Free Republic

Washington (CNN) - Sen. Chris Murphy said Sunday that a decision by President Donald Trump to pull the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement would harm the US and benefit Iran. "The President is about to impose on himself and this country a dramatic self-inflicted wound because by pulling out of this agreement, Iran will go back onto a path to develop a nuclear weapon," the Connecticut Democrat said on CNN's "State of the Union." If the US exits the agreement, Iran would still receive sanctions relief from other nations party to the deal, and the move would...

Gardaí (Irish police) in Galway are investigating an Islamist terror cell in the west of Ireland. The Irish Independent reports that eight men are being monitored in a number of rural locations where local gardaí are keeping a careful eye on them. “The belief is that members of this network are deeply committed to the Islamic State and they are organized,” a Garda source told the paper. The men’s use of Ireland’s mail service, An Post, is being tracked as they’re thought to be using it to send packages on “dummy runs” to fellow Islamists in the Middle East. They’re...

Police and federal officials said Sunday that the man suspected of stabbing a police officer and plowing a van into pedestrians on Saturday night is a 30-year-old refugee from Somalia, who had been interviewed by the RCMP in 2015. Police and politicians urged Canadians to be vigilant, but called for calm and unity in the wake of a terrorist attack in Edmonton that injured five and led to the arrest of a 30-year-suspect who had previously been investigated for espousing extremist views. It is the second major terrorist attack in Canada this year, following January’s shooting at a mosque in...

Two people have been killed during a knife attack at a Marseille train station, according to police. The assailant, who was reportedly shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ was shot dead by an army patrol at the scene. The incident took place at the Saint-Charles train station in Marseille on Sunday, when a man attacked passers-by with a knife. One person was killed by the assailant at the scene, while another succumbed a short while after, according to police chief Olivier de Mazières. The attacker, who was reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar,” was shot dead by an army patrol. At least two shots were...

Pope Francis flew to Bologna, Italy, Sunday and met with a large group of migrants and refugees, calling them “warriors of hope” while insisting that nations open broader avenues for immigration. During a full day in Bologna, Francis spent an hour meeting hundreds of migrants personally while posing with them for selfies under light drizzle. Later, the pontiff hosted a luncheon for asylum-seekers and prisoners in the St. Petronius basilica. He even donned a yellow plastic ID bracelet used by asylum-seekers to express his solidarity with them. “Do you know what you are? You are ‘warriors of hope’!” Francis exclaimed...

The presence at the European Parliament this week of a Palestinian who hijacked planes in Europe last century — and whose organization is on the E.U.’s terrorist list — continues to make waves, with some lawmakers and others calling for an investigation. Leila Khaled, a leading figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was a guest speaker at an event at the parliament complex in Brussels on Tuesday night. In 1969 and 1970, Khaled hijacked two aircraft — one Israeli, one American — in European airspace. She was arrested during the second attempt, but was soon...

A Frenchman who had been on France's terror watchlist after showing signs of having been radicalized to extremist Islam has been accepted into France's police force. The man was placed on the terror watch list in 2012 as a known radical Islamist, and France’s intelligence service DGSI kept him under surveillance for a number of years after being alerted to his behavior, according to French news site RTL. Unaware he was being watched, the man, who has not been named, applied to join the armed forces, but wasn’t successful. He then decided to try to join the French police force....

A former Danish Islamist who seven years ago traveled the Muslim world fueling the uproar over newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad is back in the headlines in Denmark after doing an about-face on the issue. Once a leading critic of the Danish cartoons, which sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries, Lebanese-born Ahmad Akkari now says the Jyllands-Posten newspaper had the right to print them. His unexpected change of heart has received praise from pundits and politicians in recent weeks, though some question his sincerity. It has also disappointed some in the country’s Muslim minority who were deeply offended by...

Denmark’s integration minister, Inger Støjberg, took to Facebook on Tuesday to praise the Mohammed cartoons that a dozen years ago plunged her country into its most severe international crisis ever. Støjberg shared a screenshot of her iPad background displaying cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s drawing of the prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban. She did so in response to the decision by Skovgaard Museum in Viborg to not display the 12 caricatures of Mohammed published by Jyllands-Posten newspaper as part of an exhibition on blasphemy. The integration minister said that the drawings, particularly the one by Westergaard that has led...

French President Emmanuel Macron said at the United Nations this week that renouncing the Iran nuclear deal would be “a grave error.” “Not respecting it would be irresponsible, because it is a good agreement that is essential to peace at a time where the risk of an infernal conflagration cannot be excluded,” he told the General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. The remarks were an indirect riposte to President Trump, who earlier the same day called the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has...

Last Wednesday the Bavarian interior ministry released statistics that made for sobering reading. In the first half of 2017 some 685 sex crimes were recorded in Bavaria, a rise of 48 percent on the same period in 2016. Of these crimes, 126 had suspects who had arrived in Germany as asylum seekers. The figures showed that sex crimes with asylum seekers as suspects jumped by 91 percent in a year. While the large majority (71 percent) of suspects were Germans, people who had come to the country seeking asylum made up 11 percent of all suspects, a figure disproportionate to...

Rule of law is imploding in Denmark as “low-tech jihad” and migrant gangs take over the streets. The Danish government should not be surprised. But it appears to be. Thousands of incidents involving loosened wheel bolts on cars, large rocks or cinder blocks thrown from highway overpasses, and thin steel wires strung across bicycle paths meant to decapitate unsuspecting cyclists, is spreading a growing sense of horror among the Danes. In almost all cases, the perpetrators have turned out to be from MENAP countries (Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan).

As the academic year begins at the University of Geneva (Unige), a new program is on offer that aims to help imams in Switzerland integrate into Swiss society. Speaking to La Tribune de Genève, Unige’s rector Yves Flückiger said the new program would include courses in French language, political philosophy, human rights and ethics. The optional program is open to imams and people who teach in Islamic centers and has come out of discussions with Geneva cantonal government, he said. […] The initiative is in keeping with the university’s international outlook, Flückiger said, in the same vein as last year’s...

A mural in Calais by the British street artist Banksy, whose works can sell for hundreds of thousands of euros, has been painted over by the owner of the building because he said the house was starting to look shabby and needed an upgrade. The stencil was a version of the painting The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, showing a group of desperate survivors on a raft after a wreck. It was given a modern, refugee-themed twist — a nod to the notorious “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais that housed thousands of refugees hoping to get to Britain...

Libertarianism.org, a project from the Cato Institute, claimed “Islamic teachings are consistent [with] many libertarian principles, such as tolerance, property rights & individualism” in a tweet on Tuesday. In the post linked in the tweet, Libertarianism.org also praised Ibn Khaldun as a libertarian hero, describing him as “the most consistent of the many free-market economists in Islamic history,” despite the fact that Khaldun promoted slavery. “Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated,”...

Despite the string of terror attacks in Paris since 2015, Parisians feel secure, according to the latest in-depth survey by the Paris region’s Urban Planning Institute. The results of the enquiry, which attempts to gauge how safe residents of the French capital feel going about their daily lives, are published every two years. Conducted by market research company Kantar TNS, the survey, introduced in 1998, asks 10,500 people living in the Paris area, aged 15 and up, a series of “rigorous” questions to see how far people living there feel secure. And the results were perhaps a bit surprising. According...

A Dearborn couple is seeking unspecified damages for being served bacon on a pair of sandwiches earlier this summer.A Muslim couple from Dearborn is suing Kentucky Fried Chicken for having recently been served bacon on a chicken sandwiches. An unspecified amount of damages are being sought by the couple, who purchased the sandwiches at a Lincoln Park KFC. They allege cheese and bacon were added to the sandwiches after they requested cheese only, according to a Detroit Free Press report. In May, a Dearborn man of Muslim faith sued Little Caesars for $100 million after he was allegedly served and...

Cowardice is all that grows in the ashes of valor. I don’t know if that fact has been remarked upon previously. Just as I don’t know the number of words launched at observing how earnestly man deploys self-praise as salve for his frailties. Though if the lucid men of antiquity have left no record, it can only be because we have lurched beyond their insight. The ongoing invasion of the West, with its now routine attendant massacres, has revealed pockets of the human psyche that probably weren’t as apparent until being pulled open by modernity’s unique social mandates. Perhaps the...

An independent K-12 Catholic school in the San Francisco Bay Area has removed religious statues from its campus in order to appeal to those of other faiths. Parents and alumni are concerned about San Domenico School's decision to remove a number of statutes and religious icons, especially those of Jesus and Mary, the Marin Independent Journal reported. "Articulating an inclusive foundation appears to mean letting go of San Domenico's 167-year tradition as a Dominican Catholic school and being both afraid and ashamed to celebrate one's heritage and beliefs," wrote parent Shannon Fitzpatrick in an email to school decision makers. "In our time...

Muslims who have already lived in Germany for a while are better integrated than Muslims in other European countries, according to a study released by the Bertelsmann Foundation on Thursday. But the study revealed some weaknesses in integration, too. The study called “Integrated, but not accepted?” compared the situations of Muslims who came to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and Great Britain before 2010. Categories for assessment included language skills, education, work and social contact. Germany came out on top in a few categories, including the integration of Muslim immigrants into the labour market and low unemployment. About 60 percent of...