Abu Muhammad lies in his front room and tells a story depressingly familiar by Iraqi standards.

The brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri is an unflinching man with a graying beard whose aim, as a Salafi, is to impose Islamic law on the divided country that has emerged since the overthrow of secular autocrat Hosni Mubarak two years ago.

When a swarm of locusts recently engulfed Muqattam, a posh suburb of Egypt’s capital that houses the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters, humorists lay in wait. “Official spokesman: locusts retreat following President Morsi’s promise to fulfil all their demands,” quipped a popular Facebook commentator, hinting that after eight months in power, Egypt’s Brotherhood-run government is itself something of a plague. Soon after, a different kind of swarm menaced the Islamist group’s offices in Cairo. Scores of youths chose the spot to perform a taunting rendition of the Harlem Shake, a pelvis-thrusting dance that has gone globally viral.

As Islamists gain ground in the fight against Syrian President Bashar Assad, the radical Nusra Front has emerged at the forefront, yet little is known about the group aside from its power and its affiliation with Al-Qaeda.

Faithful attending Sunday Mass on five continents for the first time since Pope Benedict XVI's retirement had different ideas about who should next lead the Roman Catholic Church, with people suggesting everything from a Latin American pope to one more like the conservative, Polish-born John Paul II.

Roman Catholic cardinals will soon gather beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope to succeed Benedict XVI, who retired in February.

On a crisp winter morning in Jerusalem, a group of American Christian leaders with Bibles under their arms walk the hilltop where many believe King David first established the Jewish capital some 3,000 years ago.

Islamic bonds, or sukuk, have long been popular with investors in the Middle East. Now they are being discovered in Europe and the United States.

Egypt's main opposition coalition announced today it will boycott upcoming parliamentary elections, deepening the political crisis in Egypt and practically ensuring that Egypt's next legislative body will be dominated by Islamists.

Atheists, humanists and freethinkers face widespread discrimination around the world with expression of their views criminalized and subject in some countries to capital punishment, the United Nations was told on Monday.

The muted light of an African sunset filters into the high, pointed roof of Christ The King church in Accra, a wide, understated building just metres away from the seat of government in Ghana's capital city.

The cradle of the Arab Spring is increasingly looking like the birthplace of jihadists.

Ethiopia, a US ally in the battle against Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Somalia, added to mounting worries about religious discord in the diverse east African state by screening a provocative documentary on Islamic extremism.

For Maryam Abdullah Jawad, a Shi'ite Muslim, grief at the loss of her son prevents her even contemplating the idea of solving Bahrain's political ferment by talking to its hereditary rulers.

The call to prayer echoes across the quiet highway in western Iraq and a few hundred men gather along the roadside in the frigid night air.

The underappreciated power of prayer is a prime motivating force behind a new Saudi-inspired interfaith center in Austria that seeks to become the place for world religious leaders to meet, solve problems and melt the “mountain of fears” that exists between religious people, says the Saudi official who is championing the ambitious project.

Dov Lipman’s introduction to the conundrum of the ultra-Orthodox in modern Israel began more than two decades ago, when he was a 19-year-old American student in a Jerusalem yeshiva.

Thirty-eight-year-old Reza Ali Mohammadi, a typist, and his wife, who stays at home, recently had their second son and wouldn't mind having a larger family.

An outspoken critic of Tunisia’s Islamist government was shot dead outside his home Wednesday, underscoring a deepening political rift between newly empowered Islamists and their secular opposition in states across North Africa since the Arab Spring.

Morocco likes to project itself as unique in the Middle East in finding a third way between revolution and repression amid the uprisings of the Arab Spring.