Philippines

Children wait for the start of Friday prayers at a mosque in Marawai City, the only Islamic city in the Philippines, March 7, 2008. Marawi is the spiritual centre for the Maranao, the most devout of three major Muslim groups in the Philippines. A quick glance at the streets of Marawi make it clear that this is a city of the crescent rather than the cross. “Gift of Allah” rather than “Gift of Jesus” is the sign blazoned across the city’s pedicabs, the local bank is Islamic and women are veiled. Picture taken March 7, 2008.  To match feature PHILIPPINES-ISLAM/   REUTERS/Darren Whiteside (PHILIPPINES)

Kuwait

Kuwaiti women spray foam on passing cars during continuing celebrations of the Gulf emirate’s 47th National Day and 17th anniversary of liberation from Iraqi occupation in Kuwait City on February 26, 2008. National Day commemorates the creation of Kuwait as a nation in 1961and Liberation Day marks the end of the Iraqi occupation in 1991 during the Gulf War. AFP PHOTO/YASSER AL-ZAYYAT (Photo credit should read YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty Images)

Dearborn, Michigan

Nawal Hamadeh (C), the superintendent of three charter schools that she helped start, gives some of her staff a pre-school orientation while wearing her Muslim hijab as they get ready for the new school year in Dearborn, Michigan, August 20, 2007. Women who cover up for their faith may encounter problems getting some kinds of work outside the Muslim world, particularly jobs requiring them to interact with the public. Picture taken August 20, 2007. To match feature WORK-WOMEN/HEADGEAR    REUTERS/Rebecca Cook (UNITED STATES)

China

A Uighur Muslim man points out directions to women and their children in Kashgar on June 14, 2008 in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in Central Asia. AFP PHOTO/Frederic J. BROWN (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

Kuala Lumpur

Women use the travelator at an airport in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur May 4, 2008. Malaysia may require women to obtain family consent before allowing them to travel alone outside the mainly Muslim country, state news agency Bernama reported on Saturday, quoting the foreign minister. REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad (MALAYSIA)

May Allah help her…

Niima Ahmed who is a polio sufferer stands as she and other polio suffering children wait to see a doctor at the General hospital  in Kano, Nigeria Thursday, July 19, 2007.  New York-based Pfizer is facing four court cases two filed by the federal government , two by the state in Nigeria over a decade-old drug trial in the northern Muslim city of Kano. It is accused of using a 1996 meningitis epidemic to push through  a sloppily managed study without the full understanding of the parents or the proper regulatory approval. In 2003  residents of Kano boycotted a polio vaccine  effort on charges that it was actually a western plot  to make Africans infertile the Pfizer uproar has been cited as one reason for suspicion about the vaccine. (AP Photo/George Osodi)

Bosnia

Bosnian Muslim women watch men praying during a mass funeral in Zaklopaca June 21, 2008. Thousands of Bosnian Muslims gathered for a mass funeral for 55 people killed in their village by Serb forces in 1992, whose bodies were then found in different mass graves more than a decade after the end of the country’s war.     REUTERS/Damir Sagolj   (BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA)

Pakistan

Pakistani Shiite Muslim women march towards parliament in Islamabad on August 3, 2008 to protest against the sectarian violence in the region and the killing of Shiite Muslim tribe in Parachinar and other parts of the country.  Parachinar, which has a population of about 70,000 people, was rocked by bloody sectarian clashes in April in which some 50 people were killed. Shiites account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s Sunni-dominated population, but are in the majority in Parachinar. Sectarian violence involving militants from Sunni and Shiite sects has claimed more than 4,000 lives since the late 1980s.  AFP PHOTO/Farooq NAEEM (Photo credit should read FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images)

The graduates

Iraqi women university graduates attend their graduation ceremony at Nahrain University in Baghdad on July 15, 2008. About 400 students graduated from Baghdad’s Nahrain University in its first outdoor evening commencement ceremony held since 2003. AFP PHOTO/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE (Photo credit should read AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)

Cambodia

Muslim women wave Cambodian and Kuwait national flags during a welcoming ceremony for Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah at Phnom Penh international airport August 3, 2008. Sheikh Nasser is in Cambodia on a three-day official visit. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)