Free Republic

Hamakom synagogue leased space to Islamic group and covered up pictures of Israeli hostages.. A California synagogue axed its leadership and is struggling to retain members after leasing its facility to a Muslim group that brought in an anti-Israel speaker who compared Israel to Nazi Germany. Hamakom synagogue, a conservative congregation of around 900 families located in an upscale Los Angeles suburb, says it was trying to ease tensions between the Jewish and Muslim communities when it decided to lease its space this month to the Islamic Society of West Valley, a neighboring Muslim faith group that needed space to...

Frankfurt has become the first German city to hang Ramadan lights at a cost of over €50,000 euros to honor the fact that 15 per cent of its population is now Muslim. On Monday morning, trucks began arriving on behalf of the city government to unload the stars and crescents, connecting them to the city’s power grid to honor the festival, which runs from March 10th to April 9th. The lights are similar to those that were displayed in London’s Piccadilly Circus last year. ... The lights are a result of lobbying from the Greens, the SPD and the ‘Green...

Former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson has been suspended from the party after "refusing to apologise" for comments aimed at Sadiq Khan. The Conservative Ashfield MP told GB News on Friday "Islamists" had "got control" of the mayor of London. Responding on Saturday, Mr Khan described the remarks as "pouring fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred". Losing the Conservative whip essentially expels Mr Anderson from his party in Parliament. Just over an hour after Mr Khan's criticism, a spokesperson for the Tory party's chief whip Simon Hart said: "Following his refusal to apologise for comments made yesterday, the chief...

Atheism can't equip us for civilisational war... In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”. It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title. The year before, I had publicly condemned the terrorist attacks of the 19 men who had hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the twin towers in New York. They had done it...

Saudi Arabia has been making investments in various sports, spreading its influence and evolving the country, with the recently announced merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour being the latest example. The country's Public Investment Fund is the main driver behind LIV Golf, and the kingdom has faced accusations that it is attempting to improve its international image and reputation by funding the league — a tactic known as "sportswashing." ... Activists who oppose LIV and other investments have pointed to the country's history of human rights violations, particularly the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi...

Former President Obama late on Thursday said that the expulsion of Tennessee lawmakers after they participated in a gun violence protest on the House floor is a “sign of weakness,” arguing that silencing dissenters won’t lead to progress. “What happened in Tennessee is the latest example of a broader erosion of civility and democratic norms. Silencing those who disagree with us is a sign of weakness, not strength, and it won’t lead to progress,” the former president tweeted. He added that elected officials should not lose their jobs for speaking out, especially when the protests are geared toward protecting children....

Just in case you’re not celebrating diversity enthusiastically enough yet, here is more reason to start waving those diversity pom-poms: a new bill in Massachusetts would give Muslims privileged status. Here we see it yet again: “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts are inherently and in always and every case a gateway to the preferential treatment of the Left’s favored groups. “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated,” said Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood ... In line with the fact that Islamic texts and teachings frequently exhort Muslims to subjugate Infidels (who must be made to “pay the...

What is Islam? The obvious dictionary definition answer is that it’s a religion, but legally speaking it actually enjoys all of the advantages of race, religion and culture with none of the disadvantages. Islam is a religion when mandating that employers accommodate the hijab, but when it comes time to bring it into the schools, places that are legally hostile to religion, American students are taught about Islam, visit mosques and even wear burkas and recite Islamic prayers to learn about another culture. Criticism of Islam is denounced as racist even though the one thing that Islam clearly isn’t is...

Hady Amr is a Beirut-born Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Biden Administration. “Biden Sends Pro-Hamas Envoy ‘Inspired by Intifada’ to Mediate Between Israel and Jihad Terrorists”, Jihad Watch, by Daniel Greenfield, May 14, 2021. “Hady Amr’s transformational policy”, Jewish News Syndicate, by Caroline Glick, March 2, 2023. Hady Amr is the U.S. Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs. Maher Bitar is a Palestinian American, appointed as Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at Biden’s National Security Council. He was an Executive Board member of Georgetown University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is associated with American Muslims for...

Should the public burning of the Qur’an be allowed? Should the public burning of the holy scriptures of any religious tradition be allowed? Swedish authorities have recently come up with a novel answer to these questions, an answer that is certain to cause them more problems than it will solve. Book burning is generally associated with a brutish war against human knowledge and enlightenment and conjures up images of sweaty, fiendishly grinning National Socialists standing before bonfires of books that challenged their evil ideology. The Danish activist Rasmus Paludan and others in Europe, however, have begun burning the Qur’an in...

In a recent article, the Pakistan-based Urdu-language pro-Taliban daily Roznama Ummat examined the Qatari government's preparations for da'wa ("preaching," "invitation to Islam") at the FIFA World Cup beginning on November 20, 2022. Da'wa is an important part of Islam whereby Muslims are expected to invite non-Muslims to embrace the religion. The article, titled "FIFA World Cup And Da'wa Of The Religion," and written by Islamic religious scholar Zia Chitrali, explains various media activities and events planned to explain Islam to non-Muslim spectators and to try to persuade them to convert. As part of these events planned by Qatari officials, thousands...

The Pope has denounced "narrow self-interest and nationalism" over the way Europe treats migrants. Speaking on the Greek island of Lesbos, where he met dozens of migrants, Pope Francis said they were being used for political propaganda. He urged focus on the causes of migration, such as "forgotten wars", instead of punishing those who feel their effects. And he criticised the building of walls to keep people out. "In Europe there are those who persist in treating the problem as a matter that does not concern them - this is tragic," he said. "History teaches us that narrow self-interest and...

New Zealand Police have introduced a hijab into their official uniform to encourage more Muslim women to join. New recruit Constable Zeena Ali will become the first officer to wear the official hijab. A spokesperson said they aimed to create an "inclusive" service reflecting the country's "diverse community". Other forces such as the Metropolitan Police in London and Police Scotland offer the option of a uniform hijab. In the UK, the Metropolitan Police in London approved a uniform hijab in 2006 with Police Scotland following in 2016. In Australia, Maha Sukkar of Victoria Police wore a hijab in 2004.

Eighteen years after the September 11 jihad attacks that murdered nearly three thousand people, this is where we are: the Bloomfield Hills Baptist Church in Michigan has canceled an event called “9/11 forgotten? Is Michigan surrendering to Islam” under pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. And so the answers are clear: yes, 9/11 has been forgotten, and Michigan is indeed surrendering to Islam. The event was to feature an ex-Muslim, Shahram Hadian, speaking on “How the Interfaith Movement is Sabotaging America and the Church” and economist and investigative...

In the aftermath of 9/11, Americans were given a persistent and unquestioned drumbeat of messages instructing them not to seek retribution, but to show grace and mercy towards those whose people had carried out the attacks . .. This mantra has been repeated over and over again following attack after attack in America and Europe. ... On one side, someone from another nation can throw a child off a balcony, throw a mother and child in front of a train, kidnap, rape, and murder a young woman, drive a truck through crowds of children in Sweden or France, set off...

Recent months have seen a huge increase in the number of Finnish women converting to Islam and adopting the full face veil. The niqab and hijab are becoming a common sight in Helsinki after a large influx of Muslim migrants entered the country from 2015 onwards. Finland has also seen an increase in violent and sexual crime since this, as well as, drug trafficking. However, many Finnish women are converting ‘in search of spirituality’ and also apparently feel more liberated when wearing the full face veil. The converts also say to be ‘liberated through the Islamic headdress’, which allows them...

See something, say nothing? This appears the message in Sweden, where politically-correct authorities may punish those who dare complain about the government’s culture-rending and crime-spiking importation of vast numbers of Muslim migrants. The latest example is a dental hygienist fined approximately $50,000 for revealing that some refugees claiming to be “children” are actually adults. ... Masquerading as a minor is a common tactic among migrants as it makes it relatively easy to be granted refugee status. So, unsurprisingly, Herlitz found “that several asylum seekers who were registered as unaccompanied children showed a dental development that is more typical for people...

Exposing Muslim attempts to rewrite history. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Although the conflict between Islam and the West is not an aberration but a continuation of history, the strategy of those who seek to whitewash and thus empower Islam is to fixate on peaceful aberrations while suppressing the continuum of hostility. Thus, in “Italy must remember its pluralist past,” Akbar Ahmed, Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, Washington, DC, highlights uncharacteristic episodes from Italy’s past with Muslims in an attempt to convince Italians to be even more accepting of Muslim migrants. ...

"In Western countries, dawa aims both to convert non-Muslims to political Islam and to bring about more extreme views among existing Muslims. The ultimate goal of dawa is to destroy the political institutions of a free society and replace them with strict sharia." — Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book, The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It. The ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic state in the United States could hardly be much clearer. The pretense of caring for "diversity" and "inclusion" that ICNA displays on its public website cannot be...

Ronald Reagan's major achievement in his long war against the Soviet Union: presenting communism as a joke -- exposing the lies of the Soviet regime, exposing the misery under which its people were living, and explaining why Western values were preferable to Communist ones. This is exactly what the West, Hirsi Ali explains, should be doing with radical Islam. Western civilization is a humanist vision in which Christianity integrated Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman law, thereby giving Western culture its distinctive character: freedom of speech and of the press, equal justice under law, the primacy of the individual, separation...