Free Republic

ZABUL PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN -- Sitting on the dusty flightline at Forward Op erating Base Lagman in the Afghan hinterlands, what could make better leisure reading than the November issue of Inspire -- the English-language magazine of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula? The lavishly illustrated, 23-page PDF, is a "special issue" devoted to the attempted toner-cartridge bombings via UPS deliveries from Yemen. Besides a page taunting Yemen's president, the issue focuses on how the explosives were prepared, how difficult they are to detect and how economically the plot was accomplished. Of course, none of the bombs mailed to out-of-date addresses...

Featured Term (selected at random):HOSPITALERS Originally Knights of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. After 1310 they were also know as the Knights of Rhodes, and from 1530 as the Knights of Malta. Their beginning may be traced to the Benedictines in the eleventh century. Founded to care for the sick, during the Crusades they also gave protection to the pilgrims and in time became either soldiers (military brothers) or physicians and nurses (brother infirmarians). Eventually the military phase went out of existence. The term "hospitalers" is also applied in a wider sense to other religious...

Here is a review from Saint Austin Review: The premier international journal of Catholic culture, literature and ideas of a book called: Crown of the World -- Book 1: Knight of the Temple. by Phillip Campbell III Knight of the Temple by Nathan Sadasivan is the first installment in the “Crown of the World” series, a trilogy set in late twelfth-century Palestine during the waning years of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. One of the most remarkable things about this extraordinary work of historical fiction is that the author, Nathan Sadasivan, wrote the book when he was only fifteen years...

One of the memes – the unconscious, uncritical, lazy thoughts that spreads from person to person like a virus – that has been particularly virulent during this ground-zero mosque controversy is that Christians have no standing to criticize the violence of Islam, given a supposedly violent Christian history. And no one event is more often invoked as an example of Christian hypocrisy than the so-called “Crusades” (so-called, because no one who fought in them called them that).The latest and most appalling example appears in the NY Times, courtesy of a Nicholas D. Kristoff. Among the many absurdities one can find...

Travel broadens the mind—or a part of one's anatomy—it has been said. And as the poem by Joyce Grenfell puts it, I also enjoy travelling in my head, which is to say, by reading travel literature. The wonderful books by Patrick Leigh Fermor, for instance. More recently, I have been reading something quite different in that category. This is The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, in the translation by Roland Broadhurst. Abu 'Husayn Muhammed ibn Ahmad Ibn Jubayr was secretary to the Moorish Governor of Granada in the year 1182. His employer forced him to drink, against his Moslem conscience, seven...

Islamics Launched their Crusades in 630 A.D. Western Crusades started in 1095 A.D. to Stop Muslim Invasion The Crusades were started by the Muslims in the year 630 A.D. when Muhammad invaded and conquered Mecca. Later on, Muslims invaded Syria, Iraq, Jerusalem, Iran, Egypt, Africa, Spain, Italy, France, etc. The Western Crusades started around 1095 to try to stop the Islamic aggressive invasions. Islamic Crusades continued even after the Western Crusades. Islam - Not a Religion of PeaceIslam has killed about 270 million people: 120 million Africans*, 60 million Christians, 80 million Hindus, 10 million Buddhists, etc." Forced conversions...

he year is 732 A.D., and Europe is under assault. Islam, born a mere 110 years earlier, is already in its adolescence, and the Muslim Moors are on the march. Growing in leaps and bounds, the Caliphate, as the Islamic realm is known, has thus far subdued much of Christendom, conquering the old Christian lands of the Mideast and North Africa in short order. Syria and Iraq fell in 636; Palestine in 638; and Egypt, which was not even an Arab land, fell in 642. North Africa, also not Arab, was under Muslim control by 709. Then came the year...

The year is 732 A.D., and Europe is under assault. Islam, born a mere 110 years earlier, is already in its adolescence, and the Muslim Moors are on the march. Growing in leaps and bounds, the Caliphate, as the Islamic realm is known, has thus far subdued much of Christendom, conquering the old Christian lands of the Mideast and North Africa in short order. Syria and Iraq fell in 636; Palestine in 638; and Egypt, which was not even an Arab land, fell in 642. North Africa, also not Arab, was under Muslim control by 709. Then came the year...

Books for the Arsenal of Ordered Liberty Posted by Hunter Bakeron Monday, January 4, 2010 As we begin the New Year, I find myself thinking about books that fill the conservative armamentarium for resisting the left-liberal onslaught on the past handful of years. I’ve omitted some categories, like military and foreign policy, because they are outside my areas of expertise and don’t apply as much to the Acton mission, anyway. Here are my recommendations:Economics:Common Sense Economics by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, and Dwight Lee — Dr. Gwartney taught the first economics class I ever took as a university student and...

Catholic, Crusader, Leper and King: The Life of Baldwin IV and the Triumph of the Cross By MichaModern society obsessively avoids suffering, risk and danger.  It secures everything with seatbelts and safety rails, air conditions the summer heat, prints warnings on coffee cups and advises that that safety glasses should be used while working with hammers.  Certainly such precautions have prevented misfortune.  However, since heroism and excellence are born from confronting rather than avoiding suffering and peril, the mania for safeguards has also diminished the notion of these qualities.  This is unfortunate since only those intrepid souls who confront danger,...

A Labour minister has sparked controversy by claiming that an alternative symbol is needed for the Red Cross because of the logo's supposed links to the Crusades. Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant said that the historic emblem risked undermining the work of the humanitarian organisation. His intervention came as MPs debated the adoption of the 'red crystal' - a diamond

A former FBI special agent told law enforcement and Homeland Security personnel that a network of Islamic organizations are working to incrementally implement Islamic law in the United States. During a presentation at the Bedford County Emergency Management Agency, former FBI agent John Guandolo briefed members about groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which he claims is working with other Islamic groups to slowly implement Shariah, also known as Islamic law, which encompasses all areas of life. Guandolo worked in the FBI since 1996, including nine years as a member of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the...

NEVER-BEFORE-REVEALED TERRORIST TRAINING VIDEO EXPOSES 35 COMPOUNDS ON AMERICAN SOILBy Steve Foley - Posted on February 9th, 2009 Press Release from the Christian Action Network “Act like you are his friend. Then kill him.” – Sheik Muburak Gilani explaining how to kill American infidels Washington, DC—Christian Action Network will show Homegrown Jihad at the Landmark Theater in Washington, DC, on February 11, 2009, at 7:30 pm. There is no charge to attend the viewing. Copies can also be obtained at www.christianaction.org. The American public was never supposed to know. The 2006 Justice Department document that exposes 35 terrorist training compounds...

We tend to focus on creeping sharia in the U.S. but Canada is not exempt from the grand jihad as this article from earlier this year indicates. With porous borders and chatter of a North American Union we should hope Canada is taking the threat seriously. David Harris. The enemy within If terrorism suspect Momin Khawaja, now on trial in Ottawa, is as guilty as Crown prosecutors say, it’ll be time to settle an important question: Was Mr. Khawaja a “Naji man”? Amid trial allegations, court details and defence objections, significant questions arise about Mr. Khawaja’s status as a consultant...

Over the next year, the U.S. government will need to borrow somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, the most ever by far. Estimates go as high as $2 trillion, depending on how quickly the economy cools and how fast tax revenues fall. The simple question most of America has not asked is this: Where is the money going to come from? The federal government already knows the answer to that question, and it has implications Americans are not ready for but will soon be faced with. America is going cap in hand to Middle East oil exporters. What government...

Since CNN devoted so much time to covering the Hajj, a number of prominent Muslims -- including known terrorists and jihadists -- have opined that "We are defeating these people [American "evangelicals"] through their homes in their lands." "Terrorists gush over CNN coverage," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily, December 12 (thanks to Doc Washburn): JERUSALEM – CNN's extensive coverage this week of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca is a defeat for evangelical Christians and proves it is only a question of time before Islam will be "shining all over the world," according to Muslim terrorists in Gaza speaking to...

More evil and violence from the ‘religion’ of ‘piece’. No wonder muslim kids grow up so full of hate and venom, the very people charged with protecting them are beating them down in the name of allah. Gee what a shocker there… Muslim children are being beaten and abused regularly by teachers at some British madrassas - Islamic evening classes - an investigation by The Times has found. Students have been slapped, punched and had their ears twisted, according to an unpublished report by an imam based on interviews with victims in the north of England. One was “picked up...

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Robert Spencer [whose “Jihad Watch” is featured weekly in HUMAN EVENTS] has been a one-man warning system against radical Islam. A scholar who has spent most of his professional life studying Islam, his string of books dissects the world's largest religion as a bastion of intolerance and hate, justified by the teachings of spiritual leader Mohammed and various holy men. As one of his previous titles, the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam," suggests, Spencer does not buckle in fear of the type of backlash that can materialize as a death-threatening fatwa against a critical...

A 19-year-old man is tortured and beheaded for a bad joke interpreted as blasphemy. A father is accused of killing his son because he converted to another religion. They are not Muslims but Christians, and the place is France in the mid-1700s. There was a time when Europe often behaved in ways parallel to that of Muslim-majority countries today. Yet by the end of the 1700s, this was changing. In the first case cited above, the king and even Catholic bishops failed to save the unfortunate Chevalier de la Barre, but the outcry led to the end of such actions....

Riyadh, 2 April (AKI) - Swiss football referee Massimo Busacca vowed he would wear a whistle with the Swiss Cross symbol on it during of the Saudi championship on Wednesday, despite anger voiced in the Kingdom at the 'crusader' item. "I have respect for all religions, including Islam, but I don't see anything offensive in this and am optimistic. I will not give up my 'crusader' whistle," he told pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat. Many in Saudi Arabia had called for Busacca to sport a different whistle to avoid offending Muslims. He has previously refereed several soccer matches in the Kingdom....