In its attempt to accommodate Muslim students' religious needs, a Maryland high school now allows those students who have parental permission and good grades to leave class every day to pray.

According to The Washington Post, about 10 Muslim students at Parkdale High School in Riverdale, Md., leave class for about eight minutes every day to pray. They are part of the school's Muslim Students’ Association, Principal Cheryl J. Logan told the Post, adding that another student is hoping to raise his grades so he can join the others.

Logan told the newspaper some teachers became upset when Muslim students began praying during the school day, but she explained that schools have to accommodate students who wish to practice their faith.

“I’ve been real happy with how we’ve been able to deal with it without it becoming an issue,” Logan told the Post.

While schools may restrict how students exercise their religious rights, the First Amendment guarantees they can practice their faith on school property.

Guidance provided by the Department of Education stipulates that schools "have the discretion to dismiss students to off-premises religious instruction, provided that schools do not encourage or discourage participation in such instruction or penalize students for attending or not attending.

"Similarly, schools may excuse students from class to remove a significant burden on their religious exercise, where doing so would not impose material burdens on other students," the guidance reads.

Courts have for years tried to determine when accommodation crosses the line into unconstitutional endorsement of religion, said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. The question of accommodating the Muslim faith, however, is relatively new.

"Public schools can't play favorites with religion," Mach said. "Whatever schools do to accommodate students' beliefs, it must be done fairly, equally and not to promote any one faith or encourage religious devotion in general."

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, said he has so far heard no complaints from Muslims about the school's policy. 

"We’re definitely in favor of the policy of allowing Muslim students or students of any faith to hold student-initiated and student-sponsored prayers, as the Constitution guarantees," he said.

If, however, the school begins to strictly enforce the high grades policy and denies a student who is struggling with his or her grades to pray, the organization would take a stand against that practice, Hooper said.

"As a parent, it sounds like a good idea, but I’m not sure that it conforms with what is required in terms of allowing students to pray in schools," he said. 

Some schools that have introduced similar policies to accommodate Muslim students have met challenges in the past. A San Diego, Calif., elementary school that had set aside prayer time stopped doing so after it received criticism. The school ultimately reconfigured the schedule so Muslim students could pray during lunch.

Hooper said his organization has dealt with similar cases in the past but managed to reach a compromise with the schools.

Joseph Rosenbaum P.A. / AP

In this photo made available by the defendant's lawyers, Izhar Khan, right, stands with attorney Joseph Rosenbaum outside the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Thursday.

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed charges of terrorism support and conspiracy against a Muslim cleric accused of funneling thousands of dollars to the Pakistani Taliban, citing a lack of evidence.  

Izhar Khan, 26, an imam in South Florida, stood accused of the charges along with his father, but U.S. District Court Judge Robert Scola issued a verdict acquitting him. Scola ruled there was insufficient evidence against Khan, who is the imam of Masjid Jamaat Al-Mumineen mosque in Margate, Fla.

“I do not believe in good conscience that I can allow the case to go forward against Izhar Khan,” Scola said, The Miami Herald reported. “This court will not allow the sins of the father to be visited upon the son.”

Khan was immediately freed following the judge's decision. 

“I’m happy with the justice system, to say the least, and I think justice was served,” Khan told the Miami Herald.

“[Izhar] is the baby of the [Khan] family,” Joseph Rosenbaum told reporters outside the courtroom with fellow defense attorney Marshall Dore Louis and members of Khan’s mosque. “I never saw the evidence against him. He was always innocent.”

Trial for Khan's father, 77 year-old Hafiz Khan, is expected to continue in federal court. The two had been held at a federal detention center since they were arrested in 2011, accused of funneling about $50,000 to the Taliban. Hafiz is also on trial on four terrorism support-related charges, which each carry a maximum 15-year prison sentence, The Associated Press reported.

Charges against another of Hafiz Khan’s sons were dropped earlier by prosecutors. 

Jim Hollander / EPA

Franciscan nuns and Nigerian Christians pray inside St. Catherine's Church, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity, traditionally accepted as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Monday.

Roughly one in six people around the world has no religious affiliation, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life found, making the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population.

The religiously unaffiliated population includes atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys, the study issued Tuesday reads. Many of the religiously unaffiliated, however, hold religious or spiritual beliefs, the study emphasized.

"For example, belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30 percent of French unaffiliated adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults," it read.

Making up 16.3 percent of the world population, this group comprises a majority of the population in six countries. China's number of religiously unaffiliated is the largest, with a 62 percent share.

The Pew Forum's study is based on self-identification.

Titled "The Global Religious Landscape," the study analyzed data available as of early 2012 from more than 2,500 national censuses and large-scale surveys, and found that Christians are the world's biggest religious group, with 2.2 billion people or 32 percent of the world’s population. The largest share of all Christians live in the United States, followed by Brazil and Mexico.

About half of all Christians are Catholic, while an estimated 37 percent of Christians are Protestant, the study shows. Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians make up 12 percent of Christians.

With 23 percent of the world's population, Muslims represent the second-largest religious group and are a majority in 49 countries, including 19 of the 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Hindus make up 15 percent of the population, while the nearly 500 million Buddhists add up to 7 percent.

The study also found that the median age of Muslims (23 years) and Hindus (26) is younger than the median age of the world’s overall population (28), and more than 12 years younger than the median age of Jews, which is 36 years old.

"Muslims are going to grow as a share of the world's population, and an important part of that is this young age structure," Pew Forum demographer Conrad Hackett told Reuters.

Judaism has the weakest growth prospects in comparison.

There are about 15 million Jews in the world, or about 0.2 percent of the global population, and about 44 percent of them live in North America, while about 41 percent live mostly in Israel.

The Pew Forum study also shows that an estimated 405 million people practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. More than 70 percent of the world’s folk religion practitioners live in China.

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Mona Shafer Edwards / AFP - Getty Images file

This Sept. 27 courtroom drawing shows Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in court on probation violation charges in Los Angeles.

A California man who was behind an anti-Muslim film that spurred violent protests in the Middle East was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in prison for violating the terms of his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction.

Mark Basseley Youssef, a 55-year-old Egyptian-American, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder after he admitted four of eight alleged violations including obtaining a fraudulent California driver's license.

Youssef served most of a 21-month prison term in the bank fraud case. Federal authorities wanted Youssef to serve two years for the violations.

None of the violations had to do with the content of "Innocence of Muslims," a 13-minute film that mocks the prophet Mohammad as a religious fraud, pedophile and a womanizer. The movie sparked a torrent of violence in Libya and other parts of the Middle East, and dozens died.

Federal authorities have said they believe Youssef is responsible for the film, but they haven’t said whether he was the person who posted it online. He also wasn’t supposed to use any name other than his true legal name without the prior written approval of his probation officer.

At least three names have been associated with Youssef since the film trailer surfaced — Sam Bacile, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Youssef. Bacile was the name attached to the YouTube account that posted the video.

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A New York City man prevented from returning home from overseas by the federal government’s security apparatus has landed in the United States after a three-week delay, rights advocates say.  

Samir Suljovic, 26, entered the United States on Friday night in Philadelphia, where he was questioned at length by Customs and Border Protection agents, causing him to miss his connecting flight to New York. He boarded a train, arriving in New York late Monday night.

Suljovic, who was born and raised in Queens, told NBC New York he believes he was banned from flying because he's Muslim.

"I wear a cap, I have a beard, I roll my pants up," Suljovic he told the NBC station. "They discriminated against me because I'm Muslim. What else could it be?"

"They made me feel like I'm some kind of terrorist, some kind of criminal for no damn reason," he said. "I'm an American citizen. I'm being played here."

Suljovic, who has worked as a security guard in New York, had been visiting relatives in Montenegro and was attempting to come home on Oct. 1 when he was denied boarding his U.S.-bound flight from Vienna, Austria. 

His story echoes those of dozens of other Americans, many of them Muslims, who have been stranded overseas by their apparent inclusion on the U.S. "no-fly" list, prompting legal challenges to the government.

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U.S. security watch lists currently have about 50,000 names, of which about 20,000 are on the 'no-fly' list of people who are "known and reasonably suspected terrorists," and among those are about 500 Americans, according to an official at the FBI Terrorist Screening Center, who asked not to be named.

The official would not say whether Suljovic’s name was on the no-fly list.

"Government policy is not to disclose that for security reasons," said the official. As an example, the official said, an aspiring terrorist who learned he or she was listed might change his or her identity.

Airline ticket agents in Vienna handed Suljovic a note from the Department of Homeland Security and instructed him to apply for a redress number for people who think they may be mistakenly on the "no-fly list."

The Department of Homeland Security redress procedure, which goes by the acronym TRIP for Travel Redress Inquiry Program, is set up to weed out people who are on the list because of mistaken identity. The TRIPS process does not provide a way for people who think they are wrongly placed on the list for other reasons to challenge those reasons.

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The U.S. Embassy in Vienna told Suljovic he was cleared for a flight back to the United States from Munich, Germany.

But after traveling by train to Munich, he was again denied boarding and instructed to go to the U.S. consulate there, where he did not get resolution. He says that he was instead interrogated by embassy personnel who also searched his cellphone without his permission.

The Council on American Islamic Relations, a nonprofit Muslim advocacy and civil rights group, wrote letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and the U.S. Embassy in Munich seeking an explanation of obstacles to his return home.

Suljovic told NBC New York on Monday he had to eat the cost of two flights that he was prohibited from boarding, and spent about $2,000 in Vienna and Munich while trying to get clearance to go home.

"I was like a mouse in a maze. I didn't know where to go, and I was wondering when I'd come home," he said. "I had nowhere to stay. I slept at the airport for the first few days." 

Suljovic said he's frustrated that government officials haven't been able to tell him why he couldn't come home, and that they haven't been able to tell him if he is on the no-fly list at all.

After a number of tries over the course 22 days, Suljovic was finally allowed to board the flight to Philadelphia on Friday. No explanation was given for his delays, or for his ultimate ability to fly home.

The opaqueness of U.S. security policy has prompted a a number of challenges to the use of the no-fly list. The most significant case, working its way through courts in Oregon, was brought by the ACLU in 2010 on behalf of 17 plaintiffs against the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI Terrorist Screening Center. That case challenges the constitutionality of the no-fly list, arguing that it deprives individuals of due process.

A separate lawsuit filed in April by the Michigan chapter of CAIR alleges invasive questioning of American Muslims by CPB officials at land borders.

"Samir is back in the United States because it is his right to be here,” said Muneer Awad, executive director for the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. "It is his right today, and it was his right twenty-two days ago when our government prevented him from boarding any return flight home."

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Samir Suljovic

A New York City man who traveled to Europe to visit relatives this summer has been stranded there since Oct. 1, an advocacy group says, because his name allegedly appears on the no-fly list.

According to the New York Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Samir Suljovic, 26, flew to Montenegro this summer to visit family and friends, but when he tried to travel back to New York on Oct. 1, airline representatives in Vienna, Austria, told him the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection had asked them not to allow him to board his flight.

CAIR says Suljovic is now in Germany. The advocacy group said it had demanded answers from the authorities, but have not heard back from the local U.S. Embassy or from customs and homeland security officials. Suljovic, a U.S. citizen born and raised in Queens, has no criminal history, CAIR says.

“This is outrageous,” CAIR-NY Executive Director Muneer Awad told NBCNewYork.com. “They basically ignored his calls for a reason why this is happening.”

According to the New York Daily News, the FBI maintains the no-fly list, and the TSA checks names against the list when allowing passengers on commercial flights.

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com

“This is not a unique case for American Muslims who have been traveling abroad,” Awad told the Daily News. “He has no criminal record, he has never been charged with anything criminal. A Muslim happened to be traveling abroad and it raised a red flag for no other reason than that he is Muslim.”

In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, New York members of Congress and the U.S. Embassy in Munich, CAIR states: "The denial of Mr. Suljovic's right to return home without due process of law constitutes a grave violation of his civil rights and liberties. Instead of protecting this young U.S. citizen while he traveled abroad, the government has effectively stranded him in an unfamiliar country without shelter or protection."

California student takes the long way home to US after ‘no-fly’ designation

An FBI spokesman told the Daily News the no-fly list contains about 20,000 names, and about 500 of those are American citizens.

“99.7 percent of the people who file complaints about the no-fly list, it turns out it has nothing to do with the no-fly list at all,” the spokesman told the Daily News.

In 2010, a New York man with the same name as Suljovic sued the Gramercy Park Hotel because management wouldn't hire him unless he shaved his beard, the New York Post reported.

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Chris Carlson / AP file

Soha Yassine attends an event held by Muslim and Coptic Christian leaders in Los Angeles on Monday condemning extremists they say are behind an anti-Islam film, and behind the violent reaction to it in the past week.

American Muslims, sometimes accused of failing to speak out against violence carried out in the name of their religion, have forcefully condemned both the amateurish anti-Islam film that triggered recent riots and protest in the Middle East, Asia and north Africa and the violence that it engendered.

"The American Muslim community has been very forceful and consistent in its rejection of a violent response to this intentionally provocative material," said Ibrahim Hooper, director of communications for the Council on American Islamic Relations, a nonprofit Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.

The low-budget film "Innocence of Muslims," apparently made by an obscure producer in Los Angeles and circulated on YouTube, infuriated many Muslims with its cartoonish portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. The imagery sparked Muslim protests and violence targeting U.S. diplomatic missions, including a deadly assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

In a flurry of statements, press briefings, vigils, media interviews and interfaith events, groups representing American Muslims were quick to condemn the violence, host vigils for the victims and send condolences to the families of the Benghazi victims.  But they also condemned the film, which seems deliberately designed to anger Muslims.

In getting the initial response out, there was an opportunity to make two points, said Hooper.

"People here understand that America and Americans shouldn’t be blamed for the actions of a few individuals who produced this hate film," said Hooper. "They should also understand that all Muslims shouldn’t be blamed for the acts of a few individuals that carried out these attacks as well."

The Muslim and Arab American leaders also sought to speak to an overseas audience.

Over the weekend, CAIR released an Arabic-language video appeal aimed at protesters, beseeching them not to blame ordinary Americans and the U.S. government for the film, which was "designed to provoke religious sensitivities and to distract from the positive efforts being undertaken to improve newly-free societies in the wake of the Arab Spring."

Quoting from the Quran, the speaker, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad called on protesters "to emulate Islam's Prophet Muhammad, who did not retaliate in kind to personal abuse."

On Tuesday, the organization released a similar video narrated by Imam Agdu Semih Tadese in Yoruba, a language spoken by millions in Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa.

"It is clear that the motive behind the film is to enrage Muslims and to display a hatred of Islam," according to subtitles on the video.
"However, Muslims need to demonstrate good behavior as our Prophet (peace be upon him) dealt harmoniously with people. I hereby appeal to our scholars to calm down the youth and encourage people to cultivate exemplary behavior as Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) teaches."

Lesson in freedom of speech
These messages and others also attempt to explain freedom of speech to non-Americans.

"We play a significant role in translating for our fellow Arabs and Muslims in the region to let them know what the First Amendment rights are," said Abed Ayoub, legal director for the Arab-American Anti-Defamation Committee, a 32-year-old civil rights organization.

Since the start of protests, Ayoub says ADC has spoken to dozens of Arab journalists in countries where freedom of speech is still an alien concept. The challenge, he said, is to dispel their belief that this film, or any other form of expression, has the U.S. government’s stamp of approval.

"These individuals have been living under dictatorships for decades. Some of them just don’t get it," said Ayoub.

On the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on Monday, Muslim leaders teamed up with elders from the Coptic Christian church to try to reclaim the stage from the presumptive filmmaker — an Egypt-born Coptic Christian named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — and hotheaded Islamists inciting violence.

The stakes are particularly high in Egypt, where the Copts say they have suffered a recent surge in discrimination and attacks by extremist Muslims. The Copts form a branch of Christians who are believed to have settled in Egypt shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Moderates in both religions say they want to return to the relative peace between Coptics and Muslim, populations that have coexisted for centuries.

Man behind anti-Islam film reportedly is Egyptian born ex-con
Photoblog: At site of deadly attack on U.S. consulate, condolence notes from Libyans

'Minds full of disease'
"We cannot allow the actions of a few deceived fanatical individuals to define our communities," said Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, who took aim at both the desecration of Islam by filmmakers and the violence of protesters.

Handout photo provided by Newsweek Sept. 18, 2012

He was echoed by Maher Hathout, a co-founder of Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, which hosted the event.

"These people are neither Muslims nor Copts. Those are people ... with hearts full of hate and minds full of disease," Hathout told the crowd. "Our job together is to leave no room for these voices to manipulate and take over the arena. The voice that should be heard is our collective voices here."

Satirical take
Everyday residents in the U.S. and elsewhere also are seeking to join the debate, using Twitter and other social media to distribute more cosmopolitan and diverse views to the global audience. 

Many seized on a Newsweek cover story this week titled "Muslim Rage," which accompanied by an unflattering image of screaming Muslim men. The article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a well-known critic of Islam, asserts that while some Muslims condemn the killings in the name of the faith, those voices tend to be marginalized. 

"The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support — whether actively or passively — the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group," writes Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who fled to Holland to escape an arranged marriage. "On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam." 

Newsweek called its Twitter followers to comment under the hashtag "#muslimrage." The subject went wildly viral, but perhaps not in the way that the magazine had in mind.

Some of the tweets are insulting, some defensive, but many of the thousands of tweets seemed to ridicule Newsweek’s portrayal of Muslims and many — seemingly by Muslims — offered a lighter view of their "rage."

A sampling:

"My iPhone compass won't point me toward Mecca. #muslimrage"

"Sudden midseason change of scarf trends; all oblong hijabs go out of fashion. #MuslimRage"

"Brothers are super strict/overprotective bc they don't want not one guy to see you.#MuslimRage"

"When you need to pray at the mall and all the stores with the good fitting rooms are full.#MuslimRage"

"Walks into a building with a backpack on, whole building get evacuated. #MuslimRage"

"Lost nephew at the airport but can't yell for him because his name is Jihad. #MuslimRage."

The humorous response to #muslimrage was refreshing, according to Ayoub of ADC.

"It’s good because it shows maturity," he said. "You know that we are moving past this (stereotype) — that this is not representative of who we are."

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Dwayne Gross

Muslims gather for outdoor "Jumah" prayers at Marshall Park in Charlotte, N.C., on Friday, the first of several events planned by the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs in the run up to the Democratic National Convention in the city.

BIMA

A flier for Muslim events timed for the run-up to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

In the run-up to the Democratic National Convention, several hundred Muslims attended "Jumah," or Friday prayer, in a park in Charlotte, N.C., as part of an effort to mobilize Muslims and get them engaged in political discourse. But the event sparked some of the same negative reaction that the organizers were hoping to combat.

Organizers said they hoped to use the prayers, a town hall meeting planned for Saturday and cultural festival to open events to non-Muslims and bring attention to problems that they believe disproportionately affect Muslims but are ignored by both political parties.

They cite what they consider invasive practices under the Patriot Act, discrimination against mosque construction through the use of zoning laws, "anti-shariah" bills being passed by state and local governments and more generally a climate of Islamophobia.

"One of the reasons for pulling folks together is to stay focused," said Jibril Hough, one of the organizers from the nonprofit Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs, or BIMA. "A lot of our issues that we are going to be bringing up will not be discussed by RNC or DNC. Both parties have supported deals that are eroding our civil liberties."

While about 300 Muslims prayed in Marshall Park in downtown Charlotte, the Christian group Operation Save America showed up to protest. Islam is one of the three main targets of its protests, along with abortion clinics and gay rights events. A news release from the organization on Thursday explained its reasoning.

"Hatred toward the God of the Bible (Jesus) is the great unifier of abortion, homosexuality, and Islam," said the release. "Hatred toward God and the nation He made great – America, is the platform of the DNC."

That protest had a permit and was anticipated, said Hough, and the police were poised to protect Operation Save America's right to protest without allowing them to disrupt the Muslim prayer.

"I told (the leader of the protest) I support his First Amendment right," said Hough. "But just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean you should do it."

The BIMA events were posted alongside hundreds of others on the official web site of the DNC host committee, none of which is sanctioned or supported by the committee, to let people attending the convention know what else is going on in town.

But the BIMA events were removed from the calender after negative publicity.

Some critics of Islam described both Hough and the headline speaker, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, as Islamic radicals.

In an interview on Fox television on Thursday, Zudhi Jasser, a controversial figure within the Muslim community who calls out "extremists" within his own faith, compared the views of BIMA to the KKK or the Nazi party, urging the DNC to distance itself from the event.

"They clearly are part of the global Islamist movement and really are an insurgency within this country," said Jasser, an Arizona physician who says many American Muslim leaders hope to replace American democracy with rule by Islamic law.

Meanwhile, in articles like this one in Frontpage.com, the right-wing blogosphere dissected Wahhaj's sermons and history, intimating that his conservative views were dangerous and embraced by the Democratic Party.

A senior DNC host committee official confirmed that the BIMA events had been removed from the website's "upcoming events" page.

"This event, like many others on the page, was user generated," a senior Host Committee official told NBC News on Friday. "Upon further review, and because speakers for the event and statements and positions from event organizers were not appropriate and relevant to the Host Committee, Charlotte in 2012 has decided to remove the event from our events calendar."

"This is about caving in to fear and ignorance," said Hough. On the other hand, he said, the prayer event "was very open, open to all, in the public square. Thousands will read about it and further understanding of Muslims and what is important to us."

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Alexandria County Sheriff's Dept. / AP file

John Walker Lindh is seen in a file photo originally released by the Alexandria County Sheriff's Department in Alexandria, Va. The photo was made on Jan. 23, 2002.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET: American-born Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh testified Monday that the U.S. government is forcing him to sin by denying him the right to pray daily with other Muslims in the highly restricted federal prison unit where he is detained.

He made his comments during the first day of a closely watched trial that will examine how far prison officials can go to ensure security in the age of terrorism.

Lindh was captured in Afghanistan and imprisoned in the United States after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States by Islamic extremists.

Lindh testified in federal court in Indianapolis that the Terre Haute, Ind., prison where he's serving a 20-year sentence for aiding Afghanistan's Taliban government before its overthrow allows prisoners to eat, talk, play cards and exercise together, but bans daily group prayer. He contends this violates a 1993 law barring the government from curtailing inmates' religious expression without showing it has a compelling interest.

Lindh, 31, adheres to a school of Islam that requires group prayer five times a day, if possible. 

"I believe it's obligatory," Lindh said. "If you're required to do it in congregation and you don't, then that's a sin." 

Attorneys for the government maintain that Lindh's own behavior since he was placed in the unit in 2007 proves the risks of allowing group prayer.

The government says in court documents that Lindh delivered a "radical, all-Arabic sermon" to other Muslim prisoners in February that was in keeping with techniques in a manual seized from al-Qaida members that details how terrorists should conduct themselves when they are imprisoned.

Lindh's sermon proves "that religious activities led by Muslim inmates are being used as a vehicle for radicalization and violence in the CMU," the government claims.

The prison warden halted daily group prayers in 2009 and allowed them only on the holy day of Friday.

Lindh accuses the government of going too far in its drive for security and trampling on his freedom of religion by restricting group prayers among Muslim inmates.

A cluster of U.S. marshals surrounded a shackled Lindh as he was brought into the courtroom on Monday morning. He was wearing an olive green prison uniform and a white prayer cap. He smiled at his mother, who was sitting in the third row of the courtroom gallery.

The bearded Lindh was led out after two hours of testimony.

With the help of a glossary for court officials, Lindh guided the court through a series of lessons on Muslim prayer traditions. 

Lindh has been held in the federal unit at Terre Haute since 2007.  He was charged with supporting terrorists after his capture by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and later pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day, and the Hanbali school to which Lindh belongs requires group prayer if it is possible. But inmates in the Communications Management Unit are allowed to pray together only once a week, except during Ramadan. At other times, they must pray in their individual cells. Lindh claims that doesn't meet the Quran's requirements and is inappropriate because he is forced to kneel in close proximity to his toilet.

Thomas Farr, a former diplomat who now teaches at Georgetown University and studies religion and terrorism, said common sense suggests that the prison's need for security would outweigh Lindh's religious rights.

"The foremost responsibility of prison officials, as de facto proxies for the American people, is to prevent Mr. Lindh from obtaining any capacity to plan or carry out attacks on them," he wrote in an email. "That is why he is in prison, and if that is not a compelling state interest, I do not know what is."

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which is representing Lindh, contends the policy violates a federal law barring the government from restricting religious activities without showing a compelling need.

"This is an open unit where prisoners are basically out all day," said ACLU legal director Ken Falk, who noted that inmates are allowed to play basketball and board games, watch television and converse as long as they speak English so the guards can understand. "They can do basically any peaceful activity except praying," he said. "It makes no sense to say this is one activity we're going to prohibit in the name of security."

Falk said Lindh's speech wasn't radical and was given during the weekly prayer that inmates are permitted. He said Lindh was not disciplined for the speech.

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The self-contained unit in which Lindh resides has 43 inmates, 24 of whom are Muslim. Inmates are under open and covert audio and video surveillance, and except for talks with their attorney, all of their phone calls are monitored. Prisoners are not allowed to touch their family members when they come for their tightly limited visits. They must speak English at all times except when reciting ritual prayers in Arabic.

Without such tight security, the government claims, the prisoners would be able to conspire with outsiders to commit terrorist or criminal acts.

Joe Hogsett, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said he believes decisions about prison regulations are best made by prison officials, "not by convicted terrorists and other dangerous criminals who reside there."

"Mr. Lindh is allowed to pray in his cell; he's allowed to pray wherever he happens to be as many times every day as his religion suggests to him that he should," Hogsett said. "Where the rules must draw the line is, how often must prison officials allow prisoners to congregate together?"

According to court documents, daily prayers were allowed from the time the unit opened in 2006 until May 2007, when Muslim inmates refused to stop in the middle of a prayer to return to their cells during a fire emergency.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2009 by two Muslim inmates in the unit. Lindh joined the lawsuit in 2010, and the case has drawn far more attention since then. The other plaintiffs have dropped out as they were released from prison or transferred to other units.

Lindh had been charged with conspiring to kill Americans and support terrorists, but those charges were dropped in a plea agreement. He is serving a 20-year sentence for supplying services to the now-defunct Taliban government of Afghanistan and carrying explosives for them. He is eligible for release in 2019. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

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