[. . . . ] For the first time in history, Muslims are building large and growing minorities across the secular Western world - nowhere more visibly than in Western Europe, where their numbers have more than doubled in the past two decades. The impact is unfolding from Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid, as Muslims struggle - with words, votes and sometimes violence - to stake out their place in adopted societies.

Disproportionately young, poor and unemployed, they seek greater recognition and an Islam that fits their lives. Just as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran are witnessing the debate over the shape of Islam today, Europe is emerging as the battleground of tomorrow.

"The French are scared," said Tair Abdelkader, 38, a regular at the tented mosque whose light blue eyes and ebony beard are the legacy of a French mother and Algerian father. "In 10 years, the Muslim community will be stronger and stronger, and French political culture must accept that."

By midcentury, at least one in five Europeans will be Muslim. That change is unlike other waves of immigration because it poses a more essential challenge: defining a modern Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The West must decide how its laws and values will shape and be shaped by Islam.

For Europe, as well as the United States, the question is not which civilization, Western or Islamic, will prevail, but which of Islam's many strands will dominate. Will it be compatible with Western values or will it reject them?

Center stage in that debate is France, home to the largest Islamic community on the continent, an estimated 5 million Muslims. Here the process of defining Euro-Islam is unfolding around questions as concrete as the right to wear head scarves and as abstract as the meaning of citizenship, secularism and extremism. In some cases, conservative Muslims have refused to visit co-ed swimming pools, study Darwinism or allow women to be examined by male doctors.

[. . . . ] Year by year, European Islam pulls further away from the cultural traditions of Morocco or Algeria, refashioned all the while by the pressures of life in Europe. For some, the solution is a more liberalized Islam that incorporates Western concepts of individual rights and tolerance. But for others, the answer lies in a stricter interpretation of the core elements of the faith.

"It is more fundamentalist in its essence because what you subsist on is personal practice_reading of the Koran, Shariah," Vaisse said. "It can take very humanist forms, but in some cases, it can also lead to political radicalization and terrorism."

[. . . . ] A French intelligence official who monitors fundamentalist groups said he believes the veil controversy and efforts to train imams have pushed French Muslims to an awkward reckoning point: They must decide whether to integrate with Europe or fight back in earnest against official efforts to shape their community.

"They are at a crossroads," he said. "They can either go left or right." [. . . . ]

Citing only alleged European "secret reports," an article in a Saudi government daily accused the U.S. Army of harvesting the organs of Iraqis and selling them.

The story in Al-Watan also was published in the Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Islami and the Syrian daily Teshreen, reports the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.[. . . . ]

The ACLU and an Islamic civil-rights group are calling for investigation of the head of a private-school association who wrote a letter to a Muslim school applying for membership, asking why it would want to join a group that doesn't fit its beliefs.

In a two-page letter, Edd Burleson, director of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, or TAPPS, asked the Houston school, Dar-Ul-Arqam, 10 questions, including its attitude toward "the spread of Islam in America" and the goals of the school "in this regard."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has demanded an apology and reprimands, calling the letter an "alarmingly intolerant and hostile attitude toward Islam and Muslims," the Houston Chronicle reports. [. . . . ]

The letter reflects "the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment" since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, he claimed.

Foreign nationals applying for admission to the United States using stolen passports have "little reason to fear being caught" and usually are admitted, even when their fraudulent documents have been posted on the government's computerized "lookout" lists, a report said.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General said in a 40-page report that of the 176 foreign nationals who its investigators identified as having used a stolen passport in an attempt to enter the United States from 1998 to 2003, 136 were admitted.

[. . . . ] Mr. Skinner's report made several recommendations: [. . . . ]

A former Muslim cleric was yesterday jailed for 10 years for raping and sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in a mosque where he was teaching.

Manzoor Hussain, 42, of Bristol, was convicted of one offence of rape and four of indecent assault. The offences took place at a mosque in the city between July 1996 and March the following year.

At the time of the offences, Hussain was the imam at the mosque in Lower Cheltenham Place. [. . . . ]

Bell's enthusiastic move to IP is a necessity because the Internet is revolutionalizing the telecom industry as it lets service providers easily reach customers over a high-speed network.

While carriers such as Bell and Telus Corp. control the "pipe", anyone can piggyback on it to offer services. Look at what Vonage Holdings Corp. is doing in the telephony space.

[. . . . ] One of the larger obstacles facing carriers in the short term is they are not the most flexible or quick-acting entities. While they can talk the talk about new IP services, it is smaller companies such as Vonage and Salesforce.com that are actually selling them. [. . . . ]