Mr. Obama with Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota and the first Muslim elected to Congress, in 2007.

Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama
ANDREA ELLIOTT, NYT
As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.

Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to

Virginia Tech falls silent to honor its dead

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (CNN) -- Bells tolled Friday at Virginia Tech to honor victims of the deadliest shooting on a U.S. college campus, and mourners, many wearing orange and maroon, bowed their heads, embraced and held hands in a moment of silence.

Many who stopped what they were doing to honor the 32 students and faculty shot to death Monday gathered around the school's Drill Field, site of a makeshift memorial decorated with signs, flowers and mementos.

Among the mementos are 33

Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance

By ANDREA ELLIOTT
New York Times
Under the glistening dome of a mosque on Long Island, hundreds of men sat cross-legged on the floor. Many were doctors and engineers born in Pakistan and India. Dressed in khakis, polo shirts and the odd silk tunic, they fidgeted and whispered.
One thing stood between them and dinner: A visitor from Harlem was coming to ask for money.

A towering black man with a gray-flecked beard finally swept into the room, his bodyguard trailing him. Wearing

Immigrant Entrepreneurs Shape a New Economy

By NINA BERNSTEIN, NYT
Manuel A. Miranda was 8 when his family immigrated to New York from Bogotá. His parents, who had been lawyers, turned to selling home-cooked food from the trunk of their car. Manuel pitched in after school, grinding corn by hand for traditional Colombian flatbreads called arepas.

Today Mr. Miranda, 32, runs a family business with 16 employees, producing 10 million arepas a year in the Maspeth section of Queens. But the burst of Colombian immigration to the city has

Banking for the poor

By Dr Ishrat Husain
In 1974 a young Economics professor of Chittagong University had just returned from the US after his doctorate in an exoteric topic when the famine struck Bangladesh. He approached the people of a village near the University as to how he could help them and discovered that their biggest problem was that they were so heavily indebted to the moneylenders that they had almost lost their freedom of individual action. The moneylenders were charging exorbitant rates of interest