The developer behind the Islamic cultural center and mosque planned near Ground Zero said it never occurred to him that his project would stir up so much controversy.

Sharif El-Gamal has quite a checkered past, according to the AP, with arrests for disorderly conduct, driving while intoxicated, petit larceny, patronizing a prostitute, and trespassing. A former tenant also says El-Gamal roughed him up in 2005 when the tenant was a month late on the rent. “I regret many things that I did in my youth,” El-Gamal said in a statement.

A new poll finds that 71 percent of New Yorkers want the Park51 project moved further away from Ground Zero. The same number want NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate funding of the project.

A 21-year-old film student was indicted on Monday on charges of attempted murder and assault as hate crimes for slashing a Muslim taxi driver last week. A suspicious fire at a mosque construction site in Tennessee has local Muslims worried that their project has been dragged into the Ground Zero debate. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is suing the Illinois State Police on behalf of a local Muslim cleric whose chaplaincy appointment was revoked last month. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a suit on behalf of Somali Muslims who were denied prayer time and faced harassment.

U.S. Muslim leaders say they are stepping up efforts to unify their communities and get them politically involved to counter the recent spate of anti-Muslim sentiment.

The man suspected of gunning down a lay Mormon bishop in California was mentally ill and believed the church wronged him when he was a member back in the 1980s, family members told the AP. Mormon officials are in talks with China to secure religious freedom for Mormons living in the communist country.

In yet another Obama-Lincoln parallel, a New York University law professor says that just as some Americans suspect Obama is a closet Muslim, a handful in the 1860s believed Honest Abe was a secret Catholic.

Glenn Beck sought the imprimatur of 20 heavyweight evangelicals like James Dobson at a secret meeting weeks before he went all Billy Graham on us, according to WaPo. He wants to lead, but will evangelicals follow? One Southern Baptist dean dismissed Beck’s message as “just Fox News at prayer.”

A Belgian Cardinal who told a sex abuse victim to hush up says he was “naive” to get involved. Germany’s Catholic bishops approved new guidelines that require church officials report to prosecutors suspected cases of sexual abuse of minors. An Oregon couple pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges in the faith-healing death of their infant son.

A new study says that American women derive more happiness from religious services on Sunday than shopping. The Dalai Lama has condemned cage confinement for hens.