ISLAM

Britain and fellow United Nations Security Council countries are likely to be asked to help bankroll an African force of 3,200 soldiers to fight Islamists in Mali, diplomats have said.

French authorities say a group of suspected radical Islamists posed the biggest danger to France in years and were planning to join militants in Syria.

France’s Interior Ministry has threatened to expel any Muslim who, as Paris claims, undermines security and poses “a threat to the country”.

France plans to close its embassies, consulates, cultural centers and schools in 20 countries Friday as a precautionary measure after a French satirical magazine published cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad.

France stepped up security Wednesday at its embassies across the Muslim world after a French satirical weekly revived a formula that it has already used to capture attention: Publishing crude, lewd caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Anti-Islam groups in America have provided financial support to Dutch politician Geert Wilders, an anti-immigration campaigner who is seeking re-election to the Dutch parliament this week.

Paris's famed Louvre museum this week opens a new wing of Islamic art in a bid to improve knowledge of a religion often viewed with suspicion in the West.

A crude video about the Prophet Muhammad that triggered an unprecedented outbreak of anti-American protest last week moved from being a YouTube obscurity in the United States to a touchstone for anger across the world through a phone call less than two weeks ago from a controversial U.S.-based anti-Islam activist to a reporter for an Egyptian newspaper.

Concerned about the reaction to an anti-Muslim film that was gaining attention online, the U.S. intelligence community sent a cable to the embassy in Cairo, Egypt, warning of the concern, a U.S. official told CNN.

An intelligence source on the ground in Libya told Fox News that there was no demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi prior to last week's attack -- challenging the Obama administration's claims that the assault grew out of a "spontaneous" protest against an anti-Islam film.

The deadly attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi was planned and "meticulously executed," the country's assembly chief told AFP on Saturday.

Libyans and "foreigners" carried out the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf told NBC News on Saturday.

Magariaf's interview with NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin was the first time any Libyan official has said foreigners were involved in the planning and execution of the Tuesday night attack that took the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.

"The US government has expressed its wish to send special forces to protect its embassy in Khartoum after the events that took place in most Muslim countries," SUNA news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying on Saturday. But Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti "refused to accommodate these forces".

A schlock softporn director named Alan Roberts has been identified as the director of the film that ridicules Muslims and the prophet Muhammed and has incited violent protests across the Middle East, according to a report by Gawker published Saturday.

Demonstrators in Tripoli, Lebanon, burned down a restaurant belonging to US-based chain KFC in protest against an anti-Islamic film mocking the Prophet Muhammad. At least one person was killed and 24 were wounded in the clashes with police.

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Wednesday responded to this week’s attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya by explaining to his viewers that Muslims “go crazy” when Islam is insulted because they can’t defend the tenets of their religion.