Free Republic

This doesn’t come as any surprise given the eagerness of both Facebook and Twitter to be Sharia-compliant. Facebook’s Vice President Joel Kaplan traveled to Pakistan in July 2017 to assure the Pakistani government that it would remove “anti-Islam” material. And Facebook has done so assiduously, banning numerous foes of jihad terror and twice now blocking the Jihad Watch Facebook page on spurious technical grounds. And Twitter has recently been notifying people that they’re in violation of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which violation carries a death sentence. But this shows how sick and degenerate the social media giants really are. CAIR has...

The U.S. case against the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies, who was arrested in Canada last month, centers on the company’s suspected ties to two obscure companies. One is a telecom equipment seller that operated in Tehran; the other is that firm’s owner, a holding company registered in Mauritius. U.S. authorities allege CFO Meng Wanzhou deceived international banks into clearing transactions with Iran by claiming the two companies were independent of Huawei, when in fact Huawei controlled them. Huawei has maintained the two are independent: equipment seller Skycom Tech Co Ltd and shell company Canicula Holdings Ltd. But...

The Egyptian President, accompanied by religious, military and international dignitaries, witnesses ceremony to inaugurate the Nativity of Christ Cathedral and Al-Fattah El-Alim17:43 US President Donald Trump tweeted, "Excited to see our friends in Egypt opening the biggest Cathedral in the Middle East. President El-Sisi is moving his country to a more inclusive future!" 17:40 In a short video message aired before the attendees, Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, congratulated the Egyptian people, government and president on the inauguration of the new cathedral.17:30 Following the moment of silence, the celebration on stage started with a live performance of Islamic chants and Christian hymns...

The substantial request for military support included air raids, logistics and transportation so Turkish forces could finish off the remaining fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in Syria, senior US officials were quoted as saying by the WSJ on Friday. "The Turkish requests are so extensive that, if fully met, the American military might be deepening its involvement in Syria instead of reducing it," the newspaper reported. The unidentified American officials told the Journal there was little chance Washington would agree to Ankara's requests in full. US President Donald Trump announced...

The Iranian navy will send warships to deploy in the Atlantic from March, a top commander said on Friday, as the Islamic Republic seeks to increase the operating range of its naval forces to the backyard of the United States, its arch foe.

PARIS: Saudi Arabia has threatened military action against Qatar if it goes ahead and acquires Russia's top of the range S-400 air defence missile system, Le Monde daily reported. Citing information it had obtained, Le Monde said Friday that Riyadh had written to French President Emmanuel Macron asking him to intervene to prevent the deal going ahead and to help preserve regional stability. There was no immediate official reaction from the president's office or the French foreign ministry to the report. Saudi Arabia, backed by other regional powers including Bahrain and the Unite Arab Emirates, broke off relations with Qatar...

The U.S. military plans to scale back its role in Somalia and curtail airstrikes against al-Shabab insurgents after having taken out many of the group's senior operatives, two senior U.S. officials told NBC News, the latest signal the Trump administration is looking to cut the number of troops deployed around the world. The move reflects an assessment by the administration that while the Shabab insurgency remains a threat to the Somali government and neighboring countries, it does not pose a direct danger to the U.S., current and former officials said. And it follows President Donald Trump's abrupt announcement last month...

Less than two months after he was given prominent op-ed space in the Washington Post, a video has surfaced of Houthi rebel leader Mohammad Ali al-Houthi launching a shoulder-fired missile and then reciting the Houthi slogan, which calls for “Death to America.” The Washington Post contributor chants, “Allah is the greatest. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews. Victory to Islam.” He has also taken to his unverified but media– and think tank-cited Twitter account to repeat the infamous Houthi slogan. Ali Shihabi, the founder of the Arabia Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based Middle East think tank, confirmed to...

Iran’s president submitted next year’s budget to parliament on Tuesday (Christmas), the first since the United States restored sanctions that had been lifted under the nuclear deal. The $47.5 billion budget is less than half the size of last year’s, mainly due to the severe depreciation of the local currency following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The Iranian rial has fallen from around 42,000 to the dollar a year ago to around 100,000 today.

Trump was right! The #FakeNews media is the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE… The Washington Post has a guest contributor who ordered the deaths of 26 journalists in Yemen. The Islamist contributor Mohammed al-Houthi likes to carry an AK47 with him even to interviews. And now this… Mohammed al-Houthi was recently filmed launching a shoulder-fired missile while chanting “Death to Israel!… Death to America!”

On December 14, 2018, Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's last monarch, participated in a discussion forum at the Washington Institute. He presented an opening statement, followed by taking questions from the host and reporters from major news outlets, including Persian-language Western media. His remarks were met with mixed reactions from the Iranian community across the globe, as well as from self-proclaimed Iran experts, leading to endless discussions among proponents as well as detractors on various social media platforms. Some of his more controversial statements were sensationalized by mainstream media, which created a controversy of its own. In the...

The Iranian Supreme Court has vacated the murder convictions of a group of serial killers because their victims were engaging in un-Islamic activities, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports.The men were convicted for a series of grisly killings in the southeastern city of in 2002. The vigilantes were said to believe that Islam condoned the killing of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims, the BBC reports.

Al Jazeera spoke to Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Houthi rebels' Supreme Revolutionary Committee, about the ceasefire in Hodeidah, his movement's relationship with Iran, and the Houthis' endgame in Yemen.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrian President Bashar Assad authorized Iraqi forces on Sunday to attack the Islamic State group inside Syria without waiting for permission from authorities in Damascus, the state news agency SANA said, as the two allies coordinate their fight against extremists ahead of a planned U.S. withdrawal from Syria. ... On Saturday Assad received a letter from Iraq’s Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi calling for both countries’ coordination in “fighting terrorism.” ... In Tehran, Iran and Syria signed Sunday a long-term strategic and economic agreement as the war winds down in Syria where Iran and Russia were the main...

When Donald Trump announced that his first trip abroad as president would take him to Saudi Arabia and to Israel, it was a signal that the new administration had returned America’s traditional alliances in the Middle East to their privileged status. For the prior eight years, the Obama White House had, in contrast, prioritized relations with these countries’ regional adversary in Iran and embraced the Islamic Republic’s regional allies, Turkey and Qatar, as key interlocutors and partners. The Obama administration also supported Islamist movements in the Middle East, principally the Muslim Brotherhood, that threated to topple regimes and instigate more...

Jamal Khashoggi’s op-eds published in the very influential Washington Post certainly qualify as attempts to change U.S. policy against Saudi Arabia and in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Washington Post has caused itself a major scandal since it has come to light they and their martyred “reformer” Jamal Khashoggi were publishing anti-Saudi propaganda for Qatar. They tried to bury this in a pre-Christmas Saturday news dump, but that can’t stop the damage this will do to their reputation.“Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the...

On its face, Trump’s announcement that he is pulling US forces out of Syria seems like an unfriendly act toward Israel. But it isn’t. On its face, President Donald Trump’s announcement that he is pulling US forces out of Syria seems like an unfriendly act towards Israel. But it isn’t. Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria is of a piece with outgoing US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s address on Tuesday to the UN Security Council regarding the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both statements reflect the depths of the administration’s friendship and support for the State...

US forces are reportedly evacuating their military base near al-Hasakah; The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) still press their operation against ISIS in the Hajin pocket.

On September 30th 2016 the New York Times quietly released a leaked audio recording of Secretary John Kerry meeting with multiple factions associated within Syria.The 40-minute discussion took place on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meeting took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on Sept. 22nd 2016: […] Kerry’s off-record conversation was apparently with two dozen ‘Syrian civilians’, all from US backed opposition-linked NGO’s in education and medical groups supposedly working in ‘rebel-held’ (aka terrorist-held) areas in Syria.This opposition conclave also included ‘rescue workers’ which can only be ambassadors from...

On January 3, 2014, ISIS, then a growing force mostly ignored by the Obama administration, took the Iraqi city of Fallujah; liberated years later by our Marines, at great cost, from the predecessors of ISIS then called al-Qa’ida in Iraq (Ansar al-Sunni, Ansar al-Islam). “A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago…. The upheaval also affirmed the soaring capabilities of the Islamic...