Free Republic

Actress and liberal activist Alyssa Milano, whose credits include Who’s the Boss?, Melrose Place, Charmed, My Name is Earl, Mistresses, and Insatiable, and who in 2017 re-launched #MeToo movement, announced last week that she won’t be taking part in the next Women’s March because anti-Zionist, Islamist activist Linda Sarsour is, The Advocate reported. Milano became aware of Sarsour’s caustic influence on liberal women’s politics when she was a panelist at a political event in Los Angeles last month and was challenged by rightwing reporter Laura Loomer: “You are friends with Linda Sarsour, and both of you ladies have positioned yourselves...

Saudi Arabia has ordered Canadian ambassador Dennis Horak to leave the kingdom within 24 hours (David Kawai/The Canadian Press via AP) Saudi Arabia has ordered the Canadian ambassador to leave the ultraconservative kingdom within 24 hours after his nation criticised the recent arrest of women’s rights activists. The Saudi Foreign Ministry also said it would freeze “all new business” between the kingdom and Canada. Some 10% of Canadian crude oil imports come from Saudi Arabia. Canadian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was not immediately clear if Ambassador Dennis Horak was in the kingdom. “Any...

Under the watch of Chancellor Merkel, millions of Muslim migrants have flooded Germany. Amid a spike in rapes, another frightening trend is emerging within Europe’s largest economy — Sharia Police.Gatestone Institute reports: A hundred Islamists are now openly enforcing Sharia law on the streets of Berlin, according to local police who are investigating a recent string of violent assaults in the German capital. The self-appointed morality police involve Salafists from Chechnya, a predominantly Sunni Muslim region in Russia. The vigilantes are using threats of violence to discourage Chechen migrants from integrating into German society; they are also promoting the establishment of a parallel...

...Saudi Arabia has, for decades, been making investments of a different sort—those aimed at influencing Indonesian culture and religion. The king’s current visit is the apex of that methodical campaign, and “has the potential to accelerate the expansion of Saudi Arabia’s cultural resources in Indonesia,” .. Since 1980, Saudi Arabia has devoted millions of dollars to exporting its strict brand of Islam, Salafism, to historically tolerant and diverse Indonesia. It has built more than 150 mosques (albeit in a country that has about 800,000), a huge free university in Jakarta, and several Arabic language institutes; supplied more than 100 boarding...

As one of the most successful women to ever play the male-dominated game of chess, Nazi Paikidze is used to having her moves watched closely. Her latest has drawn international attention: Paikidze announced last week that she will boycott February’s Women's World Chess Championship in Iran because the players will have to wear hijabs. Paikidze’s decision will deprive the tournament of one of the game’s brightest stars and biggest draws — the U.S. champion who once told a magazine she would “do everything I can to help more girls get into chess.”

Some child brides are living with older husbands in asylum centers in Scandinavia, triggering a furor about lapses in protection for girls in nations that ban child marriage. Authorities have let girls stay with their partners, believing it is less traumatic for them than forced separation after fleeing wars. These issues have caused unease in Scandinavia, where authorities risk complicity in child abuse. "Minors seeking asylum are in a difficult situation where they have left their homeland, family and friends, and the partner they have traveled with can be the only person they know and trust in Norway," said Heidi...

Bangladesh could drop Islam as the country's official religion following a string of extremist attacks against people of other faiths. The supreme court in the South Asia nation has began to hear arguments which challenge Islam's status as the official state religion. It comes after a spate of attacks against people of other religions such as Hindus, Christians, and minorities Shi'ites, which have been blamed on Islamic extremists. When Bangladesh was formed in 1971 after the nation split from Pakistan, it was declared a secular state. However, in 1988 the country's constitution was amended with Islam declared as the state...

View video at link http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b98_1453831974

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the fight against violent extremism, President Barack Obama argues the U.S. has one thing going for it that Europe doesn't: a long tradition of warmly embracing its immigrants, including Muslims. With the Islamic State group spreading and terrorists gaining strength in the Mideast and Africa, Obama has sought to use this week's White House summit on violent extremism to urge the world to broaden its response far beyond military interventions. U.S. airstrikes have managed to blunt some of the militants' gains in Iraq and Syria, but they don't address the extreme ideologies that underpin deadly groups...

WASHINGTON – Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s top religious authority in the ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam, has ruled it’s acceptable for men to marry girls so young the West would deem it nothing short of pedophilia and rape. Despite the Saudi justice ministry’s failed efforts to date to set 15 as a minimum age to marry a girl in the kingdom, Grand Mufti Abdulaziz declared there is nothing prohibiting Muslim men from marrying girls even younger. As Grand Mufti, Abdulaziz is president of the Supreme Council of Ulema (Islamic scholars) and chairman of...

The head of India's most powerful Hindu group vowed to press ahead with a campaign to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, stoking a sensitive debate that has stalled parliament and threatened the prime minister's economic reform agenda. Mohan Bhagwat of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which is also the ideological wing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, said India was a "Hindu nation" where many Hindus had been forcibly converted to other religions. "We will bring back those who have lost their way. They did not go on their own," Bhagwat said in a speech late on Saturday. "They...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there. "Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America. "Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said.

The "I" word -- Islam -- shall not be used other than respectfully, as in "the religion of peace."Do the Islamic State (IS) and its terrorist cohorts practice an "extremist" version of Islam? Does Obama know enough about Islam to decide? [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRSSn_yRrT4] Video linkSecretary Kerry (consistently with Obama's position), said “The real face of Islam is a peaceful religion based on ‎the dignity of all human beings:” “America’s faith communities, including American Muslims, are sources of strength for all of us. They’re an ‎essential part of our national fabric, and we are committed to deepening our partnerships with them. We’re ‎making these efforts to...

If you've been at the beach and missed the latest world news, let me briefly catch you up. Terrorists in Syria and Iraq have been overrunning the countryside, pausing to savagely murder an American journalist. Pakistan is reeling from political crisis. The Russians just made an incursion into Ukraine, the Israelis have been blowing up every other building in Gaza, and Ebola's rampaging through West Africa. All of which has led to some of the most blistering criticism of Barack Obama's presidency — and not just because he found time to golf. Republican leaders have called Obama feckless and incompetent,...

The Deputy PM of Turkey Bülent Arınç said today that women should refrain from laughing in public, because it’s immodest. In response to Arınç’s remarks, hundreds of Turkish women posted pictures of themselves laughing on social media platforms. […] Arınç chided Turkish women saying, “Where are our girls, who slightly blush, lower their heads and turn their eyes away when we look at their face, becoming the symbol of chastity?” he said. This is not the first time that a member of PM Erdogan’s AK Party espoused misogynist views in public. …

DAKAR, Senegal — A mob attacked gay people in a neighborhood in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, dragging young men from their homes, beating them with nail-studded clubs and whips, and shouting that they were “cleansing the community” of gays, several Nigerian activists and a witness said Saturday. The attack took place late Wednesday night in the Gishiri neighborhood, and one victim was beaten nearly to death, the witness said. Afterward, the mob of about 50 young men dragged four of the victims to a nearby police station, where the police further beat and insulted them, said the witness, who...

Saudi Arabia’s feared religious police entered a public park in the Gulf Kingdom and told women to stop using swings, an act that drew applause and criticism by viewers of a picture showing the men warning some women at the swings. The picture went viral on social networks in Saudi Arabia before it was published by newspapers showing two men from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice warning women against using the swings. “Some viewers of the picture supported the move by the Commission members on the grounds women using the swing could encourage men...

Laws to apply to the Sultanate's majority Muslim population The Sultan of Brunei announced on Tuesday the gradual introduction of harsh Islamic punishments, such as death by stoning for adulterers, severing of limbs for theft and flogging for a wide range of crimes including abortion and consumption of alcohol.

Vivienne Harr has already been garnering headlines for selling lemonade for 365 consecutive days – including on Day 173 at New York City’s Times Square – and raising exactly $101,320 that she donated to a nonprofit dedicated to ending child slavery. But now, the 9-year-old girl from Marin County’s Fairfax, a 40-minute drive from San Francisco, is stepping up her game, again, if that’s even possible. Last month, she began rolling out her mother’s recipe for organic, Fair Trade, “tunnel pasteurized” lemonade, bottled in Michigan and shipped to 70 mostly locally owned, organic shops in California and Oregon. On Friday,...

President Obama declares that, “We are not at war with Islam,” but the Islamic Quran and Sharia command that Muslims conduct jihadist war against non-Muslims to spread the religion and Sharia law worldwide. The question is why Obama maintains we are not at war with Islam, when Islam is clearly at war with the U.S.? President Barack H. Obama proclaims that the U.S. is not “at war with Islam.” The president then proceeds to draw an imaginary line between “moderate” and “radical” groups of Muslims that does not exist within the reality of Islamic “theology.” Obama claims that that there...