Free Republic

For years, terrible and violent crimes have been committed in the name of Islam. Does that mean Islam is inherently a religion of terrible violence? The scholar Daniel Pipes has long argued that it is a mistake to attribute the evils committed by Muslim supremacists and jihadist killers to Islam itself, or to the text of the Koran and the hadith, the religion's sacred scriptures. Like every great faith, Islam is what its adherents make of it. Today, many of those adherents are influenced by Islamism, the militant totalitarian version of Islam that emerged in the 20th century. The Islamist...

A recently released video of an interview with a Syrian rebel — and would-be-martyr – gives extraordinary insight into the mentality of the Syrian opposition. Believing that he’s speaking to European jihadist volunteers, the rebel says that Christians must be killed to impose a Sharia state in Syria, after which they will be given the classic choice: pay the jizya, convert or die. He also says that the rebels intend to move on from Syria to attack Europe and America.Similarly, another rebel clearly explains that Islam must be the sole source of authority of the future Syrian state.  In the meantime,...

The failure to confront the Islamist ideology on the federal level does not mean that nothing can be done. States laws are now taking on this task. The failure to recognize, let alone confront, the Islamist ideology on the federal level does not mean that nothing can be done. An increasing number of states are passing or considering legislation designed to take on this task. Below are five initiatives you can promote in your state:

The White House confirmed to Fox News what the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported two days ago — that the administration met with the deputy of a radical cleric who is barred from entering the United States, and whose organization supports Hamas.  Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah served as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a group headed by Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, who has urged Muslim nations to acquire nuclear weapons, demanded the death of American soldiers in Iraq, and defended Hitler. So what did the White House want to discuss with bin Bayyah? Moderation: A senior...

Three snapshots of western liberty: 1) A few weeks ago, I wrote about a Canadian police department’s diversity enforcer attempt to shut down a Pamela Geller speech by getting her bounced from a Toronto synagogue. In Britain, the shut-up-he-explained crowd cut to the chase: They went to the (supposedly Conservative) Home Secretary, the ghastly Theresa May, and got Miss Geller and Robert Spencer banned from the entire country on the grounds that their presence in the United Kingdom would not be “conducive to the public good“. By contrast, the presence of, say, Anjem Choudary, philosophical mentor of the Woolwich head...

The rise of Islamism can continue only if the economy weathers the demonstrations.Rebellion has shaken Turkey since May 31. Is it comparable to the Arab upheavals that have overthrown four rulers since 2011; to Iran’s Green Movement of 2009, which led to an apparent reformer’s being elected president last week; or perhaps to Occupy Wall Street, which had negligible consequences? The unrest marks a deeply important development with permanent implications. Turkey has become a more open and liberal country, and its leaders face democratic constraints as never before. But how much this unrest will be able to change the role...

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized. Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of...

Islamists said to execute 15-year-old Syrian boy for heresy AMMAN (Reuters) - Members of an al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo executed a 15-year-old boy in front of his parents on Sunday as punishment for what the group regarded as a heretical comment, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Mohammad Qataa was shot in the face and neck a day after being seized, said the pro-opposition monitoring group, which is based in Britain and uses a network of observers across Syria. "The Observatory cannot ignore these crimes, which only serve the enemies of the...

The attempted snow job by the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) of Tennessee which sponsored the joint Department of Justice/FBI event, "Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society," Tuesday night in Manchester, Tennessee, did not work with the 2,000 attendees. Claims that American Muslims are loyal citizens, partners in counterterrorism investigations, part of radicalization prevention efforts, and an integral part of American society for centuries fell flat, especially coming from the host organization that was formed only two years ago in response to anti-shariah legislation in the Volunteer State. A well-informed crowd responded with calls of "taqiyyah" when members of AMAC,...

Changes to the AP stylebook show that we’re blinding ourselves to the connections between Islamic extremism and terrorism. It was a report of the now numbingly familiar sort. Witnesses at the synagogue in Paris recounted that an Iranian immigrant had been screaming “Allahu Akbar!” while he chased the rabbi and his son. When he finally caught up, he slashed away at them with a box-cutter, causing severe lacerations. Nevertheless, the Associated Press assured readers that “[a]n official investigation was underway to determine a possible motive.” Quite a mystery, that.

The Russian TV channel RT is, as usual, doing something right and something wrong, often in the same breath. Two days ago I saw its broadcast on the anti-Islam backlash in the UK following the brutal beheading of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, East London. In it they mentioned graffiti on mosques, attacks on Muslims and protest marches by the English Defence League (EDL), whose images were shown. Even in me, despite my distrust for the mainstrean, socio-communist media, they created a subliminal, temporary association between the first two, which are criminal acts, and the third, which is lawful exercise...

Turkish protestors have clashed with police in Istanbul overnight, in some of the worst violence since unrest erupted three days ago. Protesters in Beskitas district tore up paving stones to build barricades, and police responded with tear gas and water cannon. The violence was sparked by plans to build on a city park but have broadened into nationwide anti-government unrest. Protesters say the Turkish government is becoming increasingly authoritarian. They fear Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) is trying to impose conservative Islamic values on the officially secular country and infringe on their personal freedoms. correspondents...

Considering the sheer number of things that Islam bans (pork, alcohol, movies, music, chess, kites, etc…) a Muslim driver who refuses to drive a truck containing them is mostly useless. When Muslim taxi drivers refused to drive passengers with seeing eye dogs or who carried bottles of alcohol, there was an uproar. But now Obama Inc. is using to claim that Muslim discrimination is a civil right that employers must accommodate. Star Transport, Inc., a trucking company based in Morton, Ill., violated federal law by failing to accommodate two employees because of their religion, Islam, and discharging them, the U.S....

Bloggers beware. And those who use email, too. And those on Facebook. And Twitter. And anyone else using social media: Diss a Muslim and the Department of Justice will be on your case with the full weight of federal law. The Obama administration, which is launching a series of Muslim Outreach Summits so that Islamists can tell federal officials how they better can serve that community, says it also is holding educational outreaches to let people know that Internet postings that violate civil rights are subject to federal prosecution. Ads by Google Will You Boldly Proclaim"I am a Christian"? Sign...

A man identified on Twitter as Abul Ala and claiming to be a Salafist-Wahhabist cleric, has decreed women should not turn on air conditioners or coolers at home, in the absence of their husbands... "turning on the cooler ventilator is prohibited for women in the absence of their husbands" because "the woman's act is very dangerous, and may bring about immorality in the society. When she turns the cooler on, someone may notice her presence home, and this might bring about immorality". ... In April, a Salafist cleric called Sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni posted a YouTube video claiming the rape of...

While much documentation is known of the American slave trade, the Muslim enslavement of Africans (and Europeans) encompassing the last 1400 years has been hushed up. This remarkable documentary films shows the story historians have neglected.

Fundamentally Freund: President Barack Obama and much of the Western press seem to have difficulty saying in close proximity to one another: ‘Islamic’ and ‘terror.’ The past few weeks have been difficult ones for the United States and its allies, as they received some painful reminders that the war on terror is far from over. In a dastardly attack on April 15, two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, killing three people, wounding 264 others and leaving more than two dozen amputees. A week later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that they had arrested two people in a...

David Cameron is planning new powers to muzzle Islamic hate preachers accused of provoking terrorist outrages such as the killing of soldier Lee Rigby. The Prime Minister wants to stop extremist clerics using schools, colleges, prisons and mosques to spread their ‘poison’ and is to head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force (TERFOR) made up of senior Ministers, MI5, police and moderate religious leaders. The high-powered group will study a number of measures, including banning extremist clerics from being given public platforms to incite students, prisoners and other followers – and forcing mosque leaders to answer for ‘hate...

It’s time ... for the British to look for the people and institutions [the the preachers of hate and the mosques they hide in] preaching hatred among the younger generations under the cover of freedom of speech. A freedom exercised without legal responsibility will result in what happened in Woolwich the other day.

LAHORE, Pakistan (Morning Star News) – A Muslim political candidate suspected of murdering a Christian has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11 election loss. Tensions were high in Punjab Province’s Okara district after provincial assembly seat candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar, sought by police in connection with a 2008 murder, on May 13 arranged for mosque calls for violence against Christian villages.