Salafists

When it comes to strange Middle East bedfellows, Lebanon's latest political partnership may be the most unlikely: The leader of one party has a reputation as a playboy with ties to neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The other group is widely viewed as a community of extremists whose puritanical strain of Sunni Islam inspired Osama bin Laden.

Angry crowds attacked U.S. diplomatic posts in Egypt and Libya on Tuesday, killing an American diplomat, after a video appeared on the Internet that protesters said insulted Islam, providing a graphic illustration of the volatile mood remaining in countries that threw off authoritarian rule in the "Arab Spring" uprisings. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that one State Department official had been killed at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and that officials were working to secure the property and personnel.

Angry crowds attacked U.S. diplomatic posts in Egypt and Libya on Tuesday, killing an American diplomat, after a video appeared on the Internet that protesters said insulted Islam, providing a graphic illustration of the volatile mood remaining in countries that threw off authoritarian rule in the "Arab Spring" uprisings. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that one State Department official had been killed at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and that officials were working to secure the property and personnel.

Angry crowds attacked U.S. diplomatic posts in Egypt and Libya on Tuesday, killing an American diplomat, after a video appeared on the Internet that protesters said insulted Islam, providing a graphic illustration of the volatile mood remaining in countries that threw off authoritarian rule in the "Arab Spring" uprisings. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that one State Department official had been killed at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and that officials were working to secure the property and personnel.

Angry crowds attacked U.S. diplomatic posts in Egypt and Libya on Tuesday, killing an American diplomat, after a video appeared on the Internet that protesters said insulted Islam, providing a graphic illustration of the volatile mood remaining in countries that threw off authoritarian rule in the "Arab Spring" uprisings. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that one State Department official had been killed at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and that officials were working to secure the property and personnel.

In the dreary suburbs of Paris, they were Algerian immigrants who survived on part-time jobs and petty crime. In Milan, they were Tunisians who stole and forged passports. And on Spain's southeastern coast, they were Algerians who specialized in stealing credit cards. For these young Muslim men accused by police of plotting terror for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, two obscure Islamic sects seemed to provide an arcane justification for underground lives of crime and terrorism.

Every woman at the bridal shower was drenched in color. One wore a lime green strapless gown with turquoise sequins; another a violet leopard-print caftan with scarlet lace; another a yellow, gold-beaded chemise with a neckline that would have made J-Lo blush. Was this Yemen, or a strange mirage? "Really, it is very bad," said Samira Taher, one of the women at the shower. "If you see me in Egypt, I am always wearing the latest fashion, I have my hair in a new design, and I am wearing makeup, but here, I am wrapped in black.

Like savvy boxers with knockout punches, Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, and the Muslim Brotherhood have circled each other warily since the Arab Spring toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. But after the SCAF-appointed election commission's banning last week of 10 candidates for the May presidential elections, including the Brotherhood's nominee, Khairat Shater, the phase of circumspection may be ending. Egyptians could be in for rougher times. The SCAF abandoned Mubarak only after it realized that Egyptian protesters would not succumb to intimidation and force.

CAIRO - As night fell Saturday and cars swerved around Tahrir Square tooting their horns, a stout woman in a black veil and robes screamed herself hoarse: "The president is an agent of the Americans!" But the protesters who had tried to charge the U.S. Embassy during four days of violent demonstrations had already gone, driven out by the police that morning. Pedestrians covered their mouths and winced when they passed the spots where the police had sprayed hundreds of canisters of tear gas. Even as Cairo settled back into its normal rhythms, and capitals around the Arab world did the same, the protests over an anti-Muslim video produced in California delivered the same jarring message of uncertainty to ordinary citizens from Tunis to Cairo: They were prisoners of a political transition whose happy ending was far from assured.

CAIRO - When filmmaker and Egyptian democracy activist Amr Salama watched Hosni Mubarak's regime collapse in 2011, he couldn't have been more heartened. Salama had been making films for years and had found himself hamstrung by the government's censorship board. This was finally the opportunity he'd been waiting for. So shortly after the regime fell, Salama resubmitted a script that had been rejected under Mubarak - one whose story centered on tension between Cairo's majority Muslim population and its Coptic Christian minority.

When it comes to strange Middle East bedfellows, Lebanon's latest political partnership may be the most unlikely: The leader of one party has a reputation as a playboy with ties to neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The other group is widely viewed as a community of extremists whose puritanical strain of Sunni Islam inspired Osama bin Laden.

In the dreary suburbs of Paris, they were Algerian immigrants who survived on part-time jobs and petty crime. In Milan, they were Tunisians who stole and forged passports. And on Spain's southeastern coast, they were Algerians who specialized in stealing credit cards. For these young Muslim men accused by police of plotting terror for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, two obscure Islamic sects seemed to provide an arcane justification for underground lives of crime and terrorism.

Syria's loosely organized pro-democracy movement drew tens of thousands of people into the heart of Damascus and cities across the country Friday, a major victory against a government campaign of violence that has killed hundreds of peaceful protesters. Activists said security forces, who have deployed tanks in some cities, killed 64 people Friday as they tried to crush the 6-week-old protest movement. In Washington, the White House said President Obama had signed an executive order imposing sanctions on three Syrian officials the United States believes engaged in human rights abuses.

This nation that inspired revolution across the Arab world is facing another bellwether moment that may again foreshadow what happens throughout the Mideast in the intensifying battle between secularists and Islamists over the role of religion in shaping public life. Tunisians will vote Sunday for a constituent assembly that will set the course for a new government and write the nation's laws. Islamists, suppressed for decades by autocratic rule, are poised to win big, a prospect that has liberals and secularists worried about the future of civil liberties.