Free Republic

The Left, champions of strict separation of church and state, have come out in support of an American theocracy. How can this be? Could this possibly be the same political machine that ritualistically goes from town to town scanning courthouses for explicit references to God, or even worse, the Ten Commandments? Or the establishment telling little Susie she cannot pray at school? Or the organization forbidding the reading of scripture, even on a purely non-sectarian, academic basis? Surely we can't be talking about the same ideologues. But there is no mistake. The Left supports theocracy, as long as it is...

Father Accused Of Murdering Daughter In 'Honour Killing' Collapses In Court As His Wife Gives Evidence Against Him By Daily Mail Reporter 19th October 2009 Tulay Goren's father Mehmet is accused of killing her after he learnt she was having sex with an older man The father accused of murdering his own 15-year-old daughter [Pic in URL] today collapsed in the dock as his wife broke a code of silence and gave evidence against him. Turkish Kurd Mehmet Goren, 49, had a fit and had to be helped to lie on the floor of the dock by prison officers at...

3:09 pm - Judge Dawson plans to enforce his order for the passport and related papers, even if the case is moved to Ohio. 3:10 pm - "We still don't have a complete copy of (Rifqa's) passport," said Bartholomew. "I am very alarmed that it hasn' been provided," she added. She said she has learned there are more documents being withheld. 3:18 pm - Attorneys are talking about arrangements for a psychological evaluation and counseling. She is to see a local psychologist on Friday morning. 3:21 pm - Elahi said he suspects "a ploy" by Rifqa's legal representatives to delay...

Watch this BRAND NEW VIDEO of Rifqa Bary (transcribing right now with Ken's help). This was before she had to run, before the summer 2009 when her dad had promised to kill her if she "had Jesus in her heart". Watch it, it's very ..........revealing. All Exclusive Atlas Rifqa coverage here. (vid hat tip Dutch) Rifqa: I am sixteen and I love Jesus, I'm crazy how I found the Lord but, people were blown away but, my parents are Muslims, radical, radical Muslims. You guys don't know the history of Islam, it's really hostile towards Christianity and the mere word...

SNIPPET: "Another European publisher has fallen victim to the continent’s blasphemy laws – blasphemy against Islam, that is. As the German press is reporting: Dusseldorf – A German publisher has cancelled plans to publish a mass-market novel out of fears that it might face violent protests due to a rude reference to the Koran, Der Spiegel magazine reported Saturday. The crime novel – about the “honour killing” of a Muslim woman – had been scheduled for September publication, but the Droste publishing company of Dusseldorf decided not to print it after all, the magazine said in a story to appear...

Five ex-Muslims who founded a group called Former Muslims United put out a public appeal Thursday to the U.S. government for protection, saying the lives of thousands of "apostates from Islam" are in peril. Speaking at Capitol Hill press conference, the Granada Hills, Calif., group cited the case of Fathima Rifqa Bary, a 17-year-old from Ohio who converted to Christianity four years ago. She fled to Florida this past summer in fears that her parents would murder her for "honor" reasons. Her father, the girl said in court filing, had already threatened to kill her. Fathima first stayed with a...

CALGARY - A mother accused of strangling her teenage daughter with a scarf was acting in selfdefence, her lawyer said Monday. Mark Tyndale, who represents Aset Magomadova, pointed to a statement of agreed facts entered in the second-degree murder trial. He said 14-year-old Aminat Magomadova, who died Feb. 26, 2007, had been "habitually running away from home, boasting that she was using drugs, being sexually active and stealing" --behaviour that caused stress for the rest of the Muslim family. Tyndale said his client, a 38-year-old Chechnyan refugee and ... Vomberg introduced numerous exhibits, including the accused's head scarf. After her...

Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who converted to Christianity from Islam and then fled for her life after her father threatened to kill her, faces daunting obstacles in her quest to be free. As a high-profile apostate, she is Islamists' highest value target right now. And on top of that, she faces a Leftist media that is complicit with those who want to see her dead or institutionalized. Witness the outrageous treatment that Newsweek gave to her story in its September 9 issue, and especially to Jamal Jivanjee, Rifqa's friend and confidante. Newsweek reporter Arian Campo-Flores, said Jivanjee, asked him...

Following news of the arrest last week of Mohammad Shafia, his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their 18-year old son, Hamed, for the alleged murder of four female family members, a case exhibiting several earmarks of a culturally motivated crime, I steeled myself for the usual media scramble to deplore all acts of “domestic violence.....” Liberals deliberately conflate domestic violence with honour killing because they feel that making any distinction would “racialize” the crimes, indicting a whole culture. But in order to avoid offending the minority communities in which honour killings occur, they must then “genderize” the practice by force-fitting...

Kingston Police have arrested at least three people in connection with the mysterious deaths of four Montreal women found in a submerged car in Kingston Mills June 30. Three teenage sisters were found dead in the car, Zainab Shafi, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with a 50-year-old woman, Rona Amir Mohammed. La Presse newspaper in Montreal said three people who were heading to Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport were arrested yesterday morning. Initially, police said the case was suspicious but that they had not found evidence of foul play. It's not clear what charges are being laid, but...

SNIPPET: "She gave a dying statement to the police saying the accused beat her and set her on fire. Vijay Singh, station officer at Bhojpur police station in Ghaziabad, said: "The girl has succumbed to her injuries. We have been looking for the four men accused in this case. One of them has been caught and charged with murder.""

Hannah Shah had been raped by her father and faced a forced marriage. She fled, became a Christian and now fears for her lifeWe are all too familiar with the persecution of Christians in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet sitting in front of me is a British woman whose life has been threatened in this country solely because she is a Christian. Indeed, so real is the threat that the book she has written about her experiences has had to appear under an assumed name. The book is called The Imam’s Daughter because “Hannah Shah” is just that:...

When the British gained control of India, they got rid of suttee, the Hindu custom of burning a widow alive on her husband’s funeral pyre. This was done to express grief, and also so that the husband’s family would not have to share the inheritance with the widow. The British commander-in-chief in India, General Sir Charles Napier (1782-1853), was informed that suttee was an ancient and accepted custom with a religious basis, and that suppressing it would cause resentment. (Sound familiar?) Unimpressed, Napier replied: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a...

The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic...

Gruesome killing poses another test for US Muslims ERIC GORSKI, AP Religion Writer February 21, 2009 The crime was so brutal, shocking and rife with the worst possible stereotypes about their faith that some U.S. Muslims thought the initial reports were a hoax. The harsh reality of what happened in an affluent suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. — the beheading of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan and arrest of her estranged husband in the killing — is another crucible for American Muslims. Here was a couple that appeared to be the picture of assimilation and tolerance, co-founders of a television network that aspired...

It is hard to understand this deal,” said Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy. And, if the special envoy of the so-called smartest and most impressive administration in living memory can’t understand it, what chance do the rest of us have? Nevertheless, let’s try. In the Swat Valley, where a young Winston Churchill once served with the Malakand Field Force battling Muslim insurgents, his successors have concluded the game isn’t worth the candle. In return for a temporary ceasefire, the Pakistani government agreed to let the local franchise of the Taliban impose its industrial strength version of sharia across the...

An upstate TV exec who set up a channel promoting Muslims as peace-loving people was stressed about his failing business in the days before he allegedly chopped off his estranged wife's head, a friend of the couple said today. ..... Hassan, who founded Bridges TV in 2004 to counter anti-Islam stereotypes following 9/11, turned himself in to cops Thursday in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park. Police later found his beheaded wife in the TV studios.

Just asking, but are beheadings common in western New York? I used to spend a lot of time in that neck of the woods and I don't remember decapitation as a routine form of murder. Yet the killing of Aasiya Hassan seems to have elicited a very muted response. When poor Mrs Hassan's husband launched his TV network to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims, he had no difficulty generating column inches, as far afield as The Columbus Dispatch, The Detroit Free Press, The San Jose Mercury News, Variety, NBC News, the Voice of America and the Canadian Press. The Rochester...

The subject of “honor killings” is gradually becoming a matter of public controversy these days. The incidence of these crimes appears to be rising although the response to them is ambiguous and vacillating. There is little doubt that something alarming is happening—and has been happening for a long while—and that what we are really witnessing is a form of culture-specific violent behavior. But the general tendency among Muslim spokespeople and social activists is to average out these tragic events as part of a garden variety social phenomenon that is statistically inevitable. When 16 year-old Aqsa Parvez of Mississauga, Ontario was...

* Baloch senator Israrullah Zehri says members should not politicise issue ISLAMABAD: The killing of women for honour is a demand of the tribal traditions, Balochistan Senator Israrullah Zehri informed the Senate on Friday. Zehri was responding to Senator Yasmeen Shah’s statement in which she had drawn the House’s attention towards reports that five women had been buried alive in Balochistan in the name of honour. She called it a sheer violation of human rights. Zehri asked the members not to politicise the issue, as it was a matter of safeguarding the tribal traditions. Leader of the Opposition in Senate...