Free Republic

The recent health-care reform legislation carries a controversial mandate that all Americans obtain health insurance, but careful study of the passed law reveals there are some groups – the Amish, for example – that can obtain an exemption. For devout Muslims, however, whose religious beliefs forbid purchasing insurance...

If you’re trying to understand what burning a Quran would look like to a Muslim, consider this: “For Christians, Jesus is the word of God. For Muslims, the Quran is the word of God. Imagine someone burning Jesus,” says Emad El-Din Shahin, a religion professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. - - clip - - The Quran teaches Muslims to respect the sacred books of Christians and Jews as well, says Chris van Gorder, a religion professor at Baylor University in Texas. “To burn a holy Quran for a Muslim is to throw down a gauntlet,” he...

City Council Meetings to Begin with Muslim Prayers By BOB CONNORS Updated 6:50 PM EDT, Tue, Sep 7, 2010 In the wake of the battle over a mosque at Ground Zero, a move by Hartford City Council is sure to have its critics. The Council announced Tuesday that it has invited local imams to perform Islamic invocations at the beginning of the Council meetings in September. Though meetings don't regularly begin with any form of prayer, an email from the Common Council called it "an act of solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters." The email even referenced the ongoing...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg might consider checking out the polls. He's under the impression 100 percent of 9/11 families support building the Ground Zero Mosque at the current planned location. "The family members, they do care," Bloomberg told "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart Aug. 26. "And the family members that I've talked to - and I'm chairman of the board of the World Trade Center Memorial - 100 percent in favor of saying, ‘These people, if they want to build a mosque, can build a mosque. The lives of our loved ones were taken because the right...

In the rain of Sunday morning they took to the streets of lower Manhattan, both sides of a mosque debate that will begin to slow down soon like a car running out of gas. There were a thousand or so people there, some supporting the building of a mosque at Park Place and more opposing it, carrying signs about freedom and religion, speaking for God and about America at a place where just about every religion in the world lost someone on Sept. 11, 2001. Somehow, even as this played out, the shouting back and forth near what they all...

Nancy Pelosi had some choice words for the American public yesterday: Shut up. If you’ve got an opinion about the N.Y. mosque controversy, better keep it to yourself or you could end up under investigation in the House Star Chamber. Pelosi says she wants to know how opposition to the mosque is being “ginned up.” She wants to know who’s funding this anger. She wants to know what the hell is wrong with the 61 percent of Americans who evidently disagree with her views. (Her disingenuous view being that this is a “zoning issue” only and all the national controversy...

President Obama says Islam has always been part of America, which raises the question, does the president know something about American history that we don't?... Most puzzling is the president's claim that "Islam has always been part of America." Islam had no influence on the origins and development of the United States. It contributed nothing to early American political culture, art, literature, music or any other aspect of the early nation. Throughout most of American history, the Muslim world was perceived as remote, alien and belligerent. Perhaps the president was thinking about the Barbary Pirates and their role in the...

With the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, an impassioned Mayor Bloomberg yesterday supported the development of a mosque near Ground Zero and chastised opponents for what he said was trampling on religious freedom. "I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state -- as important a test as we may see in our lifetimes -- and it is critically important that we get it right," the mayor said in remarks on Governors Island -- chosen by the mayor as a symbol of religious freedom in America. "To cave to popular sentiment would be...

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday that he strongly disagreed with Sarah Palin's call for New Yorkers to reject a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero—and, for a brief moment, it sounded like he called the former Alaska governor a racist" >>> Mayor Michael Bloomberg should take his sorry A!! and go live amongst the Muslims if he thinks they are so fantastic. IDIOT!

Hizbullah spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Fadlallah, who authorized suicide bombings and other attacks killing hundreds of people, was “a true man of religion” whose death last week left Lebanon “a lesser place,” according to British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy. The world “needs more men like him,” she said. "People in Lebanon like to ask me which politician I admire most... I usually avoid answering by referring to those I enjoy meeting the most and those that impress me the most. Until yesterday my preferred answer was to refer to Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, head of the Shia clergy in...

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama says he is seeing a growing recognition among Pakistan's leaders that the extremist groups who are based there represent what Obama calls a “cancer in their midst.'' Obama says Pakistani leaders are recognizing that the groups that are using Pakistan's frontier as a base are threatening Pakistan's sovereignty. After a meeting at the White House on Wednesday with Afghanistan's visiting president, Hamid Karzai, Obama said it will take time for Pakistan to assert control in border areas that have been ``loosely governed'' until now. He says Pakistani authorities are starting to do that, but that...

Finally a women’s organization has spoken out against Islam, and has even criticized the politically correct Pentagon. Concerned Women for America is a Christian based organization, and hopefully their courage will open the door for more Christians to speak up. Since most of our country identifies themselves as Christians, we are going to need a large Christian movement to win this war. If you don’t want your families future generations living under Islamic rule, turning the other cheek is not an option. Speak up, and speak often!

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the US does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say. The change would be a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century." The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the...

LONDON: Britain's government will expel an Israeli diplomat from London on Tuesday over the use of forged British passports in the suspected Mossad assassination of a Hamas operative. Foreign secretary David Miliband was scheduled to address lawmakers in the House of Commons over the issue, following the conclusion of an investigation into the use of fake UK documents. Miliband's office declined to provide details of his statement in advance, citing Parliamentary rules. But a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment ahead of the statement, confirmed that Britain will expel one Israeli diplomat....

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The founder of an Islam-oriented television station who is accused of beheading his wife is due in a Buffalo courtroom for proceedings in advance of his murder trial. Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan is tentatively scheduled to stand trial later this month for the death of his wife, Aasiyah Hassan, last year. Pretrial motions are scheduled for Friday.

Christian teacher told today how he lost his job after complaining that Muslim pupils as young as eight hailed the September 11 hijackers as 'heroes'. Nicholas Kafouris said he was forced from his £30,000-a-year post because he would not tolerate the 'racist' and 'anti-Semitic' behaviour of children. He said the predominantly Muslim youngsters openly praised Islamic extremists in class, and hailed the terrorists of the 2001 atrocities as 'martyrs'. Mr Kafouris, 40, told how one pupil said to him, ‘Don’t touch me, you’re a Christian’, when the teacher accidentally brushed against him with his arm. Others said, ‘We want to...

Another Third Way Sheila Archambault, February 2, 2010 There is a deep resistance in the Western world to take theology seriously, which is a mindset that must change, a theologian said at a Heritage Foundation lecture about the book, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom. The author, Mark Durie, a theologian, human rights activist and pastor of an Anglican church, said, “the West can no longer afford to lull itself to sleep by assuming religions are essentially all the same or that religion does not matter.” “We have forgotten how to apply theological constructs to everyday life,” he added....

After reading some more Koran tonight, I had an epiphany. I realized that some of the worst parts of the Koran were similar to worst parts of the Christian Bible. I now believe many parts of both were misinterpreted. While I realize that Islam has been violent throughout its history, so has Judeism and Christianity (think Crusades). I'm not sure I believe in the 72 virgin promise, but I am starting to get Mohammed's believe in a better after-life. I need to read more. That said, our world has gone to shit. There can be a better place for those...

The attack on illustrator Kurt Westergaard wasn't the first attempt to carry out a deadly fatwa. When Muslims tried to murder Salman Rushdie 20 years ago, the protests among intellectuals were loud. Today, though, Western writers and thinkers would rather take cover than defend basic rights. In 1988, Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" was published in its English-language original edition. Its publication led the Iranian state and its revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to issue a "fatwa" against Rushdie and offer a hefty bounty for his Murder. This triggered several attacks on the novel's translators and publishers, including the murder...

A group of Muslim protesters shouted 'murderers', 'rapists', 'baby killers' and chanted 'burn in hell' at soldiers on a homecoming parade from Iraq, a court heard today. Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment were greeted by protesters screaming the hostile jeers and holding placards as they marched through Luton last year...(snip) At one point it is alleged pieces of bacon were thrown at the Muslim protesters and others shouted 'go and have a shave' and 'Bin Laden's wife is a whore'.