Free Republic

What’s the deal with converts to Islam? Last April, a teenager in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, named Alexander Scott Mercurio was caught plotting jihad massacres in local churches, “using weapons, including knives, firearms, and fire.” On New Year’s Eve in 2022, a 19-year-old named Trevor Bickford traveled from his home in Wells, Maine, to Times Square, where he attacked three NYPD officers with a machete. In April 2021, a Zion, Illinois, man named Edward Schimenti got thirteen and a half years in prison for aiding the Islamic State (ISIS). These are just three men who are on a long and ever-lengthening...

SOLINGEN, Germany, Aug 24 (Reuters) - The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Saturday for a knife attack in the German city of Solingen that killed three people and wounded eight others. Some 24 hours after the attack, police said they made a second arrest on Saturday evening as part of a police operation at a home for refugees in Solingen. Police said they could not provide more details on the individual or its connection to the incident. Police earlier on Saturday detained a teenager who they said may be connected with the attack but said the perpetrator was still...

Lawyer for Mostafa Eldidi, 26, says he’ll defend his client’s innocenceA 26-year-old Toronto man accused of plotting a deadly ISIS-inspired rampage previously lived in Egypt and once studied at a U.S. university, CBC News has learned. Mostafa Eldidi and his father, Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, were arrested last month and charged with terrorism offences over what police described as a plan to carry out "a serious, violent attack in Toronto." On Thursday, Mostafa Eldidi's lawyer, Nate Jackson, appeared in court on his behalf for the first time. He told the court he would be meeting with his new client in...

London (PTI) -- Anjem Choudary, a radical Islamist preacher with dual British and Pakistani nationality, was on Tuesday jailed for life with a minimum term of 28 years behind bars by a UK court for directing a terrorist organisation.Choudary, 57, had been found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of directing Al-Muhajiroun (ALM) and encouraging support for the proscribed organisation through online meetings. Sentencing him at the same court to a prison term means he would be in his 80s by the time he can seek parole. Justice Mark Wall told Choudary his behaviour was of the “highest culpability”. “Organisations such...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight people from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State group have been arrested in the United States in recent days, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles and the individuals, who entered the U.S. through the southern border, are being held on immigration violations, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The nature of their suspected connections to the IS was not immediately clear, but the...

The Iraqi suspects are accused of a litany of crimes including genocide and rape.. Two suspected members of the Islamic State (IS) group have been arrested in Germany accused of enslaving and sexually abusing a pair of Yazidi girls in Syria and Iraq, prosecutors said today. The Iraqi suspects, identified only as Twana H. S. and Asia R. A., are accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership of a foreign terrorist organization... Twana H. S. repeatedly raped both children, with the help of Asia R. A., who prepared a room and put make-up on one of the...

CNN, 'The Whole Story,' 7 April 2024. "Hostages: The road home." Bianna Golodryga: Yarden Roman-Gat understands Arabic, but spoke with her captors in English... Yarden: They only want one thing. Jihad Their aim is to get the world to be Islamic. They spoke about it that all the time. They want an Islamic State Bianna: Israel should not exist? No two states? Yarden: No. No. They want "a world of Islamic state."

The Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization claimed responsibility for Friday's attack at a concert hall in Moscow in which at least 40 people were killed and 100 injured.

Terrorist attack in Russia, Several gunmen fired shots at a concert hall in Moscow on Friday

Last week’s bombing near the grave of the Quds Force general that killed 84 is the latest episode in ISIS’s war on Shiite Muslims.. In the immediate aftermath of the January 3 blast that killed at least 84 people near the grave of general Qassem Soleimani in the Iranian city of Kerman, some low-level Iranian officials hinted at a possible Israeli involvement. Iran’s deputy parliament speaker claimed it had the signs of an Israeli assault — even though it showed radically different features from Israel’s alleged operations in enemy territory, which usually involve precision killings of key enemy figures. The...

“I studied the Koran a great deal … I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.” — Alexis de TocquevilleDespite the terrible massacre of October 7, many politicians in the West continue to talk about Islam as a “religion of peace.” Respected professors, journalists, columnists, philosophers from Paris to San Francisco share this view. They really want to believe in it; otherwise, the claim that true evil comes from the West only, and the Islamic movement is no more...

An explosion at a university gymnasium in the southern Philippines has killed three people and wounded nine others, according to local authorities. The blast ripped through a Catholic mass service on Sunday at Mindanao State University in Marawi City... Police said they were investigating the explosion, including the possibility that it was carried out by pro-Islamic State militants...

Islam experts Michael Stürzenberger and Irfan Peci regularly hold events to raise consciousness of the threat of political Islam in Germany, where they expertly engage with and debate angry young Muslims who bristle at any criticism of their religion. On October 21, they held an event in Berlin, during which Irfan Peci spoke to a young Muslim who stated unequivocally that “Every Muslim must want Shariah Law enacted worldwide.” “I want Sharia Law in Germany, definitely,” the young man sporting a Salafist beard said. Asked by ex-Muslim activist Kian Kermanshahi whether he would support replacing the German constitution with Shariah...

The Euro 2024 qualifier between Belgium and Sweden was suspended at half-time after two Swedes were shot dead in Brussels earlier on Monday. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level as a man in a video on social media claimed that he was the assailant and that he was from the Islamic State. "The match has been suspended at halftime due to security reasons. Further information will follow shortly," European soccer governing body UEFA said on its website. The Swedish players told UEFA they did not want to play the second half and the Belgians agreed, Swedish broadcaster...

SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe. Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis who moved in and out of the battlefield in Syria. When Abu Hamza disagreed with fellow commanders at an Islamic State meeting last year, he said, he was placed under arrest on the orders of a masked Iraqi man who had sat silently through...

Provided Tactical Guidance in Attempt to Help ISIS to Attack U.S. Forces in the Middle EastThe Justice Department, along with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and U.S. Army Counterintelligence, announced today the arrest of a private first class in the U.S. Army, on federal terrorism charges based on Bridges’ alleged efforts to assist ISIS to attack and kill U.S. soldiers in the Middle East.Cole James Bridges, aka Cole Gonzales, 20, of Stowe, Ohio, was charged by complaint with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and attempting to murder U.S. military service members. The...

A Northeast Ohio native pleaded guilty to terrorism charges after investigators say he tried to help terrorists ambush and kill U.S. troops overseas. Cole Bridges, 22, of Stow, pleaded guilty to trying to offer material support to the Islamic State group and trying to murder U.S. soldiers. Bridges faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the two charges he admitted to. He will be sentenced on Nov. 2. According to court records, Bridges, also known as Cole Gonzales, joined the U.S. Army around September 2019. In the same year, court documents say he started researching online propaganda...

At least 400 women are in the second week of a hunger strike in a high-security prison in Iraq's capital Baghdad, the BBC has learned.They are in prison for being part of the Islamic State group, after what they say were unfair trials. The group is said to include foreign nationals from Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Syria, France, Germany and the US. It is thought about 100 children are also being held at the facility. The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, waged a brutal campaign to establish a self-declared caliphate - an Islamic nation - across Syria and...

With everyone distracted by China, skyrocketing crime and inflation, a nonexistent Southern border, and rapidly increasing authoritarianism in Washington, the Islamic State (ISIS) has taken the opportunity to strike again in North America. ... An attack on a transit bus in Surrey, B.C. over the weekend is being treated as terrorism after RCMP national security police took over the investigation.” It seems that the perpetrator, a manifestation of Canada’s deep commitment to diversity and multiculturalism named Abdul Aziz Kawam, was “initially charged with attempted murder for allegedly slashing a bus passenger’s throat on Saturday morning, but prosecutors added four counts...

More evidence on how social media works to promote Islamic radicalization — while suppressing its victims ... Facebook created over 100 pages for ISIS (Islamic State), as well as pages for other terror organizations, including the group behind the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., Al-Qaeda. ... Facebook has failed to catch Islamic State group and al-Shabab extremist content in posts aimed at East Africa as the region remains under threat from violent attacks. ... [Facebook] repeatedly failed to act on sensitive content including hate speech in many places around the world. Posts calling for violence and murder "in languages including...