Free Republic

"You are no longer in the West, you are in the Middle East, women like you are killed," Khaled Abughanem said to his daughter, according to the Justice Department. The American woman — who sought to celebrate her wedding in Mexico — invited her family to the ceremony in Guadalajara last September. Instead, her disapproving father, mother, and brothers conspired to kidnap her in an attempt to force her to marry someone else in Yemen, the Department of Justice alleged in an ongoing case against her father, Khaled, and brother, Waleed. The unnamed victim, who according to a DOJ statement...

When the bubonic plague arrived in London in 1348, the disease devastated the city. So many people died, so quickly, that the city's cemeteries filled up. "So the king [Edward III], at the time, bought this piece of land and started digging it," says geneticist Luis Barreiro at the University of Chicago. This cemetery, called East Smithfield, became a mass grave, where more than 700 people were buried together. "There's basically layers and layers of bodies one on top of each other," he says. The city shut down the cemetery when the outbreak ended. In the end, this bubonic plague,...

Eyam (AFP) - In the 17th century, residents in the remote English village of Eyam quarantined themselves to prevent the spread of bubonic plague. Most paid with their lives. Now their descendants and locals are outraged that a steady stream of visitors have ignored government warnings to stay at home to tackle the coronavirus outbreak. In 1665, the bubonic plague arrived in the Derbyshire village of Eyam from London, nearly 150 miles (250 kilometres) further south, carried by fleas in fabrics ordered by a tailor. As dozens died, the rector of Eyam church, William Mompesson, with the help of his...

The Black Death, often called the largest pandemic in human history, is conventionally defined as the massive plague outbreak of 1346 to 1353 C.E. that struck the Black Sea and Mediterranean, extended into the Middle East, North Africa, and western Europe, and killed as much as half the total population of those regions. Yet genetic approaches to plague’s history have established that Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of plague, suddenly diverged in Central Asia at some point before the Black Death, splitting into four new branches—a divergence geneticists have called the “Big Bang.” Drawing on a “biological archive” of genetic...

The “unindicted co-conspirator” Council on American-Muslim Relations (“CAIR”) and its Islamist allies are “outraged” because the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has invited me to give a lecture on my recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. On May 28, CAIR’s Pennsylvania leadership—namely Jacob Bender, Timothy Welbeck, and Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu —sent a letter to USAWC Commandant Gen. John Kem and Provost Dr. James Breckenridge urging them to revoke “the decision of the US Army War College to invite Mr. Raymond Ibrahim to deliver the prestigious 50th Annual Lecture Series of...

ZAMBOANGA, PHILIPPINES U.S. troops in the southern Philippines face the prospect of battle with descendants of the Muslim insurgents that brought U.S. General John "Black Jack" Pershing to the country more than a century ago. Before deploying to Basilan on the weekend, the Green Berets took seminars on the roots of Muslim rebellion in the poverty-wracked south as they brought Washington's war on terrorism to one of the most remote parts of the former U.S. colony. "It's an old war," said Datu Amil Jumaani, a Muslim professor who lectured the U.S. troops. Arab missionaries brought Islam to the Philippines in ...

Ethnic and religious courts are gaining ground in the UK. Will this lead to different justice for different people? Aydarus Yusuf has lived in the UK for the past 15 years, but he feels more bound by the traditional law of his country of birth - Somalia - than he does by the law of England and Wales. "Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law. It's not Islamic, it's not religious - it's just a cultural thing." The 29-year-old youth worker wants to ensure that other members of his community remain subject to the...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Archeologists have found a shipwreck from the late 1300s buried in the mud of a bay in central Stockholm, officials said Thursday. They are now awaiting permission to excavate the wreckage — one of the oldest ever found in the Swedish capital — hoping it will shed light on shipbuilding techniques and trade in the 14th century. Experts say they might be able to bring the ship up on land, as was done with the 17th century warship Vasa, which is now housed in a museum that is one of Stockholm's main tourist attractions. Parts of the...