Free Republic

A downtown Laredo street bearing the name for more than a century of a Mexican hero was changed by the Laredo City Council on Monday to remove offensive connotations it may have against Arabs or Muslims.Since moving to Laredo nearly 30 years ago, Kamel M. Shrek has studied the meaning of "Matamoros," which means Moor killer or Moor slayer. The phrase was used as a battle cry by the Spaniards during the battle of Clavijo in 844 AD, according to Shrek's research, meant to encourage killing of Muslims. After becoming a nickname in Spain related to killing Catholic Spain's Arabic...

By modern standards, contemporary Middle Eastern Arab nations are failed societies. On virtually every index of socioeconomic and political development, they compare poorly with other parts of the world. Under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, an independent group of 20 Arab scholars analyzed the state of Arab human development in a widely-circulated 2002 report. Their findings were stark. In particular, the Arab Human Development Report 2002 found that the 19 nations under study suffer from a "freedom deficit": "Out of seven world regions, the Arab countries had the...

The truth about slave trading...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Icy3_bNcJI

Have you seen a movie called Four Jills In A Jeep? Don't worry, it's not at the multiplex. It came out in 1944. A wartime movie, about the contribution of the gals to the big existential struggle. Great title, and downhill after that. This column is, metaphorically speaking, four Jills in a jeep: It's about a quartet of ladies who provide useful glimpses of where we're heading.

Before you can discuss the manifest seriousness of the latest controversy involving the pope, you have to acknowledge its hilarity. Pope Benedict XVI, in an austere philosophical address, invoked Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, the 14th century ruler who offered a harsh assessment of Islam. While the Koran says, "There is no compulsion in religion," Manuel couldn't help but notice that Muslims were setting up more franchises in his neighborhood than Starbucks - and they weren't doing so by selling the best darn Mocha Frappuccinos on his side of the Bosphorus Straits.

Most Indonesians oppose strict Islamic system - poll JAKARTA (Reuters) - Most Indonesians do not favour adopting a strict Islamic system in which sharia laws would enforce the wearing of head-scarves for women or stoning for adultery, a survey showed on Thursday. But 80 percent supported a crackdown on alcohol, gambling and prostitution, according to results of the survey conducted by the Indonesian Survey Circle, a prominent private pollster. The survey, with a margin of error of 3.8 percent, was conducted in July and August and covered 700 people across the world's most populous Muslim nation. Almost 70 percent in...

The Islamic terrorist plot to blow up ten airliners en route from Great Britain to the United States is surprising only in one respect: It makes no sense for the Muslim diaspora in Europe to carry out terrorist acts since they can have Europe—the whole of Western Europe, anyway—if they play their hand right in the next 20-30 years. Blowing up airliners, or London Underground trains, is bad for the cause. It is not directed from “Islam Central�; it is literally “home-grown.� Only a non-Chronicles reader will be puzzled by the fact that “mainstream� media all over the Western...

Dad is a coward, a hypocrite and he deserves to rot in jail By Rajeev Syal In an exclusive interview, Donna Traverso tells The Times about the man who tore her family apart SHE knew him simply as Dad, a kindly presence in her life who would tell her that she was “his little girl” as she nestled in his muscular arms. Now Donna Traverso, 25, despises her former stepfather Abu Hamza al-Masri for shattering her family and abandoning her at the age of 5. In her first interview, she tells The Times how the Egyptian disappeared with her beloved...

24 January 2006 Tuesday 24 January 2006 9:00-9:30 (Radio 4 FM) Repeated: Tuesday 24 January 2006 21:30-22:00 (Radio 4 FM) Interview series with Fergal Keane, in which he talks to people who, through conviction or circumstance, have taken a stand for what they believe in. When Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch MP, wrote Submission, a film attacking what she believes to be the Koran's endorsement of the subjugation of women, she knew it would cause controversy. She did not however envisage that it would lead to the murder of her collaborator Theo Van Gogh and a life under 24-hour...

According to the data from the investigators, radical Islamic organization Al-Asifa from the Balkans is involved in this terrorist act. It unites Slavic adherents of the Islamic fundamentalism and natives of the Arab countries, who settled in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and in Croatia after the 1992-95 war. According to the Israeli secret services, during this war the major part of the present members of Al-Asifa served in the "Al - Mojahid" and "Kataeb Talaat Yasin" divisions. They were a part of the Bosnian Muslim army (by the way, Israel secretly supported the Bosnian Serbs at that time).

NAIROBI, Kenya -- An influential religious leader and alleged al-Qaida collaborator vowed in an interview Wednesday to establish an Islamic state in Somalia, a lawless Horn of Africa nation the United States fears could grow into a major base for Islamic terrorists. "The Western world should respect our own ideas in choosing the way we want to govern our country, the way we want to go about our own business. That is our right," said Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, a key figure in a growing religious camp vying with secular factions for control of Somalia. Despite peace talks and the...

WE have Agence France Presse to thank for both the most striking headline and photograph of the tsunami devastation. The headline was "Tsunami Devastates DiCaprio", and for a moment I couldn't quite place the island: DiCaprio? One of the lesser known Maldives? Wasn't there an old Gracie Fields song – "'Twas on the isle DiCaprio that I found you?" Has Kofi Annan been flown over the devastated DiCaprio so he can marvel rhetorically: "Where have all the people gone?" Well, they're his agent and hairdresser and they've gone to lunch. The devastated DiCaprio turned out to be Leonardo of that...

Dr. Zahid Mukhtar, spokesperson for Islamic Council in Norway, stated that he sympathize with the reason why the Dutch film director Theo van Gogh wasmurdered. Mukhtar made the statement at the Norwegian debate program Holmgang Wednesday. Program leader Oddvar Stenstrøm asked if he understood that some Muslims could become so provoked that they killed, answered Mukhtar, «I understand that, even if there is no statutory authorization to do so.» Jens Stoltenberg, leader of the Labor Party, demands that Mukhtar retracts his statements. «I want to ask Muslim leaders in Norway in the most urgent manner to clearly and unmistakable condemn...

ABSTRACT: Harvard Divinity School will give back a $2.5 million cash gift from the president of the United Arab Emirates, ending more than a year of controversy spurred by the country's support of an Arab League think tank that promoted anti-Semitic ideas. The donation from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, announced four years ago, was supposed to have funded an endowed professorship in Islamic religious studies to promote "a better understanding of Islam among the non-Muslim people of the world." Harvard froze the donation in spring 2003, before a professor had been named, after some students raised concerns over the...

The father and stepmother of a five-year-old girl were convicted Thursday of murdering the child four years ago and disposing of her dismembered body parts in two parks in a horrific case that continues to stun the city with every new revelation. snip The apparent ease with which the jurors reached their guilty verdicts came despite being unaware of some of the case's more gruesome evidence - especially allegations that Khan, angry because he believed little Farah Khan was the "bastard child" of his first wife in Pakistan, visited a butcher shop several times before her murder to watch a...

Jerry Golden "REPORT" PO Box 10268 Jerusalem 91102 Israel www.TheGoldenReport.com Published 11/9/2003 Islamic Warnings! There is a small article in today’s Jerusalem Post that I felt worth elaborating on. It gives us warnings of great acts of Islamic Terror that will occur at a time of a double eclipse during the Moslem month of Ramadan. The last time that happened was in 1786, it’s happening in this month of Ramadan, and it will not happen again for another 152 years. So this is the only one that will be seen in our lifetime. It should be noted that Islam like...

SITE Institute,10/19/2003 - The SITE Institute has tracked a new al-Qaeda website airing an unseen videotape of some of the bombers involved in the May 12, 2003, car bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in which 25 people were killed. Amazingly, after speaking entirely in Arabic, two of the al-Qaeda bombers address the camera in English, threatening Americans. It appears to be the first time an al-Qaeda fighter reads some portions of his will in English. Ashraf bin Ibrahim al-Sayye, made the following threats in English: ?For the American soldiers, we say, ?You have to know that your government has become...

Princess Haifa, wife of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, rarely graces the society pages, so it was shocking to see her in Newsweek’s "terrorism" pages recently as an Al-Qaeda financier. Princess Haifa fell under suspicion because she wrote some personal checks to a woman claiming, like a fairy-tale character who lived in a shoe, that she had six children and a thyroid condition, and did not know what to do (except to write Princess Haifa and ask for money). Newsweek was casting aspersions on a devout and pious woman for giving charity to another woman with children who said...