Free Republic

A huge fire, apparently started deliberately, tore through the Grande-Synthe migrant camp near the northern French city of Dunkirk late Monday, reducing it to “a heap of ashes”, the regional chief said. Firefighters said at least 10 people had been injured in the blaze at the camp, which was home to some 1,500 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds, living in closely packed wooden huts. “There is nothing left but a heap of ashes,” Michel Lalande, prefect of France’s Nord region, told reporters at the scene as firefighters continued to battle the flames which were visible from several kilometers away. “It will...

Russia’s unexpected announcement recognizing Israel’s eternal capital of Jerusalem, a dramatic decision that places Vladimir Putin against Donald Trump in a totally new big-power rivalry – the race to Jerusalem. Many American and Israeli Jews have waited with mounting impatience for Trump to keep his campaign promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Against an atmosphere of US equivocation, Putin suddenly announced, without preamble or restricting conditions, the recognition of Israel’s capital, to take effect immediately.

* British multiculturalists are feeding Islamic fundamentalism. Muslims do not need to become the majority in the UK; they just need gradually to Islamize the most important cities. The change is already taking place. * British personalities keep opening the door to introducing Islamic sharia law. One of the leading British judges, Sir James Munby, said that Christianity no longer influences the courts and these must be multicultural, which means more Islamic. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chief Justice Lord Phillips, also suggested that the English law should "incorporate" elements of sharia law. * British universities are...

A group of Swedish football fans have launched a protest against a new ban on wearing masks at stadiums, exploiting an exception to the ban by wearing niqabs to cover their faces. On March 1st, the ban on wearing masks in the stands at Swedish football stadiums entered into force in an effort to combat violent behavior at games. Exceptions to the ban can be made however for people covering their faces in the line of duty like police, or people who cover their face for religious reasons. And it was the latter exception that some supporters of Stockholm club...

President Trump may have short-term successes but will ultimately fail, and “reality therapy” — including checks and balances in the U.S. system — will make him realize that “things are not as simple” as they appear, former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan said this week. Speaking Tuesday at the Forum for the Future of Agriculture, an annual event held in Brussels, Annan was answering a moderator’s questions about Trump’s executive order reversing the Obama administration’s environmental regulations. British journalist and BBC “HARDtalk” presenter Stephen Sackur asked Annan whether it matters that the leader of the world’s most powerful economy is saying...

Google announced its Doodle 4 Google Winner. It a lame people version of the vapid "COEXIST" bumper sticker. Is the brown boy with a half highlighted combined Mars/Venus astrological symbol suppose to be the T in LGBT?

The report released by the Bertelsmann Stiftung has described the Muslim volunteers as “important bridge-builders.” It further revealed that one out of every five Germans provided assistance to refugees in 2016. According to the study released by the German foundation on Monday, 44 percent of Muslims were socially engaged for refugees in 2016, providing assistance through activities such as German language courses, clothing donations and assistance navigating bureaucratic language. The results of the study, entitled “Engagement for Refugees—a religious thing? The role of religion in Refugee aid”, also counter what the Bertelsmann Stiftung described as the broadly held assumption that...

Why Baptists Should Support Muslims’ Right to Build Mosques Given the shift in American demographics, it might not be long before the Baptists are once again a powerless minority. And this time, it might be Muslims before whom they are pleading for ‘soul freedom.’

At a Berlin conference to promote intercultural dialogue, Germany’s integration minister discussed the absurd and slanderous things written about her online. She urged young people to lead the fight against hate speech. Speaking at this weekend’s Young Islam Conference, which opened in the German capital on Friday, the government’s integration minister Aydan Özoguz gave an astonishing and at times humorous account of the hate mail and fake news to which she’s been subjected. Özoguz told the conference participants, a specially selected group of Muslims and non-Muslims under the age of 25, that the internet and social media were driving anti-immigrant...

A Tunisian man resident in France who was arrested for driving a car at a crowd of people in Belgium on Thursday had not been previously flagged up as radicalized, a French investigation source said. The incident in the port city of Antwerp came less than 24 hours after a man killed three people in London outside parliament, hitting two pedestrians with a car and then stabbing to death a policeman. The man in Antwerp, identified only as Mohamed R., 39, lives in the northern French city of Lens, not far from the Belgian border. He had a criminal record...

Justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga has said Switzerland’s membership of Schengen is vital in the fight against international terrorism and that those who seek to end the Schengen agreement are “irresponsible”. Sommaruga was speaking in an interview with Blick following the terror attack outside the Houses of Parliament in London on Wednesday. […] Though Switzerland is not in the European Union, since 2008 it has been a member of the Schengen zone, which allows people to move freely between its 26 member countries without a passport. […] “Without Schengen, we would be less protected from terror. We would not get any...

A man has been arrested after trying to drive a car into a crowd on a busy street in Antwerp in Belgium. According to initial reports, the suspect is of North African origin and weapons were reportedly found in the car.

FULL TITLE: Construction of German mosque is halted after right-wing activists hammer ten giant crosses into building site Right-wing extremists in Germany have hampered the construction of a mosque by erecting ten large crosses at the site. The group, planted the wooden structures in the small village of Marbach, near Erfurt, in the central eastern state of Thuringia, in early March. The owner of the site has said he plans to take legal action against the activists, named as 'Citizens for Erfurt'.

Happy St. Patty’s Day via Islam Is Ireland’s Fastest Growing Religion. h/t TROP The Republic of Ireland may be intimately associated with the Roman Catholic Church, but the fastest-growing faith on the emerald isle is Islam — at such a rapid rate that Muslims are projected to replace Protestantism as the second-most popular religion by the year 2043. Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported that between 1991 and 2011, the percentage of Irish residents who were Muslim jumped from 0.1 percent to 1 percent (equating to about 49,000 people). By 2020, Ireland’s Islamic population will more than double to at least...

The upper house of parliament has rejected the idea of a nationwide ban on the Islamic face veil and other face coverings. The draft bill, which was narrowly passed by the lower house last September, was opposed by the senate after a debate on Thursday, reported news agencies. The proposal by hardline Swiss People’s Party (SVP) MP Walter Wobmann called for a federal ban on the burqa, niqab and other full face coverings in public, along the same lines as a cantonal ban that came into effect in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in July last year. …

What most Germans can agree upon is that the EU cannot stay as it is. But when it comes to how change should look, views differ sharply. The EU is about to celebrate its 60th birthday, but its age is showing. The British have opted to leave, while Euroskeptic parties are growing in popularity in major members, such as France and the Netherlands. In Germany too, the anti-Euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) are set to win their first seats in the Bundestag (German parliament) this September. And it seems that the German electorate are also restless for change. A YouGov...

Danish people have become consistently mere generous over the last four year when it comes to donating money to refugees, a new survey shows. Carried out by Voxmeter on behalf of the Danish Red Cross, the survey shows that 9.4 percent of Danes state that they would give money to refugees today compared to 4.5 percent in 2016 and 2.3 percent in 2013. The results reflect a significant change in the attitudes of Danes towards helping others, according to the secretary general of the Danish Red Cross (DRC). Anders Ladekarl, DRC’s general secretary, told news agency Ritzau that Danes have...

Sweden’s Integration Minister Ylva Johansson has done a U-turn after she told the BBC that the number of reports of sex crimes in Sweden was dropping. During a recent interview with the BBC, the minister said: “If there has been a rape towards her and a sexual harassment, we can see that the level is going down, and going down, and going down.” However, this isn’t the case. The latest stats actually show a 13 percent increase in reported sex crimes in Sweden in 2016, and a general increase over the last ten years. […] The Moderate Party’s labor policy...

A report commissioned by Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) to look into the influence of the Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood in the country has sparked debate, with a number of researchers disputing the methodology used and conclusions reached. The report suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood is secretly leading Islamists in building a parallel society in Sweden by infiltrating organizations and political parties in the country. It also claims that there is an “established structure of values among the country’s political elite which stipulate how as a citizen you should approach ‘minorities’”. But in a blog post signed by 22...

A high school in western Germany has banned the use of prayer rugs and other traditional Muslim rituals saying it is “provocative” to other students, sparking a debate about freedom of religion. The Wuppertal school sent a letter to staff in February saying Muslim students had been using prayer rugs and performing ritual washing in the restrooms, and that they should get a “friendly reminder” it’s not permitted and will be reported to the administration. …