Free Republic

... According to Ms Williams, the HFE Bill must be resisted because it permits embryo experimentation, violating the sanctity of life. It also improves the rights of gay parents (homosexuality is a sin, of course). But most of her efforts will be focused on using the Bill to restrict abortion laws. By laying amendments, MPs will be able to change abortion legislation. Because Ms Williams believes that any intervention with the embryo is sinful, she is absolute in her attitude to abortion. It should be completely illegal. She knows this is not achievable any time soon, but a reduction in...

Fundamentalist Christians have become the new target for the Old Media. One big reason is that media scribblers are simply ignorant of Western and world civilization. That thought comes to mind on listening to Verdi's Requiem, one of the most gorgeous and moving works ever composed. It is simply filled with "Christian fundamentalism" --- including the fear of punishment before God. At a guess, half of the greatest works in Western civilization are directly inspired by religious fundamentalism of one kind or another.  Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mendelsohn, Faure, Britten, Handel, and all the rest are just incomprehensible without...

Britain’s contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter, Turner Prize winner and former Times columnist, said that he had consciously avoided commenting on radical Islam in his otherwise highly provocative body of work because of the threat of reprisals. Perry also believes that many of his fellow visual artists have also ducked the issue, and one leading British gallery director told The Times that few major venues would be prepared to show potentially inflammatory works. “I’ve censored myself,” Perry said at...

Women are being given controversial "virginity repair" operations on the NHS, it emerged last night. Taxpayers funded 24 hymen replacement operations between 2005 and 2006, official figures revealed. And increasing numbers of women are paying up to £4,000 in private clinics for the procedure apparently under pressure from future spouses or in-laws who believe they should be virgins on their wedding night. Doctors said most patients are immigrants or British of ethnic origin. The trend has been condemned by critics as a sign of social regression driven by Islamic fundamentalists. Some countries have made hymen reconstruction operations illegal. ...Tory health...

There is an old hymn written by Fanny Crosby, sung at generations of camp meetings, which exclaims: "Crown Him! Crown Him! Prophet, and Priest, and King!" Since the emergence of evangelicalism as a cultural force in the 1950s, three approaches to politics, represented by three personalities, have emerged. They are the prophet, the priest and the kingmaker. The prophet has been psychologist James Dobson, who dispenses child-rearing advice on the radio from his Colorado ministry, Focus on the Family. On family issues, Dobson's counsel is moderate and broadly appealing. On politics, his tone sharpens. He rails against compromise on social-conservative...

NEW YORK - Christiane Amanpour's work on the documentary series "God's Warriors" took her directly to intersections of extreme religious and secular thinking. She watched, fascinated, as demonstrators in San Francisco accused teenagers in the fundamentalist Christian group BattleCry of intolerance in a clash of two cultures that will probably never understand each other. Understanding is what Amanpour is trying to promote in "God's Warriors," which takes up six prime-time hours on CNN this week. The series on religious fundamentalism among Christians, Muslims and Jews airs in three parts, 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday through Thursday. Many people know only stereotypes...

A U.S. defense analyst and author says Americans should be very concerned about some radical Muslim paramilitary compounds that have sprung up around the country and that are surrounded with "No Trespassing" signs. Hear This Report Greg Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), says the compounds are often populated with former U.S. convicts who were converted to Islam in prison. These convicts, he contends, are connected to a Pakistani organization. "Islamberg in New York, Ahmedabad in Virginia, and Holy Islamville in South Carolina, and so on are places which have been formed largely by Jamaat ul-Fuqra," Copley...

For the AKP, democracy is merely a means to a higher Islamic goal, If you thought Turkey was no threat to the West, think again. A new generation of politicians is aiming to Islamise the state by stealth. The AKP - Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party - has a stranglehold on Turkey for the foreseeable future. The AKP was founded to replace a previous Islamic party banned for extremism. It benefited hugely from the corruption scandals that dragged down the previous government, taking two-thirds of parliament in the 2002 general election (on a third of...

Relativism has made liberal openness appear weak, empty and repugnant compared with the clarity of dogma I don't usually consider either the Ministry of Defence or the Vatican to be prescient founts of wisdom. But when two such different oracles issue remarkably similar warnings, you have to take notice. Earlier this week it was revealed in this newspaper how the MoD believes that "the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly pragmatic values" was causing more and more people to seek "more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism". Flash back to 2004...

The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, wrote more than 200 years ago about the all-powerful "invisible hand" of the market. It was tough, he said, but good for all. The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman was the great champion of the invisible hand and free markets. Governments, he said, should just let markets do their work. Economist Duncan Foley, in his new book "Adam's Fallacy," says wait a minute. This is free market theology, he says, and it's producing a value-free society, an unequal society, an immoral society. This hour On Point: the author of "Adam's Fallacy"...

Protestantism and Islam: Points of Contact Protestantism may well have begun as a genuine movement of reform. Accepting the teachings of the Church, its adherents wanted to bring the practice of the Church into line with its teachings. This is the object of all Christian movements. However, it very soon developed into something far more radical, jettisoning basic Christian teachings, bringing in doctrines entirely new to Christianity, and having to meld the results into a coherent whole. This involved developing doctrinal and practical solutions to new problems in the field of Christian faith and morals. Most of Protestant teaching was...

A Christian woman who once served as an FBI informant on her husband's alleged support of terrorism now is seeking divorce from the self-described radical Muslim who told her he would be proud if their two teen sons blew themselves up for Allah. But she's finding herself on her own – completely – after a judge allowed her lawyer to withdraw, refused to allow an interested lawyer from appearing in her court, and then refused to allow time for any other replacement to be found before today's trial. At stake are Rosine Collin Ghawji's sons, whose futures have been defined...

Anyone familiar with contemporary talk-radio in the United States knows that the word "liberal" has become for some a slur, implying that holders of ideals like tolerance for other cultures or concern for the poor and disadvantaged are somehow inherently polluted by nonchalance toward national security, too little concern about crime and too much about the rights of terrorists. But another word, "fundamentalist," has likewise been made into an insult of its own, something recently noted by David Klinghoffer, the erstwhile literary editor of National Review and current senior fellow at a public policy think-tank, the Discovery Institute. (Full disclosure:...

Products Site Content Five Years Later: Are We Any Safer? John Lehman Proceedings, September 2006 Discuss in the eForum. Timeline: Major Islamic Extremist Attacks A former secretary of the Navy and member of the 9/11 Commission identifies the real enemy in the current war and assesses progress. GREG E. MATHIESON According to the author (left)-here, with fellow 9/11 commissioner, Washington attorney Richard Ben-Veniste (right)-the commission's report on the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and its recommendations for what the United States should do to prevent such attacks from happening again have been largely ignored. Are we winning the war? The...

If there is any among you who still thinks the mass media isn't in the pocket of the Left, you merely have to compare how the Plame affair went from being the biggest scandal since Capt. Dreyfuss to a non-story once the crime couldn't be laid at the feet of Karl Rove or Dick Cheney. Of course, inasmuch as Valerie Plame was not an undercover operative, it was never a big deal. But once it turned out that Clinton colleague Richard Armitage was Shallow Throat, the media buried the story back among the classified ads. Liberals who are aware that...

There is no Fundamental Islam. "Fundamentalism" is a word that came from the heart of the Christian religion. It means faith that goes by the word of the Bible. Fundamental Christianity, or going with the Bible, does not mean going around and killing people. There is no fundamental Islam. There is only Islam full stop. The question is how the Koran is interpreted. All of a sudden we see that the greatest interpreters of Islam are politicians in the western world. They know better than all the speakers in the mosques, all those who deliver terrible sermons against anything that...

Editor's note: Seldom I disregard the editorial policy of dealing exclusively with issues of my country. The recent escalation of violence in the Middle East against Israel however merits our attention for the issue goes far beyond a dispute between the Islamofundamentalists of Hezbollah and Israel; it isn't about Israel's future and safety anymore, rather a 'holy war' between deranged people and freedom; between terror and the values and liberties the civilised and rational inhabitants of this world hold dear. Someone sent the following speech -originally published March 03, 2006, which I have decided to post for it couldn't have...

Want to know where the Democratic Party stands and where America would be under their leadership? Just ask Jimmy Carter. Carter is certainly not bashful about bashing the United States, even on foreign soil or to the foreign press. He sat for an interview with Der Spiegel recently and fired with both barrels at President Bush, "fundamentalist" Christians and Israel. But do Carter's views represent those of the Democratic Party? Well, he sure seems to think so. He told Der Spiegel, "I think I represent the vast majority of Democrats in this country." If so, that's scary. Expanding on the...

'Fascistic' is the right word for Islamic fundamentalism By Janet Daley (Filed: 14/08/2006) The anti-war-on-terror lobby has had a bad week. Not that it hasn't kept its end up. Oh no. Faced with a threat so devastating that it seemed more like a world-domination plot from a Superman comic than a hard-headed act of war, there was nothing for it but to fall back on semantics. George W. Bush was pilloried for referring to "Islamic fascists" by, among others, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu. Using that kind of language "on the ranch in Texas" did not help, he...

ALERT!CLINTONS CONTINUE ATTACK ON RELIGIOUS RIGHT by Mia T, 6.15.06     "For ... the so-called Christian right and its allies, their great sin has been believing they were in full possession of the truth." bill clintonTanenbaum Center For Interreligious Understanding*New York, New York, 16 June 2006 * Note the irony WHY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT MUST MOBILIZE AGAINST HILLARY:CLINTON CONFLATES EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS AND ISLAMO-FASCIST TERRORISTS by Mia T, 03.16.06 It is wrong to demonize and cartoonize one another and ignore evidence and to make false charges and to bear false witness. Sometimes I think our friends on the other side...

For decades, America's interaction with the Soviet Union was governed by the policy of containment, but it took Ronald Reagan's aggressive policy of confrontation to end the Cold War. So when some Washington policymakers are entertaining a new vision of containment for terrorism and Islamist fundamentalism, FSM Contributing Editor Ben Shapiro argues that the country should prepare itself for another lengthy stalemate unless and until we are ready to confront this challenge with all we've got.

http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060517/NEWS01/605170309/1002

The judicial branch is no place for politics, Judge John E. Jones III told a crowd Tuesday afternoon at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. The federal judge from Pottsville ruled in December that Dover's intelligent design policy was unconstitutional...... Jones was among the speakers at a two-day convocation..Though he was asked to speak about the Constitution's Establishment Clause..he instead talked about the broader issue of th epublic blurring the lines between the branches of government...... judges should make decisions based on the law, not based on personal affiliation, he said. "We must remember that we have a rule of law,"...

The new 10th Anniversary edition of the book that still has Darwin Fundies running scared. With a new afterword. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743290313/ "A persuasive book. It will speak to the layman and perhaps even to professional evolutionists as well, if they are able to suspend for a little while their own judgment about origins, the ultimate black box." -- The Washington Times "An argument of great originality, elegance, and intellectual power. . . . No one can propose to defend Darwin without meeting the challenges set out in this superbly written and compelling book." -- David Berlinski, author of A Tour of...

No difference between these Kansas' Baptists and other hate-filled jerks around the world. Folks, according to Yahoo News / AFP: FLUSHING, United States (AFP) - Five women sang and danced as they held up signs saying "thank God for dead soldiers" at the funeral of an army sergeant who was killed by an Iraqi bomb. For them, it was the perfect way to spread God's word: America was being punished for tolerating homosexuality. For the hundreds of flag waving bikers who came to this small town in Michigan Saturday to shield the soldier's family, it was disgusting. "That could be...

A GROWING number of science students on British university campuses are challenging the theory of evolution, saying that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Koran as scientific fact and at one college in London, most biology students are now thought to be creationists. Earlier this month, Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin's theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution. In the US, there is growing pressure to teach creationism or "intelligent design" in science classes,...

How to Win In Iraq Lieutenant Colonel Terence J. Daly, U.S. Army Reserve (Retired) Proceedings, December 2005 Sidebar: Recommended Reading (and Viewing) on Counterinsurgency Discuss this article in the eForum. "The population's attitude in the middle stage of the war is dictated not so much by the relative popularity and merits of the opponents as by the more primitive concern for safety. Which side gives the best protection, which one threatens the most, which one is likely to win, these are the criteria governing the population's stand." --David Galula Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice U.S. ARMY (KATHY JO YOUNG) We...

Institutionally, there is no way for fundamentalism to overcome its schizophrenia. It must choose either comprehensive cultural retreat or comprehensive cultural victory, either pietism or Christendom. Three basic ideas are crucial for the success of any religious, social, intellectual, and political movement. First, the doctrine of predestination. Second, the doctrine of law. Third, the doctrine of inevitable victory. The fusion of these three ideas has led to the victories of Marxism since 1848. The Communists believe that historical forces are on their side, that Marxism-Leninism provides them with access to the laws of historical change, and that their movement must...

They are the young men whose rioting has laid waste to Paris's outer suburbs, is spreading across France and licking the heart of the capital. The riots are described as the worst to hit France since May 1968 and have been linked to radical Islam. However, it is better to compare the unrest to the riots that burnt down African-American ghettos across the United States in the 1960s. "It is nothing to do with radical Islam or even Muslims," said Olivier Roy, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and a leading authority on political Islam. Although...

OF the many questions surrounding Egypt's presidential elections last week - Were opposition candidates unfairly removed from the ballot? Did the ruling party of President Hosni Mubarak cheat at the polls? - a more general query has gone largely unmentioned: Did this election, or the other recent democratic experiments in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, really further American aims in the Muslim world? The answer is troubling. The post- 9/11 prevailing wisdom has held that military force and exporting democracy are the West's twin weapons against terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is the product of a "medieval" mindset, we are told, and if...

White seculars in Tehran insist that 90% of the Iranian political power is found in Qum, some might also add that at least 70% of the Iraqi political power is also found in Qum. Asia Times Newspaper correspondent has visited 'The International Association for Ahl Al Bait (The Prophets Family), which is supervised by his eminence Al Sayyid Ali Al Sestani and asked a question that stated: Which is the voice with the greatest credibility in the Shiite sect? Is it the sedate and solitary voice in Najaf, which forced the Americans to submit for its desires? Or is it...

Riyadh (AsiaNews) – With the death of King Fahd and the arrival of King Abdullah, the persecution by the Saudi Kingdom of believers of religions other than Islam, especially Christians, is on the rise. Sources close to AsiaNews in the Saudi capital have confirmed that the religious police, the Muttawa, has raided the homes of foreigners, especially suspect homes (i.e. those where Christians live). This has forced many groups, who used to meet in the privacy of their home to pray, to stop this activity. Furthermore, fear is such that people have stopped meeting out of fear that the police...

CARACAS, Venezuela - Pat Robertson's call for American agents to assassinate President Hugo Chavez is a "terrorist" statement that needs to be investigated by U.S. authorities, Venezuela said Tuesday. The Bush administration quickly distanced itself from the religious broadcaster. Robertson's suggestion Monday that the United States "take out" Chavez to stop Venezuela from becoming a "launching pad for communist influence and Muslim extremism" appeared likely to aggravate tensions between the United States and the world's fifth-largest oil exporting country. Chavez, who was democratically elected, has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States...

Two people have been killed, eight injured and 145 arrested in renewed unrest among the Kurds of western Iran, the Interior Ministry has said. The ministry offered only vague details on the deaths and arrests in the town of Saqqez, which followed rioting and a gun battle elsewhere in Kurdish-dominated territories in July. Iranian officials deny the rash of unrest on the western borders is ethnically motivated, but Kurdish leaders disagree, saying Tehran's discrimination towards their people was fomenting discontent. Shots fired The Interior Ministry website named the dead men in Saqqez as Mohammad Shariati, a 55-year-old retired teacher,...

It is depressing to say, but even I have been disheartened by the news coming from Iraq. But, I don't blame the Bush Administration, completely. I feel Pres. Bush has got to emerge from his 4-week hiatus with a refreshed spirit and a fresh approach to Iraq and the real enemy, Iran. Friends, you must get Kenneth Timmerman's Countdown to Crisis, which chronicles the evil of the Iranian state in their 20-year war with America. It is enough to reinvigorate you commitment to fighting the War against ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM. America must regain our faith in ourselves; see ourselves again as...

The U.S. Government is now openly supporting the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian resistance movement designated as terrorist organization by the US State Department. On June 20th of this year, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq held a conference at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which is where many foreign journalists stay and is under the full protection of the U.S. Army. I was in the area of the hotel that day, and saw at least 10 U.S. tanks heading in the direction of the hotel to provide additional security. I knew of the conference in advance, because of a report issued to all NGO's working...

2.What is Fundamentalism? We find in the Gospel of Saint Luke (chapter 9) a typical and interesting case of a concrete fundamentalist attitude. We read: “They (Jesus and the disciples) went to a Samaritan village to make preparations for him, but the people would not receive him because he was going for Jerusalem. Seeing this, the disciples James and John said: ‘Lord do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?’ But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village” (Lk 9:51-55).The two disciples indeed show in this incident a concrete...

Summary: Their attempt to practice religion consistently explains the terrorists' actions. Body: The continued attacks by Islamic terrorists against the West--most recently, the horrific suicide bombings in London--have led many to ask, what is the motivation of the terrorists? Commentators are eager to offer a bevy of pseudo-explanations--poverty, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc.--while ignoring the motivation the terrorists themselves openly proclaim: Islam. The near silence about the true role of Islam in motivating Islamic terrorists has two main causes: multiculturalism and religion. Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are equal and therefore none may criticize another; intellectuals and politicians are therefore reluctant...

Summary: America should redouble and refocus its military action, not increase its foreign aid, if it wants to attack the "root cause" of terrorism. Body: In light of the recent suicide bombings in London, and the general inability of the West to prevent terrorist attacks, there is much talk about fighting the "root cause" of terrorism. The most popular argument is that terrorism is caused by poverty. The United Nations and our European and Arab "allies" repeatedly tell us to minimize our military operations and instead dole out more foreign aid to poor countries--to put down our guns and pick...

Without it -- without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same -- the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers -- the multiculturalists -- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal. I'm not talking about our soldiers, policemen, rescue workers and, now,...

I WAS BORN A CHOSEN PERSON, though this state of affairs was not of my choosing. My mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were staunch Seventh Day Adventists—a Saturday-worshiping fundamentalist sect that arose in the mid-19th century. Our faith's founder prophesied Jesus' Second Coming and "the Rapture" in 1850. When both failed to occur, he instead started the church into which the matriarchs of my family were later born. These strong women gave their offspring no choice but to attend the same churches and share their faith, so attend and share we did. My father and grandfather, however, did not attend church,...

Is Conservatism compatible with capitalism? Theorists such as Joseph Schumpeter thought (as did Marx) that the central process of capitalism was "creative destruction." Too much destruction, and there isn't much left to conserve. The conclusion would have to be that capitalism drives out conservatism, but for the last half century, America has been developing a dramatic refutation of this abstract thesis. It is a development that would have astonished students of American culture in the middle of the 20th century. In those days, Louis Hartz declared that America was a liberal society lacking both conservatism and socialism because it had...

Is there or isn't there a Saudi megaplot to thwart democracy in the Middle East and spread fundamentalism in its place? Is Lebanon the staging ground for a fundamentalist Sunni restoration in Syria to be orchestrated by the Saudis? 'snip' A few weeks ago in downtown Beirut, and a short distance from Hariri's grave, the espresso-sippers at trendy cafes got the privilege of first-row seating to the spectacle of fellow Lebanese demonstrating for an Islamic state and the imposition of Islamic law. They were Sunnis from the furthermost northern region of Lebanon around Akkar that hugs the Syrian border. Some...

The military establishment's fondness for Islamist fundamentalists, jihadists and rightwing groups remains as strong as ever -- the May 15 Convocation of Deeni Madaris and the May 18 edict against suicide attacks provide the latest evidence.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - To the uninformed, this weekend gathering here may have seemed like a church revival, full of zeal and fervor. But worshipping God was most decidedly not part of the agenda. The attendees of the "All Atheists Weekend" gathered to discuss what they call the rise of fundamentalism in the U.S. and the blurring of lines between church and state. Attendees also took time to view documentaries that question the historical accuracy of the Bible - and to hear lectures about the dangers of religious icons on public property and problems with President Bush's so-called "faith-based initiative,"...

The emotions this movement inspired coincided with the one deeply moral political phenomenon that postwar America has experienced--Martin Luther King's civil-rights movement. The Rev. King's multiracial civil-rights marches and their role in overturning de jure and de facto segregation in the U.S. were a political and moral achievement. In retrospect, it's clear that the moral clarity of the early civil-rights movement was a political epiphany for many white liberals. Some have since returned to traditional, private lives; others have become neoconservatives. But many active liberals carried along their newly found moral certitude and quasi-religious fervor into nearly every major public-policy...

We've been close friends for years. We have shared Sabbath meals and addressed one another's constituencies. One of us is a very large black man, the other is an average size white guy. One of us raises Rottweiler dogs, the other sails boats. One of us is a Christian pastor while the other is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. Yet for all these differences, something recently united us. And it was not that we're both bald or that we both have beards! What happened is that the senior rabbi of one of Seattle's largest Reform congregations attacked us in a local...

From a reader: Dear Mr. Goldberg, I have been following with interest the exchanges between you and the increasingly hyperbolic Andrew Sullivan. With respect to "fundamentalism," it is probably worth noting that the term has a precise definition. A fundamentalist is anyone who agrees with the Five Points of Fundamentalism, a statement of faith formulated at the Niagara Bible Conference of 1895. The Five Points are: 1) the inerrancy of scripture; 2) the virgin birth of Jesus Christ; 3)the substitutional theory of atonement; 4) the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ; and 5) Christ's imminent bodily return to the world. The...

The influence of evangelicals is almost everywhere -- from places of political power like Congress and the Supreme Court to cultural status markers like the New York Times' best-seller list, where titles such as "The Purpose Driven Life" reside. But the person many evangelicals consider the most prominent member of their fold -- President Bush -- doesn't use that term to describe himself publicly and neither does the White House. He has had a "transformation." Evangelicals believe in "personal transformation," a spirit-driven change in behavior. The National Association of Evangelicals' statement of faith says, "For the salvation of lost and...