Free Republic

While there is not much time left until June 18, the day of the presidential elections in Iran, the war between the two factions within the regime for winning this seat has escalated. On April 25, a letter signed by 220 members of the Iranian parliament was published in the media. The MPs asked Ebrahim Ra'isi, the head of the regime's judiciary, to run for the presidency. The letter was published contrary to the usual custom of non-interference of the legislature in the affairs of the executive branch. Ra'isi's endorsement is also interpreted as an attack against the current president,...

To the organizers of Jexodus, the movement to lure Jews away from the Democratic Party and over to the GOP, I have good news and bad news. The good news: There is a Jexodus! Jews, including many prominent intellectuals, have been bolting their longtime party en masse. The bad news: The party they are leaving is the GOP. Ever since the GOP rolled over and became the Party of Trump, normally stalwart Republican Jews have made it clear they can no longer abide what their party has become. The list includes Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Bill Kristol, David Frum, David...

For those of you familiar with fundamentalist movements, particularly the IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist), you’ll know these movements tend to be rife with sexual abuse and cover-ups. Because the IFB maintains ideologies of separatism and elitism, they tend to deal with their issues “in house.” The trend is: keep it in the church, don’t tell anyone (authorities included), blame the victim, and re-locate the offender to another church in another town (and don’t forget his severance package). Well, in a shocking turn of events, one IFB mega-pastor took a public stand against these actions, and those of us who have...

Well, at least the Dallas Morning News was kinda nice to Liberty University. In the lede to its story on Ted Cruz in New Hampshire, the newspaper called it a "huge evangelical Christian college." Once upon a time, many mainstream media routinely slapped Liberty with the "F" word: "Fundamentalist." But the paper doesn't prove its claim that Cruz sounded less evangelical, more secular in his New Hampshire visit to sound more presidential. It therefore pushes a related stereotype: that Americans don’t particularly like evangelicals. DMN paints Cruz as a conservative's conservative as well as an evangelical's evangelical. It says the...

Maybe it’s time progressives started using these “religious freedom” laws to our advantage.Maybe it’s time to start the Church of Gay. Or actually pass state and federal laws specifying that gay businesses have the legal right to discriminate against religious fundamentalists. Time to fight special rights with special rights. After all, Indiana’s new “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” does just that—it confers special rights on a small minority of citizens and, importantly, their private businesses, to disregard other laws and the constitution and discriminate against other citizens. The law isn’t about protecting religious freedom; it’s about hiding the impulse toward ugly...

Megyn Kelly really grilled Rudy Giuliani on his comments where he said Obama doesn’t love this country. But Giuliani wouldn’t fold, standing firm, even doubling down on why he believes Obama doesn’t love this country.

Whether you call it Islamic extremism or Islamic fundamentalism, the goal of all true believers is the same: the submission of all of the world's peoples to Allah The Muslim Council of Britain reacted angrily to the letter written by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to Muslim religious leaders urging them to do more to combat Islamic extremism and telling them that they had a responsibility to explain to their followers “how faith in Islam can be part of British identity.” In responding to the letter, the Deputy Secretary of the Council, Harun Khan, asked if Mr. Pickles was seriously suggesting...

Pope Francis equated Christianity with Islam while leaving Turkey. “We have our share of fundamentalists” too. The pope also said fighting poverty and hunger were key to defeating Islamist killers. Ugh. The Jerusalem Post reported: Pope Francis said Sunday that equating Islam with violence was wrong and called on Muslim leaders to issue a global condemnation of terrorism to help dispel the stereotype. Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, told reporters aboard his plane returning from a visit to Turkey that he understood why Muslims were offended by many in the West who automatically equated their religion with...

ISIS is leaving a path of destroyed churches, shrines and mosques in its wake as it storms across Syria and Iraq, and has even set its sights on Mecca -- Islam's holiest site. The nihilistic jihadis, led by self-proclaimed descendant of Prophet Muhammad Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, have already bulldozed or blown up some of the most sacred places in Iraq, and seem bent on killing and destroying anyone or anything that does not measure up to their twisted vision of Islam. Experts say the group, which originally stood for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but now simply calls itself "Islamic...

As sparring partners go, a Hollywood actress and an evolutionary biologist would not appear to be a natural fit. However, Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie, 39, and controversial scientist Professor Richard Dawkins, 73, have found themselves inadvertently at loggerheads over whether children should be allowed to read fairytales. Miss Jolie, who plays an evil fairy godmother in her latest film Maleficent – a spin on the classic story of Sleeping Beauty – said fairytales play an important role in how she raises her six children, using ‘a little magic’ to impart important moral lessons. The other day, one of the kids lost...

ydia still doesn’t know why she was expelled from Bob Jones University in March 2009. But she believes it has something to do with the fact that she was raped. Lydia, who asked to be identified by only her first name, loved BJU, a Christian university in Greenville, S.C., when she started there in the fall of 2008. Pursuing a nursing major, she enjoyed the classes, played intramural sports and had a great group of friends. Then, when she went home over Christmas break, she says she was raped by an acquaintance. For weeks, Lydia didn’t tell anybody about it,...

There is an incompatibility between Islam and the ideas which are fundamental to Western civilization. There are logical contradictions between the principles at the basis of Islam and the West. One cannot resolve logical contradictions, they cannot be solved in the way that problems can. You simply cannot square a circle. It’s got nothing to do with terrorists, or fundamentalists, fanatics, or Islamic radicals of various sorts. I’m here talking about mainstream Islam and the fact that it is in serious, direct and open contradiction with principles which are at the core of Western civilization and form the very...

The US Justice Department has filed suit against the adjoining towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, communities populated largely by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). ...FLDS...controls most...law enforcement and other government services in those two communities...It is charged with discriminating against those who are not members of the FLDS. The Justice Department...alleges...the cities’ joint police department “routinely uses its enforcement authority to enforce the edicts and will of the FLDS; fails to protect non-FLDS individuals from victimization by FLDS individuals; refuses to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies’ investigations of FLDS...

THE end is near — or so it seems to a segment of Christians aligned with the religious right. The global economic meltdown, numerous natural disasters and the threat of radical Islam have fueled a conviction among some evangelicals that these are the last days. While such beliefs might be dismissed as the rantings of a small but vocal minority, apocalyptic fears helped drive the antigovernment movements of the 1930s and ’40s and could help define the 2012 presidential campaign as well. Christian apocalypticism has a long and varied history. Its most prevalent modern incarnation took shape a century ago,...

KIEV: A 19-year-old Muslim girl was stoned to death under 'Sharia law' after taking part in a beauty contest in Ukraine. Katya Koren was found dead in a village in the Crimea region near her home. Her body was buried in a forest and was found a week after she disappeared, the Daily Mail reports. Koren's friends said she liked wearing fashionable clothes and had come seventh in a beauty contest. Police investigations revealed that three Muslim youths killed her claiming her death was justified under Islam, One of the three named as 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev is under arrest and...

Conservatives for Palin is rejoicing for the same reason some of you now have a dark cloud of fear hanging over your Saturday night. The fundie vote is up for grabs now that Huckabee is out and the second in line candidate is Sarah Palin. Yes, that’s right. Sarah Blood Libel Palin. One day years ago, after the sportscaster fill-in job didn’t work out, a young Sarah Palin told a friend she wanted to be President one day. Today she wants it so bad she chokes on her own bitterness every time she has to say “Obama”. Palin has still...

Although the sophisticated may deride them as simple-minded, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said traditional Christians should have the courage to embrace their faith. Scalia spoke to members of the St. Thomas More Society of Maryland who gathered Oct. 21 at the Westin Hotel in Annapolis following the 52nd annual Red Mass, held at nearby St. Mary Church. The liturgy, celebrated by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, marked the beginning of the judicial year. During a hotel banquet, the St. Thomas More Society honored Scalia with its “Man for All Seasons Award,” given to members of the legal profession who...

It's not surprising that breakaway Mormons say they love their polygamous lives in the affidavits they've sworn to support their position that practising it is their constitutional right. What is surprising is that the affidavits are steeped in the myth of persecution. Filed in advance of the constitutional reference case, which is scheduled to be heard starting Nov. 22 in B.C. Supreme Court, they reveal that almost all of the breakaway Mormons say they live in fear of being jailed or having their children taken away from them. Yet, the first time such men were charged in Canada with polygamy...

To halt this “soul drain,” to answer the fundamentalist challenge and, most of all, to understand our faith better, Peter Kreeft looks at five major points of conflict... Whose Bible is it, anyway? We needn’t be bitter in defending our beliefs. Even though many fundamentalists think the Catholic Church is under the control of Satan and all or most Catholics are headed for hell, not all think that — and we shouldn’t think the same of them. However narrow-minded their faith often is, it’s also usually genuine, both in personal sincerity and in basic Christian orthodoxy. Fundamentalism is not some...

More than a hundred years ago, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) outlawed the practice of polygamy. LDS records, however, indicate that early Mormon leaders, Joseph Smith Jr. and Brigham Young, have both been “sealed” (married) for eternity to hundreds of wives. Despite its current temporal ban on polygamy, the LDS Church promotes polygamy on a perpetual basis. Polygamous unions, mainly on behalf of the dead, using living Mormons as proxies, are routinely performed in LDS temples. Mormon fundamentalists — representing the sects of Mormonism which embrace early Mormon teachings that made polygamy a central part of...