Free Republic

Police ill-equipped to defend against an American Beslan Authorities fear the school massacre that shook Russia a few years ago may be a dress rehearsal for what al-Qaida plans to do in America – only on a grander scale, launching multiple school attacks simultaneously across the country. In 2004, Chechen terrorists associated with al-Qaida seized a school building in Beslan, Russia, and slaughtered 338, including 172 children. Three years later, schools and local police in this country are still unprepared to deal with such an assault, experts warn. Most don’t have response plans for handling a single active shooter, let...

The Byzantine icon representing this article is the work of the 16th-century iconographer Theophanes the Cretan. Many Muslims around the world today would consider it offensive and insulting to Islam. Muslims in the Balkans just a few years ago have entered churches and destroyed icons like this one for precisely that reason. How does this icon insult Islam? In many ways, including these: 1. It depicts human beings, which violates the traditional Islamic prohibition of images and would be considered idolatrous and blasphemous on its face. 2. It depicts Jesus not as a Muslim prophet. Instead, it depicts Jesus in...

The Byzantine icon representing this article is the work of the 16th-century iconographer Theophanes the Cretan. Many Muslims around the world today would consider it offensive and insulting to Islam. Muslims in the Balkans just a few years ago have entered churches and destroyed icons like this one for precisely that reason. How does this icon insult Islam? In many ways, including these: 1. It depicts human beings, which violates the traditional Islamic prohibition of images and would be considered idolatrous and blasphemous on its face. 2. It depicts Jesus not as a Muslim prophet, as this does: Instead, it...

Relations between Bahrain and the United States have come under increasing strain amid the Shi’ite revolt in the Gulf Cooperation Council kingdom, a report said. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that Bahraini leaders were expressing dismay over what they determined was Washington’s failure to support Manama in the campaign against Shi’ites backed by Iran. The institute cited veiled criticism of the administration of President Barack Obama during the Manama Dialogue in early December. The United States sees political reform as compatible with maintaining the historical security relationship, while the royal family views Shi’ite leaders with suspicion, believing...

Did you ever read “The Prophecies of St. Malachy?” Malachy, an Irish saint, “prophesied’ the reigns of Popes from his time of 1143 AD to the end of his list – the next pope after Benedict XVI in an era of persecution and the destruction of “the seven hilled city.” He didn’t predict their names or state his list as the end of time (nor do I), but he does predict judgment following…interestingly accurate in its 1 to 5 word phrases codifying each succeeding Pope. E.g., Pope John Paul I was called 869 years ago “of the half moon” –...

A news roundup from today’s Sydney Morning Herald, giving another bracing insight into the success of our immigration program. Item one: When two men in traditional Middle Eastern dress sat down with the owner of a Bankstown restaurant recently, they were after only one thing. At first they shared a hookah pipe and chatted amiably about religion, but the conversation quickly turned to extortion: they wanted $50,000 in exchange for ‘’protection’’. The terrified restaurant owner told Fairfax Media they asked him a menacing question he was sure was rhetoric: ‘’Have you heard of Brothers 4 Life?’’ It’s a question many...

Islamist gunmen destroyed several tombs in Timbuktu on Sunday, residents said, days after the United Nations authorised African states to ready a force to take on al Qaeda-linked groups in Mali's northern desert zones. "Since 0800 (GMT) this morning, the Islamists have been destroying tombs again," Youssouf Toure, a resident of the ancient trading town, told Reuters by telephone. "(They are) targeting new ones and the ones they destroyed several months ago," he added. Residents said the attacks on traditional Sufi Islamic shrines were being carried out by about 15 heavily-armed fighters, some weilding pick axes. At least two previously...

Christianity faces being wiped out of the “biblical heartlands” in the Middle East because of mounting persecution of worshippers, according to a new report. The study warns that Christians suffer greater hostility across the world than any other religious group. And it claims politicians have been “blind” to the extent of violence faced by Christians in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The most common threat to Christians abroad is militant Islam, it says, claiming that oppression in Muslim countries is often ignored because of a fear that criticism will be seen as “racism”. It warns that converts from Islam...

she was raped. ... Sabera is a resident of the Jaghori district of Ghazni province. About four months back, she was accused of having illicit relations with a 24-year old boy and was flogged under the orders of clergymen and local influential people in a field court. This matter drew serious reactions from the government of Afghanistan, the National Assembly and human rights organizations around the world. While talking to Sabera, I asked her what she was thinking when she was being flogged in front of hundreds of people? She answered, “They took me to a desert. There were many...

The bodies of 15 members of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) have been found, almost two weeks after they were kidnapped from a north-western town, officials said. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the killings. "We have received dead bodies of 15 kidnapped FC men", senior local FC commander Ali Sher Mehsud said, revising the earlier death toll. He said that the FC men were killed in Shawa, a small town in the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border. All the corpses, which arrived in a military hospital in the north-western Tal town, had bullet wounds, he...

Islamists in Mali have begun destroying remaining mausoleums in the historic city of Timbuktu, an Islamist leader and a tourism official said. “Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu,” Abou Dardar, a leader of the Islamist group Ansar Dine, told AFP news agency. Islamists in control of northern Mali began earlier this year to pull down shrines that they consider idolatrous. …

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on December 22, 2012, allegedly shows rebels speaking at an undisclosed location in Syria on December 22, 2012. AFP PHOTO / YOUTUBE JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia: The world's largest Muslim body on Sunday condemned threats made by Islamist rebels in Syria against two Christian towns, warning of fresh confessional strife in the war-torn country. Such threats "are contrary to the precepts of Islam which calls for tolerance, brotherhood and peace," said the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation based in the Saudi city of Jeddah. It warned against the risks of...

Three churches in the Austrian town of Amstetten (pop: 21,000) were burned this morning. All of the indications point to arson. Several eye-witnesses saw a suspect. As is their custom, the police and newspapers have given a detailed account of his stature and clothing, but fail to mention his skin colour. Amstetten has a large Mohammedan population.

The details and translations emerged Saturday of a December 13 interview on Egyptian television Al Baghdadia. During the discussion the Shiite ayatollah Ahmad Al Hassani Al Baghdadi issued a that against Christians in Iraq. Labeling them as “polytheists” and “friends of the Zionists”, the leader stressed that they must choose “or Islam or death,” while “their women and girls may legitimately be regarded wives of Muslims.” This last statement regarding the females is the Muslim indirect way of authorizing any Christian woman or girl may be captured and raped, even if she is already married, within Islam captive women may...

Accommodating is the preferred style of conflict resolution often used by the Obama Administration to resolve crisis on the diplomatic stage. Today’s Democrats are too willing to put the needs of terrorists before this country, allies or any other democracies. In fact the only people they see as enemies are American conservatives. Obama will surrender victory in order to maintain peace with people whose only goal is to wipe America off the face of the earth. This White House refuses to do or say anything that might upset...

Obama's brothers in Egypt: "Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Party Member Mahmoud Khalil: Americans Are Cows, Not Cowboys; 'America Will Disintegrate' Jews Control World’s Gold" MEMRI Following are excerpts from an interview with Mahmoud Khalil, a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which aired on Al-Nas TV on September 11, 2012. Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV. Mahmoud Khalil: "Your regular American is not such a great intellectual as we imagine him to be." Interviewer: "He is not interested in politics..." Mahmoud Khalil: He has a huge body. Eats like a pig. He is like...

Two unidentified masked men shot Mursal Isse Siad, 55, outside his home in Beledweyne, 206 miles (332 kilometers) north of Mogadishu, for leaving Islam, Muslim and Christian sources told Morning Star News. The assailants fled immediately after the murder. Siad’s oldest daughter (name withheld), 15, said her father was killed “because he failed to attend the mosque for prayers and used to pray at home. He used to share with us about Jesus.” She said that he had received messages on his mobile phone stating, “We know what you are doing, and you must stop, otherwise you risk your life.”...

Nearly 23 years after Rashad Khalifa was stabbed and beaten to death, the man accused of doing it has been convicted of premeditated, first-degree murder. A Pima County jury returned the guilty verdict against Glen Francis, 52, after three hours of deliberations. ... Attorneys for both sides agreed Khalifa, 54, was likely killed because of his religious teachings. After studying the Quran for years, he found a mathematical code and came to believe two verses were satanic. In his English translation of the Quran, he removed those verses. He also taught that people should follow the word of God and...

please find two seemingly unrelated stories about two separate Jihadis from the Mobile, Alabama area (one of our favorite cities actually and the permanent homeport for the battleship USS Alabama, one of the great historical treasures that every American should visit at least once). Nevertheless, something is going on in that area. There are two known Jihadis that made news recently, one we have known about for some time and the other only more recently came on the scene. The first one is Omar Hammami, a Muslim who grew up in Daphne, Alabama, a really nice town outside of Mobile....

U.S. on alert for Islamist ire to ‘Zero Dark Thirty’Film depicts harsh interrogation methods By Kristina Wong The Washington Times Thursday, December 20, 2012 **SNIP** Yet fears of a violent backlash against “Zero Dark Thirty,” which goes into wide release in the U.S. on Jan. 11, are swirling in some corners of Washington and appear to be accentuated by a public perception of a U.S. government consultative role in pre-production research for the film. Radical corners of the Muslim world have been known to fan the flames around perceived official U.S. involvement with material considered blasphemous, as happened this autumn...