Free Republic

Islam is in danger TODAY'S EDITORIAL By Farid N. Ghadry September 21, 2006 The recent brouhaha surrounding Pope Benedict XVI comments on Islam delivered in Germany should give Muslims a pause. Not one that would conjure the recalcitrant attacks that we have seen recently but rather one that would question why such a prominent religious leader would utter these words. What the Pope said allows me, as a Muslim, to ponder self-examination and not rush into a reaction of condemnation. Islam, throughout its history, delivered its share of great minds to humanity during times of peace and prosperity. Scientists like...

The Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius asks, “Are We Fighting Islamic Fascists?” and answers a bold, “Yes and no.” His argument for “yes” is pretty strong: Ernst Nolte's "Three Faces of Fascism," a classic study of the social forces that created fascist movements in France, Italy and Germany during the 1920s and '30s … concludes … Fascism is "resistance to transcendence" … rebellion against the liberating but destabilizing transformations of modern society. In the countries where it took root, fascism began as a middle-class assault on the liberal elites who were creating that era's version of globalization. Jews were a...

Radical mosques are being built across the United States at an alarming rate, all tethered to a fanatical strain of Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia. And while so many have gone up, not one has come down. Not even Brooklyn, New York’s Al-Farooq Mosque, which housed al-Qaeda’s American hub in the early 90’s, the Alkifah Refugee Center, has met its demise. Recently, a new mosque of this kind was given the green light, a 29,000 square foot goliath, smack in the middle of South Florida. Tonight, a group of community leaders will be voicing their concern in protest. The mosque...

The people of Sarajevo, renowned for their pluralism, have been shaken after a series of incidents including the murder of a Muslim woman by her Islamic extremist son who questioned her faith. Upholders of Bosnia's moderate version of Islam say the problem caused by an influx of hardline fighters during the country's 1992-1995 war has worsened in recent months, highlighted by the gruesome murder. "Bosnia's tradition of Islam is tolerant, it promotes pluralism and we should not allow those representing a one-track ideology to teach us," says Jasmin Merdan. The 26-year-old -- a practising Muslim who portrays himself as a...

Saudis are still teaching intolerance by the bookClaims that school texts have been revised are untrue By NINA SHEA SAUDI Arabia's public schools have long been cited for demonizing the West as well as Christians, Jews and other "unbelievers." But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis — that was all supposed to change. A 2004 Saudi royal study group recognized the need for reform after finding that the kingdom's religious studies curriculum "encourages violence toward others and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own...

JERUSALEM -- The leadership of a West Bank Palestinian city now controlled by Hamas has warned a local Young Men's Christian Association to close its offices and leave town or face likely Muslim violence, WorldNetDaily has learned. The move highlighted long-standing fears Hamas would use its win in last January's Palestinian parliamentary elections to impose an anti-Christian, anti-Jewish hard-line Islamist regime in the West Bank and Gaza.

In the shop next to my house, there is a home delivery service which is run by an Indian. He is a good man, hardworking and devoted to his job. I talk to him whenever he delivers something to my house and he talks to me about the time he spent working in Abu Dhabi and of his dream to live in London. Last week I asked him to deliver a newspaper to my house. When he delivered it to me, he asked me whether I wrote in it. I told him that I did and he asked me to...

WASHINGTON: The Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban with the help of Pakistani and Saudi engineers. According to an account published here on Saturday, a local Afghan told the makers of a Swiss documentary on the giant statues which had stood there, carved in the side of a mountain for hundreds of years, had been destroyed by engineers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The dynamiting of the statues took place in March 2001. Swiss documentary filmmaker Christian Frei, who has made several documentaries that have won praise at various international film festivals, shot ‘The Giant Buddhas’ in...

EDITOR'S NOTE — This is another story in an occasional series examining the fault lines within Islam between the forces of moderation and extremism. The consequences of this fight that shook America on Sept. 11, 2001, reverberate today, and the struggle for Islam may be the defining conflict of our era. LOS ANGELES — UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl has a scholarly manner and speaks in soft tones. But listen as he tells his story. A Kuwaiti native, he was fascinated by militant Islam as a young man, then evolved into a moderate champion of democracy and suffered...

LONDON - A British jury convicted radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri on Tuesday of fomenting racial hatred and inciting his followers to kill non-Muslims. Al-Masri, 47, the former imam at London's Finsbury Park mosque, also was convicted of possessing a terrorist document and threatening or abusive recordings. Al-Masri, Britain's best-known Islamist orator, could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison. The jury of seven men and five women found al-Masri guilty on seven of nine charges of soliciting murder. He also was convicted on two of four charges of stirring racial hatred. Though asked to stand for the...

Wahhabism has become institutionalised at the World Economic Forum with the advent of the 'West Islamic World Dialouge' ( aka Da'wa)- a Saudi run initiative designed to promote Islamist economic interests and establish a Khalifate under the guise of "understanding and cooperation between Western countries and countries with predominently Muslim populations". Adding insult to injury, the Wahhabists running the forum have cynically appealed for funding for terror linked charities like the UK Islamic Relief (which was linked to Al Qaeda), under the guise of combatting extremism with compassion (!).

EXTREMIST chaplains' domination and intimidation of Muslim believers incarcerated in New York prisons remains a major problem. Worse, the state Department of Correctional Services (DCS) is fighting to preserve this dangerous status quo. Last week's illegal-weapon charges against Warith Deen Umar, the former chief Muslim chaplain of the state prison system, were one sign. The raid this past weekend on his upstate home by NYPD counterterror cops was another. Born Wallace Gene Marks, Umar — now 61 — was once an adherent of Louis Farrakhan, with the alias Wallace 10X. He began his activities as a prison chaplain in 1975....

A U.S.-based Saudi professor and former U.N. fellow says he agrees with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust is a "myth" and says America eventually will collapse like the Soviet Union. Abdullah Muhammad Sindi, who has taught at four American schools, told Iran's Mehr News Agency Dec. 26, "I agree wholeheartedly with President Ahmadinejad."

EVER SINCE 9/11, we learned last month, federal officials have been monitoring radiation levels around a number of American mosques. It is an understandable precaution, given Al Qaeda's interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, and its history of mass murder. Understandable -- but also troubling. In a nation as tolerant as this one, nobody can be happy about the need to focus self-defensive attention on mosques. Unfortunately, we are at war with violent Islamist radicals, and they are not above using mosques to incubate terrorism. If there is evidence of heightened radioactivity around a Muslim facility, the government should be aware...

The former President of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid, has published a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam: Muslims and non-Muslims must unite to defeat the Wahhabi ideology. Many, many people sent to me in the course of the day yesterday, asking me to comment; but really, it contains nothing new. It is just more of the kind of analysis we have seen by the bushel since 9/11: Islam is a religion of tolerance and peace, and the big bad Wahhabis are hijacking it into something else. But as I show in my book The Politically...

Saudi television featured an interview with a young Palestinian girl who called Jews "villains" and "dogs" and said the Palestinians have no desire for peace with Israel. In the segment on Iqra TV aired Dec. 7, the young girl said that in 1948, "the Jews occupied our land, our country. They drove us out of our homes, and put us in tents. Then they would destroy our homes. They'd put our clothes out on the sand, and then demolish the homes. They would get them out, destroy their homes, demolish and bring them down." The excerpt, translated by the Middle...

The key word in this entire story in 'quietly'. The keep-a-lid-on-it tactic adopted by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority makes one wonder whether the Canadian Government really wants its own citizens to be aware of the true scale of the Islamist threat that has grown significantly in the years under the Liberal rule. Hopefully, with thanks to CP, this revelation will become a subject of national debate, and will force the campaigning leaders to look at the issue more closely and suggest their strategies of dealing with radical Islamism.OTTAWA (CP) - Canada's air security agency has quietly warned its...

For more than three decades, Saudi-backed organizations have poured billions of dollars into the United States and other countries to fund Wahhabi mosques, Islamic schools, conferences and education for imams, or Muslim spiritual leaders. Some money comes directly from the Saudi government. Other funds come from wealthy Saudis, investigators say. In the United States, some of the money flowed through a web of Islamic organizations now under investigation for financing terrorism. But the main clearinghouse for Wahhabism in the United States is a group not known to be under investigation, the Islamic Society of North America. ISNA is subsidized by...

Perle claimed Saudi Arabia was no ally of the United States and that the Saudi royal family had allowed terrorist ideology to flourish within its borders and beyond. He called the U.S. government`s continued friendship with the Middle East nation the result of an intelligence failure worse than that concerning the Sept. 11 attacks. 'It is one of the greatest intelligence failures of the century that the rise of extremist institutions inspired culturally and intellectually by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia went so unmarked,' Perle told a group at the conservative Hudson Institute. 'This seems to me a far larger...

Bill Clinton was wrong and still so I received an email from Donna P. asking the following question: Hi, It's just been reported that ex US president Clinton, has said that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. I was wondering if you'd care to share your views on that statement . If you could talk to Bill Clinton, what would you have to say about his statement? Thank you, Donna P. . During the time of Bill Clinton presidency the following happened: 1. Talaban became very strong and Al-Qaeda finalized its attacks against in NY in 11/9/2001 2. Saddam...