In an event organized by the progressive Islamic organization Muslim Wake Up!, the traditional Friday prayers will be led March 18 by a woman, Amina Wadud, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Ramush Haradunaj, the ethnic Albanian prime minister of Kosovo (known to the Albanians as Kosova) stepped down from his post and boarded a flight for the The Netherlands March 9, turning himself over to international authorities at The Hague, where he is wanted in connection with atrocities carried out when he was a commander of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA). He shared the flight with another ex-KLA commander, Lahi Brahimaj. The two are now being held at the same prison as former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. (UK Independent, March 10) Hopefully this development will put an end to the incessant whining of the Slobo-suckers that their boy is being unfairly singled out. Meanwhile, two other of their faves, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain at large—presumably in Serb-controlled Bosnia.

Italians are demanding answers in the case of US troops opening fire at a checkpoint on a car containing an Italian secret serviceman and an Italian journalist recently freed from Iraqi abductors.

A friend writes, translating from the Feb. 27 edition of the Turkish journal Aksam:

Thomas Friedman in his March 3 New York Times column, "Brave, Young and Muslim," hails restive and modern-minded reformers in the Islamic world, and especially singles out Irshad Manji, Canadian Muslim feminist author of The Trouble with Islam Today.

On March 1, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that executing convicts who were under 18 when their crime was committed constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In a commentary for TruthOut, Marjorie Cohn notes that this finally brings the US in line with the civilized world:

Citing an anonymous "intelligence source," Newsday and assorted other media outlets claim that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most-wanted militant leader in Iraq, has been urged by Osama bin Laden's top aide to organize attacks in the US.

A judge in the tribunal created to try Saddam Hussein was assassinated by unkown gunmen along with his son outside their home in north Baghdad, two days after the tribunal ruled that a first group defendants from the Saddam regime would be tried for crimes against humanity.