Free Republic

Evil is not a color. It has no particular religion nor creed, nor style of dress, nor gender nor geographic home. Evil is an equal opportunity employer. One hopes we learn at least that much from the adventures of Jihad Jane. That, according to federal prosecutors, is the name Colleen LaRose used when she went online to say how “desperate” she was to do something to help Muslims. That desperation allegedly led her deep into the shadowy world of fundamentalist extremism. LaRose, prosecutors say, used the Internet to recruit would-be terrorists. She allegedly sought to kill a Swedish artist who...

... The indictment said that in mid-2008, Ms. LaRose, using the aliases JihadJane and Fatima LaRose, began posting on YouTube and other Internet sites messages about her desire to help Muslims. A MySpace profile for a woman who refers to herself as JihadJane displays pictures of bloodshed and violence in the Middle East scrawled with messages like “Palestine We Are With You” and “Sympathize With Gaza.” ... The indictment refers to e-mail messages in which a conspirator, citing how Ms. LaRose’s appearance and American passport would make it easier for her to operate undetected, allegedly directed her in March 2009...

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- A Swedish artist who angered Muslims by drawing the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog said Wednesday he has no regrets and believes the suspects in an alleged plot to kill him were not professionals. Lars Vilks, who has faced numerous death threats over the controversial cartoon, said he has built his own defense system, including a "homemade" safe room and a barbed-wire sculpture that could electrocute potential intruders. He said he also has an ax "to chop down" anyone trying to climb through the windows of his home in southern Sweden.

The official story is that fear of Muslim violence drove Yale University Press (YUP) to censor the Danish Muhammad Cartoons and other imagery of Muhammad from an upcoming book about, well, the Danish Muhammad Cartoons. That's what Yale, its administration and press, says publicly, matter-of-factly, and, it seems, without shame. But it is a shameful thing. Yale's decision to censor pictures of Muhammad from an academic text about them is one of those watershed moments that history will record as institutional capitulation to Sharia (Islamic law) at one of the storied centers of Western learning, American branch. It also happens...

Yale University is publishing a book about the notorious cartoons of Muhammad, printed in Danish newspapers in 2006, that inflamed radical Muslims and touched off riots in which upward of 200 people were killed. While many Muslims say any depiction of Muhammad is blasphemous, the irreverence shown to Judeo-Christian religious figures has become so commonplace in Western culture that only the deeply religious notice anymore, and when they complain, they're dismissed as bigots or worse by academics and journalists. By comparison, the Muhammad cartoons were quite mild, but you're going to have to take our word because Yale, that bastion...

Cartoon protester guilty of soliciting murder By Richard Holt and agencies Last Updated: 5:40pm GMT 05/01/2007 A British citizen has been found guilty of soliciting murder and stirring up racial hatred in the wake of the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Umran Javed, 27, was said to have been one of the leaders of a demonstration against the cartoons in London. Hundreds of Muslims demonstrated in London against the publication of the cartoons He was found guilty of calling for the murder of American and Danish people and remanded in custody until sentencing in April. Javed, of Washwood...

A ceramic bobblehead doll of the Prophet Muhammed - created to resemble the infamous caricature published by a Danish newspaper - is being hawked online for $22.99 a pop by an ex-Marine. The unapologetic creator, Timothy Ames, 28, said the bobblehead is similar to "dashboard Jesus" figurines that can be stuck with adhesive to flat surfaces. "I thought, 'If they flipped out over some cartoons what will they do with a dashboard Muhammed?'" Ames said from his home in Hawaii. But Islamic experts are not amused, saying the bobbleheads could anger Muslims, whose religion strictly prohibits depictions of the prophet....

17 August 2006, 11:26Holocaust caricature exhibition will provoke Islamophobia - Russian human rights activists Moscow, August 17, Interfax - Russian human rights organizations have stated that the Holocaust caricature exhibition in Tehran will entail an upsurge of Islamophobia and called on the Iranian authorities to close it down. In an appeal to the Iranian embassy and the UN office in Moscow, they called ‘to listen to the public voice and to close down the exhibition in order to prevent unrest throughout the world, to prevent the prerequisites for Islamophobia’. ‘The caricatures mocking the Holocaust tragedy amounts to jeering at the...

An exhibition of more than 200 cartoons about the Holocaust opened Monday as Iran's response to last year's Muslim outrage over a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. The display, showing 204 entries from Iran and abroad, was strongly influenced by the views of Iran's hard-line president, Mahoud Ahmadinejad, who drew widespread condemnation last year for calling the Holocaust a "myth" and saying Israel should be destroyed.

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Journalists gave eagerly awaited film "The Da Vinci Code" a cool reception at its first press screening on Tuesday, a day ahead of the world premiere of the adaptation of Dan Brown's controversial novel. The release of the big-budget Hollywood thriller has already prompted a wave of protests from Christians across the world who believe the theories put forward in the novel are blasphemous. One of the central characters suggests Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and they established a dynasty which elements within the Church would stop at nothing to try to cover up. The outcry...

More than 50,000 people attended the funeral Saturday of a Pakistani student who died while under arrest in Germany for allegedly planning to attack a newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. About three dozen people were injured in a stampede when crowds tried to enter the family's home in the Pakistani village of Saroki to see Amer Cheema's face, police and witnesses said. Mourners chanted "God is great!" and "We are slaves of Prophet Muhammad!" Some congratulated Cheema's father, kissing his hand and calling his son a martyr. German police say Cheema, 28, hanged himself in his Berlin...

The al-Qaeda terrorist network sent 12 of its militants to Denmark in order to assasinate those who drew the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, according to Hamid Mir, the journalist who interviewed Osama bin Laden shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks. According to an interview with the website of satellite television network al-Arabiya, Mir was brought to Waziristan, Pakistan's tribal area, in a zone believed to be run by the Taliban leader Abdullah Mahsud, where he met with some representatives of the Taliban. These sources told Mir that 12 members of al-Qaeda left Afghanistan and entered Iran with the...

Dear Viewer, Thank you for your correspondence regarding the "South Park" episodes entitled "Cartoon Wars." We appreciate your concerns about censorship and the destructive influence of outside groups on the media, entertainment industry and particularly Comedy Central. To reiterate, as satirists, we believe that it is our First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people, groups, organizations and religions and we will continue to defend that right. Our goal is to make people laugh and perhaps, if we're lucky, even make them think in the process. Comedy Central's belief in the First Amendment has not wavered, despite...

NEW YORK - Banned by Comedy Central from showing an image of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the creators of "South Park" skewered their own network for hypocrisy in the cartoon's most recent episode. The comedy — in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians — instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag. In an elaborately constructed two-part episode of their Peabody Award-winning cartoon, "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker intended to comment on the controversy created by a Danish newspaper's publishing of caricatures of Muhammad. Muslims consider any physical...

Per a FoxNews Alert: New tape shows Zawahiri threatening attacks against the U.S. because of the Mohammed cartoons. Mention was made of "another 9-11, another Madrid." The tape appears to be authentic, according to Fox. No link yet.

Planned Exhibit of Cartoons Protested The caricatures of Muhammad will be displayed at a UCI student forum. Muslims object, and university officials are wary. By Daniel Yi, Times Staff Writer February 25 2006 Plans by a Republican student group at UC Irvine to showcase the controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that led to violent protests around the world are drawing condemnation from Muslim groups and university officials. The caricatures will be part of a panel discussion sponsored by the campus College Republicans scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. in UCI's Crystal Cove Auditorium.

A wide range of panelists assembled Tuesday to discuss the wisdom and ethics of the decision to reprint a controversial cartoon in The Badger Herald last week. The cartoon, which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, accompanied an 800-word editorial advocating the “sacred right” of freedom of speech. The cartoon’s original Sept. 2005 publication in a Danish newspaper continues to spur a heated reaction — sometimes violent — from Muslims worldwide. “I believe a newspaper, when possible, should give people the information they need to conduct intelligent, well-informed debate,” Mac VerStandig, editor in chief of...

Yahoo!Mail bans Allah and Dirty Harry handles By John Oates Monday 20th February 2006 16:27 GMT Yahoo! is banning the use of allah in email names - even if the letters are included within another name. This was uncovered by Reg reader Ed Callahan whose mother Linda Callahan was trying to sign up for a Verizon email address. She could not get it to accept her surname. Enquiries to Verizon revealed that a partnership with Yahoo! was to blame. Yahoo! will not accept any identies which include the letters "allah". Nor will Yahoo! accept yahoo, osama or binladen. But it...

Muslim computer-hacker gangs have launched a massive attack on Danish and Western Web sites as part of the mass protests across the Arab world over the publication of cartoons making fun of the Prophet Mohammed. The cyber-crime monitoring group Zone-H.org said in a statement that more than 1,000 Danish, Israeli and European sites were defaced or shut down by Islamic hackers in the last week. And experts fear that's just the beginning of what could be a massive cyber-jihad stretching from the Middle East and Europe to the United States and dominating cyberspace for weeks, costing millions of dollars. "We...

Hundreds of Afghans shouted support on Monday for Osama Osama bin Laden and threatened to join al Qaeda during a protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, while Pakistan Islamists vowed to broaden their campaign. In an attempt to cool the controversy, Pope Benedict said the world's religions and their symbols had to be respected. The student protest against the cartoons in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad passed peacefully in contrast to a weekend of deadly rioting in several countries, including Nigeria, where 28 people were killed, and Libya where 11 died. Two weeks ago in Afghanistan, at least...