Free Republic

This video traces the cause of our economic crisis that had its roots planted 12 years ago.

A lawmaker from the Silicon Valley wants to require "climate change" to be taught as "science" in all California public schools. Warmers can't convince the adults, but they can brainwash the children. "You can't have a science curriculum that is relevant and current if it doesn't deal with the science behind climate change," says the bill's sponsor, California state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. "This is a phenomenon of global importance, and our kids ought to understand the science behind that phenomenon." So should adults such as Al Gore, who declares the debate over even as evidence debunking the junk...

How big do you have to be to earn the wrath of the United Nations and Internet giant Google? If you're journalist Matthew Lee, all it takes are some critical articles and a scrappy little Web site. Lee is the editor-in-chief, Webmaster and pretty much the only reporter for Inner City Press, a pint-sized Internet news operation that's taken on Goliath-sized entities like Citigroup since 1987. Since 2005, he's been focusing almost entirely on stories that deal with internal corruption inside the U.N., posting several stores online almost daily. He's been especially interested in the inner workings of what could...

The number of people who make their livings trying to influence the federal government runs into the hundreds of thousands, an enormous figure given the fact that most lobbying is aimed at 535 members of Congress. The exact size of this lobbying army is hard to define, however, because the 30,000 or so people who register to lobby each year do so voluntarily (there is essentially no enforcement of lobbying registration laws), and only those who meet with lawmakers and their staffs directly are required to register at all. The majority of people who lobby do so indirectly, through tele-marketing,...

Britain's Treasury is likely to back plans to issue Shariah law-compliant bonds, officials said Sunday - amid continuing debate about the application of Islamic laws in the country. Treasury Secretary Alistair Darling, who will present his annual budget March 12, plans to issue the Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, to tap into a fast-growing market in the products. "We want the City of London to be one of the gateways globally for Islamic financial products," a Treasury spokesman said, on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy. ...Shariah law prohibits charging or paying interest, which has led to the...

Fawza Falih was condemned to death by a court in the town of Quraiyat after confessing under interrogation to having used sorcery to bewitch people. ...Saudi Arabia’s religious police, the Muttawa, arrested Falih in 2006, and after 35 days’ detention and interrogation, she signed a statement confessing to having been a witch. However, at trial Falih repudiated her confession, saying it had been extracted under torture. Human Rights Watch also charged the Saudi woman’s trial was flawed, alleging misconduct on the part of the judge and prosecutor. An appeals court threw out the death penalty in September 2006, but the...

Last month, the president announced his intention to sell Saudi Arabia some of our most sophisticated weapons. This is a bad idea, and you should let your representative know it right away. The proposed $20 billion deal includes “satellite-guided weaponry” and “high-tech munitions,” including 900 JDAM bombs. The JDAM is arguably the smartest “smart bomb” in our arsenal. Its electronics can “guide the bomb to its target regardless of weather.” And, it is also resistant to the jamming of its GPS system. ...The Saudi government funds and operates “mosques, madrassas, and Islamic centers” in the United States and elsewhere. These...

It is seven months since Du’aa was stoned to death by a mob in the Kurdish hillside village of Basshiqa, northern Iraq ...Du’aa was taken to the home of Sheikh Sulaiman Sulaiman, the senior Yazidi figure in the village. ...A 65-year-old uncle, Salim, a science teacher, backed the head of their tribe, Omar Hamko, 73, in demanding that she be killed to “cleanse the family honour”. Her father would not countenance it. He proposed that she be married to a cousin and moved to Syria. ...When the uncle insisted that he would decide Du’aa’s fate as the elder sibling and...

When others in his church and nation are often blinded by multiculturalism and rigid political correctness, the Church of England’s ethnically Pakistani Bishop of Rochester often speaks boldly. His recent column in The Daily Telegraph warning against encroaching self-segregation and even the growing practice of Islamic Sharia law within British Islamic communities has aroused the ire of some Muslim clerics in Britain. “There has been a worldwide resurgence of the ideology of Islamic extremism,” Nazir-Ali wrote. “One of the results of this has been to further alienate the young from the nation in which they were growing up and also...

Muslim students of five public elementary and high schools in Manila are now learning the Arabic language and Muslim values. Mayor Alfredo Lim said asatidz or Muslim teachers are handling the Arabic Language and Islamic Values Education (Alive) program that began last month at the Santiago Elementary School, Avanceña High School, Apolinario Mabini Elementary School, Aurora Quezon Elementary School and Baseco Elementary School. The city government has deployed 18 asatidz to teach some 1,040 Muslim students in the five schools. Areas like Quiapo have huge Muslim communities. “This is in recognition of the multifaceted personalities and cultures of our young...

Polls show that 40 percent of British Muslims want Sharia, Islamic Law implemented in the UK and the government has moved to accommodate them. Tony Blair’s government passed a law that would essentially criminalize blaspheming Islam. The law was weakened in the House of Lords but it will return again stronger than ever especially as the electoral and terror power of Muslims grow along with the desire of Western governments to appease them. Norway and Sweden have already begun the process of implementing similar laws. In parts of Australia criticizing Islam can get you jail time. In Israel a woman...

The medical community is warning the public: a leprosy outbreak in Springdale could blossom into an epidemic, if something isn't done soon. Doctors say at least nine cases of leprosy have been confirmed in Springdale. Local doctors say they would be shocked by even one case of leprosy in their entire career, so they say something must be done soon, in order to stop leprosy's spread. Springdale MD Jennifer Bingham says, "my initial response was: I am shocked. I am shocked we are seeing this. It's a true reason to be very worried." Medical specialists say the Marshall Islands have...

Tension was rife in Kano following moves by the state’s sharia police against brothel, hotels and cafes situated in non-Muslim sections of the Sabon Gari area of the metropolis. The sharia police numbering about two hundred were seen at night patrolling in seven open vehicles that carried dangerous weapons including bows, arrows, sticks and cutlass. They attacked a civil service club at Magajin Rumfa Road, and all the hotels that are located in Sabon Gari, an area where most of its inhabitants are Christians. The Sharia Police, otherwise called, Hisbah Police, earlier turned down summons by the Kano State Police...

Yaquby relinquished life as a full-time holy man and academic when he agreed to supervise an Islamic bank at the request of a friend in 1989, a decision that would turn him into a major financial powerbroker. "I told him I don't know what to do there. He said consider it a learning experience," Yaquby said at the Reuters Islamic Finance Summit. Between engagements in London, New York, Dubai and Bahrain, Yaquby will sit on the board of scholars next week that will decide the fate of the $80 billion Islamic bond industry, rocked by controversy over questions about compliance...

A man of 22 has been sentenced to death in Iran for drinking alcohol. The man, named only as Mohsen, had confessed and expressed remorse, the state news agency said yesterday. Islam bans alcohol and under Iran's strict sharia law a person caught drinking for a fourth time who confesses can face death. Mohsen's lawyer Aziz Nokandei said: "He was drinking at home, made some disturbance in the street and was arrested."

A 70-year-old woman convert from Islam died on Friday from burns she suffered when unknown assailants in a Muslim-majority area about 150 miles northwest of the capital set her home on fire last month. ...Family members did not file charges with police over Beoa’s death because they could not trace anyone to the arson, Mintu said. He added that filing charges would also hamper evangelistic efforts. ...pastor Abdul Mabud Chowdhury said villagers were not only upset over Beoa’s planned February 13 baptism but angry with her daughter and son-in-law, 40-year-old Ashraful Islam, for converting to Christianity and for his evangelistic...

The Gaza Strip is home to 1.5 million Muslims - and about 3,000 increasingly frightened Christians. The small evangelical Baptist community has been a principal target of the extremists because of its missionary work, which has been halted. "Christians get killed here, let alone a Muslim who converted," said Ashraf, 36, who did not give his last name. "I stopped going to church even before the coup." And recently, even his church leader, pastor Hanna Massad, has fled to the West Bank. The murder of Baptist congregant Rami Eyad in October sent shock waves through Gaza's Christian community. Eyad's religious...

A businesswoman was detained and strip-searched by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop with an unrelated man, taboo in the country, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. The incident came just days after a UN report blasted the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom for widespread discrimination against women and as a UN expert on women's rights began a visit to the country. ...The English-language Arab News quoted a 40-year-old financial consultant, named only as Yara, as saying she was arrested on Monday by members of the powerful Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She...

Joseph Protano, a devout Roman Catholic, was a regular visitor to a prayer room open to all faiths at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. But Mr Protono, 54, became increasingly angry to find that a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary were regularly being left covered up. On one visit he discovered three Muslims – two patients and a consultant – inside the prayer room with the two icons masked by a cloth. A picture of the Virgin Mary had also been placed face down. Mr Protano is alleged to have uncovered the symbols and stood the picture back...

Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs, because they say it is against their religion. Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam. Universities and NHS trusts fear many more will refuse to co-operate with new Department of Health guidance, introduced this month, which stipulates that all doctors must be "bare below the elbow". The measure is deemed necessary to stop the...