Free Republic

While Obama’s connection to his Muslim family in Kenya is an acceptable topic for discussion in the Arab world, it is viewed as a ‘great taboo’ in the United States. Why is that so? This ‘taboo’ should be considered unfair at best, purely prejudiced at worst. Is it fair that we censor such discussions just because Obama’s relatives are ‘Muslim’? The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) should condemn the media for keeping a tight lid on the subject. Isn’t it time to go beyond what is disclosed by President Obama in his Dreams from My Father or Wikipedia’s limited...

CAIRO — The elections that followed the Arab uprisings elevated Islamists out of decades of repression and into the region’s most powerful posts. Here in Egypt, a former prisoner became president. But to Salafists, adherents of a puritanical form of Islam who have embraced the country’s new freedoms with gusto, the emerging Islamist order has a serious flaw: It isn’t nearly Islamist enough. “They say that the people do not want sharia,” said Gamel Saber, a back-slapping Salafist activist who said he dreams of a day when his country’s courts will fully implement Islamic law. “But that is not true....

The American Left used to champion free expression. We were lectured -- correctly -- that the price of being repulsed by occasional crude talk and art was worth paying. Only that way could Americans ensure our daily right to criticize those with greater power and influence whom we found wrong and objectionable. When 1950s comedian Lenny Bruce titillated his audiences with the F-word and crude sex talk, liberals came to his defense. They reminded us that vulgar speech is not a crime: The First Amendment was not just designed to protect uplifting expression, but also rarer blasphemous and indecent speech....

With the Innocence of Muslims director under arrest for rather thin parole violation charges, many on the right have wondered where the Left has been on free speech. Should the ACLU, who regularly champion flag burners, step in to protest the backlash against clearly protected speech? Where are the Hollywood elites whose livelihoods depend on churning out offensive films? Nowhere, of course, and one cannot fully blame them; people who go against jihadists often find themselves with severed heads. There is another reason – to the Left, free speech has always been a canard to promote progressive change. The ACLU...

A recent Egyptian TV program showed how Islamic Sharia law’s many prescriptions do not merely clash with modern-day concepts like free speech and religious freedom, but even with medicine and science. On September 16, popular TV persona Wael El-Ibrashi hosted Dr. Zaghlul al-Naggar, a prominent Islamic thinker and Chairman of Egypt’s Committee of Scientific Notions in the Quran, on the topic of medical science and Islam. Inevitably the idea of drinking camel urine as a form of therapy—first proposed in the 7th century by Muslim prophet Muhammad—came up. Not only did Dr. Naggar promote this practice, but he made the...

BAMAKO - Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants have joined forces in northern Mali and say they will create an independent Islamist state. The groups took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize control of the territory in early April. Resistance is growing in the north to the efforts to introduce Islamic law. In the northern Malian town of Gao, court is in session. Commissioner Abdoulaye Maiga begins by reading from the Quran in the roadside courtyard outside the former police station. Once an area businessman, Maiga is a member of the militant Islamist sect Ansar Dine that residents...

"Lawsuit follows Michigan Muslim mob attack on believers"Hundreds of angry Muslims threw chunks of concrete and eggs at a team of Christians, spraying them with urine and cursing at them – all while police stood by and then threatened the victims with “disorderly conduct.” Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Somalia? No. Dearborn, Michigan. So now a team of attorneys from the American Freedom Law Center is going to court on behalf of the victims of the violent Muslim mob at the Arab International Festival last June, an attack that was captured on video. The federal civil rights complaint in the U.S. District...

....Coming so soon on the heels of Obama’s condemnations of the Mohammed spoof trailer, Representative Michael Grimm (R., N.Y.) is calling on President Obama to condemn the Piss Christ exhibit. ...[I]f you really want him to condemn the Piss Christ, this is what you have to do: Find an enterprising young artist willing to create a “Piss Mohammed” version of Serrano’s work, and ask the museum to hang it right next to the Piss Christ. It could be part of a “Piss Religion” exhibit. If the gallery declines (as it surely would), then perhaps one could gather together a small...

An Army brigadier general has been charged with forcible sodomy, inappropriate relationships, and possessing alcohol and pornography while serving as a senior commander in Afghanistan earlier this year. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, a deputy commanding general of the 82 nd Airborne Division, faces a possible court martial over the charges handed down Wednesday. In May, Sinclair was sent home to the United States in the middle of his combat tour in Afghanistan, where he was serving in the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar as the deputy commander of logistics and support for the 82nd Airborne. *snip* A news release by...

During the Republican primaries, Muslims were accused of harboring plans for “stealth Shariah.” A group of five Republican House members, led by Michele Bachmann, groundlessly accused two prominent Muslim federal officials of loyalty to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Another Republican representative, Joe Walsh of Illinois, used a campaign rally to suggest that Muslims in the Chicago suburbs were plotting to commit terrorist attacks. In New York City, the police spied on thousands of Muslims for six years without producing any evidence that could lead to an investigation.... ....From the 19th century on, distrust, violence and, eventually, immigration restrictions were aimed at...

The detention of Nakoula Bessaly Nakoula, the California filmmaker who produced an anti-Muhammad video that enraged anti-American mobs in the Middle East, aroused a national debate on the First Amendment. On Monday’s broadcast of “The Five” on the Fox News Channel, co-panelist Eric Bolling said that act represented something else: President Barack Obama’s administration holding the Quran in higher esteem than the U.S. Constitution. “I don’t want to cut you off — can we throw the picture up of the filmmaker again, where he is all in disguise and the cops are leading him out?” Bolling said. “To me, America...

In December the Obama Administration pushed a UN resolution that banned criticism of Islam. The Obama Administration helped the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) push through their resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on religion. Team Obama led the way for the resolution to pass through the General Assembly. Now the Iranian Regime is threatening to sue Barack Obama using that same blasphemy law. Press TV reported: A senior Iranian official says US President Barack Obama could face legal action in connection with the production of an anti-Islam movie by an American Jew. “A complaint...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

"We should strive to have it legalized" Is polygamy becoming the new “gay” movement in America? [Cast of "Sister Wives"] With television shows such as HBO’s “Big Love” and TLC’s “Sister Wives,” polygamy is the once-taboo lifestyle that appears to be gaining wider acceptance – especially on the heels of homosexual marriage victories across the nation. ... the website Pro-Polygamy.com declared Aug. 19 the 12th annual Polygamy Day. According to the site, since it began, “the annual celebration grew into a widespread and religiously-neutral individual celebration around the country among all forms of consenting-adult pro-polygamists.” Historically, polygamy has had little...

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) blasted Republicans for including a plank in their convention platform targeting Shariah law in an interview with Mother Jones Wednesday, blasting the language as "an expression of bigotry." "There has never been any legislation offered to establish Shariah law — not at the federal level, not at the state level. There's not been a municipal ordinance opposing this, there's not been anything," said Ellison, the nation's first Muslim member of Congress. The Republican platform included language demanding "no use of foreign law by U.S. courts in interpreting our Constitution and laws." "Nor should foreign sources of...

Muslim immigrants with more than one wife will see an increase in their social welfare benefits beginning in 2013, when reforms to the British welfare system come into effect. Although polygamy is illegal in Britain, the state effectively recognizes the practice for Muslim men, who often have up to four wives (and in some instances five or more) in a harem. Currently the state pays extra wives in polygamous households reduced amounts of individual income support, in addition to the normal amount received by the husband and his first spouse. Under the new rules, however, the extra wives will be...

Yes, there is a Huma Abedin angle to this story but a certain Muslim Congressman seems to be in the middle of digging himself a bit of a hole. On July 12th, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Muslim-MN) sent a two-page letter to the five congressmen who sent five separate letters to five separate Inspectors General on June 13th. The June 13th letters raised serious concerns about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration inside the U.S. Government. Among the concerns raised with the OIG at the State Department are the familial connections of Hillary Clinton’s closest aide – Huma Abedin – to the Muslim Brotherhood....

In 2011, death row inmate Abdul Awkal sued an Ohio prison because he was receiving non-halal food while in prison. As a consequence, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction banned all pork products in prison. This year, prisoner James Rivers filed a lawsuit arguing that pork should not be outright banned. He reasoned that, should Muslims not want to eat pork, they had the right to, but that it was discriminatory to ban pork for everyone. Additionally, the prison did offer meals without pork products in them before the ban. To reinforce Rivers's lawsuit, prison authorities argued that the...

Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death. The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament. It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.

At least 90 Iraqi teenagers with "emo" appearances have been stoned to death by religious extremists in Baghdad in the past month after an inflammatory interior ministry statement dubbed it "devil worshiping", activists said. Iraq's Moral Police released a chilling statement on the interior ministry's website condemning the "emo phenomenon" among Iraqi youth, disturbingly declaring its intent to "eliminate" the trend. "The 'Emo phenomenon' or devil worshiping is being followed by the Moral Police who have the approval to eliminate [the phenomenon] as soon as possible since it's detrimentally affecting the society and becoming a danger," the statement read. "They...