Free Republic

Was CNN breaking story - 4000 protesters burn flag, raise black flag of ROP... an outrage.

DAHSHOUR, Egypt (AP) -- When the angry mob was rampaging through town, storming her home and those of other Christians, the 70-year-old woman hid in her cow pen, pushing a rock against the door. There she cowered for hours, at one point passing out from tear gas being fired by police that seeped in. When Sameeha Wehba emerged just before dawn, she found she was the only Christian left in this small Egyptian village just south of Cairo. Dahshour's entire Christian community - as many as 100 families some estimate - fled to nearby towns in the violence earlier this...

Liberal talk show host Tawfiq Okasha recently appeared on "Egypt Today," airing a video of Muslims slicing off a young man's head off for the crime of apostasy -- in this instance, the crime of converting to Christianity and refusing to renounce it. The video—be warned, it is immensely graphic—can be seen here (the actual execution appears from minute 1:13-4:00). For those who prefer not to view it, a summary follows

An Islamist who believes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States were an American conspiracy is the front-runner in Egypt’s presidential race, a new poll shows. Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, formerly a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, led the field of 13 candidates with 32 percent of the vote in a survey released Monday by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Mr. Abolfotoh expressed his views on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in an interview last year with Egypt scholar Eric Trager. Mr. Trager, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,...

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, in a policy U-turn, on Saturday named its deputy leader and businessman Khairat al-Shater as its presidential candidate for a vote in May after initially pledging it would not run for the nation's top job. The Brotherhood said it changed tack after reviewing other candidates in the race and after parliament, where its Freedom and Justice Party controls the biggest bloc, was unable to meet "the demands of the revolution", a reference to its mounting criticism of the ruling army's handling of the transition. Given the Brotherhood's strong showing in the parliamentary election and its broad grass-roots...

CAIRO — As Egypt’s ruling generals near the end of their formal reign, the country’s main Islamist party is asserting increasing authority over the political system and openly confronting the powerful military. The Muslim Brotherhood’s growing influence came into sharp focus Sunday as its political wing and other Islamists established a dominant role in the 100-member body chosen by the parliament to write the country’s new, post-revolutionary constitution. Liberals and leftists vowed to boycott the assembly, and at least eight withdrew from it, accusing the Islamist parties of taking over the process. The move came just days after the Brotherhood...

Several thousand men and women demonstrated outside the Tunisian parliament on Friday to demand the inclusion of Islamic law in the north African country's future constitution. "The people want the application of God's sharia", "Our Koran is our constitution", "No constitution without sharia," and "Tunisia is neither secular nor scientific, it is an Islamic state", cried the protesters, drawn mainly from the Islamist Salafist movement. Some men climbed on the roof of the building and unfurled a banner that read: "The people belong to God."

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — A large map of Libya hangs on the wall in the home of Idris al-Rahel, with a line down the middle dividing the country in half. Al-Rahel, a former army officer, leads a movement to declare semiautonomy in eastern Libya, where most of the country's oil fields are located. The region's top tribal leaders meet Tuesday in the east's main city Benghazi to consider unilaterally announcing an eastern state, linked to the west only by a tenuous "federal union." Opponents fear such a declaration could be the first step toward outright dividing the country. But some...

The Arab Spring may quickly become an Islamist Winter in Libya, reads a new report circulated among federal law enforcement and written for policymakers on Capitol Hill. An advance copy of the report entitled "A View to Extremist Currents In Libya" and obtained by Fox News, states that extremist views are gaining ground in the north African country and suggests a key figure emerging in Libya formerly tied to al Qaeda has not changed his stripes. "Despite early indications that the Libyan revolution might be a largely secular undertaking ... the very extremist currents that shaped the philosophies of Libya...

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Pentagon chief Leon Panetta made history Saturday as the first American defense secretary to set foot on Libyan soil and said he hoped the post-Moammar Gadhafi government could assemble the country’s militias into “one Libya.” Panetta has indicated that the U.S. will give the Libyans some time to gain control of the militias that overthrew Gadhafi during an eight-month civil war before determining how to help the fledgling government. At a news conference in the capital with Prime Minister Abdal-Raheem al-Keeb, Panetta said that he was confident that the new Libyan government is reaching out to...

In the eight months since the Egyptian Revolution, radical Islamic groups are rising to power, the army seems unwilling or unable to stop a growing rash of sectarian violence and the long-standing friendship between the U.S., Israel and Egypt is in serious question. “I am the enemy of democracy,” Hesham al Ashry said in an interview with Fox News in his Cairo tailor shop. The devout Muslim is a main organizer in a group called the Salafists, which is working to bring Shariah law to Egypt. They, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, have risen quickly in the past eight months...

Lack of U.S. leadership enables radicalization in the Middle EastWhen the Arab Spring uprisings broke out earlier this year, many foreign-policy experts were alarmed that the revolts took the White House by surprise and concerned by the Obama administration’s lackadaisical response. Washington adopted a hands-off policy toward the sweeping political changes, arguing that the people of the region should be free to chart their own destiny. “There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity,” President Obama said in May. In his typically weak manner, he also cautioned that, “we must...

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its "basic source". But that formulation can be interpreted in many ways - it was also the basis of Egypt's largely secular constitution under President Hosni Mubarak, and remains so after his fall. Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi's era that he said was in conflict with Sharia - that banning polygamy. In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya's economy integrate...

The National Transitional Council (NTC) has declared the liberation of Libya eight-months after the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule began. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the leader of the NTC, kneeled in prayer after taking the stand in a celebration in Benghazi on Sunday and promised to uphold Islamic law. Thousands of people in Kish Square sang the national anthem and waved flags, both of which date back to the monarchy which Gaddafi overthrew in a 1969 coup. "We as a Muslim nation have taken Islamic sharia (law) as the source of legislation, therefore any law that contradicts the principles of...

Islamists are expected to do well in Tunisia's first democratic election Sunday, 10 months after the ouster of autocratic leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in a popular uprising that set off protest movements around the Arab world. The Ennahda party will almost certainly win a share of power after the vote, which will set a democratic standard for other Arab countries where uprisings have triggered political change or governments have tried to rush reforms to stave off unrest. Sunday's vote is for an assembly which will draft a new constitution to replace the one Ben Ali manipulated to entrench his...

IDF Home Front Command chief Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg says the 'Arab Spring' may bring an 'Islamic Winter' - and War. 'Arab Spring' revolutions have destabilized the region and raised the likelihood of war, top general says. "It looks like the Arab Spring, but it can also be a radical Islamic winter," IDF Home Front Command chief Major General Eyal Eisenberg said during a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on Monday. "This leads us to the conclusion that through a long-term process, the likelihood of an all-out war is increasingly growing," Eisenberg said. "Iran...