Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Two years after protracted American-Saudi negotiations persuaded the State Department that the Saudis would remove religious intolerance from their national textbooks, a new study finds the books still portray non-Sunni Muslims as the enemies of true believers. The report from the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute finds that the Saudi textbooks are filled with the austere supremacism of the Wahhabi sect of Islam, despite promises from the Kingdom in 2006 to alter them. For example, a textbook for 10th graders on Islamic jurisprudence not only says it is permissible in Islam to murder a homosexual,...

Excerpt - The kidnappers of five British hostages seized in Baghdad last year have claimed in a video-taped statement that one of the men has killed himself. According to the statement, the hostage – named only as Jason – died on May 25, four days before the first anniversary of the abduction. ~ snip ~

One recurring question that has been at the forefront of most intelligence agencies since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaida on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon just 1 mile outside Washington concerns the ongoing efforts by terrorist groups to acquire weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological and mostly nuclear. Each of the NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons comes with a certain advantage and disadvantage -- for the terrorist, that is. Of the three sorts, biological weapons are quite possibly the easiest to safely reproduce in a lab, assuming one knows what to do. A...

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have replaced top police and security officials in the Muslim dominated Xinjiang province, which is the hotbed of separatism and political violence. They have also closed down 41 "illegal" places of worship. These places of worship were used as training ground for conducting a "holy war", Chen Zhuangwei Chen, the police chief of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province, said.

The gentleman who was one of the five live persons (and 199 cadavers, some held for 30 years) Israel traded for the bodies of two of its soldiers is in the news. He vows to continue the struggle. Well, last time he shot a civilian father in front of his 4-year girl, and then crushed her skull with his rifle butt. What a hero! What a blow for the oppressed Palestinians! May we suggest a Nobel Peace Prize for the gentleman? A trifling honor we shall no doubt will have to beg him to accept. So, good buddy good pal,...

There is by now only one constant in the entire sad Iraqi saga since the brilliant three-week victory of 2003, and the subsequent violent reconstruction that followed. In our collective exasperation almost all the bad news from the front is due to someone else’s stupidity; any good reports are always the result of one’s own insight and sobriety. The result is irony, but also amnesia about what was written and said in the recent past. Consider the paradoxes we’ve witnessed. We were paralyzed for a year over Ambassador Joe Wilson’s carnival-like mission, in part due to the prompt of his...

8 July 2008 | 16:36 | Source: Beta PRIŠTINA -- Representatives of civil society in Kosovo will start lobbying for Kosovo's recognition, write Priština media. Daily Koha Ditore claims that there is financial support from George Soros and the Kosovo Fund for Open Society: “The lobbying group will include Veton Suroi and Blerim Shala, the coordinator of the former Kosovo negotiating team, Luan Shllaku, the director of the Kosovo Fund for Open Society, and Muhamet Mustafa, the dean of the Reinvest University.� The group‘s work will be based on the plan and recommendations of former international envoy to Kosovo Martti...

S ixty prominent leaders from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Qatar, and Iraq have supported development of closer ties with Kosovo and fast recognition of Kosovo independence by the Arab states. The conclusion came from the conference “Kosova and the Arab world� organized in Amman, Jordan, by the Al Quds Center for Political Studies and Forum 2015 from Prishtina. Speakers at the conference were Kosovo intellectuals like Veton Surroi, Muhamet Mustafa and Qemalj Morina, and influential intellectuals and civil society leaders from the Arab world. “Kosovo topic arose interest among the Arab participants at the conference, who saw it important to...

16 July 2008 Gjakova _ The UN authorities in Kosovo have pledged to hold talks with council officials in Gjakova after it emerged a park is being built over the remains of a Serbian Orthodox Church. Local Serb radio KIM found that the construction of the park in Gjakova (known in Serbian as Djakovica), an overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian town in western Kosovo, is now in its final stages. A metre of soil was placed on top of the church’s foundations and trees and flowers planted over it. Some 20 workers from the Bala construction company were finishing work at the...

Last update: 3:22 p.m. EDT July 17, 2008 GRACANICA, Serbia, July 17, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The following statement was issued today by His Grace ARTEMIJE, Bishop of Ras and Prizren, and pastor of Orthodox Christians in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija: "On July 21, President George W. Bush is scheduled to meet with Hashim Thaci, styled by some 'Prime Minister' of the separatist Albanian Muslim administration in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. As pastor of the Orthodox Christian people of Kosovo, I protest to the fullest possible degree the fact that President Bush would...

"This is to raise awareness about the civilian toll in Iraq, and how a lot of them have been forced by the consequences of the invasion to become suicide bombers."

In a few moments, we'll open this up to a discussion, but first I'll make a few comments about some of the emerging threats that we face in the 21st century, and offer some ideas about how we can face those threats. It's time to send a clear message to the world: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong deterrent. But we'll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy. We'll negotiate with Russia to achieve deep reductions in both our nuclear...

Madrassas do not breed terrorists: Musharraf ISLAMABAD: There is a need to dispel the western notion that Islamic educational institutions breed extremists and terrorists, President Pervez Musharraf said on Wednesday. Talking to International Islamic University (IIU) Rector Dr Manzoor Ahmed, the president said that the institutions of higher education were best placed to promote a critical dialogue within the Muslim world and that they could create an interfaith harmony. President Musharraf, who is also chancellor of the university, also discussed issues related to university academics, including improving the higher education system in the country, with the IIU rector. Sources said...

I was watching Morning Joe today, and someone (I don't recall if it was Mika or Joe, or whom ...) was lamenting the fact that polling shows us that 39 percent of Americans (read yokels) mistakenly believe Obama attended a Muslim school in Indonesia, etc. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek similarly mocks the notion, writing: His stepfather sent him to a Muslim school. False. When Obama lived in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, his mother and stepfather sent him for a time to a Catholic school, and for a time to an Indonesian public elementary school, where he had a...

Excerpt - A teenage Omar Khadr sobs uncontrollably as Canadian spy agents question him at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a brief video excerpt released via the internet early Tuesday morning. The 10-minute video posted just after 5 a.m. ET is of poor quality and the voices are often inaudible, as it was never intended to be viewed by the public. But it shows Khadr, 16 at the time, being interviewed by Canadian officials in late February 2003. ~ snip ~

Turning their Backs on Jihad By Britta Sandberg More and more prominent terrorists are defecting from the cause. The Egyptian theologian Dr. Fadl is the best known, but many others are likewise reconsidering. Experts see it as a delayed reaction to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Noman Benotman walks into a restaurant on Park Lane, the exclusive, minimalist sort of place that is currently all the rage in London. People in business suits converse in hushed tones at nearby tables. Benotman, wearing an orange polo shirt and a gray checked blazer, fits in perfectly. Benotman, a 41-year-old man from...

It is increasingly hard to draw a line between the agendas of the violent and non-violent -- Who says that Islamists can't learn a trick or two from the West when they have to? Take a glance at the glossy brochure of Islam Expo - billed as Europe's “biggest Islamic cultural festival” - which ended at Olympia yesterday. You could be forgiven for thinking that you were looking at the catalogue for the forthcoming Boden sale that comes to the venerable London exhibition centre in a few weeks' time. Visitors to Islam Expo would have witnessed such innocent activities as...

Former CIA agent: "We do not face a global jihadist 'movement'" Glenn L. Carle "was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats." In "Overstating Our Fears" in the Washington Post, July 13, he says this: We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda. In a circulating e-mail, LTC Joseph Myers, who has served...

....says Washington Post. There are a large number of "depending on" qualifiers and so this is by no means a done deal. In any case, the military has no plan to send additional troops to Afghanistan till next years. If this happens, three brigades slated for Iraq in 2009 will retrain for Afghanistan. So why are we not happy? Haven't we been yelling and screaming for more troops for Afghanistan? We are not happy for two good reasons. First, the US has an absolute shortage of combat brigades. That three may go to Afghanistan and not Iraq changes nothing: the...

Next week's interfaith conference in Madrid, sponsored by the Saudi King, may be inherently limited in scope — but that doesn't diminish its capacity for trouble. Like the debate over Senator Obama's proposal to enter into direct talks with the president of Iran, critics are put in the awkward position of opposing dialogue in favor of conflict. Why, ask proponents of dialogue, should we look a gift horse in the mouth. The danger in interfaith dialogues, as in diplomatic ones, is the price of admission. The thing to watch will be not what is said but what isn't. And whose...

(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama discussed his vision for the world in a wide-ranging foreign policy discussion with CNN's Fareed Zakaria. The Democratic presidential hopeful answered some tough questions about how he would deal with the world's crises, what he would do if Osama bin Laden is caught and his plan for Iraq. Here are some highlights from the interview, which aired Sunday on "Fareed Zakaria -- GPS." ZAKARIA: Tell me, what is your first memory of a foreign policy event that shaped you, shaped your life? OBAMA: A first memory. Well, you know, it wasn't so much an event....

Heard this music video parady on Youtube and amost fell off my chair... :)

Islamists have it all over everyone else in the art of intimidation using freedom in western civilization as a weapon in the battle to rule the world. One reason this practice has been successful is that civilized societies cannot comprehend a doctrine so pervasive in its goal to take over the world that so many non Muslims are unwilling to accept that we are in a war of different worlds. The threat is not extra terrestrial; it is a real threat by real people. To followers of Islam there is but one goal; replace all other religions and governments with...

DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda Yemeni wing called in an Internet posting on Wednesday for kidnappings of tourists in the Arab country to press for the release of jailed militants. "It is a duty that detainees be freed through any rough way such as kidnapping tourists, who are numerous, or through various other ways," an article in the e-magazine of al Qaeda in the South of the Arabian Peninsula read. The group said it was pained some militants "had turned themselves in voluntarily to the ruling regime to improve their situation", in an apparent reference to a Yemeni-American thought...

War On Terror: As Washington moves an aircraft carrier off Pakistan's coast, U.S. commandos are reportedly poised to launch raids against terror targets inside Pakistan. It's about time.It appears hawks within the Pentagon and CIA have won a long-running policy battle with risk-averse officials in the administration and diplomats at the State Department. The result is a more aggressive, go-it-alone policy in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks against our troops and the Afghan government. Politics and diplomacy had not produced the desired results, and they've had ample opportunity to work. For nearly seven...

[Arab racism against Jews even inside Israel] Fear of calling a terrorist a terrorist Ha'aretz, Israel - Jul 7, 2008 If justifying the murder of innocents because they belong to a certain hated group is not abject racism, I'd like to know what is. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999795.html

With or Without Nukes, Iran Is a Mortal Threat Elan Journo Imagine that your neighborhood is overrun by a gang. These brutes are wielding crowbars, knives, and pistols in a frenzied spree of home break-ins and mugging and murder. Now suppose the police reveal that their grand strategy for dealing with this gang is to block them from getting submachine guns--as if without such weapons, the gang would no longer bother people. Would you sleep soundly at night? Or would you be outraged? Of course you would, because this gang--even without more powerful weapons--is already a serious menace that must...

BAGHDAD (ANS) -- The Reverend Canon Andrew White, affectionately known as The Vicar of Baghdad, says the situation for Christians in Iraq is "clearly worse" than under the Saddam Hussein regime, toppled by US and Coalition forces in 2003. In a segment of the CBS news program 60 Minutes, originally broadcast on Dec. 2, 2007, updated June 26 and aired on June 29, 2008, correspondent Scott Pelley asked Canon White: "You were here during Saddam’s reign. And now after. Which was better? Which was worse?" "The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied. "There’s no comparison between...

STEWART: That's the way to read through it. What do you feel like-- Do you watch the news that we're watching in the United States? LOGAN: No. STEWART: Do you see what we're hearing about the war? Do you-- LOGAN: No. STEWART: So we might actually know everything? LOGAN: If I were to watch the news that you're hearing in the United States, I'd just blow my brains out. 'Cause it would drive me nuts. STEWART: Really? LOGAN: Yeah.

The Karachi Kids -- the two Americans who are in a madrassa in Pakistan, have been released and on their way home. The director of the documentary who found them says "I am grateful for the safe return of the two American children from Atlanta from a Taliban-backed madrassa but the mullah claims to have up to 78 more in his institution. The headmaster comes to the United States once a year and personally recruits American children to enroll in his madrassa. This pipeline to jihad must be closed. Let me be clear – these children do not learn math,...

Suspected Shiite militiamen have begun using powerful rocket-propelled bombs to attack U.S. military outposts in recent months, broadening the array of weapons used against American troops. U.S. military officials call the devices Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs. They are propane tanks packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and powered by 107mm rockets. They are often fired by remote control from the backs of trucks, sometimes in close succession. Rocket-propelled bombs have killed at least 21 people, including at least three U.S. soldiers, this year. The latest reported rocket-propelled bomb attack occurred Tuesday at Joint Security Station Ur, a...

Writing in Human Events, Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer observes that, “[t]hree years after the July 7, 2005, jihad terror attacks in London, the jihad in Britain is stronger than ever. It is not proceeding by means of more terrorism, but by stealth and by the preemptive surrender of all too many British officials.” He explains: The stealth jihad is a deeply-rooted, well-funded and wide-ranging effort to impose Islamic law, Sharia, upon the non-Muslim populations of Western countries. In England, and in America, it sometimes takes the form of an effort to win acceptance for Sharia law by portraying it as...

HUNDREDS of Islamist women gathered at the radical Red Mosque in Pakistani capital today and vowed to raise their children for holy war, days after a suicide bomber killed 18 people after a similar rally. Chanting slogans of "jihad is our way", burqa-clad women, some with babies, listened to fiery speeches from the daughter of the mosque's jailed cleric on the eve of the anniversary of a commando raid on the complex in which more than 100 people died. "Our mujahideen (fighters) laid down their lives for the enforcement of the Islamic system in Pakistan. We are left behind to...

Not trying to be spammy here, but has anyone else seen this film? I just watched it and strongly believe that it should be required viewing for every American, lest we forget exactly who and what we're up against. From the website: "Obsession - Radical Islam's War Against the West is a new film that will challenge the way you look at the world. Almost 70 years ago, Europe found itself at war with one of the most sinister figures in modern history: Adolf Hitler. When the last bullet of World War II was fired, over 50 million people were...

Some in Britain have come up with an ingenuous way of countering the threat of jihad: They pretend it does not exist. One would think this would be rather difficult in the wake of the recent terrorist attempts in London and Glasgow, but the jihad-deniers use these very incidents to make their case. The failure of the bombs to go off, they argue, is proof that the would-be terrorists were an assortment of bungling fools. What's more, they extend this characterization to all those who swear by the cause. On this view, the whole concept of jihad is merely a...

In his address Lord Phillips praised the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who famously said last February that it was “inevitable” that Sharia would come to Britain. “An approach to law which simply said – there’s one law for everybody – I think that’s a bit of a danger,” said the Archbishop. He had apparently forgotten, if he ever knew, that the idea of “one law for everybody” was one of the great achievements of Judeo-Christian civilization, and was rooted in the idea of the dignity of all human beings as created in the image of God.

Three German tourists kidnapped in eastern Turkey Three German tourists were kidnapped in Turkey's eastern province of Agri, CNNTurk reported on Wednesday. They were kidnapped by terrorists, it added quoting the governor of Agri. (UPDATED) Three German climbers on Mount Ararat were kidnapped in Turkey's eastern province of Agri, CNNTurk reported on Wednesday. The three, who were party of a 13-member team, were kidnapped by terrorists, it added quoting the governor of Agri

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Three police officers were killed in a shooting outside the United States consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday, Turkish television said. Television images appeared to show four bodies on the ground in front of the high-walled complex. Media earlier said that two police had been shot dead. The U.S. embassy in Ankara said it was aware of an incident near the Istanbul consulate, but had no further details.

Three years after the London Tube and bus bombings, it is alarming beyond measure to record that Britain is even now sleepwalking into Islamisation. Some people will think this is mere hyperbole. However, that's the problem. Britain still doesn't grasp that it is facing a pincer attack from both terrorism and cultural infiltration and usurpation. The former is understood; the latter is generally not acknowledged or is even denied, and those who call attention to it are pilloried as either ' Islamophobes' or alarmists who have taken up residence on Planet Paranoia. Certainly, the police and security service have been...

TEHRAN: Iran will hit Tel Aviv, U.S. shipping in the Gulf and American interests around the world if it is attacked over its disputed nuclear activities, an aide to Iran's Supreme Leader was quoted as saying on Tuesday. "The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe," the students news agency ISNA quoted Ali Shirazi as saying in a speech to Revolutionary Guards. "The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran. If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian...

Islamists' Catch-22 Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. Try a little thought experiment. What would have happened in this country during the Cold War if the Soviet Union successfully neutralized anti-communists opposed to the Kremlin’s plans for world domination? Of course, Moscow strove to discredit those in America and elsewhere who opposed its totalitarian agenda – especially after Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s excesses made it fashionable to vilify patriots by accusing them of believing communists were “under every bed.” But what if the USSR and its ideological soul-mates in places like China, North Korea, Cuba, Eastern Europe and parts of Africa had been...

Try a little thought experiment. What would have happened in this country during the Cold War if the Soviet Union successfully neutralized anti-communists opposed to the Kremlin’s plans for world domination? Of course, Moscow strove to discredit those in America and elsewhere who opposed its totalitarian agenda – especially after Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s excesses made it fashionable to vilify patriots by accusing them of believing communists were “under every bed.”

Under pressure from fundamentalist forms of Islam and bursts of sectarian violence, the most populous Christian community in the Middle East is seeking safety by turning inward, cutting day-to-day social ties that have bound Muslim to Christian in Egypt for centuries, members of both communities say. Attacks this summer on monks and shopkeepers belonging to Egypt's Coptic Christian minority, and scattered clashes between Muslims and Christians, have compelled many of Egypt's estimated 6 million to 8 million Copts to isolate themselves in a nation with more than 70 million Muslims. To a degree, the separation will stand as the legacy...

"If you can't beat 'em, subvert 'em with subterfuge."--RE Bierce With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray, it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists, or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the ideological. --Cinnamon Stillwell, San Francisco Chronicle If you're an Islamist, it's time for Plan B. Islamists aren't dummies: even as al-Qaida is destroyed on the...

Nicholson Baker and Pat Buchanan are high on the list of Osama Bin Laden's "Favorite Infidels". They have done the impossible. They have written well-selling books proclaiming that World War II should NOT have been fought. Sir Winston Churchill was the real villian of the Forties they claim. They claim that World War II marked the destruction of the West. Because Britain, France and The Netherlands were bled white by the war, they could no longer hold on to their colonies. Aw pshaw. To digress a moment, young presidential candidate Adolf Hitler perceived a problem selling Nazism to the German...

This will come as no surprise to anyone who is aware of the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum about that organization's "grand jihad" in the United States; Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani's 1999 testimony about 80% of mosques in America being under the leadership of extremists; and the 2005 Center for Religious Freedom report about the massive distribution of hateful jihadist and Islamic supremacist material in mosques in this country. It will come as no surprise to those of us who have noted the utter failure of the Muslim community in America to do anything to teach against the jihad ideology. "Undercover...

From Nigeria to Indonesia, Christians are under siege in virtually every single country in the Muslim world, the victims of countless acts of discrimination, depredation, brutality, and murder that are so widespread and systematic that it can rightfully be called the new Holocaust. This time, however, the perpetrators of this Holocaust aren’t wearing swastikas, but kufi skull caps and hijabs. Some of the oldest Christian communities in the world are subject to relentless attack and teeter on the brink of extinction at the hands of the “Religion of Peace”: Palestinian Christians in Gaza and the West Bank; Assyrian, Syriac and...

KABUL: A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-filled car into the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul, leaving at least 40 people dead, officials and a witness said. ( Watch video ) "The number of deaths at this time is 28, while 141 people were wounded, half of them hospitalised," health ministry spokesman Abdullah Fahim said, adding that the figure was based on information from several hospitals. The blast destroyed about four cars outside the embassy in the heart of the city, and flesh and broken limbs were scattered at the scene, an Afghan witness said. The bomber hit the...

Excerpt - A suicide bomber has rammed a car full of explosives into the gates of the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital, killing 28 people, officials say. A spokesman for the health ministry said 141 people were injured, including civilians and security forces. The attack is one of the deadliest - after a relatively quiet period in Kabul. The Taleban have vowed to step up their attacks on the capital. ~ snip ~

On Wed. July 2, 2008, an Arab started trying to kill people on a very packed busy street in Jerusalem with his work vehicle, a caterpillar type of huge bulldozer. He just drove it onto the adjacent packed street and started trying to crush cars. One of the first cars he attacked was ours. In our car were my husband in the front passenger seat, me the driver, and 3 of our girls in the back; we were on our way to meet visiting friends. As we drove toward the place, we were on the packed street called Sarei Yisrael,...