Free Republic

A senior leader at the Deans Ave Mosque who lost his wife in the terror attack says he has forgiven the shooter. Farid Ahmed says the extraordinary gesture to the man who killed so many of his friends is what his wife would have wanted. The widower was first interviewed at the cordon on Friday shortly after the shooting broke out. At the time, he hadn't heard from his wife, and since then he's received terrible news. Husna Ahmed ran classes for children at the mosque, while her husband gave sermons. "She was probably more open than me; she...

More than 1,000 people were feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone slammed into the country, submerging entire villages and leaving bodies floating in the floodwaters, the nation's president said. "It is a real disaster of great proportions," President Filipe Nyusi said. Cyclone Idai could prove to be the deadliest storm in generations to hit the impoverished southeast African country of 30 million people. It struck Beira, an Indian Ocean port city of a half-million people, late Thursday and then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi with strong winds and heavy rain. But it took days for the...

In the introduction to his 2006 book “The God Delusion,” author Richard Dawkins boldly declares his goal: “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.” It is a goal that has meant Dawkins’s books have courted controversy ever since. Now, a group of translators wants to get Dawkins’s books in front of a new group of religious readers: Muslim readers, in Muslim-majority countries where atheism is rare. “If you get enough people to talk about these ideas, if you convince people it’s okay to think about religion, to...

A man was arrested for allegedly intimidating and threatening worshippers at a mosque in Phoenix. The Phoenix Police Department on Saturday night arrested Noel Thomas Becht on charges of trespassing, disorderly conduct and threatening and intimidating, according to The Associated Press. Becht remained in custody at the Maricopa County Jail as of Monday. Becht initially entered the United Islamic Center Saturday evening around 7 p.m. He asked about the Muslim religion and requested to sit in on a prayer service, police say. He then reportedly started wandering around the mosque and entering rooms and areas he should not have...

A child care center in the western German city of Düsseldorf has appealed to police after its plan to involve an imam in religious education lessons sparked a hostile backlash. The Protestant kindergarten announced the pilot project last week, saying it aimed to teach children about different faiths and complement the regular visits they already had from a pastor. Hartmut Wölk, the pastor behind the initiative, told German media he received dozens of abusive messages accusing him of being a "renegade," an "anti-Christ" and of "paving the way for Sharia law in Germany." "We expected criticism, but I have never...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a lower court ruling that found that the owner of a Hawaii bed and breakfast violated a state anti-discrimination law by turning away a lesbian couple, citing Christian beliefs. The justices refused to hear an appeal by Phyllis Young, who runs the three-room Aloha Bed & Breakfast in Honolulu, of the ruling that she ran afoul of Hawaii’s public accommodation law by refusing to rent a room to Diane Cervilli and Taeko Bufford in 2007. Litigation will now continue that will determine what penalty Young might face. The...

Most people do not have a good understanding of real science, and can therefore be taken in if a claim is presented in ‘science-y’ language. Thus purveyors of medical pseudoscience will freely use terms like energy, vibrations, frequencies, resonance and so on in describing their interventions but none of these terms are being used in the precise way that a physicist would use them. Many pseudoscientists will also refer to the latest ideas in real science to imply that their claims are derived from the latest cutting-edge theories. One example would be claiming that homeopathy is consistent with quantum mechanics...

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — When the gunman advanced toward the mosque, killing those in his path, Abdul Aziz didn’t hide. Instead, he picked up the first thing he could find, a credit card machine, and ran outside screaming “Come here!” Aziz, 48, is being hailed as a hero for preventing more deaths during Friday prayers at the Linwood mosque in Christchurch after leading the gunman in a cat-and-mouse chase before scaring him into speeding away in his car. But Aziz, whose four sons and dozens of others remained in the mosque while he faced off with the gunman, said he...

The notion of “intelligent design” arose after opponents of evolution repeatedly failed on First Amendment grounds to get Bible-based creationism taught in the public schools. Their solution: Take God out of the mix and replace him with an unspecified “intelligent designer.” They added some irrelevant mathematics and fancy biochemical jargon, and lo: intelligent design, which scientists have dubbed “creationism in a cheap tuxedo.” But the tuxedo is fraying, for intelligent design has been rejected not just by biologists but also by judges who recognize it as poorly disguised religion. Nevertheless, its advocates persist. Among the most vocal is Michael J....

From newstalkzb.co.nz: The crowd in attendance at a vigil at Auckland’s Aotea Square cheered loudly when Attorney-General David Parker said the Government would ban semi-automatic rifles. He warned of a global rise of extremism. “There is a dimming of enlightenment in many parts of the world,” he said. “How can it be right for this atrocity to be filmed by the murderer using a go-pro and live-streamed across the world by social media companies? “How can that be right? Who should be held accountable for that?” The answer is obvious: New Zealand’s law-abiding gun owners. They’re the ones who will...

CHRISTCHURCH=Manacled and barefoot, Brenton Harrison Tarrant walked into a courtroom on Saturday and flashed an “OK,” widely seen as a symbol of white power, as he stood to face murder charges less than 24 hours after brutal assaults on two mosques in this city left at least 49 dead. Police named Tarrant the primary suspect in what was the deadliest attack in New Zealand’s history — and one of the worst cases of right-wing terrorism in years — after the 28 year-old Australian allegedly stormed two mosques during mid-day prayers on Friday and mowed down dozens of huddling and fleeing...

A man was reportedly attacked with a hammer outside a mosque in London just hours after a deadly attack on two mosques in New Zealand. British news outlet The Independent reported three men shouted Islamophobic slurs as they drove past a mosque in East London, calling worshippers terrorists. When people chased after the car, the men exited and attacked a man with a weapon reported to be a hammer. Police confirmed to the news outlet that a 27-year-old victim of the attack suffered head injuries. A fight between the two groups ensued before the car sped off. "The suspects returned...

Vigils for the victims of shootings at two mosques in New Zealand have begun in the UK amid an outpouring of support for the Muslim community in the UK. The attacks in Christchurch, which have left 49 dead and at least 20 injured, have been condemned by public figures. The Queen said she was "deeply saddened" by the shootings, and PM Theresa May called it "sickening". It comes as police have increased patrols at British mosques to provide reassurance. Senior counter-terrorism experts and security services were also due to hold talks with the Home Secretary on how mosques in the...

New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed 40 people have died in today’s shooting, with 20 injured.

Ethiopia’s aviation authority is unable to read the black box recorders from the Boeing 737 Max plane that crashed Sunday, but a row is brewing over just where the flight recorders will be sent for analysis. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is pushing to have its experts analyze the data and voice recorders, which were partly damaged, the Wall Street Journal reports, but Ethiopian authorities would prefer to work with the U.K.’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch to ensure that U.S. experts won’t have undue influence in the probe of the American-made plane. Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde GebreMariam told WSJ...

At this point, the notion of a new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie opening with a boffo Friday-Sunday debut is barely news anymore; it's now akin to a new Tyler Perry-as-Madea movie opening with $25 million. Still, even by Marvel's standards, Captain Marvel flew higher, further and faster than its relative competition. The Brie Larson/Samuel L. Jackson/Reggie the Cat sci-fi adventure opened with $153m in North America this weekend, which is the second-biggest solo superhero non-sequel launch behind Black Panther ($202m in 2018). It's the third-biggest March opening of all time, sans inflation, behind Batman v Superman ($166m in 2016) and...

A new case report from the Centers for Disease Control released Thursday starkly highlights the costs of not vaccinating children. It details an unvaccinated 6-year-old boy’s encounter with tetanus—and the hugely expensive, two-month-long effort it took to save his life. Tetanus is caused by the namesake bacteria Clostridium tetani. More accurately, it’s what happens when the soil-loving C. tetani gets into your body—usually through an open cut—and spews out an extremely potent toxin. This toxin can quickly paralyze and send your muscles into constant spasms, beginning with the jaw (if you know anything about tetanus, it’s probably that it causes...

Joshua Nerius became privy to his parents’ anti-vaxxer convictions only after he contracted measles himself at 30 years old. Now he’s speaking out against parents who hold similar beliefs, calling them “people who want to spread fear.” What began as a rash and high fever in the spring of 2016 was later discovered to be none other than measles— a highly contagious, and often life-threatening disease that’s become increasingly rare since the introduction of a vaccine in 1963. It was only after an emergency room doctor told Nerius his condition strongly resembled measles that Nerius asked his mother if he’d...

CNN) — A Florida sixth-grader who was arrested last month following a Pledge of Allegiance dispute at his school will not be prosecuted, his attorney said Wednesday night. The student at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland refused to take part in the Pledge of Allegiance on February 4, according to the Polk County School District. At the time, it said the student was arrested for becoming disruptive, not for refusing to participate. The case attracted national attention after Team Roc, a branch of the Roc Nation entertainment company founded by hip-hop artist Jay-Z, became involved. It raised awareness about...

A book that pushes the conspiracy theory Qanon climbed within the top 75 of all books sold on Amazon in recent days, pushed by Amazon’s algorithmically generated recommendations page. “QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening,” which has no stated author, ranked at No. 56 at press time, was featured in the algorithmically generated “Hot new releases” section on Amazon’s books landing page. The book claims without evidence a variety of outlandish claims including that prominent Democrats murder and eat children and that the U.S. government created both AIDS and the movie Monsters Inc. The Qanon conspiracy theory moved from...