Free Republic

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown. If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria's devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi'ite fighters on the frontlines - who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies. From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of...

BEIRUT - Al Qaeda fighters killed the leader of a rival Islamic brigade in a twin car bombing near Syria's northern city of Aleppo, an attack likely to further exacerbate rebel infighting in the country's brutal civil war even as government forces continued their intense shelling of opposition-held areas of the city on Sunday. The attack targeted the base of rivals, the Tawheed Brigades, and killed commander Adnan Bakkour, said Rami Abdurrahman of the Observatory. The al Qaeda linked Islamic State also killed another prominent commander of another rebel brigade, said analyst Charles Lister of the Brookings Doha Center. Lister...

WASHINGTON — A great deal of diplomatic attention over the next few months will be focused on whether the temporary nuclear deal with Iran can be transformed into a full-blown accord. President Obama has staked the success of his foreign policy on this bold gamble. But discussion about the nuclear deal has diverted attention from an even riskier bet that Obama has placed: the idea that Iran can become a cooperative partner in regional security. Although they won’t say so publicly, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry surely dream of a “Nixon to China” masterstroke. They are quietly...

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors. But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. It was kept secret and remains so today. President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by...

Imam Hussein was killed by armies of the Yazid near Karbala in 680 AD. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan have day as national holiday. Blood-covered young men swarm into the streets as part of a religious procession in Pakistan. Children also take part in the gory ritual self-flagellation which is held ahead of Ashura on the ninth day of Muharram in Peshawar. Shi'a Muslims all over the world pay their respects with the flowing of their blood as they mourn the slaying and martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Shiite Muslims staging a religious procession near Pakistan’s capital Friday killed seven Sunnis from an Islamic seminary for insulting them as they passed, officials said. ... The Shiites were observing Ashoura, which commemorates the 7th century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. The schism between Sunnis and Shiites dates back to that time.

The Muslim Association of Iceland now admits that foreign donors will be paying for the mosque's construction costs. The former mayor of Reykjavik says he believes it is outrageous for the city to give Muslims a site at no cost at a great location in the center of the city, and asks why political and feminist groups are so tolerant of a religion that he says degrades women. The Reykjavík City Council has approved a building permit for the construction of the first mosque in Iceland. The mosque will be built in Sogamýri, an upscale district near downtown Reykjavík on...

Clarification: Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria. Reporter Yahya Ababneh, with whom the report was written in collaboration, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents. Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a decade. This report is not an Associated Press article; rather it is exclusive to MintPress News. Ghouta, Syria —...

Recent news of a chemical weapons attack in Syria smacks of desperation. The question comes down to who is most desperate right now, the Assad regime or the Muslim Brotherhood rebels? Consider that since June, Assad’s forces have been winning. According to a CBS News report from last month, victories for the rebels had become “increasingly rare” and that the Muslim Brotherhood-backed opposition fighters were sustaining “some of their heaviest losses” near Damascus. The New York Times echoed this sentiment, even saying that before gaining the upper hand, concerns were that Assad would use chemical weapons; he did not. In...

Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has warned shale oil and gas development poses a threat to the kingdom's economy, the Wall Street Journal's Summer Said reports. In an open letter to Saudi oil minister Ali al Naimi [in Arabic], Alwaleed also warns the kingdom must diversify its revenue streams in the face of flagging oil demand. A source translated the key portion of the note: With all due respect to your Highness’ viewpoint about shale gas and that it poses no danger on Saudi economy at ‘the present time’, I was hoping that your Highness would also shed light...

The Mideast: The president opposed arming the Syrian rebels last year on the grounds the arms could find their way into Islamist hands. This year he's changed his mind — but the rebels haven't changed their Islamist spots. One would have thought that the decision to intervene in the Syrian civil war, a conflict in which the U.S. has no clear strategic interest, would have been announced by President Obama, sans golf garb, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, and not by Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. One would also have...

The Syrian rebels are “cannibals” and should not be given arms, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday. "I think you will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras," Putin said at a joint press conference in London with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Putin was referring to video footage posted on the Internet last month of a rebel fighter eating the heart of a government soldier. "Is it them who you want to...

Top Sunni Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, says the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization is the “Party of Satan.” In an interview with Al Arabiya aired on Sunday, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, slammed Lebanese Hezbollah group as “party of Satsan” that seeks to “sow discord” among Muslims.

More than 1,000 people were killed in violence in Iraq in May, making it the deadliest month since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, the United Nations said on Saturday, as fears mounted of a return to civil war. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the last two months as al Qaeda and Sunni Islamist insurgents, invigorated by the Sunni-led revolt in Syria and by Sunni discontent at home, seek to revive the kind of all-out inter-communal conflict that killed tens of thousands five years ago. "That is a sad record," Martin Kobler, the U.N. envoy in Baghdad, said in...

Al Faroq Media regularly publishes Mohammed al Zawahiri's statements and propaganda. The outfit published a statement from 20 Egyptian jihadists, including al Zawahiri, calling for attacks inside Shiite-led countries. Twenty Egyptian jihadists have issued a statement calling upon Sunnis to launch attacks in Shiite-led countries in response to the Assad regime's offensive in Qusayr, a city in western Syria near Homs. The chief signatory on the statement is Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri. The statement was released on May 25 by Al Faroq Media, an Egyptian jihadist propaganda outfit that is...

In Russia, most analysts, politicians and ordinary citizens believe in the unlimited might of America, and thus reject the notion that the US has made, and continues to make, mistakes in the [Middle East]. Instead, they assume it’s all a part of a complex plan to restructure the world and to spread global domination,” writes Fyodor Lukyanov ... It’s instructive to view ourselves through a Russian mirror. The term “paranoid Russian” is a pleonasm. “The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication...

The Bashar al-Assad rule in Syria has come under heavy fire from people who believe that the regime must quit over its atrocities. But any attempt by the US-led West to impose a replacement will backfire soon India’s oil-rich western neighbourhood, extending from the Arabian Sea to the Bosporus, is engulfed in conflicts arising from sectarian and civilisational rivalries, aggravated by the meddling of external powers. With an arsenal of over 100 nuclear weapons, Pakistan is today witnessing a period of internal strife, largely arising from the pernicious role of its military establishment and tensions across its disputed borders with...

SNIPPET: "Indonesian anti-terror police, Densus 88 secure a terror suspect's house during a raid in Mojosongo, Solo in Central Java. Indonesian police have arrested 11 members of an Islamic group allegedly planning attacks on American diplomatic missions, a spokesman says." SNIPPET: "The group had planned to hit the US embassy and a US consulate, as well as a building near the Australian embassy in the capital Jakarta that houses the office of American mining giant Freeport-McMoran, police said. Police said they were from a new outfit called HASMI, the Sunni Movement for Indonesian Society, and explosives and a bomb-making manual...

A Bahraini court has sentenced a man to two years in prison for making insulting comments about one of the Prophet Mohammad's wives... Aisha, a revered figure for Sunni Muslims, in comments online. "The accused entered a website and made comments that were so morally filthy and depraved that the tongue could not pronounce them, and they slandered Aisha ... Underlying tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Muslim countries are often ignited by such issues concerning figures from early Islam and the different interpretations of Sunnis and Shi'ites over the historical events of that period. Such slander cases have become...

Last week's publicized defection of the Tlass family marked a potential turning point for Syria's al Assad regime. The Tlass family formed the main pillar of Sunni support for the minority Alawite regime. The patriarch of the family, former Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, had a strategic, brotherly bond with late Syrian President Hafez al Assad. cut But blood still runs thick in clan politics, and as Sunni blood was spilling into Syria's streets in the current uprising, the Tlass family likely felt growing pressure to side with its fellow Sunnis. Perhaps more critical, the Tlass family assessed it was time...