Free Republic

Muslims and the US Election Campaign: “A Time for Change” by Mounir Azzaoui While America’s Muslim leaders are calling on Muslims to vote for Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate is trying to quash the belief held by many that he is a Muslim. Nevertheless, Obama is considered by many to be a real alternative. Mounir Azzaoui reports from Washington. In view of the fact that the race for the White House is now in full swing, it is unlikely that the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) choice of motto for its annual conference in Columbus (Ohio) was...

The war on free speech by Islamic fanatics has claimed another victim. This time they did it without killing anyone, staging a riot or even issuing a threat. Fear alone turned out to be enough for Random House to drop plans to publish a novel about a wife of the prophet Muhammad. Probably the only surprising thing about this story was that Random House had, in the first place, signed on to the idea of publishing The Jewel of Medina by journalist Sherry Jones. The deal was inked last year even though the world already had witnessed the murder of...

Roots of Religious Terrorism Brett interviews Professor James W Jones, on the new book, Blood that Cries Out from the Earth: The Psychology of Religious Terrorism. Dr. Jones, talks about what it is that motivates religious terrorists and the commonalities and differences between religiously motivated terrorists both in the East and West. Dr. Jones has extensively researched the jihadi movement and brings us fantastic insight. Dr. Jones shares with us the dangers of the virtual world and how that aids jihadists in recruitment and what must be done to counter to those efforts? Are we winning or are we losing...

Madness -- politically correct madness. The FBI showed it wasn't anti-Arab by hiring Nada Prouty, and she handsomely repaid them for it, too. Nada Nadim Prouty Update: "Fake citizen worked on major terror cases," by David Ashenfelter for the Detroit Free Press (thanks to Sr. Soph): Nada Prouty, the Lebanese immigrant who parlayed a sham marriage into U.S. citizenship and key jobs at the FBI and CIA, worked on several counter-terrorism investigations, including the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, her lawyer said in court documents Thursday. "Nada Nadim Prouty accepts full responsibility for her actions and is...

WASHINGTON (Routers) In an effort to drive a wedge between moderate Germans and those more extreme, the State Department issued new rules today, stipulating that the word "Nazi" was not to be used by department employees to describe the enemy. Germany recently declared war on our country, as part of its alliance with Imperial Japan, which itself attacked us at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii a little over a week ago, and with which we are now at war. "Nazism has a great many admirable features," said a department spokesman at Foggy Bottom, "and we want to make clear that despite...

A Dutch court is presently considering a petition by the Dutch Islamic Federation seeking a review of whether Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders's new 15-minute video Fitna (strife) violates Dutch hate-speech laws. The video is a graphic description of jihadist Salafi Islam (or “jihadism”) as an interpretation of the Quran that seeks to dominate the world and slaughter non-believers. These reactions confirm the fundamental problem within European society. While the international community is pre-occupied with condemning Geert Wilders for producing a video on the barbaric manifestations of jihadism, no one is denying the facts presented in the video. No...

Like pensions and insurance, defence is one of those subjects to which too many people only pay attention when things go wrong. You might think, in the light of the past decade, that this would have changed. But you would be sadly mistaken. Even today, even after Iraq, few mainstream MPs without an immediate personal or constituency interest in the subject turn up in the Commons for defence debates. Many politicians who are thoughtful about a range of domestic issues still pass by on the other side when the conversation gravitates to the military. In this they reflect the British...

The appearance of nuclear weapons materials on the black market is a growing global concern, and it is crucial that the United States reinforce its team of nuclear forensics experts and modernize its forensics tools to prepare for or respond to a possible nuclear terrorist attack. Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney, starting a visit on Saturday to try to push forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Washington would never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security. Palestinians accuse Israel of undermining the U.S.-sponsored peace talks by expanding Jewish settlements, refusing to remove West Bank roadblocks and mounting offensives against militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip who fire cross-border rockets into the Jewish state. "America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is Israel's right to protect itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction,"...

Was Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King on the mark last week when he asserted Islamic terrorists would rejoice if Sen. Barack Obama becomes the next U.S. president? As a journalist and author who has conducted dozens of on-the-record interviews with Muslim terrorists, including with some of the most notorious Palestinian terror leaders, and who has documented many of those interviews in a recently released, 210-page book, "Schmoozing with Terrorists," I can answer the above question with a resounding "yes." Terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election victory not so much because of the senator's middle name –...

One expert said some productions made by the terror group were 'good enough to put on the Discovery Channel' PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN In an Internet age, al-Qaeda prizes geek jihadis as much as would-be suicide bombers and gunmen. The terror network is recruiting computer-savvy technicians to produce sophisticated Web documentaries and multimedia products aimed at Muslim audiences in the US, Britain and other Western countries. Already, the terror movement's al-Sahab production company is turning out high quality material, some of which rivals productions by Western media companies. The documentaries appear regularly on Islamist Web sites, which al-Qaeda uses to recruit followers...

<p>NEW YORK -- In the video game that Wafaa Bilal created, his avatar is steely-eyed and hooded, with an automatic rifle at his side, an ammunition belt around his waist, a fuse in his hand and the mien of a knightly suicide-bomber. He is the "Virtual Jihadi."</p>

The leader of Hizbullah Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has now called for revenge against Israelis and Jews around the world, for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, which he claims was done by Israel. It does not matter, of course, who actually pulled off the assassination. Israel and the Jews would be blamed by Hizbullah even if Syria had been responsible. Blame Israel and the Jews for everything is what Hizbullah always does. In the past, Hizbullah has taken revenge against what it claimed to be Israeli actions by murdering Jewish schoolchildren in Argentina. Once again it is threatening to attack innocent...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byQD8VPhvdM&feature=related

<p>Fire officials found three separate “points of origin,� all near the intersection of Silverado Canyon Road and Santiago Canyon Road. Two were on one side of the road, and the third was on the other. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing,” said Kris Concepcion, a fire authority battalion chief. Also, the fire traveled 3 miles in its first 20 minutes when it was ignited about 6 p.m. Sunday, he said.</p>

We’ve already heard the tales of abuse of the “illegal enemy combatants” housed in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. War-on-Terror suspects have been detained, forced to eat unnatural foods, given only paperback editions of the Koran and denied the comforts of sexual congress with livestock. To these horrors must now be added that of repatriation. It seems that detainees released and returned to their native lands are dissatisfied with this resolution of their status. Their home countries remain the pestilent “hell-holes” that contributed to the detainees’ motivation to join the ranks of the Islamic jihad against America....

Throughout our young history, Americans have been admonished to "Remember the Alamo," "Remember the Maine" and "Remember Pearl Harbor." These remembrances - and others - were for the purpose of motivating the public to fight on until an enemy was vanquished. When victory was assured, the memory faded into history. Now, as we approach the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, there are suggestions that we should begin to forget the worst terrorist incident in America's history. Recently, a front-page story in The New York Times suggested it is becoming too much of a burden to remember the attack, that nothing...

History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself -- "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case -- a flawed case -- for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among...

Reporting on the fatalism – or aplomb, depending on your point of view - of New Yorkers in the vicinity of last week’s steam pipe explosion near Grand Central Station, The Washington Post offers this vignette: Malcolm Pollack … heard the blast and thought it sounded like Zeus had declared war on the planet. On the street he comforted a woman who was crying and who kept sobbing "I hate it, I hate it.""You hate what?" Pollack asked."I hate … Muslims," she finally burst out."You mean, you hate yourself for hating Muslims," he said."That's right," she said.Pollack recalled that jump...

In connection with the two planned, but unexecuted terrorist attempts in London on June 28/29, 2007, and the partly-successful terrorist attempt at the Glasgow airport in Scotland on June 30,2007, the police authorities of Glasgow and London are reported to have detained five persons so far for questioning. Two of them are believed to be the perpetrators of the Glasgow attempt, who were picked up from the burning car----one of them with serious burns. Of the remaining three, two were picked up from a car on a highway and one was picked up at Liverpool. 2. The police has not...

The international media barely noticed when Pakistani authorities recently picked up three foreign jihadis, including two German passport holders, in the remote town of Taftan near the Iranian border. But the arrests are being taken seriously by Western intelligence agencies.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Anti-terror agents hunted for more suspects Tuesday in an Indonesian region where alleged militants were arrested days ago, authorities said, declining to say whether those detained included the country's most wanted man. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Indonesian officials had told their Australian counterparts they believe one of those arrested was Abu Dujana, who police here say heads up the Southeast Asian militant network Jemaah Islamiyah. «I can confirm that is what the Indonesians are saying,» Downer told Sky News. «At this stage we haven't got any corroboration of it, but assuming it's correct _...

At a Town Hall meeting in Des Moines, IA, on June 1st, John McCain was asked about his views on torture, and he repeated just about word-for-word what he said in the second Republican debate (video link): Every retired and active duty military officer that I know says we shouldn't torture people. General Colin Powell, all of these others who have had the responsibility of leadership because they fear that if we torture people what happens to their soldiers when they are captured. We don't want that to happen to men and women serving in the military. The Stiletto has...

A bulk purchase of disposable cell phones across The South Plains is turning into a federal investigation. Muleshoe authorities have questioned a man, who according to police reports, confesses to buying 60 pre-paid cell phones that might later be used to detonate bombs in the Middle East. The man reportedly bought the phones from stores like Dollar General, Family Dollar and even Wal-mart's across the region. Lubbock is included in the towns he confessed to buying the phones in. Again, in police reports he admits to a store manager the cell phones would eventually be used as bomb detonators in...

EXCLUSIVE: THE Howard Government has banned a radical Muslim sheik from entering Australia to speak at a major Islamic conference in Melbourne on the weekend. Sheik Bilal Philips, who has been linked to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings in New York, was refused a visa at the last moment by Department of Immigration officials, sources told the Herald Sun. It is believed the department acted on advice from national security agencies.

An online forum tied to the website of the Palestinian group Hamas posted a photo of a little girl in a combat vest and the head band of the terrorist Al-Qassam Brigades. "Have you seen the new child martyr who will soon shake Israel [to the core]?" says the caption, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute blog Future 'martyr' The message accompanying the photo on the Shabakat Falastin Lilhiwar online forum says the girl "is part of the Muslim generation which will go down in history [as a generation] … that refused to [accept] humiliation and defeat." Hamas,...

Mohammed's 31 terror plots from Big Ben to BangkokMurderous trail of the one-time playboy who turned to terrorKey al-Qa'eda figures: where are they now?Mohammed's statement in fullProfile: Khalid Sheikh MohammedLeader: Guilt and GuantánamoUS military tribunals: Q&ADamian Thompson's blog: Just don't call him a 'terrorist'Ben Fenton's blog: The enemy studies historyThe mastermind of the September 11 attacks boasted that he beheaded an American journalist and devised several attacks against key British targets in a shocking confession to a US military panel.The statement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which includes a rambling justification for al-Qa'eda's confrontation with the West and violence against...

In Cairo last year, Deputy Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Habib told us that the 9/11 attacks were "great crimes," but that he doubted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible. It's probably too much to expect that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession that he "was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z" will sway minds like Mr. Habib's. But for the rest of us, the testimony by bin Laden's top operational lieutenant is a jolting re-education in the enemy we face.

The idea that poverty breeds terror appears obvious; how could it be otherwise? And people as different as the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharraf, have also noted a link between poverty and terrorism. In fact, there is now robust evidence that there is no such link. That does not mean, however, that economics is irrelevant. First, to the question of poverty. Of the 50 poorest countries in the world (see list at right) only Afghanistan (and perhaps Bangladesh and Yemen) has much experience in terrorism, global or domestic. But surely that is the...

WASHINGTON – While the U.S. scrutinizes visa requests from countries known as terrorist havens, a British intelligence revelation suggests "homegrown" European jihadists could pose a far greater threat both on the continent and in America, according to a new report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. The basis for that threat is the "Visa Waiver Program" between the U.S. and Great Britain. The program allows anyone subject to the VWP to sidestep in-place security procedures that screen for terrorists. British security officials have revealed there are some 200 cells involving more than 1,600 people. Many under surveillance have links back to...

ZUTPHEN, Netherlands -- On the surface, the young Dutch Moroccan mother looked like an immigrant success story: She studied business in college, hung out at the pub with her friends and was known for her fashionable taste in clothes. So residents of this 900-year-old river town were thrown for a loop last year when Bouchra El-Hor, now 24, appeared in a British courtroom wearing handcuffs under an all-encompassing black veil. Prosecutors said she had covered up plans for a terrorist attack and wrote a letter offering to sacrifice herself and her infant son as martyrs "We were flabbergasted to learn...

Extremist preachers, revenge for killings of relatives push Indonesian militants to terror --------------------------------------- (AP) Basri sports a crude tattoo of Mickey Mouse on his wrist and spent his youth drinking alcohol and jamming to Nirvana songs in a rock band. He was never religious, and even now struggles to remember verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book. Yet until his arrest this month, the 30-year-old was one of Indonesia's most wanted Islamic militants. He was accused in the beheadings of three Christian girls and a string of other attacks on Sulawesi island, a key terror front in the world's most...

Islamist Forum Participants Discuss Threat to Islamist Sites and Ways to Avoid Exposure On-Line A recent discussion on an Islamist forum reflected Islamists' growing concern over the threat posed to their websites by Western intelligence agencies, and over the danger of exposure mujahideen face when online. Forum participants suggested various strategies for ensuring the circulation of Islamist materials and for protecting the Islamists' online anonymity. The following are the main points of the discussion: Addressing the issue of the threat to Islamist websites, one of the forum participants wrote: "We are all aware of the Zionist-Crusader campaign that has been...

The Hezbollah guerrilla group denied Tuesday that four bombs uncovered by the Israeli army on the volatile border were new, saying they were planted before this summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli army announced Monday that it uncovered the bombs on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon and accused the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah of planting the explosives in recent days. If true, it would mark a violation of a U.N.-brokered cease-fire by Hezbollah and indicate a failure by international peacekeepers to prevent new attacks on Israel. Both Hezbollah and U.N. officials said Monday they were...

Somali conflict enters 'final battle' as soldiers hunt down Islamists Friday, January 05, 2007 By Kim Sengupta Ethiopian and Somali government troops are engaged in what they were describing as one the "final battles" of the war with hundreds of Islamist fighters in the south-west of Somalia. With combat intensifying near its border, and renewed fears that the conflict may spread across the region, the Kenyan government sent extra forces to the area and declared the frontier has been "sealed". Sources say American forces were helping to direct attacks by Ethiopian helicopter gunships as US warships stepped up patrols off...

The Junior Scholastic "news magazine" that is written for elementary students and used in thousands of public schools across the United States has published an article promoting "madrassa" school life for American children who are Muslims, much to the outrage of some parents. "Remember way back in grade school and getting Junior Scholastic magazine in school? Well here is an example of what JS has devolved into. Force-feeding the barbaric propaganda of Islamic madrassas down the throats of my 7th and 4th graders. Disgusting," a father wrote WND about the issue, published in November. Scholastic spokeswoman Jennifer Slackman told WND...

Freed jihadis put Pakistan's war on terror 'back to square one', say senior officers By Massoud Ansari in Karachi and Gethin Chamberlain, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:20am GMT 31/12/2006 Anti-terrorism forces in Pakistan have been told to brace themselves for a wave of atrocities. Intelligence officials warned that the security situation is now more precarious than it was before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The aftermath of a suicide bomb in Karachi in 2002 which killed 11 French engineers Senior officers say they are "back to square one" in their fight against international terrorist groups after...

Six Seattle-area Muslims gathered in prayer Friday in front of a US Airways ticket counter at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to protest the removal of six imams from a flight in Minneapolis earlier this week. The prayer lasted eight minutes without incident. "We are asserting the right of Muslims to be free of fear, free of apprehension, to take an equal seat at the table," said Jafar Siddiqui, a member of American Muslims of Puget Sound. Afterward, airport patron Frank Meyers, of San Jose, Calif., accused airport terminal managers of being "politically correct" by allowing the prayer service to block a...

Thanks to a joint education initiative by the US and Saudi governments, 10,936 Saudi students - a record number - are now enrolled at 733 colleges and universities in this country, with 3,000 more expected to arrive next semester. Nearly 87 percent of these students are studying at institutions of higher learning in just four states (California, Florida, Colorado and Virginia). So what are Americans supposed to get out of this educational exchange? Kumbaya, a professor tells The Washington Post: "At the government level, relations are strong. . . . But at the popular level, there's a huge amount of...

I. For nearly 50 years, worries about a nuclear Middle East centered on Israel. Arab leaders resented the fact that Israel was the only atomic power in the region, a resentment heightened by America’s tacit approval of the situation. But they were also pretty certain that Israel (which has never explicitly acknowledged having nuclear weapons) would not drop the bomb except as a very last resort. That is why Egypt and Syria were unafraid to attack Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. “Israel will not be the first country in the region to use nuclear weapons,” went the...

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay are becoming fat. Meals totaling 4,200 calories per day are brought to their cells. U.S. government dietary guidelines recommend 2,000 to 3,000 calories per day for weight maintenance. One detainee has almost doubled in weight, to 410 pounds. The meals are all prepared according to Islamic guidelines. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) said the revelation of over-feeding of prisoners confirms his charges of abuse and torture. “Does the Bush Administration’s cruelty know no bounds?” Durbin asked. “Why not whole grains, fruits and vegetables? Why not a healthy diet?” Guantanamo official, Commander Justin Freih, explained, “Whole grains, fruits...

As we (or the better informed among us at least) celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto this Saturday, marking the date in 1571 when the navy of Pope Pius V's Holy League turned back the Ottoman Turks from one of their recurrent jihads, it might be opportune to consider how the Islamic world has advanced politically over the last half century.... ...To each his own, says I. Better that Arab-Muslim passions be turned against their own city councilmen and politicos than against the Zionist-Crusader Conspiracy, and better that Sunnis and Shias proclaim death to each other rather than...

Spencer on the Redeker death threats at HotairTwo guys they want deadToday's Jihad Watch videoblog at Hotair deals with the strange contradictions of the death threats against French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, and we review the half a decade of war on terror since, the central question that comes to the minds of both experts and policymakers is this – who is winning the war and where are we in its prosecution? And to refine, is al Qaeda on the retreat, is Afghanistan working, is Iraq surviving the challenge, and is Lebanon’s Cedars Revolution on the rise or has it been defeated? Is Hezbollah’s war changing the U.S. strategy regarding Iran and Israel? And finally, is the U.S. homeland secure,...

Pope Benedict XVI, the "Panzer pope," has done the unusual in modern discourse: he has jumped into the war on terror with armored facts from six centuries ago that refute a deal of the appeasement from 21st-century Europeans and their American fellow travelers. You will recall that Pope Benedict recently spoke, auf Deutsch, at Regensburg University, where he once enjoyed a professorship. The speech was dry, mechanical, unappetizing, a predictable German exercise in theology, with much attention to how reason and faith are compatible. In Calvinist seminary we used to call this a Roman disquisition on epistemology. Yet in the...

The Calling of Our Generationhttp://magic-city-news.com/article_6655.shtml By Hans Zeiger Sep 18, 2006, 10:43 "The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation." These are the words of President Bush on September 11, five years after the attacks. If Baby Boomers doubt that this present war is the calling of their generation, the children of the Boomers-at least the rising leaders among them-have little doubt that it is theirs. On the eve of September 11, 2006, nearly 150 Hillsdale College students gathered for a...

“Dad, What Did You Do in the War?”http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODdhMDAyZDRhNDU2MDEwYjk1Y2Y1Y2I5YTE3ZjdjNmE http://tinyurl.com/m5dyu September 11, 2006, 5:39 a.m. Why I joined. By David French I woke up early one morning in the fall of my 36th year and traveled to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to take an Army physical. I felt faintly ridiculous, standing there in my briefs next to a bunch of high-school guys who looked like they just left a casting call for Friday Night Lights. They called me “sir” and talked about combat and death while I duck-walked past a stern-eyed doctor, took a drug test with absolutely no privacy, and...

'He is a dog and if we see him we will kill him' Clancy Chassay in Beirut Monday September 11, 2006 The Guardian (UK) Protesters greet Tony Blair’s visit to Lebanon. Photograph: Alvaro Barrientos/AP Hundreds of angry demonstrators waving Lebanese flags and chanting "down with Blair" gathered to protest at Tony Blair's meeting with Fouad Siniora at the prime minister's office in the heart of Beirut today. Held back by a line of Lebanese troops and security personnel enforcing a 1km buffer zone around the office, some protesters carried posters reading "Blair, you killer, go to hell" and "The blood...

On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government showcases Mohammed Khatami, former president of Iran. Khatami gets the royal treatment although the U.S. State Department places Iran on the A-List as a state sponsor of terrorism. Another triumph for enemy propagandists. This week marks the fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist strikes on our nation. How best to honor the memories of the nearly 3000 fallen from those vicious attacks? Let's start with the lunacy emerging from distinguished Harvard University. The oldest institution of higher learning in the United States has stepped forward...

What have you learned since the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago? The mass murder of 2,996 innocent people on American soil forced open my eyes to the Islamic holy war against the West, freedom and modernity. The battle has raged not for years or decades, but for centuries — well before the Crusades began. The indelible sight of workers plunging from the Twin Towers — head first, feet first, solo, hand-in-hand — roused me from slumber. The photos of children incinerated on United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 77 compelled me to start paying attention to the...