Free Republic

May 29, 2008 By Andrew Walden (Hawai'i Free Press) Nadhmi Auchi, seen here with the Governor of Illinois, Rob Blagojevich (middle) at a 2004 Chicago dinner in Auchi's honor arranged by Antonin Rezko (potentially, right)[1]. All three men have been convicted of corruption related charges (Auchi 2003, Rezko 2008, Blagojevich 2009).[2] “A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser (dual US-Syrian citizen Tony Rezko) just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses. The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi,...

Swiss hold 8 over Saudi suicide bombs Alison Langley in Zurich, and Brian Whitaker Saturday January 10, 2004 The Guardian The Swiss authorities have arrested eight people in connection with suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia. The arrests on Thursday were part of a national operation by 100 police officers who raided homes in Geneva, Bern, Zurich, Vaud and Aargau and questioned about 20 suspects. Those arrested are suspected of providing logistical support for a series of attacks by Islamic militants on housing compounds in Riyadh last May which killed 35 people, including nine assailants. Officials said all the suspects were...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lifted a U.S. ban on a planned visit by a leading European Muslim critic of the Iraq war, in a move rights groups hailed as a victory for civil liberties. Clinton signed orders which ended the ban on Professor Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University, who was barred due to alleged terrorism ties which he denies, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Wednesday.

Five years after being barred from the U.S. for making charitable contributions to a group that sent those contributions to the jihad terror group Hamas, internationally renowned Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, often dubbed “the Muslim Martin Luther,” will make his first public appearance in America this April after being permitted to enter the country. The turnabout comes not because Ramadan has been cleared of these charges, but because Secretary of State Clinton has, in the words of State spokesman Darby Holladay, “chosen to exercise her exemption authority for the benefit of Tariq Ramadan.” Holladay disingenuously suggested that the Bush Administration...

Is Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss born Muslim professor whose grandfather founded the Egyptian Brotherhood, a “moderate” or a “radical”? According to SwissInfo, His elder brother, Hani, director of Geneva’s Islamic centre, was fired from his public teaching job after he told a French newspaper that stoning a woman for adultery was acceptable.Ramadan has so far only called for a moratorium on stoning. Now this is perfect. Ramadan, in calling for a moratorium on stoning, would appear to some people (including Notre Dame which hired him) as a “moderate” Muslim. But of course he hasn’t renounced stoning as such. How could...

GENEVA, January 2 (IslamOnline.net) – No sooner had Swiss Muslims launched campaigns to clear stereotypes and enter into dialogues to reach out to the non-Muslim citizens during 2004 than right-wing media and newspapers threw a spanner in the earnest works. Swiss Muslims, however, remained determined to ride out the storm and demonstrate to the public that they were an integral part of society. The right-wing, in a nutshell, failed to break their staunch stamina. Day in and day out, headlines like “The Islamic Terror is Coming, “Country Vs. Radicalism”, “Islamists Living With Us,” “Hijab in Parliament” and “Swiss Funds for...

Blair backs banned Muslim scholar Vikram Dodd Wednesday August 31, 2005 The Guardian A Muslim scholar accused by critics of sympathising with violence has been appointed to a government taskforce attempting to root out Islamic extremism in Britain, the Guardian has learned. Professor Tariq Ramadan has been banned from entering the United States and France because of his alleged views supporting violence, allegations he strongly denies. He faced a campaign of vilification from rightwing British newspapers, and last night some saw his inclusion on the group as evidence of the government's willingness to stand up to the tabloids. The taskforce,...

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter...

A French physicist with the European atomic research centre near Geneva was charged with terrorism offences by a Paris judge last night after investigators said that he offered to work with the North African branch of al-Qaeda. Adlène Hicheur, 32, who is of Algerian origin, was arrested last week with his younger brother after intelligence agents intercepted his alleged internet contacts with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The physicist, who works at the giant atomic collider at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), which straddles Swiss and French territory, told the Islamic group that he was interested in committing an...