Amid bad news from Iraq, we must remember most of Islam's faithful are ordinary people living ordinary lives.

The success of ISIS militants nor the swiftness of their advance through Iraq shouldn't come as a big surprise - the seeds were sown as soon as Saddam was toppled.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said that the country is ready to assist Iraq in its battle against extremist Sunni Islamists.

Islamic militants have captured Iraq's northern capital, Mosul, in a devastating defeat for the Iraqi Government, whose forces fled the city, discarding weapons and uniforms.

Meriam Yahya Ibrahim, who was sentenced to death in Sudan after she married a Christian man, is to be freed, a Sudanese foreign ministry official has said.

A prominent Saudi cleric has sparked outrage by saying that online conversations between men and women are religiously forbidden.

Nigeria's president has been sent a new video of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in which they beg him to spare their lives through a prisoner swap.

The Sudanese woman sentenced to hang for refusing to renounce Christianity has given birth to a baby girl named Maya, her lawyers said yesterday.

The right-hand man of a Muslim leader at the centre of an Auckland mosque row has been charged with threatening to kill.

A girl who spent several months last year as a hostage of Boko Haram has told how she was ordered to fight alongside the Islamists in ambushes on the Nigerian military.

The father of one of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram has spoken of the "other worldly" moment when he saw his daughter's face on the hostage video released by the group.

A Salafist imam who taught two men who were stopped from leaving New Zealand to join the war in Syria says he is no terrorist.

A Muslim imam accused of teaching "extreme Islam" has been barred for a second time from his Auckland mosque sparking a row between worshippers.

Islamist military group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the mass abduction of 300 Nigerian schoolgirls. But who is in this group, and what do they really want?

Nigerian troops were reported to be massing for an assault to try to free hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by a militant Islamist group.

Parents of 230 girls abducted from their boarding school by Nigerian Islamists have had to call off the search for their daughters because of a lack of police back-up.

Evidence of a plot by Malaysian Islamists to hijack a passenger jet in a terrorist attack copying 9/11 was being investigated in connection with the disappearance of Flight MH370.

A booklet aimed at addressing family violence in ethnic communities has been launched by the Government today.

'I'm a soldier..I couldn't do anything else.' A man accused of killing a British soldier in a frenzied knife attack in London has defended his actions.

A UK terror suspect is on the run in Britain after he escaped surveillance by putting on women's clothes at a London mosque.

A foreign student had nightmares after a shopper told her to either take off her burqa or leave NZ while she was shopping at a Dunedin supermarket, court is told.

After almost a week, there is no precise death toll, no word on the fate of dozens still missing and no details on the al-Qaeda-linked terrorists who attacked Nairobi's most upscale mall.

A NZ man who narrowly survived a massacre at a Kenyan mall is undergoing surgery to remove shrapnel, while another Kiwi has described hiding in a box to avoid attackers.

A Hastings man was shot in the back during the weekend's mall massacre in Kenya, just days before he was due back in New Zealand.

US Rev. Terry Jone is pulled over by police towing a metal trailer filled with 2998 copies of the Koran soaked in kerosene he allegedly intended to burn for 9/11 victims.

One of his victims was a pregnant soldier who pleaded for her life. Now an Army psychiatrist has been sentenced to death for killing 13 people at Fort Hood.

Anjum Rahman is gaining support in her bid to become the first Muslim woman elected to public office in New Zealand.

Sweating nervously from his bald head the American soldier gathered enough composure to deliver an extraordinary presentation.