Muslim Mob Goes on Rampage & The Christian MC Who Hates Cops

Muslim Mob Burns Down Christian Neighborhood
In Gojra, Pakistan, hundreds of angry, gun-totin' Muslims entered a Christian neighborhood and started burning down homes. Officials say the attack was incited by a radical Islamist group, who were responding to rumors that some Christians had desecrated a Quran. When all was said and done, eight Christians were dead -- six dying in the fires and two by gunshot-- because there were rumors that some folks destroyed A BOOK.

Devil Told Teen to Kill Parents
In Australia, the trial is under way for a 16-year-old Satanist who allegedly plotted to kill his parents, two school friends and then himself -- because the Devil told him to. On March 25, 2008, the teen killed his father with a 23cm (about 9 inches) knife and repeatedly stabbed his mother. According to the prosecutor, the teen tried to kill his mother because he felt she "deserved it and he hoped she would be a better person in the afterlife."

Suspect in Daniel Pearl Murder Arrested
In Islamabad, Pakistan, police have arrested a man that was suspected of involvement in the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The suspect, Rao Shakir, is a purported member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a banned Sunni Muslim militant group linked to both the Taliban and al-Qaida. The group has been blamed for killing scores of minority Shiites across Pakistan while its members have been accused of attacks against Westerners.

Cops Dress Up Like Muslim Women For a Day
In the UK, a police exercise which involved female officers spending a day dressed in full Muslim dress has been derided as "a complete waste of time". The charade, which involved two sergeants and a community support officer dressed in full-body Muslim garb and another officer in Muslim dress and head scarf, was part of a diversity training program aimed at helping officers learn more about Islam and the issues affecting Muslim women. Critics of the dress-up day, are understandably angry and bewildered, "'After this are they planning to dress as members of other communities such as Hindus and Buddhists? Because if I was a member of one of those communities, and they had been dressing up as Muslims, I would be asking why not us?"

And finally...It's Hard Out There For a Christian Rapper
In Florida, Christian rapper Illyte (l.), was sentenced to two years in prison for two counts of corruption by threat of public servant. The rhymer's (who's real name is Antavio Johnson) charges stem from a song called “Kill Me a Cop” that was posted on Johnson's Myspace page earlier this year. The ditty includes such Jesus-inspired lyrics as "Call me crazy but I think I fell in love with the sound of hearing the dispatcher saying, 'Officer Down.”

Satanic Scribe's Eerie Death

The definition of redundancy: Harvey Keitel in hell in an Adam Sandler movie.

From today's New York Post:

DID black magic and a curse play a role in the death of Ronald Tavel -- the Obie-winning playwright and Andy Warhol collaborator who mysteriously died aboard a Thailand-bound jet last week?

Tavel, 68, who was returning to his Bangkok home from an art conference in Berlin on March 23, "drank and over-drank and became dehydrated during the flight, and then his heart just stopped," a source told us.

Fellow playwright and friend Larry Myers says Tavel -- who penned the Obie-winning "Boy on the Straight-Back Chair" and "Bigfoot," and scripted Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" -- had been on a downward spiral ever since becoming fascinated by the dark arts, which he began weaving into his avant-garde work in the late '80s.

"He wrote one about Satanism and black magic for Theater for the New City and everything went wrong," Myers told us. "The actors got sick, pages from the script vanished, scenery crashed, the lights went out. He told me somebody had put a curse on him. It completely creeped him out and it [bleep]ing freaked me out. And right after that, he packed up and moved to Thailand."

Tavel, whose oddball works were part of a downtown movement called "The Theatre of the Ridiculous," was a "very religious person, but when he started exploring the dark forces, and got into the occult and spiritualism, he was never the same," Myers said. "The moral is: Watch what you write about . . . the shadow finally overtook him."

In another weird twist, Ira Silverberg of the Sterling Lord Literistic agency told us Tavel delivered his new novel, "Chain," five days before his death. "The story is wrapped around the obsessive relationship an expat has with a local male prostitute in Bangkok," Silverberg said. "It's full of the spirit of Tavel." While the apparent cause of death was a heart attack, authorities are awaiting autopsy results.