Free Republic

The marriage of a government official to a 12-year-old girl has inflamed a long simmering battle over marriage to minors, pitting Saudi human rights activists and at least one prominent Muslim sheikh against government officials who have been accused of failing to curb the widespread practice. The fact that the unidentified groom, who lives in the city of Najran, was a mazoun, or marriage official, whose job it is to preside over the signing of marriage contracts, only added to the outrage over the marriage among many Saudis. Many families marry their daughters to older men for financial benefits, getting...

A Fatwa on the Truth http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10481 It is one of those uniquely modern Western paradoxes, to wit, that the most courageous Europeans are those forced into hiding. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie, the Danish editorial cartoonists -- all are paying the price for freely expressing their opinions and beliefs -- or lack thereof. Add to that exalted list one Robert Redeker. M. Redeker, a high school philosophy professor in suburban Toulouse, is in the bouillabaisse for a commentary he wrote last month for Le Figaro in which he accused Islam of "exalting violence," and christened the Muslim prophet Muhammad a...