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Travel mag Conde Nast Traveler asked its readers to name (and shame) the friendliest and unfriendliest cities in the US and across the world. The "unfriendliest" winner in both categories was deemed to be Newark, New Jersey, which one reader say they would not recommend for anything except as "a cheaper/less busy airport to fly into while visiting other cities." Other winners and losers: -- The next four unfriendliest cities in the US? Oakland, New Haven, Detroit, and Atlantic City, which one voter calls a "pale shadow of Las Vegas." -- Globally, Islamabad, Pakistan; Luanda, Angola; Kuwait City, Kuwait; Lome,...

<p>This year's Ramadan was the most violence since 2007, with 671 people killed. Police said the deadliest of today's attacks took place when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a residential area in the town of Tuz Khormato, 130 miles north of Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding dozens. "My shop's windows were smashed and smoke filled the whole area," says a shoe shop owner, who survived an attack near his store in New Baghdad. "I went outside of the shop and I could hardly see because of the smoke. ... At the end, we had a terrible day that was supposed to be nice because of Eid."</p>

The Obama administration believes the bloody suicide attacks and car bombings in Baghdad that have killed dozens of Iraqis in recent days were likely carried out by al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). On Saturday evening, the State Department announced that the attacks bear the hallmarks of AQI - led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is now based in Syria.

U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sent their warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid al-Fitr around the world, calling it "part of a great tapestry of America's many traditions." "Michelle and I send our warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid-al-Fitr in the United States and around the world," Obama said in his message. "For millions of Americans, Eid is part of a great tapestry of America's many traditions, and I wish all Muslims a blessed and joyful celebration. Eid Mubarak," Obama said. Eid is being celebrated on Thursday in the Arab world and most of the East...

Violence has been on the rise across Iraq since a deadly crackdown by government forces on a Sunni protest camp in April, and attacks against civilians and security forces notably spiked during Ramadan. The surge of attacks has sparked fears that the country could spiral into a new round of widespread sectarian bloodshed similar to that which brought the country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007. In the holy Shiite city of Karbala, police said four people were killed in a car bomb attack near a cafe at night. Karbala is 80 kilometres (50 miles) south...

Arizona Senator John McCain is in Egypt with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham just weeks after the new government, run by the Muslim Brotherhood, was overthrown by the military. Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was heavily protested by millions of people as he tried to turn the fragile State into a dictatorship under Sharia law. More from The Daily Beast: During their whirlwind tour of Cairo Tuesday, two top GOP senators held the most extensive meeting to date between U.S. officials and senior officials in the embattled Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters are fighting in the streets to overturn last month’s...

The State Department on Tuesday ordered most embassy personnel out of Yemen and urged all U.S. citizens currently in that country to leave over the Al Qaeda threat that triggered the shutdown of 19 American diplomatic posts this week. The U.S. Air Force already has flown State Department personnel out of the capital of Sanaa as part of the broad evacuation effort. "The U.S. Department of Defense continues to have personnel on the ground in Yemen to support the U.S. State Department and monitor the security situation," Pentagon spokesman George Little said. The rapid-fire developments on Tuesday came as two...

A statement issued Tuesday says the department has ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen "due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks." The travel warning says U.S. citizens currently in Yemen should depart and calls the security threat level in Yemen "extremely high." A U.S. intelligence official and a Mideast diplomat told The Associated Press that the current shutdown was instigated by an intercepted secret message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and his deputy in Yemen about plans for a major terror attack. Britain's Foreign Office says it has evacuated all staff from its embassy in...

<p>Jihadists in Egypt's lawless Sinai Peninsula are using U.S. weapons to carry out attacks against the temporary government in the wake of the military's ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, according to the embattled nation's Interior Ministry.</p>

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Warnings from U.S. officials on the threat of possible terrorist strikes against Americans overseas -- and the massive closure of embassies in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia on Sunday -- may have divulged too much information, including details about the intercepted chatter and source of the information. Some intelligence officials say the disclosures may work against obtaining new information and even pose a deadly threat from militants who might kill anyone suspected of working with Western intelligence, The Washington Times reported. “There simply are not that many who would know about the attacks,” the Times quoted one...

Towns and villages in Syria that have been home to Christians for hundreds of years are being steadily emptied by sectarian violence and targeted kidnappings.Tens of thousands Syriac Christians – members of the oldest Christian community in the world – have fled their ancestral provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah in northeastern Syria, residents have said. "It breaks my heart to think how our long history is being uprooted," said Ishow Goriye, the head of a Syriac Christian political Hasakah Mr Goriye, told The Daily Telegraph how, over the past two years he has watched as Christian families from Hasakah...

Tunisian authorities say a suspected religious extremist blew himself up while making a bomb in a home he was renting near the capital. … Separately, the interior ministry says an “extremist” was arrested on Friday after he blew off his hand while handling explosives in Menzel Bourguiba, 43 miles from Tunis. …

Muslims and Christians must raise young people “to think and speak respectfully of other religions and their followers, and to avoid ridiculing or denigrating their convictions and practices”, Pope Francis has said. In a personal message to the world’s Muslims to mark the end of Ramadan, the Pope said: “Turning to mutual respect in inter-religious relations, especially between Christians and Muslims, we are called to respect the religion of the other, its teachings, its symbols, its values. Particular respect is due to religious leaders and to places of worship. How painful are attacks on one or other of these! “It...

The United States will temporarily shut down its embassies and consulates around the world Sunday -- including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt -- as a precautionary measure over terror-related concerns, State Department officials said. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did not say how long the international installations would stay closed -- only that the decision was taken “out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting.” Officials would not describe the nature of the threat. Sunday is a normal workday in many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, meaning that is where...

U.S. embassies in a slew of Muslim countries will close on Sunday due to a credible and serious security threat. The embassies will close in response to "a specific threat against a U.S. embassy or consulate," according to a senior U.S. official, who called it a "concerted effort" to target an embassy or consulate in a Muslim country. "We just don't know which one," the official told ABC News. "There could be other targets, not just embassies," another U.S. official said. The threat is considered to be throughout the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Some of the biggest...

The Arab Spring began in Tunisia, and it’s lurching toward the brink again just weeks after the Egyptian army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government. Last week an assassin took out left-wing opposition leader Mohammed Brahmi with a 9mm pistol. Ballistics reports indicate the killer used the exact same weapon to murder another opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, last winter. And this week Al Qaeda-linked terrorists dug in on Mount Chambi killed at least eight Tunisian soldiers. Ennahda, the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is taking the heat. While they aren’t being fingered as directly responsible, they’re being blamed all the...

Capital city of nearby country becomes haven for converts—even though denied refugee status. The New York Times sheds fresh light on the challenges faced by Afghan Christians seeking religious freedom, spotlighting the growth of a refugee church in India's capital city, New Delhi. As the Times observes in a report worth reading, more than 200 Christian converts from Muslim backgrounds have fled to New Delhi, seeking refuge from the Taliban and from political backlash after television coverage resulted in one Afghan politician's urging the government to execute converts in 2010. As CT noted in July 2010, the Afghan government also...

Reza Aslan, a religious scholar with a Ph.D. in the sociology of religions from the University of California and author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” went on FoxNews.com’s online show Spirited Debate to promote his book only to be prodded about why a Muslim would write a historical book about Jesus.

(original title, had to be shortened to fit):Bloodbath in Cairo: More than 120 dead and 1,000 injured after police 'shoot to kill' in violent clashes which have rocked Egypt More than 120 people are believed to have been killed at a protest in support of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi, according to the Muslim Brotherhood. Security forces are reported to have started shooting demonstrators shortly before pre-dawn morning prayers at a round-the-clock vigil in Cairo being staged by backers of Morsi, who was removed from power by the army three weeks ago. Makeshift field hospitals around the area near the...

The upshot of all of this is that when Sisi calls on all Egyptians to rally "in every public square", and when the general characterises these forthcoming rallies as a "mandate" to fight "violence and terrorism" this has to be seen as paving the way for more military action. The end game is not very difficult to see. Sisi has already given the world a taste of what he is willing to do when officers opened fire on peaceful protesters during morning prayers. There were at least 50 dead on the spot, possibly as many as a 100 in total....

before the civil war the city of Qusayr, located in eastern portion of Syria near the Lebanese border, had around 40,000 people, including 7,000 Christians. “In late 2011, the Sunni townsmen came and told us to either join us in anti-regime demonstrations or leave the town. If we didn’t, we would be killed,” Fadul Abu Yohanna Kasouhah, a Christian resident of Qusayr, described to CSI. According to Fadul, the Sunni Islamists in his village used the loudspeakers from the Mosques to name the Christian families by name and told them to leave. Fadul told CSI how his cousin was gunned...

We are living through one of the largest persecutions of a religious group in history. Few people realize that we are today living through the largest persecution of Christians in history, worse even than the famous attacks under ancient Roman emperors like Diocletian and Nero. Estimates of the numbers of Christians under assault range from 100-200 million. According to one estimate, a Christian is martyred every five minutes. And most of this persecution is taking place at the hands of Muslims. ... In Crucified Again, Ibrahim performs two invaluable functions for educating people about the new “Great Persecution,” to use...

Thursday, July 25, 2013 Muslims are Not a Minority Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The most persistent myth of the Western Dhimmi narrative is that Muslims are a minority and must receive special protection and accommodation. But Muslims are not a minority. There are 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims worldwide, outweighing Catholics as the next largest religious faction at 1.1 billion and Hindus at 1 billion. They are still a minority of the overall population in Western countries, but a demographically trending majority. In the UK more people attend mosques than the Church of England, that makes...

Middle Eastern Christians decry how Western media misrepresent the increasingly violent events in Syria.Now that Syria is in shambles—with an estimated 93,000 dead, 1.5 million refugees, and 4.5 million internally displaced; ancient churches torched, destroyed, or vandalized; Christians targeted for murder and kidnapping and even used as human shields—now the mainstream media is starting to admit that, yes, the rebel forces appear to include quite a few Islamist guerrillas. Now that even chemical warfare has made its appearance, with Carla Del Ponte, a member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, confirming that “the chemical weapons are being used...

The Obama administration has quietly presented a plan in which the Palestinian Authority and Jordan will receive sovereignty over the Temple Mount while Israel will retain the land below the Western Wall, according to a senior PA negotiator speaking to WND.

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Syria, Lebanon and Christian GenocidePosted By Joseph Puder On July 16, 2013 @ 12:06 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments The destinies of Syria and Lebanon have been intertwined since the days of French colonial rule, in between the two world wars.  It is for this reason that the ongoing civil war in Syria has had its impact on Lebanon.  Lebanon is more divided on the issue of the Syrian uprising than any other country in the region.The Syrian regime has dominated its smaller Lebanese neighbor since the mid-1970s.  It has loyal allies...

Jews around the world and particularly in Israel on Tuesday marked the solemn fast of Tisha B'Av, the annual commemoration of the destruction of the Temple and numerous other tragedies to befall the Jewish people. Under threat of Muslim violence, Jews (and Christians) were barred from entering Jerusalem's Temple Mount as part of the ceremonies, a situation many said proves the Tisha B'Av tragedies have not come to an end despite the rebirth of Israel as a nation state. >>SNIP<< On Monday, the eve of Tisha B'Av, a few hundred Jewish worshipers did ascend the Temple Mount, only to be...

An Al-Qaeda front group operating in Syria has killed a rebel chief in a firefight in the coastal province of Latakia, a monitoring group said on Friday. The killing comes amid soaring tensions between the mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its supporters and groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda, mostly made up of non-Syrian fighters. Better known as Abu Bassir al-Jeblawi, rebel chief Kamal Hamami was shot dead Thursday by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), one of the main jihadist groups operating in Syria, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. He was killed when ISIS fighters...

Saudi Arabia threatened on Tuesday to expel non-Muslim expatriates who eat, drink, or smoke in public during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Ramadan begins in the kingdom on Wednesday. "Non-Muslim residents in the kingdom must not eat or drink in public during Ramadan, in respect to the holiness of Ramadan and the feelings of Muslims," said an interior ministry statement published by the official SPA news agency. Foreigners caught breaking the fast in public "will be subject to deterrent measures that include terminating their employment contracts and expelling them from the kingdom," the ministry said.

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Muslim Brotherhood Out, Killing Christians InPosted By Raymond Ibrahim On July 11, 2013 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 1 Comment Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.“In scattered locations across Egypt,” wrote Morning Star News, “mobs of hard-line Muslims enraged over the deposing of the country’s Islamist president [Muhammad Morsi] this week attacked Christian homes, business[es] and church buildings and were suspected in the shooting death of a priest.”None of this should come as a surprise.  As Gatestone Institute reported right at the beginning of the June 30 revolution, anonymous “letters addressed to the...

Egypt’s newly appointed interim prime minister Hazem el-Beblawi is to offer ministerial posts to members of the Muslim Brotherhood and to the hardline Islamist Nour Party, state media said on Tuesday. “There is no objection at all to including members of those two parties in the government,” a presidential spokesman said. The announcement followed el-Beblawi’s appointment as prime minister in a transitional government, as the authorities sought to steer the country to new parliamentary and presidential elections. Adli Mansour, acting head of state since massive demonstrations ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi out of office last week, also appointed former UN...

When rock legend Paul McCartney came to Israel in 2008, he was, at least to some extent, taking his life in his hands. Not because of Israel's sometimes precarious security situation, but because he was threatened by BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) anti-Israel groups. “I got death threats, but I'm coming anyway,” the singer was quoted as saying by Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs researcher Adam Shay. “I got explicit death threats, but I have no intention of surrendering. I refuse to cancel my performances in Israel,” Shay quoted McCartney as saying.

Someone on the board asked about a threat / promise to destroy the pyramids

Horrific video shows Syrian Catholic priest being 'beheaded by jihadist fighters in front of cheering crowd'A Syrian Catholic priest has been beheaded by jihadist fighters in Syria, it has been claimed. The death of Franciscan Father Francois Murad has been confirmed by the official Vatican news agency. The gruesome killing has raised further concerns about the West arming rebels in the fight against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Grainy footage purported to show the 49-year-old’s death has been posted on the internet. Father Francois, was killed on 23 June in Gassanieh, in northern Syria. He had been staying...

Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi...

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the prominent Sunni cleric, said Friday that Hezbollah and Iran are "more infidel than Jews and Christians." Coming from the guy who once lauded Hitler for exacting "divine punishment" on the Jews, that really is saying something. That the war in Syria is sectarian was obvious almost from the start, despite the credulous belief that Bashar Assad ran a nonsectarian regime. That a sectarian ruling minority fighting for its life would not fold easily was obvious within months, despite happy guarantees that the regime's downfall would come within weeks. That a sectarian war in Syria would stir similar...

An Egyptian magazine claims that six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy. The Dec. 22 story published in Egypt's Rose El-Youssef magazine (read an IPT translation here) suggests the six turned the White House "from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood." The story is largely unsourced, but its publication is considered significant in raising the issue to Egyptian readers. The six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland...

ASSIUT, Egypt — An Egyptian court has convicted a Coptic Christian lawyer in the southern province of Assiut on charges of blasphemy and sentenced him to one year in prison with hard labor. The verdict against Roman Murad Saad was handed down on Saturday. It’s the latest in a surge of blasphemy cases following Egypt’s 2011 uprising. ... Court officials say Saad was found guilty of ridiculing Islam’s holy book, the Quran, at a lawyers’ union library. No further details were immediately available in the case.

Russell Brand is best known as a British comedian and TV/film star, who, in addition to co-starring in the upcoming animated film "Despicable Me 2," is also a Solzhenitzyn-quoting, part-time essayist. In the wake of the barbaric beheading of a soldier in London, Brand wrote an essay in The Sun called "Blame this on madness...not Muslims." Dean was particularly touched by the effort to defend the Muslim community from the ugly passions stirred by group blame. Brand's perspective is that mental illness is more at fault in the attack than the influence of radical Islam and that root causes must...

As Muslims Riot In Sweden, Police Take Action And Arrest Concerned Locals Protecting Their Neighbourhoods May 30 Posted by kafircrusaders Like the UK, Sweden has been swamped by anti-social Muslim immigrants over the past decade or so. The new uncivilized Muslim immigrants bring with them a whole new set of problems for the natives to deal with. Its a familiar pattern that has been repeated in every non Muslim nation that are unfortunate enough to be hit be Islamic immigration. Constantly demanding their own way,expect respect off everybody else yet giving non in return, unwilling to integrate and contribute to society...

The First Amendment served us well for a time, but now it's outdated. Remember reading that England had arrested a guy for anti-Muslim Twitter postings in the aftermath of the Woolrich slaughter? And remember thinking, "Well, this is America, that can't happen here"? Oh yes it can. Obama's Attorney for the Eastern district of Tennessee wants you to know that if you say something untoward about Muslims, the Federal government may imprison you. Killian and Moore will provide input on how civil rights can be violated by those who post inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media. “This is...

Via Judicial Watch, Bill Killian, the US Attorney for the Eastern district of Tennessee, just wants Americans to know what the consequences for free speech might be. Special speakers for the event will be Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and Kenneth Moore, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Knoxville Division. Sponsor of the event is the American Muslim Advisory Council of Tennessee — a 15-member board formed two years ago when the General Assembly was considering passing legislation that would restrict those who worship Sharia Law, which is followed by Muslims. Killian and Moore...

Syrian state-run television reported Thursday that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed three Westerners, including an American woman and a British citizen, who they claim were fighting with the rebels and were found with weapons and maps of government military facilities. Syrian TV identified the woman, releasing what it claimed were images of her Michigan driver's license and U.S. passport. It also released what is said was the name and passport of a British citizen. It did not identify a third person who it claimed was a Westerner.

Barack Hussein Obama Financially Supporting a Worldwide Christian Genocide of Women and Children Members of the Free Syrian Army reportedly attacked the Christian-dominated al-Duvair village in Reef on the outskirts of Homs on Monday, where they massacred its citizens, including women and children, before the Syrian Army loyal to Bashar al Assad intervened on behalf of the Christians. This reported attack comes shortly after intense fighting in the city of al-Qusseir over the weekend, in which Bashar Al-Assad’s forces inflicted heavy casualties on the rebels. Assad’s forces launched an offensive in April in an effort to cut off supply lines...

Asians were accused of practicing witchcraft on their employersA Saudi court sentenced two Asian housemaids to 10 years in jail and ordered their lashed 1,000 times each after they were found guilty of indulging in sorcery at their employers’ houses in the Gulf Kingdom, a newspaper reported on Monday. Their Saudi employers reported the two maids to the Gulf country’s feared religious police, saying they had discovered that their families had been harmed because of sorcery practiced by the maids against them. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who searched the two houses...

While much documentation is known of the American slave trade, the Muslim enslavement of Africans (and Europeans) encompassing the last 1400 years has been hushed up. This remarkable documentary films shows the story historians have neglected.

DEARBORN-Police in Dearborn are trying to understand why a pressure cooker was left in the restroom of the Adoba Hotel, forcing the evacuation of guests until the early morning hours. The evacuation also canceled Sunday night’s banquet of the University of Muslim Association of America. Asgar Zaidi of Washington D.C. has been attending the organization’s conference for the past 11 years. He says it’s the first time it’s ever been held in Dearborn. “We all look forward to this time of year, Memorial Day weekend … we have fun, we learn and it’s just disheartening to see this type of...

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is reported to be clinically dead as the monarch is not recently seen in the public. A Saudi journalist working for London-Based Asharq Alawsat says the Saudi monarch has been clinically dead since Wednesday. He also quoted medical sources in Saudi Arabia as saying that the king’s vital organs, including his heart, kidneys and lungs, have stopped functioning. [snip]

At least 10 people have been killed in a series of explosions in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, reports say. Several more were wounded in the suspected bomb attacks, targeting mainly Shia districts of the capital, police told Reuters news agency. The violence comes amid a marked rise attacks linked to growing political and sectarian tension recently. The bloodshed has raised fears of a re-emergence of the levels of sectarian violence seen in 2006 and 2007. In one of the deadliest days recently, more than 70 people were killed and many others injured in a series of bomb attacks across Iraq...