Free Republic

I was chatting with a guy in a waiting room the other day about religion.  He related that his cousin converted to the Russian Orthodox religion and eventually became a bishop.  He said that his cousin believed that Islam was an evil religion and remarked about how unchristian it was to allege such a thing.  I replied that most Christians today refuse to acknowledge the truth about their own religions, let alone Islam. Is Islam just a bad or corrupted religion, or is it really evil?  This is why I believe it to be evil: The fundamentals of the Islam...

PARISIAN sunbathers will no longer be allowed to go nude or wear g-strings on the capital's artificial beaches and risk a fine if they are caught baring their breasts or buttocks. City hall has issued a decree banning indecent clothing to preserve the tranquillity of the sandy beaches created on the banks of the River Seine every summer since 2001. "People must behave according to good standards to maintain tranquillity, security and public order," the decree said, according to Saturday's edition of Le Parisien. "Notably indecent attire (nude sunbathing, g-strings and toplessness etc) is forbidden." The city police will be...

German widows and widowers who want to take the ashes of their loved ones home with them have to cross the border to the Netherlands and organize cremation there. Since the 1930s, German law stipulates that urns must be buried at a cemetery. Displaying ashes on the mantelpiece or scattering them over a cherished plot of earth, long possible in the United States and several European Union countries, was ruled unconstitutional in Germany in 1979. The first initiative aimed at abolishing mandatory cemetery burials since the 1979 ruling is now being debated in North Rhine-Westphalia's state parliament. The draft legislation,...