Free Republic

Broadway composer denies NC companies right to produce showsTony Award-winning composer asks other Broadway artists to act as wellSchwartz’s work includes ‘Pippin,’ ‘Godspell,’ ‘Wicked,’ ‘The Magic Show’Schwartz: Action against apartheid ‘eventually proved to be very effective’=====The reaction against North Carolina’s law rolling back LGBT protections continues to spread beyond the business world, where corporations have called for its repeal. Now Broadway’s musical world is flexing its muscle.This email by Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz began circulating Friday, according to the online theater publication BroadwayWorld.com:“To my fellow theatre writers and producers: As you no doubt know, the state of...

For some time, an argument has been made that the liberal left, in refusing to examine the problems of Islam, has betrayed its Enlightenment roots. That is, while secular, feminist, and protective of free speech in dealing with its Western peers, the liberal left has been accused of abandoning its heritage in its quest for political correctness regarding Muslims. In truth, however, the left has a distinguished background of courting Islam as a weapon against Western capitalism. Its most representative figures from the past did so frankly, as the following rehearsal of their statements demonstrates. Karl Marx supported the Ottoman...

Americans were stunned on October 11 when the Justice Department unsealed its complaint against Mansour Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old used-car dealer from Corpus Christi now in federal custody, and Ali Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Shakuri remains inside Iran. The pair have been charged with conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir. As disclosed by the Treasury Department, the plot was coordinated by Arbabsiar’s cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai, a top Quds Force functionary whom the Treasury designated in 2008 as one of several “individuals and entities fueling violence in Iraq.” Shahlai was...

The name of Iranian ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi is little known outside his own country, which is unfortunate. Ayatollah Boroujerdi has been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since 2006. Boroujerdi, aged 50, is an heir to a distinguished Shia clerical family. He was born in Tehran and educated in the Shia religious center of Qom. Like his father, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Ali Kazemeyni Boroujerdi (1924-2002), Boroujerdi preaches the pre-Khomeini interpretation of Iranian Shiism, which calls for religion to be kept apart from politics. His health has been badly affected by the conditions of his imprisonment, yet he...

Bin Laden Looks for an Exit StrategyBy Stephen Schwartz : 11 Sep 2007 Since 2001, each September we remember. Today, we first think of the frontline fighters in Iraq, Americans, Iraqis, and other members of the Coalition in combat, first against Saudi-incited, Wahhabi terrorism - miscalled a "Sunni insurgency." But none of us forgets the terror inflicted on the whole world six years ago; the sudden appearance, after so many years, of a real sense of American national unity, and the equally-surprising commitment to change in U.S. policies in the Middle East. President George W. Bush, in vowing to...

When PBS refused to air a documentary about the rift between Islamic moderates and their radical, murderous counterparts, PBS based its decision on the judgment of an employee whose sources on this topic are themselves aligned with self-confessed radical Islamists. FSM Contributing Editor Stephen Schwartz’s shocking exposé will have you demanding answers! _______________________________________________ Last week, in a reportage for FSM - the antidote to the “mainstream media” - Contributing Editor Alex Alexiev, one of the most authoritative Western experts on radical Islam, described the fate of a documentary video of which he was co-producer. Titled Islam vs. Islamists, the documentary...

Perhaps no single figure better represents the lamentable situation of Middle East studies (MES) today than Professor Natana J. DeLong-Bas, a Georgetown graduate who currently teaches at Brandeis University and Boston College. Her specialty happens to be Wahhabism, the ultrafundamentalist Islamic sect and state religion in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism inspires al-Qaida and its variants--including the Sunni jihadists currently murdering U.S. and coalition troops, as well as Shia Muslims, in Iraq. DeLong-Bas is a professional apologist for Saudi extremism. She recently reached a depth of mendacity about radical Islam it is hard to imagine her exceeding. In an...

"Islamic fascists"--used by President George W. Bush for the conspirators in the alleged trans-Atlantic airline bombing plot--and references by other prominent figures to "Islamofascism," have been met by protests from Muslims who say the term is an insult to their religion. The meaning and origin of the concept, as well as the legitimacy of complaints about it, have become relevant--perhaps urgently so. I admit to a lack of modesty or neutrality about this discussion, since I was, as I will explain, the first Westerner to use the neologism in this context. In my analysis, as originally put in print directly...

BRITISH AUTHORITIES have been slow to acknowledge openly the Pakistani-Muslim background of the suspects arrested in the mass terror conspiracy that brought chaos to British and American airports Thursday. At first, official sources in the United Kingdom would confirm only that they were working with "the South Asian community" on the case; then it was disclosed that the Pakistani government was involved in the investigation. This reticence in naming the focus of so significant a terrorism inquiry is a symptom of the larger problems of Islam in Britain, and of "Euro-Islam" more generally. Put plainly, Pakistani Sunnis in Britain--more than...

It has elsewhere been noted that while pundits across America agonize over the anti-Semitic babble of actor Mel Gibson, the commentocracy have had little to say about the murderous July 28 attack on a Jewish community facility in Seattle. In that despicable incident, 30-year old Naveed Afzal Haq kidnapped a 13-year old and used her as a cover to penetrate the premises. He then sprayed the building with gunfire, leaving Pamela Waechter, 58, dead, and five more people injured. Waechter had followed a remarkable path, having been raised in the Lutheran church and then converting to Judaism. Reporting in the...

Haifa has also been targeted by Hezbollah. Among the first dead were workers in a railroad repair yard. I worked on the railroads in America, as a young Marxist. These railroad workers are my people, along with the Kabbalists. It is also difficult to avoid the presumption that rockets have fallen on Haifa precisely because it represents, once again, Arab-Jewish cooperation. Indeed, the whole Hezbollah target zone is filled with Arab communities that have learned to function within Israel. They include Nazareth, the Christian holy site, which has an Arab majority and whose walls are also decorated with leftist posters...

Since the atrocities of September 11, 2001, the West has begun to pay attention to the problem of Islamic education, including particularly the madrassahs or religious schools in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and elsewhere that indoctrinate young believers in the radical and violent doctrines of Wahhabism and related pseudo-religious ideologies. In recent travels on behalf of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, I have begun analyzing how non-Muslims and other Westerners may assist moderate Muslims in changing this negative situation

A few days ago I received an e-mail from Homa Arjomand. She is a Canadian, Muslim lady who has been working to assure that some Canadian Muslims were not successful in getting the Canadian government to accept the Sharia (Muslim law) to be put in place for Muslims there. The e-mail was to announce the success of her efforts, as Canada just shot down this effort. There are many more than one billion Muslims (just the Sunnis number a billion) around the world. Despite the scenes of death and destruction we see almost every day, carried out by some portion...

Four years after September 11, 2001, numerous non-Muslim Americans repeatedly ask, “Why do American Muslims stay silent in the face of extremism and terrorism? Why do they not act to cleanse their religion of the reputation it has acquired?” Paradoxically, Muslims in the US and Great Britain are, today, far more dominated by Islamist extremism than their counterparts in various Muslim countries. In many lands where the majority follows Islam, a struggle is underway between mainstream moderates and radicals inspired by the ultra-Wahhabi preachers of Saudi Arabia, the agitators of the Muslim Brotherhood in various Arab countries, and the virulent...

The successful completion of the parliamentary election in Iraq represents a multiple victory for the faith of Islam, the people of the Middle East, and global democracy, and an obvious defeat for the enemies of responsible religious and civic values -- everywhere, in the U.S. as well as in Mesopotamia. Voting was so popular with the Iraqis that the terrorists of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi effectively observed a ceasefire during the balloting. The Western mainstream media (MSM), with their usual ignorant obtuseness, completely misconstrued this remarkable development. To the MSM, Zarqawi called off his murderous lackeys to encourage his Sunni...

Liberated Iraq has begun its third round of elections, with media reporting Tuesday that Iraqi émigrés living in 15 Western and Muslim countries have flocked to out-of-country polling places established to fulfill their democratic desires. The third Iraqi ballot will seal a new political order in the country, based on popular sovereignty. Even the minority of Iraqi Arab Sunni Muslims appear eager to vote, notwithstanding their incitement by some of their leaders, who are discontented over the loss of the privileged status the Arab Sunnis had under Saddam. The January parliamentary vote, the October referendum on the constitution, and now,...

Things look promising in Kosovo, despite the tender ministrations of the United Nations. -------------------------------------------------- Prishtina, Kosovo SOME OF THE FRESHEST and most distinctive voices of "new Europe"--Donald Rumsfeld's term for the former-Communist states that have joined the reunited continent as ardent supporters of capitalism, democracy, and other conservative values--are sounding off in a place so new, in its own way, that less than a decade ago most Americans had never heard of it: Kosovo. Isolated by the Albanian language, an ancient Indo-European tongue with no obvious relatives, as well as by the long-standing hostility of their rapacious neighbors, the Kosovars...

Prishtina, Kosovo -- Irving Kristol, the recognized father of neoconservatism, is said to have formulated an important rule of politics: "Know who your friends are." I would add to this advice that one should also know who one's serious enemies are. I have often repeated two other dicta I consider indispensable to modern intellectual activism: "The art of politics is that of making, not confusing distinctions," and, "Learn to anticipate, not react to, events." The latter two are paraphrased from Trotsky, which will doubtless bring sneers to the lips of neocon-baiters. But so be it. I am reminded of these...

We have reached the fourth anniversary of the terrible attacks of September 11, 2001. I am sorry to say that, in my view, the U.S. and Western media have completely failed to meet the challenge of reporting on Islam, in the four succeeding years since then, or in reaction to the atrocities that followed, including the extremist violence in Iraq, which I would not dignify with the titles "insurgency" or "resistance," the Madrid metro and London underground bombings, and the terror assaults in Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, and elsewhere. On September 12, 2001, it was as if two civilizations, the Judeo-Christian...

Zawahiri's Threats Al Qaeda's number two man should be taken even more seriously than Osama bin Laden. by Stephen Schwartz 08/04/2005 4:00:00 PM AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI, the second-in-command of Osama bin Laden, has delivered a video statement, broadcast by al Jazeera, threatening more terror by al Qaeda in Britain and in the United States. His rant must be taken extremely seriously. First, while Osama bin Laden is a hateful, murderous Islamist radical, there is a difference in psychology between him and Zawahiri. Bin Laden falls into the category of those who became radicals to fill a void in their lives. The...