Sunni Muslims

Masked gunmen ambushed a religious school's van, killing five Sunni Muslims and wounding three others in the latest round of religious violence in Karachi, Pakistan's main city, police said. The attack led to violent protests, and five students were hurt when police opened fire on demonstrators.

Days after the Bahraini government banned demonstrations by opponents, about 2,000 residents of the mostly Shiite Muslim village of Sitra turned a funeral into the first protest under a new three-month state of emergency, a show of deepening resistance against the regime. The government has arrested more dissidents and human rights workers, destroying their homes and also beating relatives, witnesses said. Many other activists have now gone into hiding in this tiny country, their family members said.

Gunmen tied up and executed seven Sunni Muslim men, apparently in retaliation for the slaughter of Shiite Muslim worshipers last weekend, authorities said. An eighth man who was shot in the head survived, and five women were beaten with rifle butts but were not shot, police said. The massacre occurred in a middle-class Karachi neighborhood near two Shiite mosques where 20 worshipers were fatally shot Saturday.

The captured leader of an outlawed militant group that has waged a years-long campaign of bombings and killings against Iranian authorities may soon be handed over to Tehran, Pakistani and Iranian news media reported Saturday. Abdul-Rauf Rigi, described as the leader of the Sunni Muslim ethnic Baluch group Jundallah, was arrested along the Iran- Pakistan border Dec. 22 and may be handed over to authorities in Shiite Muslim-run Iran after he is interrogated in Pakistan, Pakistani media reported.

The death toll continued to rise Monday from the murderous rivalry between two Muslim sects in Pakistan as masked gunmen opened fire on worshipers at a Sunni mosque, slaying at least 21 people, many of them praying boys from a religious school. The blood bath in Multan, a city in the eastern province of Punjab, came one day after the killing of a leader of the minority Shiite sect in a town 60 miles to the south.

Three gunmen hopped out of a pickup truck and opened fire on a Sunni Muslim mosque here Friday, injuring three people. In a nation unnerved by bombings and the assassination of a Shiite Muslim cleric, the attack raised fears of violence between the two religious sects.

Gunmen fired into a bakery complex bedecked with Shiite Muslim political posters here Friday while another group of militants car-bombed a Shiite mosque near Baqubah, killing more than 20 people in the two attacks. The deaths raised fears that Sunni Muslim insurgents are increasingly targeting the Shiite community, which is preparing for an important holiday.

Gun battles between majority Sunnis and minority Shiites left at least 40 people dead and 43 wounded in remote northwestern Pakistan after men opened fire on Shiite Muslims, a Pakistani official said. Authorities had imposed a round-the-clock curfew to control the situation in Parachinar in North-West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, the official said. The trouble began Friday when gunmen began shooting at Shiites near their mosque, a resident said.

Shia Muslims in Pakistan, demanding enforcement of their religious code of law, battled police in the southwestern city of Quetta in a clash that left at least five people dead, officials said. They added that two police officers were among those killed in the capital of Baluchistan province, near the borders with Afghanistan and Iran. The Shias, a minority in Pakistan, are demanding that the government enforce their code of Islamic law, which differs from that of the majority Sunni Muslims.

A Turkish high court ruled that religious education classes geared toward Sunni Muslims should not be compulsory, a major victory for a Shiite branch of Islam. The ruling affecting Turkey's Alevi community is also likely to please the European Union, which has made religious liberties a condition for Turkey's membership bid. The Alevis are followers of a tradition rooted in Shiite beliefs, and have long complained of discrimination and forced assimilation through mandatory courses on Sunni Islam in schools.

Iraq's parliament knocked away one of the last barriers to forming a new government Saturday when it struck down a ban on three Sunni Muslim politicians. The reinstatement of former lawmaker Saleh Mutlak and two other politicians virtually guaranteed that their secular Iraqiya bloc, popular with Iraq's Sunnis, will join Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government. Different Iraqi political groups and U.S. officials have pushed for a coalition government with a big role for the country's Sunni minority, who after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 waged an insurgency against the Americans and the new Shiite elite.

A bomb planted on a motorcycle killed five people Monday at a famed Sufi shrine in central Pakistan, the third terrorist attack at one of the country's many such shrines in four months. The latest attack occurred at the Baba Farid shrine in the town of Pakpattan in Punjab province, about 120 miles southwest of the eastern city of Lahore. A crowd had gathered about 6:20 a.m. for early prayers when the bomb exploded, said Shafiq Dogar, a Pakpattan senior administration official. "Two people parked the motorcycle near the eastern gate of the shrine, and the bomb was inside one of two milk cans on the motorcycle," Dogar said.

When Nabeel Rajab saw his picture splashed on the front pages of a state-run newspaper over the weekend as an alleged member of a terrorist network plotting to overthrow the government, he knew it was time to start packing. The prominent Bahraini human rights activist sent his children away and put toothpaste and shampoo into a small bag in anticipation of his arrest. "I've kept the children out of our home for the past four days," he told The Times by telephone on Monday. "I don't want to be beaten in front of them.

Three bomb blasts tore through a Shiite Muslim procession Wednesday in Pakistan's second-largest city, Lahore, killing at least 28 people and wounding 200 others, authorities said. The attacks occurred as thousands of Shiites marched through Lahore's streets in a traditional mourning procession for Imam Ali, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures. No one claimed responsibility for the blasts, but Sunni Muslim militant groups have frequently targeted Pakistan's Shiite minority.

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say. The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in...

At least 41 people were killed and 237 wounded Sunday in three suicide car bombings targeting the Iranian and German embassies and the Egyptian Consulate in Iraq in a span of 30 minutes. The attacks, which Iraqi government officials blamed on the Sunni Arab extremist group Al Qaeda in Iraq, came two days after unknown gunmen in uniforms massacred 25 people in a Sunni district south of Baghdad. The bloodshed raises fears that the security situation could unravel before Iraq's next government is formed, as armed groups and political parties look to exploit the uncertain period after last month's national elections.

I think Geyelin has some basic misconceptions about Jews. Although Jesus was Jewish there is no reason to assume that all Jews are as tolerant and forgiving of personal and collective abuse as he was. As far as I know, Jews are human beings just like everyone else, and when they are threatened, as is the almost continual case by their fellow Semites, the Arabs, they get angry. Yes, they eventually hate. Arabs don't apologize for hating Jews certainly! Why does it seem that Jews and the Israeli government in particular are required to be better Christians than the rest of the world?

A leading Sunni party announced Saturday that it will boycott Iraq's upcoming elections because its leader was barred from participating, casting into doubt the inclusiveness of a vote that the U.S. military hopes will finally stabilize the country enough for its troops to go home. The Iraqi National Dialogue Front, whose leader, Saleh Mutlak, has been forbidden to run because of his alleged expressions of sympathy for Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, cited what it called "Iranian interference" for its decision not to participate in the March 7 parliamentary elections.

The barring of hundreds of mostly Sunni candidates from participating in Iraq's upcoming elections is testing the limits of U.S. influence in Iraq even as American troops prepare to draw down later in the year. U.S. diplomacy has shifted into high gear in recent days in an attempt to pressure Iraqi government officials into finding a way out of a crisis that many fear could seriously destabilize the country both before and after the election. The 515 barred candidates -- the number keeps growing -- belong mostly to Sunni Arab and secularist parties that oppose the dominance of Shiite religious parties in the current government.