losing trust of some Muslims," April 20 I was surprised by the statement by Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for Greater Los Angeles, that "our mosques are off-limits ... our Koran is off-limits." If Islam is a universal religion, why would a Muslim spokesperson declare their mosques and their sacred book off-limits? On the other hand, if Islam is a political force, intending to subject us all to harsh Sharia law, then it is understandable that Muslims would want to keep their meetings closed and their handbook for accomplishing their objectives out of the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"Surrender": A review of Bruce Bawer's book "Surrender" in the May 20 Calendar said that Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn was murdered by an Islamic extremist. Fortuyn was murdered by an extremist objecting to Fortuyn's views of Muslims in that country.

A Dutch university fired Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan for hosting a show on Iran's state television, which the school said could be seen as endorsing the regime. Ramadan -- known as a reformist who condemns terrorism, seeks to modernize Sharia law and urges Muslims living in Europe to integrate -- has recently been criticized in the Dutch press for allegedly voicing more conservative views for Muslim audiences than he does in the West. Both the city of Rotterdam and Erasmus University dismissed Ramadan from his positions as "integration advisor" and professor.

Much of the world knows Petra, the ancient ruin in Jordan that is celebrated in poetry as "the rose-red city, 'half as old as time,' " and which provided the climactic backdrop for "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." But far fewer people know of Madain Saleh, a similarly spectacular treasure built by the same civilization, the Nabateans. That's because it's in Saudi Arabia, where conservatives are deeply hostile to pagan, Jewish and Christian sites that predate the founding of Islam in the 7th century.

When she was practicing law, Kartini Maarof once went beyond the call of duty for her divorce client. She arranged for Rohaya Mohamad, a mother of seven, to be married again -- to Kartini's own husband. The spouse they have shared for a decade is 43-year-old Ikramullah Ashaari, who has four wives and 17 children. His 72-year-old father has 38 offspring from five marriages, without ever having flouted Islam's prescribed limit of four wives at a time. Polygamy is legal for Muslims in Malaysia, though not widespread.

Hussein Qambar Ali, a Christian convert from Islam who was convicted of apostasy in Kuwait earlier this year, fled to the United States last week and is deciding whether to seek religious asylum here. Hussein, who has taken the Christian name Robert, arrived in the United States last Saturday and was taken to an undisclosed location by representatives of the human rights group Christian Solidarity International-USA, said the organization's president, Jim Jacobson.

A fierce wind blew down from the barren Khwaja Amran mountains, whipping up a stinging sandstorm, so Maulvi Abdul Samad and his band of fighters, some only in their teens, took shelter in a crumbling house. They sat on the floor of pounded earth, cradled their assault rifles in their arms and shared slabs of unleavened bread. The fighters listened with silent respect as Samad, their fork-bearded elder, spoke of what more than a decade and a half of warfare had taught him.

In what American officials now admit was a foreign policy failure, the United States "missed" the formation of a generation of Islamic extremists--many of whom have since gone on to foment death and violent dissent from Morocco to the Philippines--during the decade-long U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.

At 2:15 p.m. on Sept. 14, aboard the Croatian Airways flight from Amsterdam, a stout, round-faced man with a bushy beard and dreams of Islamic holy war in his head touched down in this Balkan city. In his 39 years, Talaat Fouad Kassem's extraordinary life had taken him from the poor south of his native Egypt to the anti-Communist struggle in Afghanistan, then to Europe.