The man behind Sweden’s first suicide bombing was born in Iraq and may have had ties to the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq, according to the NYT.

German officials raided Muslim networks in three states, an action that signals the country’s growing concern over radical Islamic groups, the NYT reports.

A group of U.S. senators is calling on Switzerland to allow Mormon missionaries to continue working in Switzerland after 2012, despite a de facto ban. The federal government is suing an Illinois school district for denying a Muslim teacher unpaid leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Pakistani blasphemy case in which a woman has been sentenced to death began with a quarrel over water in a sweltering farm, NPR reports.

The disgraced Legionaries of Christ is ordering images of its founder removed from buildings, prohibiting the celebration of his birthday, and banned the sale of his writings from Legion centers. A defrocked California priest made notorious by a searing documentary about the Catholic sex abuse scandal was arrested in Ireland on child pornography charges.

The Israeli inferno that killed 43 people brought Jews and Arabs together as they sought to battle the blaze. American Jews are relearning ancient burial rituals.

Ministers in Fort Worth, Texas are trying to organize a boycott of city buses carrying atheist ads. The Andy Warhol Foundation said it will withhold funding from the Smithsonian unless a video that shows ants crawling on a crucifix is displayed at the National Portrait Gallery. A New Hampshire couple complained to a local school board that their son’s civil rights were violated when he was assigned a book that calls Jesus a “wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist.”

The conviction of street preacher David Brian Mitchell raises questions about the dividing line between divine inspiration and insanity. A far right British group has decided not to invite Florida Pastor Terry Jones to its anti-Muslim rally because of he might offend their gay members. A convicted drug dealer in California wants to celebrate Festivus in jail. Hmmm….where to stick the Festivus pole?