Free Republic

A particular theology is central to the problem of terrorism THE latest attack in Britain shows how the Islamist threat is being driven by something much grander than mere foreign policy or feelings of grievance. The perpetrators believe they are soldiers in the perceived historical battle between good and evil. The methods of attack are becoming more brazen, amateurish and desperate, illustrated most profoundly by the burning terrorist at Glasgow airport shouting "Allah" while struggling with a policeman, but the ideological roots are unchanged. As a commentator on Muslim affairs and home-grown terrorism, I am often asked whether there is...

The Islamic movement Tablighi Jamaat (proselytizing group) wants to build a mosque in East London for up to 10,000 people, part of an "Islamic Village" for the London Olympics of 2012. Tablighi Jamaat is on the fundamentalist side of the Islamic spectrum and has links with Wahabism. It is based in Pakistan, where for a Muslim to convert to Christianity is a capital offense. The Mosque and surrounding buildings will ultimately accommodate 70,000 visitors. What happens after the Olympics is another matter, but what seems on the cards is a permanent Muslim city in the heart of London -- which...

Many people have written many books, treatises and articles for the purpose of defining the role jihad is supposed to play in the lives of the Muslims. Most writers have tried, in their own ways, to come up with the [true] meaning of the Arabic word [Jihad,] others took circuitous routes to emphasize on what they believed was the purpose for which Allah has purportedly made the launching of jihad by Muslims an integral part of their lives. Until recently, my mind had remained in a state of dichotomy; it being the result of the inadequate attention, I admit, I...

BANGKOK, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Separatist violence has killed more than 1,000 people in Thailand's Muslim south and the number of dead in the second half of this year almost doubled from the first half, police figures showed on Thursday. By Wednesday, 1,016 people had been killed in the three provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat and four districts of nearby Songkhla province since violence erupted on Jan. 4 last year, a Reuters calculation based on a police record showed. Of the total, 511 people were killed between Jan. 1 and Nov. 16 this year, according to a police record...

Talks on whether Kosovo should remain part of Serbia or be given independence should start soon, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4319566.stm

The U.S. has obtained a 13-page letter written by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq, outlining with what one senior official calls "chilling clarity" al Qaeda's stretagy for Iraq and beyond, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. The letter, which was written shortly after the London bombings in July, calls Iraq "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era." Zarqawi is America's most-wanted insurgent in Iraq. Zawahiri, the man most intelligence analysts believe is the brains behind bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization, is considered...

By refusing to confront the truth we are not only deluding, but hurting, ourselves http://www.JewishWorldReview.com On Monday, I outlined the problem of the age: the incompatibility of Islam with a multicultural West that hides away inconvenient history and disturbing doctrine under layers of political correctness. Without stripping them off to examine the problem, all we get is a lot of wishful thinking. Historian Niall Ferguson, writing in the Telegraph on the intensifying "Muslim colonization" of Europe, has decided that such "demographic shifts" are not "invariably a bad thing." After all, seven centuries of jihad-imposed dhimmitude for infidels in Muslim Spain...

What steps should Western border agencies take to defend their homelands from harm by Islamists? In the case of non-citizens, the answer is simple: Don't let Islamists in. Exclude not just potential terrorists but also anyone who supports the totalitarian goals of radical Islam. Just as civilized countries did not welcome fascists in the early 1940s (or communists a decade later), they need not welcome Islamists today. But what about one's own citizens who cross the border? They could be leaving to fight for the Taliban or returning from a course on terrorism techniques. Or perhaps they studied with enemies...

In Islam, lying or omissions for the 'greater good,' according to a strict or radical Islam/Islamist philosophy is not only acceptable, it is holy and blessed work. It is called al-Takeyya (or al-Taqiyya) and is a strategy outlined in the Hadiths and supported by various interpretations of some of the Suras in the Koran. We have just seen it in action and most people never even caught the whiff of mental ether the Islamists were pouring into the airways of the already comatose and choking non-Islamist world. Al-Takeyya is a policy whereby a Muslim may lie, deceive or omit critical...

Islamic terrorism may eventually be defeated in its large manifestations, like the one we saw on 9/11, but built into earliest Islam is an ultimate goal of religious world domoination, whether carried out by violent or peaceful means, as seen in the Quran, the Hadith (the record of the deeds and sayings of Muhammad), and the sunna (the example or path of Muhammad). Osama bin Laden and Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who beheads innocent workers in Iraq, are open about this goal, as we see in these fatwas, statements, and interviews before and after 9/11.

There are many lessons of September 11. The most important one, which has yet to be fully grasped by many Americans, is that Islam as such poses a threat, not some allegedly aberrant variety of it. This fact creates a serious conceptual problem for them. They find it hard to grasp that the “tolerant” and “peaceful” Islam we hear about in the media is, for the most part, something like the unicorn: no matter how detailed is our description of it, and now matter how much of an imaginative effort we make, the thing simply does not exist. It is...