Free Republic

Al Qaeda's leadership is suffering from a communication breakdown and struggling to issue directives after its computer network was hobbled in September, the Washington Post reports. Four of the five main online forums that the terrorist group uses to communicate with followers were disabled on Sept. 10, monitors of the Web sites told the newspaper. The loss to Al Qaeda is the equivalent of the Pentagon's and the White House's Web sites suddenly going offline, expert Evan Kohlmann told the Post, and it has left the propaganda strategy that Usama bin Laden and his followers rely on "hanging by a...

At the Investigative Project on Terrorism: CAIR Exec’s Telling Interview. In a recent interview with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islam Online website, and reported by the BBC Middle East Monitoring Service, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR), Executive Director Nihad Awad reflected on “interfaith dialogue,” the Bush administration, the upcoming presidential election, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Asked about the prospect of a new U.S. president, and whether American Muslims regret support for George W. Bush in 2000, Awad’s answer offers a disturbing window into his soul.“We should not blame the Muslims for taking part in the political process, and we should...

In a video marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, al Qaeda’s top leader in Afghanistan vows more “large-scale” attacks against the United States and its allies. In another segment, the personal adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Omar says al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive and well. Al Qaeda leaders featured on the video promise more violence against their enemies. “We inform the forces of the Cross and their apostate agents that the Mujahedeen’s policy in the coming stage, God permitting, is going to be more major, large-scale attacks like the Kandahar prison operation, the...

Hackers prevented Al Qaeda from releasing a videotape to mark the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Al Qaeda has traditionally issued a video or audiotape by either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri, the terror network’s two leaders, to mark their massive terrorist attack on the US. As-Sahab, Al Qaeda’s media unit, had indicated earlier this week that it would post such a videotape on September 11. As-Sahab had banner images on the internet showing a silhouetted head with a question mark and the words, “Wait 11 September”. The US-based intelligence group IntelCenter had speculated the video would be a...

The disappearance of the CEO and president of a Shariah-compliant investment firm has left many in West Ridge's Indo-Pak community wary and in turmoil. Concerned when monthly profit checks from Sunrise Equities stopped arriving in August, no one has seen or heard from the firm's CEO, Salman Ibrahim. Ibrahim has not returned investors' phone calls. Phone calls to the firm's office at 6355 N. Claremont, and its downtown affiliates, Sunrise Development Inc., have also gone unanswered, leaving many of the firm's mostly Muslim investors wondering where Ibrahim and other corporate officers have gone. "[Ibrahim] stopped paying the monthly installments," said...

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

One speaker at the meeting, held on the anniversary of the attacks in America, told the assembled crowd that the West should "listen to the warnings." The most incendiary speech was delivered by Saiful Islam, from Luton, Bedfordshire, who praised Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda for their "courage" in retaliating against the "dictatorship and oppression" of the West. He said: "The blame of 9/11 belongs to no one but the American government. They are the terrorists. [...] Mr Islam warned that unless British and American troops were withdrawn from "Muslim lands" they would be to blame for the consequences, saying...

A high school sophomore asked me this week whether Sept. 11 would always be remembered. Would it always be, as she put it, "somber"? Lacking a crystal ball, I have no answer. And, frankly, looking back seven years to that cataclysmic jihadist atrocity, I realize I'm probably not the most dependable prognosticator because never would I have imagined back in 2001 how successful that heinous strike would be in utterly changing us and our world. Blame ignorance, blame cowardice: The strangest effect of 9/11 has been, on balance, an accelerated campaign of accommodation of Islam's law in the West, a...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is the seventh anniversary of the terror attacks on September 11th of 2001. Everybody says you shouldn't politicize this day. Sorry, can't help it. My remembrances of the September 11th attacks do not just stop on the day of 9/11. There have been a lot of things that have happened since those attacks, and I think we need to remind ourselves of them, because it was seven years ago, ladies and gentlemen, that we were blindsided. Nineteen terrorists possessed by evil, hijacked our airplanes using box cutters. They stopped an election that was taking place in...