Free Republic

The "Republican war on women" is a fiction extracted from the imaginations of Democratic campaign strategists and endorsed by President Obama. But if the president is looking to help some oppressed people of the female persuasion, there's an opportunity at hand to wage a "war." Abolishing child marriage is wise, moral and good politics. Child marriage adds to the fragility of fragile states, where girls are often regarded as salable commodities. The kidnapping of 275 Nigerian schoolgirls in April by the Boko Haram terrorists to sell to waiting customers was unusual, but not unique. The child-marriage belt stretches from Africa...

Lebanese army soldiers outside Arsal near the Syrian border in Lebanon, Monday, Aug. 4, 2014 Presented by Militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured the Lebanese city of Arsal in fighting that began on Friday and continued Monday.  According to The Telegraph, a Syrian rebel group set up check-points in the border city but have not yet declared the area as part of the caliphate. In addition to 40,000 residents, there are roughly 120,000 refugees living in Arsal.  The conflict broke out after the Lebanese Army arrested Abu Ahmad al-Jumaa, a former commander in the Free Syrian Army who later declared...

From the Quran: “The punishment of anyone who fights against Allah and His apostle and do mischief in the land is to be killed or crucified or to have their hands and feet from opposite ends or be banished from the land.” (Quran: The table spread – Sura 5:33) Won’t convert?  Won’t pay your fine for being an infidel? You have 4 punishments options: public execution (Qatl), crucifixion (Salb) and amputation of one hand and one foot from opposite sides (Yuqata’ Aydihim wa-Arjulihim) or exile (Nafy).At Christian Post: Christians ‘Crucified Again’ for Refusing IslamTo the awe of its readership, a...

Jihadists in Benghazi are declaring themselves part of an Islamic caliphate just days after tribal warfare forced American diplomatic personnel out of Libya over fears for their safety. As WND reported Monday, in a repudiation of the premise advanced by President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the “Arab Spring” was a democracy movement, Libya has descended into lawless chaos in which various terrorist militia, including al-Qaida, vie for power. With most of the world focused on foreign crises like the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Russian influence in Ukraine, the State Department quietly announced the withdrawal of...

For over 2,000 years, Christians and Muslims lived in peace in Mosul, Iraq, the country's second largest city. That all changed on June 10, 2014 when the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, invaded the city and evicted its Christian population. With the Christians gone, ISIS has begun to destroy or occupy every Christian landmark in the city. The Assyrian International News Agency released a full list of the 45 institutions the Islamic State destroyed or occupied. Here are a few examples: Syrian Catholic Diocese Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation Archbishop’s Palace Chapel Syrian Orthodox Archdiocese Church of...

Taking shape in parts of Iraq and Syria, the Islamist caliphate known as ISIS is already a rival in lunacy and horror to North Korea. The caliph has decreed that women from puberty up to the age of the menopause — estimated to be as many as four million — must undergo compulsory genital mutilation. I am waiting to find out what feminists have to say about this. Christianity has roots in that same territory going back to the first centuries after Jesus Christ. Raqqa in Syria is one of the cities under ISIS, and Assyrian Christians there are the...

Alive but not at peace, Iraqi Christians who have fled the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Mosul are recounting their nightmares about the group, while also lamenting the ostensible end of a place for their community in Iraq. Thousands fled the violence after ISIL, which now calls itself the Islamic State (IS), took control of Mosul, and many others who were left behind were forced to flee the city last week under the threat of forced conversion or execution by jihadists. Not only were the Christians harried, but their heritage that is thousands...

The purge of Christians from northern Iraq continues under the hands of the Sunni jihadist group, the Islamic State--formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). ISIS militants seized the famous Mar Behnam or St. Behnam monastery this week, a fourth century Christian landmark, and forced monks to leave immediately. According to the Agence France-Presse, the monastery, a famous landmark of early Christianity, is now fully in the hands of ISIS jihadists ... The monastery itself is one of the oldest monuments in the history of Christianity

An Air Algerie flight with at least 116 people on board which dropped off the radar in the early hours of Thursday has apparently crashed in Mali, the flight operator said. Air Algerie said via Twitter that the plane has apparently crashed in the Tilemsi area, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) from the southeastern city of Gao.

Outlawed Baath party in Iraq announced, the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “ISIS” organization because of the last displacement of Christians from Mosul city, the second largest city in Iraq, which is controlled by ISIS since 10th of last June. Observers had expected the occurrence of differences between groups allied to ISIS organization in cities and areas they control after the 10th of last June due to the views of ISIS which adopts the "Islamic Caliphate", and refuses anyone who don’t pay allegiance as well as what is known of the organization of fighting groups and...

Associated PressJuly 24, 2014 COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norway's intelligence service said Thursday it has received information about an imminent "concrete threat" against Norway from people with links to Islamic fighters in Syria. Benedicte Bjoernland, the head of Norwegian security service PST, said the agency has received "reliable information" from a foreign partner about some kind of attack "within days." "It was unspecific about what the target might be," Bjoernland said, adding PST has no information about how or when such an attack would take place. (snip)

The UN says militant Islamist group Isis has ordered all women and girls in Mosul, northern Iraq, to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM). UN official Jacqueline Badcock said the fatwa, or religious edict, applied to females between the ages of 11 and 46.

(Photo: Reuters)Families fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Mosul wait at a checkpoint in outskirts of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region in June 2014. At least five Christian families who were not healthy enough to flee Mosul, Iraq after the militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ordered them to convert to Islam or be executed, have renounced their faith for Islam, according to a local government minister."There are five Christian families who converted to Islam because they were threatened with death," Younadim Kanna, a Christian and a member of Iraq's Parliament told The New...

Muslims in Iraq have declared war against Catholicism, attacking monks and priests and forcing them to leave immediately. They forced monks and priests to leave the beautiful monastery of Deir Behnam. The history of the monastery of Deir Behnam goes back to the fourth century AD and is associated with the story of the Assyrian Prince Sennacherib II who built it after converting to Christianity with his sister Sarah and forty of his followers at the hands of St. Matthew.It was built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib II as penance for killing his son, Behnan. Today, the fate of St....

The Islamic State-- formerly Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)-- has previously used water as a destructive tool to destroy crops and dams in Shi'ite territory. Now, ISIS is attempting to deprive major Christian strongholds of water through their control of pipe systems. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the city most affected by ISIS's new campaign to deny water to as many Christians and Shi'ites in Iraq as possible is the city of Qaraqosh, currently under control of Kurdish Peshmerga forces and, thus, impenetrable to the terrorist jihadist group. Their only current connection to Qaraqosh is a water pipeline from...

When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, there were at least 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Over the last ten years, significantly in the last few months with the emergence of ISIS, that figure has dropped to about 400,000. In a region where Christians predate Muslims by centuries, over one million Christians have been killed or have had to flee because of jihadi persecution, while America is basically standing by and watching. This is the sad news that Breitbart’s National Security Editor and one of the world’s leading experts on asymmetric warfare, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, brought to Breitbart News Saturday,...

"We offer them three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract - involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword," the announcement said. A resident of Mosul said the statement, issued in the name of the Islamic State in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, had been distributed on Thursday and read out in mosques. It said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which the group has now named Caliph Ibrahim, had set a Saturday deadline for Christians who did not want to stay and live under those terms to "leave the borders of the Islamic...

By Theodore Shoebat For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ (Philippians 3:18) Muslims entered churches in Iraq, tore out all of the crosses, and replaced them with the antichrist black flags of Islam. The Muslims are doing the same in Syria. Here is a photo taken in Raqqa of Muslims removing a cross from the top of a church:According to a recent report: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants reportedly have occupied both Mosul’s Chaldean Catholic and Syriac Orthodox...

Islamic State sets new rules, raising possibility of martyrdomChaldean Auxiliary Bishop Saad Sirop of Baghdad has confirmed a troubling report from Mosul that the Islamic State is now presenting Christians in that city with a final ultimatum of conversion, subservience or death. According to sources known to Aleteia, but kept anonymous due to security concerns, a number of mosques in the city of Mosul, and through loudspeakers, called on Christians Friday to leave the city. They said in their appeals that the reason was due to the rejection of the bishops to meet elements of the Islamic State to dictate...

Ali Muhammad Brown was charged with executing two gay men in Seattle. Brown was previously prosecuted federally following an FBI probe into an Islamic group suspected of supporting jihadists overseas. This devout Muslim is also a registered sex offender for crimes against a 6-year-old girl, the same age as Aisha when Muhammad married her. He was previously prosecuted as part of a federal investigation into a sleeper cell thought by investigators to be linked to a terrorism funding organization. “One prominent member of the group is thought to have been killed waging jihad in Somalia after fleeing prosecution in the...