When the Nigerian poet Orikinla Osinachi wrote the "Veiled Assassin", he never knew that his fictional story was actually similar to how the male suspect in the major anti-terrorist investigation in London also escaped capture disguising himself as a Muslim woman dressed in a burqa. Was is it a coincidence or a prophetic foresight?

The Gallup polling organization has found that, while Muslims say they admire democratic values, they also believe Islamic laws and democracy can exist side-by-side. Basing its findings on a survey of 10 mostly Muslim countries, Gallup said world leaders should support democracy in those countries despite the peoples' strong feeling about religion. VOA's Stephanie Ho reports from Washington.

Jasmin Merdan, who heads a Bosnian nongovernmental organization (NGO) opposed to Islamic fundamentalism, told RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service on December 8 that such beliefs pose a threat to Bosnia-Herzegovina by providing encouragement to terrorists and by undermining the more tolerant form of indigenous "traditional Islam."

Muslims in Europe, amid a worsening climate of "Islamophobia," face discrimination in education, housing, and employment.

Mozart and the German Opera in Berlin remain in the glare of publicity over the modern staging of "Idomeneo," a 225-year-old opera.

The modern staging has become caught up in cultural tensions between the Islamic world and the West because it features the severed heads of the great teachers of world religion, including the Prophet Muhammad.

Saudi ambassador to Egypt Hisham Nazir has highlighted the great attention given by the Saudi authorities to the pilgrims to perform hajj.

Pope Benedict XVI, in a parting message of goodwill to Muslims at the end of his first papal trip to a predominantly Muslim nation, said Friday that the Vatican wishes to "impose nothing on anyone."

On a traffic-choked boulevard in Ankara, in central Anatolia, the bleeping of car horns and the rattle of buses mix with the muezzin's airy call to evening prayer. Is this the sound of a new Europe? Perhaps. But for Pope Benedict XVI, who arrives in the city today for his first visit to a Muslim-majority country, that's a problem.