Free Republic

snip The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam. Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic...

At about $50 a barrel, crude oil prices are down by more than half from their June 2014 peak of $107. They may fall more, perhaps even as low as $10 to $20. Here’s why.

The Islamic State (Isis) have crucified 17 young men in 48 hours in retaliation for a wave of assassinations targeting their fighters. The executions carried out by the jihadist group, which controls vast swathes of land straddling Syria and Iraq, took place in the eastern and northern Syrian cities of Deir Ezzor (or Deir al-Zor) and Raqqa "to send a message to all their opponents after recent assassinations of 12 Syrian, Iraqi and Algerian jihadists," said London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The men, who were shot dead and then crucified for three days, were accused of fighting against Islamic...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman in Riyadh on Sunday as part of a diplomatic tour of OPEC members to discuss falling oil prices, which have hit its economy hard. The Saudi side in the meeting included Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and several princes including Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin, intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar and three sons of King Abdullah, who is in hospital, state media reported. No details of the meeting were given by the official Saudi Press Agency and there was no indication that the world's biggest oil exporter was any closer to...

Dozens of Muslim men in Algeria took the streets outside of a mosque to celebrate the murders of 17 innocent lives in France at the hands of fundamentalist Islamist terrorists. Shouts of “strike France and the Jews,” “Allah is the greatest,” and “Charlie is dead” clamored throughout the streets in the Belouizidad district of Algiers, according to Haaretz.

Six jailed over Paris bomb plot A Paris court has sentenced a French-Algerian, Djamel Beghal, to 10 years in jail for plotting to bomb the US embassy in France in 2001. Beghal, 39, was on trial with five other alleged militant Islamists. They got jail terms of one to nine years. Beghal, arrested in Dubai in July 2001, retracted a confession he had made there, alleging it was extracted by torture during weeks of questioning. He had said the bomb plot idea had come from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Beghal was found guilty of "criminal association in relation with a terrorist...

Muslim Brotherhood TV Host and former Egyptian PM Mamdouh Ismail "The news (about the Paris terrorist attack)shocked the entire world. But let me dwell for a moment on what the French president said at the place of the event. He denounced it and said that this was an unparalleled terrorist crime. These are the well-known political, diplomatic statements regularly made in such incidents." "But I'd like to remind the French president of the history of French terrorism in Algeria. We should point out that it was France that introduced terrorism to the whole world in Algeria. Algeria is not really...

I try to ignore Ron Paul and his spawn as much as humanly possible but sometimes the doddering old fraud just goes too far. As a recap, Muslim terrorists, or at least everyone in the world thinks they are Muslim terrorists except the Obama administration, stormed the offices of a Parisian magazine that happens to poke fun at Islam and its Mohammed. People were killed. What lesson does Ron Paul draw from this? The French had it coming:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) “But in the context of things, France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs...

French police have reportedly identified the people involved in the shooting at the headquarters of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday. According to Metro, by Wednesday evening local time French law enforcement was aware of the names and birthdates of the alleged perpetrators. Metro reported one of the suspects is 34-years-old, another is 32-years-old, and the third is 18-years old. The two older men are reportedly brothers, French citizens, and residents of Paris. Metro reported the younger man is a student whose nationality is unknown and has no fixed address. Le Point reported French police were focusing on two...

In a major positive development, Egypt's President Al Sisi has made an impassioned plea for a "religious revolution" in Islam. Speaking at Al Azhar University in Cairo, Sisi spoke directly to the religious establishment of Egypt: Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible! I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema – Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I'm talking about...

Speaking before Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry on New Year's Day, 2015, in connection to Prophet Muhammad's upcoming birthday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date on the subject. Among other things, Sisi said that the "corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years" are "antagonizing the entire world"; that it is not "possible that 1.6 billion people [reference to the world's Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so...

In a TV interview, Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, the imam of a gay-friendly mosque in Paris, said: "I believe that it was Allah who created homosexuals... Allah does not speak against homosexuality in the Quran." The Algerian-born Zahed founded the gay-friendly mosque and an association for gay and lesbian Muslims in France. Following are excerpts from the interview, aired on Deutsche-Welle TV Arabia on December 17, 2014: Interviewer: Let me take you back to the moment when you told your parents that you were homosexual. How did they respond? Ludvic-Mohamed Zahed: They did not believe me – especially my mother, who said:...

There's only one real way to compare military strength, and thankfully the world hasn't had many opportunities lately. Despite the potential powder keg in the South China Sea, standoffs in Ukraine, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, inter-state warfare between the world's military powers has been all but banished from the global scene (for the time being, at least). For a simpler evaluation of military power, we turned to the Global Firepower Index, a ranking of 106 nations based on more than 50 factors including overall military budget, available manpower, and the amount of equipment each country has in...

ANSWER's Steering CommitteeBy Ryan Anderson O’DonnellFrontPageMagazine.com | March 12, 2003 The group at the forefront of the recent anti-war rallies, International A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is in reality a front organization designed to further the radical agenda of several extremist movements from the political Left. Despite the media’s assertions to the contrary, present incarnation of the peace movement, led by ANSWER, is anything but representative of mainstream America. ANSWER’s steering committee reads like a "Who’s Who" of radical political organizations. The most influential member of ANSWER’s steering committee, Ramsey Clark’s pet project known as the...

The Islamic State Widens its Bridgehead in North AfricaPosted By Ari Lieberman On December 3, 2014 @ 12:05 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments As ISIS continues its brutal occupation of large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, effectively blurring the border between those two pseudo nations, a new, if not more menacing threat is emerging in North Africa where the Islamic State is looking to plant its cancerous roots.In Egypt, the Sinai based Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Islamist organization responsible for dozens of terror attacks throughout the country announced on its Twitter account that it had...

CAIRO — The Arab League warned Sunday that Israel has reached a “red line” after fresh clashes in Jerusalem, urging international pressure to stop what it branded “violations” in the holy city. Clashes around the flashpoint Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound — the third holiest site in Islam and Judaism’s holiest — prompted Israel on Thursday to close the site for a day. The Temple Mount and adjacent neighborhoods have seen months of violence, with the mosque compound a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to perceived Jewish attempts to take control of it...

(Reuters) - Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago.The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates...

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, on August 12, 2014. It was his first official visit to the Russian Federation as President. And Vladimir Putin was the first leader to invite him for a visit outside the Arab world since his swearing-in as head of state. The agenda included introduction to a selection of Russian military hardware for sale. (1) The two leaders agreed to expand cooperation in the field of arms exports to Egypt in addition to studying the establishment of a logistics center Masri on the Black...

A French tourist captured in North Africa by a group aligned with the Islamic State is seen beheaded in a video circulated on Wednesday, according to SITE Intelligence, which tracks jihadist groups. The Frenchman — Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was abducted in Algeria on Sunday by the terrorist group, known as Jund al-Khilafah. Mr. Gourdel had arrived only a day before on a trip to go hiking in Algeria’s northern mountains.

ISIS-linked militants in Algeria have beheaded a French tourist captured at the weekend - having earlier made threats to kill him if France did not stop bombing targets in Iraq. Herve Gourdel, 55, was captured by the Islamist group Jund al-Khilifa while hiking in the Djurdjura National Park on Sunday - just one day after he arrived in Algeria for a walking holiday... Gourdel, who lived in the southern French city of Nice, only arrived in Algeria on Saturday and was seized the following day while hiking in the heart of the Djurdjura National Park - whose dense forests, deep...