Free Republic

Last week’s bombing near the grave of the Quds Force general that killed 84 is the latest episode in ISIS’s war on Shiite Muslims.. In the immediate aftermath of the January 3 blast that killed at least 84 people near the grave of general Qassem Soleimani in the Iranian city of Kerman, some low-level Iranian officials hinted at a possible Israeli involvement. Iran’s deputy parliament speaker claimed it had the signs of an Israeli assault — even though it showed radically different features from Israel’s alleged operations in enemy territory, which usually involve precision killings of key enemy figures. The...

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that the country’s warships destroyed a command center with Kalibr cruise missiles, killing dozens of Ukrainian officers. “More than 50 generals and officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were killed,” the statement said. The strike took place near the village of Shirokaya Dacha in Dnepropetrovsk Region. The strike hit the compound where commanders of several Ukrainian units had gathered for a meeting, Moscow said.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked Shiite Muslims representatives on Monday how they were handling growing anti-Semitism in Germany. In a meeting with leaders from the Islamic Association of Shiite Congregations in Germany (IGS) at the Bellevue Palace in Berlin, Steinmeier expressed his concerns over rising hostility toward Jews from all aspects of society, including Muslims. “Anti-Semitism in Germany isn’t primarily a Muslim problem, but it is also seen more strongly among Muslims,” the president said, according to those present at the meeting. His statement was part of a broader conversation focused on concerns over rising anti-Semitism in Germany and to...

IRBIL, IRAQ — Iraqi security forces and Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militias appeared Thursday to be on the verge of victory in a two-week effort to recapture Saddam Hussein’s hometown from the Islamic State, which has held the symbolically important city since June. But the seemingly certain triumph of a force with little Sunni Muslim participation in the center of Iraq’s Sunni heartland has raised another troubling issue: the extension of Iran’s influence in a country where the Shiite Muslim neighbor is already the most significant outside player. The forces that appeared Thursday to have cornered the last Islamic State fighters...

Three attackers with grenades, Kalashnikovs and explosive suicide vests struck at the Imamia mosque in Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan's restive northwest, around the time of the main Friday prayers. The attack comes two weeks after a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan killed 61 people ... violence has been on the rise in Pakistan in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shiite Muslims, who make up around a fifth of the population. The suicide bombing at a mosque in southern Sindh province on January 30 was the deadliest...

JURF AL-SAKHAR, Iraq - After helping government forces break Islamic State's grip over a strategic town just south of Baghdad on Saturday, Shi'ite militias decided it was time for payback ... As the angry crowd of militiamen around the unarmed militants swelled, shots rang out. The three men lay soaked in blood in the dirt with gunshot wounds to the head. "Those dogs are Chechens. They don't deserve to stay alive. We took confessions from them and we don't need them anymore," said one of the Shi'ite militiamen. The victory could allow Iraqi forces to prevent the Sunni insurgents from...

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 sectarian tensions underlying the conflict in Syria have erupted in Australia, with acts of violence, harassment and threats ... Jamal Daoud, a high-profile community leader in western Sydney, says the situation is becoming "very vicious". Although he is a Sunni Muslim, because of his opposition to removing the Syrian regime by force, Mr Daoud says extremists at home view him with the same hatred they have for Shiites and Alawites. ... the source of the violence in Sydney, the Jabhat al Nusra supporters," he said. "The last two years they have flourished in western Sydney, they have flourished. We...

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the prominent Sunni cleric, said Friday that Hezbollah and Iran are "more infidel than Jews and Christians." Coming from the guy who once lauded Hitler for exacting "divine punishment" on the Jews, that really is saying something. That the war in Syria is sectarian was obvious almost from the start, despite the credulous belief that Bashar Assad ran a nonsectarian regime. That a sectarian ruling minority fighting for its life would not fold easily was obvious within months, despite happy guarantees that the regime's downfall would come within weeks. That a sectarian war in Syria would stir similar...

Al-Hamad, who is Wahhabi (extremist Sunni) and harbors a sectarian hatred for Alawite and Shiite Muslims, said he has another gruesome video of his killing a government soldier from the Alawite faith. “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites]. ... Human Rights Watch (HRW), which validated the video, released a report on May 13 identifying al-Hamad as a well-known commander responsible for the recent cross-border shelling of a Shi‘ite Lebanese village that killed two. The organization called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes...

Gunmen on Thursday pulled 20 Shiite Muslims from a bus and shot them dead in northwestern Pakistan, the second such incident in six months

Is Barack Obama the "promised warrior" coming to help the Hidden Imam of Shiite Muslims conquer the world?

BAGHDAD, April 11 — Arms that American military officials say appear to have been manufactured in Iran as recently as last year have turned up in the past week in a Sunni-majority area, the chief spokesman for the American military command in Iraq said Wednesday in a news conference. The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that detainees in American custody had indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives had given support to Sunni insurgents and that surrogates for the Iranian intelligence service were training Shiite extremists in Iran. He gave no further description of the detainees and did not...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and...

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 11 — Lebanon was thrown into a political crisis Saturday when talks broke down over giving the militant faction Hezbollah and its political allies greater control of the government. Almost immediately, cabinet ministers from the group and the other main Shiite party resigned. Lebanon’s political leaders have held talks for four days, trying to defuse tensions among the various government factions after Hezbollah demanded a greater role in the cabinet and called for its alliance to have veto power over all government decisions. Hezbollah was politically emboldened after its 34-day war with Israel this summer, and it...

I should've known that something interesting was coming on CNN when I saw that the violent-nihilistic movie, "V for Vendetta" was advertising itself earlier today on "CNN Sunday Night." You might remember that film; audiences were supposed to cheer terrorists as they blow up Big Ben in London. Happily, audiences shunned the film--Hollywood seems to have overestmated the public appetite for terror-philic films. And that was just the commercial. Host Carol Lin didn't let me down, either--even as she ran down the USA....

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 2 — Iraq's dominant Shiite political bloc fractured Sunday when its most powerful faction publicly demanded that the incumbent Shiite prime minister resign over his inability to form a unified government. The split came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, paid an urgent visit to Iraqi leaders here to convey in the most forceful terms yet that their patience for the country's political paralysis was wearing thin. It was not clear whether the joint visit by Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw, the top emissaries of the two countries that led...

KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) - US-led coalition forces urged residents to leave this Iraqi holy city after three civilians were killed and seven wounded in fighting between Shiite Muslim militiamen and Iraqi troops. US warplanes flew low overhead and coalition soldiers drove through town telling people to leave over loudspeakers following clashes between US-trained Iraqi paramilitaries and loyalists of Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr. A patrol of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) came under attack 50 metres (yards) from the mausoleums of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas, among Shiite Islam's most revered shrines, said witness Hassan Ghanem. Ghanem said he...

At least nine people have been killed and 15 wounded in a car bomb attack in the Iraqi town of Najaf. The explosion was outside Shiite Islam's holiest mosques, it is reported. Sky's foreign affairs editor, Tim Marshall, says it is likely the attack was as a result of in-fighting between Shiite Muslims rather than an attack on Coalition trrops

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR AGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 15 — The most combative group of Shiite Muslims announced during their main prayer sermon today that they would proceed with a proposal to form their own militia to safeguard holy sites from any transgressions by American troops. More than 3,000 of the faithful flooded one of the dusty main thoroughfares in Sadr City, a predominately Shiite slum in Baghdad, to hear the prayer leader, Sheik Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, denounce the American forces, accusing them of defiling sacred places after an incident on Wednesday in which an American Black Hawk helicopter forced down a...