Free Republic

Saudi Wealth Fuels Global Jihadism Posted Oct. 27, 2003 By Kenneth R. Timmerman Generations of Muslims in the Middle East have been raised on the anti-Western, anti-Semitic theologies of Ayatollah Khomeini and in the Saudi Wahhabi system of madrassas (religious schools). This foundation set the stage for the rise of Osama bin Laden. Doaa 'Amer is a professional TV anchor who hosts Muslim Woman Magazine on IQRAA TV, a satellite channel broadcasting throughout the Arab world. As she tells it, her job is to educate the next generation of children to be "true Muslims." Readers accustomed to hearing Islam described...

AMERICANS will certainly have 9/11 in mind when they vote today. But they should keep another date in mind, too — one almost exactly a quarter-century ago: Nov. 4, 1979. A clear path runs to 9/11 from the day of the raid on the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the seizure of American hostages. The 1979 embassy attack came at a time when the administration of President Jimmy Carter was trying to prop up the new Khomeinist regime in Tehran. Carter had decided to support Khomeini in the context of the so-called "Green Belt" strategy developed by National Security...

In his recent visit to Washington, Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told his American interlocutors that the European Union's initiative on Iran was heading for an impasse.... The Europeans have never been able to see any of the real decision-makers (known as tasmimgiran) in Tehran let alone engage them in negotiation. Rouhani and other facade officials, who talk to the Europeans, may honestly believe that Iran is not up to mischief if only because they do not know what is going on. Only those in the camarilla around "The Supreme Guide" have the full picture. The doors of that camarilla,...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

For most Americans, February 14 was Valentine's Day, the most insipid holiday on the calendar. The date deserves to be better known for another reason. On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader and revolutionary dictator of Iran, pronounced a fatwa (an Islamic legal judgment) against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. It said: It is not outlandish to think of the World Trade Center towers as The Satanic Verses, magnified immeasurably but not beyond all recognition. "In the name of Him, the Highest. There is only one God, to whom we shall all return. I inform all zealous...

PARIS, 1 September 2004 — The Muslim world has a new hero. He is Hicham El-Gerroudj, the Moroccan running champion who bagged two gold medals at this year’s summer Olympics in Athens last week. For several days images of his heroic exploits, punctuated by smiles and tears of joy, have provided something of a relief from the Arab televisions’ normal fare. El-Gerroudj’s triumph, however, cannot hide the fact that, for the world’s 57 majority Muslim nations, this was probably the worst Olympics ever. To start with, the Muslim nations, who together account for some 1.2 billion people, almost a fifth...

City Journal Our Islamic Fifth Column Farrukh Dhondy Autumn 2001 My first name gives rise to confusion. It’s a common Muslim name, so people I meet, or who read my byline, assume that I am of the faith. Most recently, in response to a column I write for an Indian paper, in which I confessed to having met a few terrorists in my time and attempted to analyze their limited grasp of the world, I received a lot of hate mail. Some of the e-mailers clearly thought I was a Muslim apostate and reminded me that the penalty for that...

The charm of Iowa and New Hampshire: Canadian air masses; black ice and small towns; armies of journalists,clubby and obtuse; projections that do not project, experts who do not know; and finally, the candidates and their campaigns, multimillion-dollar insta-corporations careening to destruction, or surviving for another shot at becoming the Most Powerful People in the World. All of this is based on the say-so of yokels who were lucky enough to erect their peculiar political institutions on the equivalent of the Comstock Load, the system we wish Afghanistan and Iraq to emulate. At the end of his book Five Days...

TEHRAN, Oct 13, (AFP) -- A 52-year-old Iranian man tried last week to set fire to the tomb of Iran's late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in southern Tehran, a newspaper reported The man, who was not named, tried last Friday to set the tomb ablaze with petrol, said the daily Sharq, quoting Iran's semi-official labour news agency "During initial questioning, he said he decided to take the action after a premonitory dream," it said. The office of Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the ayatollah's grandson, which is responsible for the mausoleum, said the report was exaggerated. "It was not so dramatic...

Mr. Hossein Khomeini will give a speech at American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC on Friday September 26. Mr. Hossein Khomeini, grandson of the Ayatollah Roohollah Khomeini who ushered in Iran's current theocracy, will join us to discuss the situation in that country. Mr. Khomeini recently left Tehran for Baghdad, where he was outspoken in his criticism of the Iranian regime, and where he was the target of an assassination attempt. Mr. Khomeni will speak on the record and take questions after his prepared remarks. Start: Friday, September 26, 2003 3:30 PM End: Friday, September 26, 2003 5:00 PM Location:...

A grandson of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is currently in Iraq has denounced the religious "dictatorship" ruling Iran, an Arabic newspaper reported Monday. Iran "needs a democratic regime which does not use religion as a means to oppress people and stifle society", Asharq Al-Awsat daily quoted Hussein Khomeini, 46, as saying. The grandson of called for "separating religion from the state and ending the despotic religious regime reminiscent of the rule of the Church during the Dark Ages in Europe", the newspaper reported. "All those who came to power after (the 1989 death of) my grandfather exploited...

A group of exiled Iranians demonstrated in Oslo on Tuesday against both Nobel Prize winner Jimmy Carter and the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The group of around 40 people shouted "Shame on the Nobel Committee" and "Shame on Carter" as they demonstrated outside Norway's National Theater. The theater is located near the Oslo City Hall, where Carter was awarded the Peace Prize in a traditional annual ceremony. The demonstrators claimed that both the US and Jimmy Carter, as a former US president, share responsibility for the revolution in Iran in 1979 that unseated the shah and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to...

<p>September 17, 2002 -- NEW Jersey voters already concerned about Sen. Robert Torricelli's low ethical threshold now learn that he's been a paid shill for a group the government identifies as a terrorist organization. Called on this by his Republican opponent, Douglas Forrester, in a debate Thursday, Torricelli said the group had been pulled from the State Department's global terror list and given a clean bill of health. Not true.</p>

CAIRO (Reuters) - When Thomas from the United States wanted to know what the Muslim world had to say one year after the Sept. 11 attacks, he turned to IslamOnline.net. His request was courteous, unlike some angry questions sent in the past year to the Web site which offers online Islamic fatwas -- or religious edicts -- as well as news and advice to Muslims and others interested in the Islamic world. But regardless of the questioner's sympathies, IslamOnline aims to offer authoritative statements from scholars on Islam, reflecting differing views from various schools of thought. "Today we have broken...

Militant Islam is on the ascendant almost everywhere around the globe -- except in the country that experienced it longest and knows it best. In Iran, it is on the defensive and perhaps in retreat. This situation has vast potential consequences. It derives from the fact that (putting aside the exceptional case of Saudi Arabia) militant Islam first attained power in Iran in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah. Twenty-three years later, Khomeini's aggressive, totalitarian project has left Iranians deeply disillusioned and longing for a return to normal life. The population wants freedom from a regime that bullies them...