Muslim, Christians | featured news

An Egyptian court convicted in absentia Wednesday seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Florida-based American pastor, sentencing them to death on charges linked to an anti-Islam film that had sparked riots in parts of the Muslim world.

Joseph Nassralla said he offered Media for Christ's broadcast studio for 10 days of filming but had nothing further to do with movie, which has sparked anti-American protests across the Arab world. The head of a Christian charity that provided its Duarte headquarters as a set for "Innocence of Muslims" said Monday that he was duped into participating in the low-budget anti-Islam film that has generated anti-American protests across the Arab world.

“Innocence of Muslims” -- the crude and provocative anti-Islam video blamed for a wave of deadly violence against U.S. diplomatic outposts -- was promoted by a small band of anti-Muslim Christian activists, according to reports, but the true identity of its director remained unclear.

Four people were killed in Indian Kashmir on Monday when police fired on Muslim protesters who set fire to a Christian missionary school to denounce reports that copies of the Koran had been damaged in the United States, officials said.

Arsonists in Malaysia struck at a convent school and a fifth church on Sunday amid rising tensions between majority Muslims and Christians over the use of the word "Allah" to describe the Christian God.

At a Mass to wrap up his weeklong pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Benedict XVI tells the Israeli city's residents to work for peaceful coexistence. Celebrating Mass for tens of thousands of pilgrims in Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI today urged Christians and Muslims to reject the "hatred and prejudice" that have produced sporadic conflict in the predominantly Arab city.