Free Republic

Scores of Muslim inmates at a high security prison are set to launch a multi-million pound claim for compensation after they were offered ham sandwiches during the holy month of Ramadan. They say their human rights were breached when they were given a special nightly menu - drawn up to recognise their specific dietary requirements - by officers at HMP Leeds last month. More than 200 Muslim inmates at the jail are believed to have been offered the meat which is strictly forbidden by Islam. The sandwich was one of three options on the menu card which was created to...

It has been an unusually violent week for Amsterdam's western Slotervaart district. Cars were torched and youths clashed with police on several consecutive nights after a 22-year-old ethnic Moroccan was shot dead at a police station. He was killed by a policewoman he had just stabbed a number of times. The riots that followed reminded Amsterdam's Chief Commissioner Bernard Welten of a major nightmare for Western European cities: violence on a Parisian scale. Every major town in the Netherlands has its share of so-called problem youths, the type of violent adolescents who gang up to terrorise the neighbourhood. Many of...

A controversial week of events, billed as Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, launches at the University of Washington and some 100 other colleges next week — drawing condemnations from Muslim groups here and across the country. The UW College Republicans...say the week is intended to foster awareness of the terrorist threat posed by a small number of extremists within Islam. But some local Muslims say the week fosters Islamophobia and racism and attempts to paint all Muslims as terrorists. Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, launched this year by a recent graduate of Duke University...is intended to "confront the two Big Lies of the political...

Saint-Dizier, France - French police clashed overnight with youths who went on a rampage in a town in eastern France, prompting Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to travel to the trouble spot. Between 40 and 50 masked youths used metal bars to smash a firefighters' vehicle and a police car dispatched to a shopping mall in Saint-Dizier, said Yves Guillot, the head of the Haute-Marne regional government. The youths then fanned out across the town of 30 000 inhabitants, setting fire to two buildings, a car rental office and 16 vehicles. Police reinforcements were sent in to quell the violence. "We...

Police said anti-Jewish and anti-Christian fliers were found on cars parked in a lot on the northwest corner of 15 Mile and Ryan roads. Sterling Heights police Detective Sgt. Paul Jesperson said three separate complaints were filed by residents Tuesday who found the fliers on their windshields. He said the flier said: "Kill Jews and Christians if they don't believe in Allah and Mohammad." It further advises people to "Fight those who do not believe."

In a statement of support, CAIR said: "The scurrilous smear campaign against Dr. Omeish is only the latest episode in a sustained effort by a vocal minority of Islamophobes who seek to demonize and marginalize the mainstream Muslim community and its leaders. "These hate-mongers target any Muslim individual or institution seeking to offer an Islamic perspective on issues of importance to our society. It is a dirty political game in which our entire society is the loser. "Unfortunately, the hysteria that has been created about 'jihad' and the fear generated by the domestic lobby in support of Israel's Apartheid-like polices...

Another absolutely disgusting example of pre-emptive dhimmitude, in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism, right here in the US: First Jell-O, now Santa. So long, Halloween parade. Farewell, Santa’s gift shop. The holiday traditions are facing elimination in some Oak Lawn schools this year after complaints that the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students. Final decisions on which of the festivities will be axed will fall to the principals at each of Ridgeland School District 122’s five schools, Supt. Tom Smyth said. Parents expect that the announcement is going to add to the tension that has been building since...

ROME (Reuters) - A far-right Italian senator outraged Muslims on Thursday by calling for a "Pig Day" protest against the planned construction of a mosque in northern Italy. Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant Northern League party said he was ready to bring his own pig to "defile" the site where the mosque is due to be built in the northern city of Bologna. "I am making myself and my pig available for a walk at the site where they want to build the mosque," Calderoli, who is a deputy speaker of Italy's Senate, said in a statement. Calderoli also said...

Muslims, Han Chinese clash in north China - group 04 Sep 2007 04:25:00 GMT Source: Reuters Alert Me | Print | Email this article | RSS [-] Text [+] BEIJING, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Thousands of Han Chinese and members of the Muslim Hui ethnic minority group clashed over a dispute in north China, resulting in one death, a Hong Kong human rights group said on Tuesday. Relations between the Han, who make up more than 90 percent of China's 1.3 billion population, and the 10-million-strong Hui Muslims have long been sensitive. Huis complain about offences to their religion and...

The artist behind the controversial caricature of the Muslim prophet Muhammad published in Nerikes Allehanda, Lars Vilks, claims to have begun receiving death threats. Vilks says he is planning to report the matter to the police after a slew of threats arrived over the last 24 hour. "There have been a lot of threats. A variety of death threats have come through via telephone, e-mail and in the comment section in my blog," Vilks told TV4. Despite the death threats, the artist says that he has no regrets about drawing the pictures of Muhammad as a dog.

Marking the beginning of yet another dispute over free speech and religious sensitivity, the government of Pakistan has joined Iran in protesting the publication in a Swedish newspaper of a sketch featuring the head of Mohammed on the body of a dog. "Pakistan condemns, in the strongest terms, the publication of an offensive and blasphemous sketch of the Holy Prophet in the Swedish newspaper," the foreign ministry in Islamabad said in a statement Thursday. A Swedish diplomat was summoned to the ministry and "was told that the publication of the sketch had caused grave affront to the religious sentiments of...

For Arabs and Muslims across the Puget Sound area, a rise in the nation's threat level or a bombing halfway around the world often can mark a period of unease.

Muslims want ban on Easter eggs 22 August 2007 ANTWERP – "If headscarves are banned for employees who work at the desk at city services in order to guarantee neutrality of services, then we demand that no Christmas trees be set up in city buildings and that no Easter eggs be given out." Antwerp trade union representative Badia Miri said this on Wednesday in the Gazet van Antwerpen. Miri is one of the seven Muslim women who were forced to remove their headscarves if they wanted to continue working at the desk. Three of the seven staff members of the...

Published Monday | July 23, 2007 Muslims draft complaint against Swift meatpacking plant THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tension came to a head at a Grand Island meatpacking plant in June, when Jama Mohamed said his desire for 10 minutes to pray at sunset was met with shouting. After he left the production line and began praying, Mohamed said, supervisors took his prayer mat, pulled him up by his collar and sent him crying to a lead supervisor, who fired him. "I told him, 'Look, I know I am in America and I know in America there is a freedom of religion...

The caller began: "Sir, I'm calling because of some statements you've been making in the past week about the religion of Islam and … " Boortz interrupted: It's a cult, it's not even a religion. … " After a long list of crimes perpetrated all over the world in the name of Islam, the talk host told the caller, "You don't have a word of condemnation in you until the non-Islamic world rises up and starts to make it clear that we are fed up with your damned religion. We've had it up to here. "And somebody, like I said...

MOSCOW, March 4 (Reuters) - Plans to build a memorial to the 333 hostages killed three years ago in the Beslan school siege have sparked a row between Christians and Muslims in Russia. The local Russian Orthodox diocese says it will build a church in the grounds of Beslan's school No. 1 to commemorate the victims -- half of them children -- killed in a clash between insurgents and Russian troops. But one of Russia's leading Muslim clerics has accused the Orthodox church of trying to hijack a national tragedy by building a memorial that he said would exclude the...

The 18-year-old man who shot and killed at least five people Monday night at Trolley Square has been identified as Solejman Talovic, a Bosnian refugee who lived in Salt Lake City. Little additional information was released about Talovic. The Bosnian community, which numbers about 3,000 in Utah, planned a press conference later this afternoon. Talovic parked his car in the west parking lot and walked into the mall, encountering two people, whom he shot. Then he walked further into the mall and shot a woman, said Police Chief Chris Burbank. He then walked to a gift shop and shot five...

The imam of the Taipei Grand Mosque complained to Taiwan's foreign minister for sending him a greeting card for the Chinese New Year showing four pigs, a newspaper said on Saturday. After receiving the New Year card, Imam Ma Hsiao-chi pointed out to the Foreign Ministry that the card was offensive to Muslims, the Liberty Times reported. Muslims do not eat pork and regard pigs as unclean animals. But the ministry defended Foreign Minister Huang Chih-fang's sending out the greeting cards, which were printed because 2007 is the Year of Pig according to the Chinese lunar calendar. "Sending New Year...

NEW YORK - Three groups are urging ABC News not to keep CNN Headline News personality Glenn Beck on as a "Good Morning America" commentator because they believe he's biased against Arabs.

Muslim Groups Opposed to ABC's Hiring of Radio Talk Show Host (CNSNews.com) - Three Arab and Muslim American advocacy groups are voicing their opposition to ABC's "Good Morning America" hiring talk-show host Glenn Beck, claiming he has "an obvious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice in his broadcasts." The Arab American Institute, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council claim Beck made "threats and blatantly inaccurate statements" on his show. The groups sent a letter to ABC/Disney asking for a meeting to detail their concerns. They have also launched a membership action campaign urging supporters to contact ABC News over...