Free Republic

Here’s the latest on the Arab Spring... Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law.

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Libya's transitional leader declared his country's liberation on Sunday, three days after the hated dictator Moammar Gadhafi was captured and killed. He called on Libyans to show "patience, honesty and tolerance" and eschew hatred as they embark on rebuilding the country at the end of an 8-month civil war. The transitional government leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil set out a vision for the post-Gadhafi future with an Islamist tint, saying that Islamic Sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation in the country and that existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified. In...

MORE than a dozen American states are considering outlawing aspects of Shariah law. Some of these efforts would curtail Muslims from settling disputes over dietary laws and marriage through religious arbitration, while others would go even further in stigmatizing Islamic life: a bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.” Supporters of these bills contend that such measures are needed to protect the country against homegrown terrorism and safeguard its Judeo-Christian values. The Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said that...

The use of the death penalty to implement the Sharia, Islamic law, continues to increase year by year: in 2010 there were at least 714 executions, against 658 in 2009 and around 585 in the previous year, in 13 countries with a Muslim majority, many of which ordered by religious tribunals. ... The Sharia has been applied through hanging, decapitation and execution by firing squad. In Iran, Nigeria and Pakistan people have been sentenced to death by stoning, but there are no reports of actual executions by this method, though stoning is used without regular trials in Somalia, Afghanistan and...

“Muslims Against Crusades” (MAC), an Islamic group based in the United Kingdom, plans to wage a propaganda campaign to make a portion of London accept Sharia law. They are calling it the “Islamic Emirates Project,” and it is designed to create beachheads for sharia across the UK. The MAC group is specifically encouraging Muslims, who comprise 15% of Waltham Forest in northeast London, to enforce Islamic legal codes ... ... The MAC intends to convince Muslims in Waltham to self-enforce Sharia at first, and later to set up an ‘emirate’- an Islamic statelet with Sharia law replacing British legal codes...

A blog purportedly written by a gay woman in Syria, which described life in Damascas amid the current political unrest, has been revealed to be a hoax. A Girl Gay in Damascus gained a worldwide readership and was closely followed by news organisations. But the true author has now come forward - Tom MacMaster, an American man studying in Scotland. Many Syrian activists have reacted angrily, accusing him of trivialising or even harming their cause. "One day if I'm kidnapped by my government, many readers won't care because I could turn out to be another Amina," wrote one Lebanese blogger....

...“Paula Brooks,” editor of Lez Get Real since its founding in 2008, is actually Bill Graber, 58, who said he is a retired Ohio military man and construction worker that had adopted his wife’s identity online... Brooks’s identity came under suspicion after news broke that a woman called Amina Arraf on the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus” might not really be a Syrian lesbian. Over the weekend, as journalists, bloggers and fans of Amina hunted for clues to the identity behind the blog, Brooks came under review as a possible suspect. Liz Henry, a Web producer at BlogHer.com, questioned...

BOISE, Idaho – A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government's improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history." The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism...

A Saudi linguist convicted of sexually assaulting a housekeeper and keeping her a virtual slave for four years won a 20-year reduction in his prison sentence Friday, and his defence attorneys hope it means he'll be released from prison soon. District Judge J. Mark Hannen sentenced Homaidan al-Turki to between eight years and life in prison during a hearing Friday in Centennial. Hannen cited al-Turki's good behaviour in prison in cutting the sentence from its original 28 years to life. ... Al-Turki insists he is innocent and a victim of anti-Muslim sentiment. His case has angered Saudi authorities — several...

Within hours of the raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound, the CIA had used 21st technology to get "a virtually 100 percent DNA match" on the dead man. But something out of another century may come back to haunt the United States: the al-Qaida leader's burial at sea. Conspiracy theorists on the left and right were quick to insist bin Laden was either still alive or had been dead for years, pouncing on the government's decision to slide the body of the world's most wanted man off a board into the Arabian Sea. The burial at sea largely followed...

A Florida judge is defending his controversial decision to apply Islamic law instead of state or federal statutes in determining whether an arbitration award was correct, the St. Petersburg Times reports. The case in question involves former trustees of a local Tampa mosque, the Islamic Education Center of Tampa, who are suing because they claim they were unfairly removed as trustees. Hillsborough Circuit Judge Richard Nielsen said that the two parties can seek guidance from the Koran to resolve their dispute, according to MyFoxOrlando.com. Nielsen said that based on testimony, "under ecclesiastical law," and pursuant to the Koran, "Islamic brothers...

The powers that be at Al Jazeera have offered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a job. Ever since she gave them a free commercial on the floor of the Senate, they began development of a signing package for her talents at the "real-news-even-if-you-don't-agree" station. Sources familiar with the package have been able to disclose the conditions of her employment. First of all, the former First Lady will have to cover her face. She may not agree with that, but that's really one of the most important things. Secondly, she will be the travelling road reporter that reports exclusively on honor...

IN an old apartment building in the south of Cairo, along the Nile River, the Muslim Brotherhood is planning Egypt's future...Although banned, the Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt's best-organised opposition group... it was from the Muslim Brotherhood that Hamas - the militant Palestinian group that runs Gaza - developed. The Muslim Brotherhood's view on the possible introduction of Sharia law - strict Islamic law - is creating much interest in a country with a traditionally secular government. Refat Abdo Said, looking to run as a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, backs Sharia law for Muslims and non-Muslims...What about equality between men and women?...

There has been a shakeup at the Cordoba Initiative/Park 51, the group behind the projected Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. The deceitful pro-Sharia Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan are out, and an imam from Washington, D.C., Abdullah Adhami, is in. What does this mean? First, it means that we won. We are declaring victory. It seems clear that Rauf had to go because he had become a liability to the taqiyya project of the Ground Zero mosque. And that is because of the light we shed on his true beliefs and allegiances. Rauf snagged more...

A Harry Potter star was beaten, called a ''slag'' and threatened with death after she met a young man who was not a Muslim, a court heard today. Victim Afshan Azad, 22, played Padma Patil, a classmate of the teenage wizard, in the blockbuster Hollywood films based on the children's books by JK Rowling. She was assaulted and branded a ''prostitute'' after meeting a young Hindu man, a relationship which brought anger from her father, Abul Azad, 53, and brother, Ashraf, 28, Manchester Crown Court heard. The frightened actress later fled through her bedroom window after threats were made to...

A Saudi father went to hospital with his eight-year-old daughter for medical tests on the girl ahead of her marriage but the management succeeded in persuading him to cancel the plan, a local newspaper reported on Thursday. Receptionists and nurses at the hospital in the central town of Rass were shocked when the unnamed father requested marriage tests for his daughter, prompting them to inform the management, Kabar said. “Members of the management talked to the man and tried to convince him that what he was doing is a serious social violation,” the paper said. “In the end, the man...

Islamabad – Islamic extremists are systematically targeting teachers in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Their crime is to teach children of both sexes in violation of Sharia...at least 22 teachers were killed in the province between January 2008 and October 2010. Islamic radicals are by far the worst offenders when it comes to murdering teachers because, contrary to Islamic law, many schools in Baluchistan are mixed, with boys and girls in the same classroom... Muslim clerics funded by Saudi Arabia teach religious hatred and push young people to take justice in their own hands ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A New York judge has warned the founder of a Muslim-oriented television station to retain a lawyer so he won't have to defend himself during an upcoming trial on charges he beheaded his wife. Muzzammil Hassan ...has parted ways with three previous lawyers. Hassan's pursuing a battered spouse defense.

A University of Colorado student who started wearing hijab after converting to Islam is fighting the Boulder County Jail's insistence that she remove her headscarf for a booking photo, saying that to do so would violate her religious beliefs. Maria Hardman, 19, of Boulder, reported to the jail Wednesday to do the paperwork for a two-day work crew sentence that was supposed to be served this weekend. But when a jail detention officer told her to remove her headscarf for her mug shot, she balked. "It's stated in the Koran in two or three places that believing women should wear...

A brother of three men indicted last month on federal sex trafficking charges provided one of them access to restricted areas at the Nashville International Airport including in the cockpit of a plane. The information came out during a hearing regarding the federal detention of Abdifatah Sharif Omar and Mohamed Sharif Omar Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Nashville. The two, along with brother Liban Sharif Omar, are three of the 29 individuals — mostly from Minneapolis and Nashville — indicted in November on federal charges of sex trafficking involving juvenile girls.