Saudi women have mounted a rare protest against the abaya, posting pictures on social media wearing the obligatory body-shrouding robe inside out.

Tariq Ramadan, a leading Islamic scholar held in France since February on charges of raping two women, was released on bail Friday after he persuaded judges he was not a flight threat.

The 56-year-old Swiss academic, who took leave of his teaching post at Oxford University late last year to fight the rape claims, won bail on his fourth request to be freed from Fresnes prison near Paris.

Former first lady Michelle Obama blasts President Donald Trump in her new book, writing how she reacted in shock the night she learned he would replace her husband in the Oval Office and tried to "block it all out."

She also denounces Trump's "birther" campaign questioning her husband's citizenship, calling it bigoted and dangerous, "deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks."

A Pakistani Christian woman who spent eight years on death row for blasphemy has been freed from jail after an acquittal that triggered Islamist protests, but is still in Pakistan, officials said Thursday amid appeals for her to be offered asylum.

Asia Bibi's conviction was overturned by the country's highest court last Wednesday, but she remained in prison as the government negotiated with hardliners who blockaded major cities and demanded her immediate execution.

Kuwaiti sculptor Sami Mohammed finished his towering statue of the country's first emir over four decades ago, but now it just gathers dust unseen in a long-shuttered office block.

Stymied by a conservative view of Islam that bans representations of the body, the 75-year-old faces any artist's nightmare: he can't get his work displayed to the public in his homeland.

French bishops announced Wednesday they were setting up an "independent" commission to "shed light on the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic church since 1950."

A painting of an animal in an Indonesian cave dates from at least 40,000 years ago, making it the world's oldest piece of figurative art, new research has shown.

The painting in Borneo, possibly depicting a native type of wild cattle, is among thousands of artworks discovered decades ago in the remote region.

An Indian activist said Wednesday that he expects thousands of people to join his "March for Justice and Peace", a 9,500-kilometer hike from New Delhi to Geneva next year.

Rajagopal PV told reporters in Geneva that he plans to begin his long trek from New Delhi next October 2 and should arrive in the Swiss city on September 25, 2020.

Workers perched on scaffolding delicately repair Cairo's 13th-century al-Zahir Baybars mosque, a vital restoration project in the Egyptian capital's neglected Islamic quarter.

Halted by the popular protests that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and the ensuing political and economic turmoil which enveloped the country, restorative work on the Mamluk-era mosque picked back up last month.

A body representing 144 Turkish mosques in the Netherlands has asked Twitter to block the account of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders for inciting hatred.