Free Republic

Seville Awaits First Grand Mosque The Seville mosque will accommodate up to 10,000 worshipers. By Al-Amin Andalusi, IOL Correspondent SEVILLE, June 14, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Plans to build the first grand mosque in the Spanish southern city of Seville are proceeding at full swing, despite fierce opposition form few locals. In May, the Muslim association of Seville reached an agreement with the authorities on building the mosque, expected to be one of Europe's biggest mosques. Arab Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, will finance the two-year construction of the mosque, expected to total six million euros,...

Book explores how other cultures perceive the West Wisam Younis of Iraq recently told The Associated Press that his ambition was to kill Americans. So far, all he has managed to do is kill eight of his own countrymen and wound another 80. He's facing murder charges in Iraq and hopefully will never be free to kill again. Elsewhere in the Islamic world, angry crowds are protesting what they say is abuse of the Quran by American interrogators at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One photograph of Muslim protesters in India showed a man with a sign that said,...

The Bush administration have transformed their policy from the first term into one of speaking loudly and carrying no stick. The top story in Sunday's Washington Post reported that the Bush administration is revising its counter-terrorism strategy. Whereas since the September 11 attacks the US has concentrated its efforts on physically destroying al-Qaida to prevent it from carrying out another major attack by arresting and killing its operatives and leaders, now, according to the report, the US will be widening the focus to include contending with the threat of militant Islam generally by trying to counteract it as a social...

David Selbourne’s book warning western nations they underestimate the threat of extremist Islam failed to find a British publisher. America has taken it up and the arguments are causing a stir, says Sarah BaxterWhen David Selbourne flew into America recently, he had good reason to feel he had arrived in the land of the free. His new book, The Losing Battle with Islam, was featured at New York’s Book Expo, the US publishing industry’s trade fair last week, after it failed to find a British publisher. One glance at the title and it is easy to see why. The Losing...

I recently returned home from Beirut, Lebanon, where I spent a month covering the democratic Cedar Revolution and Syria's withdrawal from the country after a 30 year-long occupation. Few places in the world beat Beirut as a foreign assignment. The city is packed from one end to the other with the classiest hotels, the hippest night clubs, the most stylish bars, the fanciest restaurants, the coziest cafes, and the best shopping districts this side of New York and Paris. But Lebanon's sophisticated and freewheeling culture isn't the only thing that makes a trip to that country both attractive and memorable....

I recently returned home from Beirut, Lebanon, where I spent a month covering the democratic Cedar Revolution and Syria's withdrawal from the country after a 30 year-long occupation. Few places in the world beat Beirut as a foreign assignment. The city is packed from one end to the other with the classiest hotels, the hippest night clubs, the most stylish bars, the fanciest restaurants, the coziest cafes, and the best shopping districts this side of New York and Paris. But Lebanon's sophisticated and freewheeling culture isn't the only thing that makes a trip to that country both attractive and memorable....

An alleged terrorist on trial for a conspiracy targeting the U.S. and Israeli embassies claimed Monday that terror masterminds Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would soon set up a Muslim caliphate state. Abed al-Tahawi's made the statement in brief remarks to reporters before the military court convened to hear the prosecution sum up its case in his trial. "Although they accuse them of being terrorists, the heroes Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi will come back to the scene soon to set up an Islamic caliphate state," he said.

CHANGING PERCEPTIONS FOR MUSLIMS as for others, history is important, but they approach it with a special concern and awareness. The career of the Prophet Muhammad, the creation and expansion of the Islamic community and state, and the formulation and elaboration of the holy law of Islam are events in history, known from historical memory or record and narrated and debated by historians since: early times. In the Islamic Middle East, one may still find passionate arguments, even bitter feuds, about events that occurred centuries or sometimes millennia ago—about what happened, its significance, and its current relevance. This historical awareness...

Yesterday that recently vanquished cliché, the Arab street, returned to remind us that there are some things that even the most enlightened Westerners don't get about Muslims -- their fanaticism about the Koran. Newsweek, which had only a few months ago been jubilantly celebrating the new People Power rising up in the Middle East, apparently ran an article in which it was alleged that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, in order to annoy the Muslim inmates, had deposited copies of the Koran on or in the toilet bowls of the prison facility. There was even a rumor that a copy of...

Muslims Demand Church Closing-Demand Christians Return To Islam ICC has received a report of an attempted church closing in West Java, Indonesia on April 14, 2005. On 14 April around 8:00 P.M. a group of about 50 people claiming to represent the Aliansi Gerakan Anti Pemutadan [the Alliance of the Movement Against Apostasy] approached a Gereja Kristen Pasundan church at Jalan Kebonjati number 108, Bandung (capital of West Java province). The group demanded that the church close its satelites (Pos PI) in the villages of Kampung Gugunungan Village, Cimahi Village, and in Cisewu District and Garut District by 10 May...

<p>Chris Crain, editorial director of the gay newspaper chain Windows Media, was beaten by seven men in Amsterdam, Holland, as he was walking hand-in-hand with his boyfriend early Saturday morning.</p> <p>Crain described the gay-bashing in a first-person story scheduled for publication Friday in the Washington (D.C.) Blade, one of several papers owned by Windows. Crain and William Waybourn founded the chain in 1996.</p>

What is the fastest-growing religion on Earth? Most news reports suggest it is Islam. But a new book makes a compelling case it is a new, or, perhaps, old form of biblically inspired evangelical Christianity that is sweeping through places like China, Africa, India and Southeast Asia. In "Megashift," author Jim Rutz coins a new phrase to define this fast-growing segment of the population. He calls them "core apostolics" - or "the new saints who are at the heart of the mushrooming kingdom of God." Rutz makes the point that Christianity is overlooked as the fastest-growing faith in the world...

The conviction of Ali al-Timimi crystallizes a disease and the medicine needed to cure it. Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - These thoughts emerge from a location I consider among the highest intellectual points of contemporary Islam: from within the walls of the Gazi Husrevbeg Medresa in Sarajevo. It is therefore a message from inside the Islamic umma, or world community, to the umma, and above all to American Muslims. I have written and spoken in the past of Wahhabism, the Saudi state cult, as a cancer within Islam. I have lately perceived a better parallel. Stalinism was once called “the syphilis of...

1. The Historical Background of Islamic Resurgence The West itself is largely responsible for creating and fostering the dangers to its civilization. Throughout human history empires rose by military conquest and fell when their rulers took their power for granted, indulging their greed without counting the cost. The basic pattern progressing from war to occupation, exploitation, negligence and collapse has not changed. Often, exploitation was oppressive and cruel from the outset. The more enlightened the exploitation, the longer it lasted, always providing the rulers dealt efficiently with their security problems. These multiplied when it inevitably turned into over-exploitation. A correlation...

The Agenda of Islam - A War Between Civilizations http://www.betar.co.uk/articles/betar1072264293.php The war has started a long time ago between two civilizations - between the civilization based on the Bible and between the civilization based on the Koran. And this must be clear. [snip] There is no fundamental Islam. "Fundamentalism" is a word that came from the heart of the Christian religion. It means faith that goes by the word of the Bible. Fundamental Christianity, or going with the Bible, does not mean going around and killing people. There is no fundamental Islam. There is only Islam full stop. The question...

While revisiting the history of the French-Algerian war in 1954, I stumbled on an extensive quote -- at second hand -- from Paul Johnson's Modern Times, which though written before 9/11 provided a valuable key to understanding 'terrorism' as it emerged from the chrysalis of anti-colonialism. Colonialism died in part, Johnson argued, because it provided the demographic basis for its own demise. (Hat tip: FreeRepublic) Algeria was the greatest and in many ways the archetype of all anti-colonial wars. In the 19th century the Europeans won colonial wars because the indigenous peoples had lost the will to resist. In the...

Finished reading this. I don't totally agree with him. He overplays the importance of culture and downplays the importance of ideology. For instance I feel Japan will take sides with the West before it ever would with China. One point that got my attention was his suggestion that Latin America will move closer to North America both economically and diplomatically. I wonder if we will see new reconciliation between the Catholic and Protestant churches - realizing that our differences are miniscule and we need to get on the same page to resist the emergence of the Apostate Church. There already...

Christian ties may bind US troops to South Korea By David Scofield All that remains of the 50-year South Korea-US security alliance - a friendship forged in blood, as the leaders of the United States forces used to say - is the high fences and cinder-block buildings that mark America's bases in South Korea. Speeches and statements underscoring South Korea's rising prominence and the extolling benefits of a "balanced" foreign policy, independent of and not beholden to allies, rejecting US-dictated policy that may not always be congruent with the country's best interests, have been pouring forth from President Roh Moo-Hyun...

TigerHawkThursday, March 31, 2005 Al Qaeda's grand strategy  Monday evening I attended a public lecture on al Qaeda's grand strategy by Michael Doran, Asst. Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton. Professor Doran was rather famously passed over for tenure last spring, quite possibly because he does not hold to the prevailing academic dogma about the Iraq war and American policy in the Middle East. At the time, the Daily Princetonian quoted an anonymous professor in the History Department as having said "we don't want him" with the pregnant implication that the reason had little to do with the quality...

<p>CAMBRIDGE - Samuel Huntington is poised to become a best-selling author for a book he published in 1996, but he's deeply ambivalent about his sudden fame.</p> <p>Almost overnight, ''The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order'' has become one of the most influential books of the new wartime era. In it, the Harvard political scientist predicts that 21st-century global conflict will not occur between nation-states such as the United States and Russia, but rather between civilizations defined by shared values, cultures, and religions.</p>