Free Republic

According to Reporters Without Borders, the U.S. has dropped to 46th place in press freedom. The lowered ranking was based on the conviction of the WikiLeaks informant, the effort to punish NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and the Justice DepartmentÂ’s monitoring of reporters.Unmentioned by the report, however, is an equally serious cause for concern. Most press censorship in the U.S. is self-imposed. The masters of the media are quite willing to suppress certain news stories without any government encouragement. This can be accomplished in several ways: by not reporting a story, by providing only minimal coverage, or by shaping the story...

As my friend Daniel Pipes wrote some days ago at National Review, the Middle East Forum is debating whether one can speak meaningfully of “moderate Muslims,” with Dr. Pipes defending the affirmative and Raymond Ibrahim the negative thesis. I respect both Pipes and Ibrahim, but I am not satisfied with the content of the debate. The first issue to be settled is what moderation might mean in the case of adherence to a religion, which is after all not a list of positions but an existential stance towards life. One can speak of a moderate Communist (e.g. Gorbachev) or moderate...

Eyewitnesses have given a harrowing account of the murder in Cairo of a young Coptic Christian woman, hauled out of her car and beaten and stabbed to death by a Muslim mob, apparently targeted because of a cross hanging from her rear-view mirror. The incident occurred in the Cairo suburb of Ain Shams after mosque prayer services on Friday, ... 25-year-old Mary Sameh George was attacked in her car near a church, where she planned to deliver medicine to an ill and elderly woman. Protestors climbed onto her car, collapsing the roof, then hauled her from the vehicle, beating and...

Islamofascism: With an eye toward the 2016 election, the radical Muslim Brotherhood has built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc. 'Muslim voters have the potential to be swing voters in 2016," said Nihad Awad in launching the benign-sounding U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, whose membership reads like a Who's Who of Brotherhood front groups. "We are aiming to bring more participation from the Muslim community." USCMO also aims to elect Islamists in Washington, with the ultimate objective of "institutionalizing policies" favorable to Islamists — that is, Shariah law....

Honor Diaries is the first film to break the silence on 'honor violence' against women and girls. Honor Diaries is more than a movie, it is a movement to save women and girls from gender inequality, forced marriages and human rights abuses.

Billboards proclaiming ‘Jesus is Muslim’ getting people upset By Will Lerner 22 hours ago Odd News Billboards that are being displayed in parts of Ohio are certainly getting people talking. The large advertisements have been paid for by a local Muslim organization and say things like, “Jesus is Muslim,” and “Mohammed is in the Bible.” As WSYX ABC 6 reports, this has some people outraged and others defending the message. The billboards are promoting Ask A Muslim, an organization that is, “dedicated to educating you about Islam, giving you a chance to hear about Islam from practicing Muslims.” Kenneth Tour,...

Just in time for Easter, from The New York Daily News: Two historians claim the search for the Holy Grail is over.The famous cup used by Jesus Christ during the Last Supper was identified in a book written by Margarita Torres Jose Manuel Ortega del Rio, titled “Kings of the Grail” and published last week, as the jewel-encrusted goblet on display at the San Isidro Basilica in the northwestern Spanish city of Leon.News of the discovery caused masses of people to flock to the historic church to view the precious chalice – forcing the operators of the museum to pull...

Spanish historians claim they’ve discovered the 2,000-year-old Holy Chalice, the biblical cup that Jesus Christ used during the Last Supper. Margarita Torres, a medieval history lecturer at León University and Jose Ortiza del Rio, an art historian, penned a new book claiming that years of research has led them to conclude that Christ’s chalice is somehow inside a medieval goblet that has been on display in Spain for 1,000 years, Daily Mail reported. Residing inside the Basilica of San Isidoro, a church in Spain that is located on the site of an ancient Roman temple, the goblet — known as...

Spanish historians say they have discovered what Monty Python could not – the Holy Grail, the legendary cup Jesus supposedly drank from at the Last Supper. The Spaniards – Margarita Torres and José Ortega del Río – believe the 2,000-year-old vessel is in a church in León in northern Spain. The pair spent three years studying the history of the chalice and last week published a book, “The Kings of the Grail,” making their case. The onyx chalice, they explained, was concealed within another antique vessel known as the Chalice of Doña Urruca, which is located in León’s basilica of...

KFC diner told 'you can't have bacon in your burger here - we're now halal' A diner was left fuming after a KFC restaurant took his favourite meal off the menu because it breached their new halal regulations. Alan Phillips was told he would have to travel five miles to another branch if he wanted the Big Daddy, a chicken burger, topped with bacon, cheese and salad. The branch, in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, is one of 86 KFC restaurants which is running trials of a scheme where they sell nothing other than halal meat. The company has taken the burger off...

“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews. The Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: ‘Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.” Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan wa Ashrat as-Sa’ah, Book 41 of Koran, 6985 The Islamic group “Ask a Muslim” is running “Jesus is Muslim” billboards in Columbus, Ohio. Mohammad, the founder of Islam, was born 500 years after Jesus’s death. The Christian Post reported, via Free Republic:

Former President Jimmy Carter has a new crusade: the fight for the human rights of women and girls worldwide, particularly against oppression driven by religious zealotry. It is a worthy cause -- but unfortunately compromised by Carter's insistence that modern Western democracies are just as guilty of sexism as authoritarian regimes dominated by medieval fundamentalism.

EXCLUSIVE: The FBI is searching for a recent Army recruit believed to be planning a "Fort Hood-inspired jihad against U.S. soldiers," FoxNews.com has learned. The alert, whose legitimacy was confirmed by military and law enforcement officials, stated that a man identified as Booker had told friends of his "intention to commit jihad." Booker, who is also known as Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, was recruited by the U.S. Army in Kansas City, Mo., in February 2014 and was scheduled to report for basic training on April 7. But he was discharged last week, apparently after law enforcement authorities learned of his alleged...

A US Navy official warned Sunday that finding the missing Malaysian jet may be impossible, as efforts to locate the plane intensified ahead of the expected failure of its black-box homing beacons. “It all depends on how effective we are at reducing that search area,” Capt. Mark Matthews told reporters at Australia’s Stirling Naval Base near Perth. “Right now, the search area is basically the size of the Indian Ocean, which would take an untenable amount of time to search.”

The Pew Research Center just released a report this week based on 2012 data which details the use of religious police to enforce what Pew calls “religious norms” and, in one case, “social restrictions.” The data, and the graphic that accompanies the introductory article, show that 17 nations employ religious police. What the article does not mention is that 15 of those 17 nations are Islamic.

SAN FRANCISCO – A California state senator who authored gun control legislation asked for campaign donations in exchange for introducing an undercover FBI agent to an arms trafficker with links to separatist groups in the Philippines, court documents revealed Wednesday. Investigators said Sen. Leland Yee discussed helping the agent get weapons worth $500,000 to $2.5 million, including shoulder-fired missiles, and explained the entire process of acquiring them from a Philippine military captain and separatist groups to bringing them to the US, according to an affidavit by FBI agent Emmanuel Pascua....

Controversial billboards in Columbus, Ohio, reading "Jesus is Muslim" and "Mohammed is in the Bible" are drawing protests from local Christians who say Muslims are "hijacking" the name of Jesus. "Although we support the Islamic community's right to free speech, as well as their right to post messages on billboards, we do not support the hijacking of the name of Jesus Christ in their attempt to lure uninformed Christians into their religion," Coach Dave Daubenmire of Pass the Salt Ministries said in a statement Thursday. Daubenmire is hosting a prayer vigil on Saturday alongside the Rev. Rusty Thomas of Operation...

The Western institutionalization of sharia norms. A Swedish art professor has applauded Apple’s promise to diversify its emoticon options, including figures wearing religious headgear such as the hijab. “It’s great, we need people with different skin colours among the emojis, and people with different clothes, from the hijab to the kippa,” illustration professor Joanna Rubin Dranger at Stockholm’s Konstfack academy told the TT news wire on Thursday. The website DoSomething.org first let the battle cry sound, asking Apple to take a closer look at its 800 emojis. “The only two resembling people of colour are a guy who looks vaguely...

At a time when terrorism committed in the name of Islam is rampant, we are continuously being assured—especially by three major institutions that play a dominant role in forming the Western mindset, namely, mainstream media, academia, and government—that the sort of Islam embraced by “radicals,” “jihadis,” and so forth, has nothing to do with “real” Islam.“True” Islam, so the narrative goes, is intrinsically free of anything “bad.” It’s the nut-jobs who hijack it for their own agenda that are to blame.More specifically, we are told that there exists a “moderate” Islam and an “extremist” Islam—the former good and true, embraced...

The Algemeiner has acquired photos and footage from the aftermath of a horrific anti-Semitic attack that took place in Paris, France late last week. Speaking on camera a day after his assault, the victim -- a 59-year-old Jewish teacher only identified as David -- said he was attacked by three North African "Maghreb men" at 10 p.m. on March 20 after leaving a kosher restaurant in Rue Manin, Paris, and making his way to a subway station. "They started to curse me out: 'dirty Jew,' 'death to the Jews,' 'son of a b***,' etc. Then they started to beat me...