Free Republic

The recent military success of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)–they have taken several northern cities in Iraq and are said to be advancing on Baghdad—has the White House in a tizzy. In 2011 President Obama declared Iraq had been cleared of Islamic extremists, that they’d been decimated and were on the run. White House spokesman Josh Earnest insisted that “the administration is not accepting responsibility for these events. As the president has pointed out, Iraq was broken when he took office. The responsibility for that lies with his predecessor.” Earnest contended that “steps the President has...

(CNSNews.com) – The startling gains made by jihadist fighters in Iraq are placing the region’s already extremely vulnerable Christians in even greater peril, Christian advocacy groups are warning. While hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are affected by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s takeover of key cities including the Ninawa (Nineveh) provincial capital, Mosul, minority Christians – some of whom trace their origins to the earliest years of Christianity – are among those with the most to lose.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄŸlu has said Ankara was unable to evacuate the Turkish consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul due to intense fighting although it sent an order to free the diplomatic mission now under the invasion of radical militants. Militants linked to the al Qaeda splinter group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), seized 48 Turks from the Turkish consulate in Mosul on Wednesday, including the consul-general, three children and several members of Turkey's special forces. The group was taken from the consulate building to a militant base. Turkish authorities had contacted militant...

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase "global war on terror," a signature rhetorical legacy of its predecessor. In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense Department's office of security review noted that "this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' " Coincidentally or not, senior administration officials had been publicly using the phrase "overseas contingency operations" in a war context for roughly a month before the e-mail was sent.

US President Barack Obama says his government is looking at "all options", including military action, to help Iraq fight Islamist militants. He said the US had an interest in making sure jihadists did not gain a foothold in Iraq. "There will be some short-term immediate things that need to be done militarily," Mr Obama told reporters at the White House as he met Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. "I don't rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in Iraq, or Syria for that matter."

The leader of radical Sunni fighters who have made rapid military advances in Iraq is the rising star of global jihad, driven, Islamist fighters say, by an unbending determination to fight for and establish a hardline Islamic state. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, commander of the ISIL, now controls large parts of eastern Syria and western Iraq, a vast cross-border haven for militants in the Sunni Muslim core of the Middle East. "For Sheikh Baghdadi, each religion has its state except Islam, and it should have a state and it should be imposed. It is very simple," said one of his non-Syrian...

English schoolchildren will be taught “British values” in the wake of a report that some schools had been taken over by Islamists. Michael Gove, the education minister, said that in future all of England’s 20,000 elementary and high schools will have to promote British values of tolerance and fairness. The announcement came in the wake of the “Trojan horse” scandal which found that some schools in the central city of Birmingham had been taken over by Islamists. Regulator the Office for Standards in Education said Monday it had found a “culture of fear and intimidation” at a minority of the...

In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run. But some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought...

Suspected Nigerian Islamist militants killed 17 people in a remote northeastern village on Tuesday night, hours after a bomb killed 118 people in the central city of Jos. Militants opened fire on Alagarno village and razed several houses to the ground. The attack was barely 30 km (20 miles) from Chibok, where Boko Haram Islamists abducted more than 200 schoolgirls last month.

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- The U.S. military has doubled the number of aircraft standing by in Italy if needed to evacuate Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, CNN has learned. A decision to evacuate as violence in the Libyan capital grows is "minute by minute, hour by hour," a defense official told CNN on Monday. Fierce fighting swept across the city Sunday after armed men stormed the country's interim Parliament. Sporadic bursts of gunfire and blasts could still be heard on the outskirts of the capital Monday evening. The violence appeared to be some of the worst since...

A Chinese national was killed and 10 others were feared kidnapped after an overnight attack in northern Cameroon believed to have been carried out by Boko Haram militants from Nigeria, officials said on Saturday. "Boko Haram Islamists attacked a camp (of road workers). A Chinese was killed. Ten Chinese cannot be found since the attack. We think they have probably been kidnapped," a local police chief said on condition of anonymity. The cross-border attack comes as Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan arrived in Paris Saturday to attend an international summit on Nigerian security, aimed at forging a strategy against the Islamist...

CRAZY!… Obama Does Not Mention – Islam, Muslim, Al-Qaeda, Islamists – Not Once in Today’s 9-11 Memorial Speech.. [ full title ] . gave a lengthy speech at the 9/11 Museum dedication. He did not mention – Islam, Muslim, Islamist, Al-Qaeda – not once. It might be too offensive. It’s as if it was a random act of violence. ... Today the Islamists won – again.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels detonated 60 tonnes of explosives packed underneath a large Syrian army base, blowing a hillside hundreds of meters (yards) into the air, an insurgent in the operation who provided footage of the attack said on Thursday. The casualty toll from the blast was not immediately known. An Islamic Front commander said that his brigade dug a 850-metre (2,800-foot) tunnel underneath Wadi al-Deif base, which is surrounded by rebels but has remained inside government control for the entirety of the three-year-long civil war.

YOLA, Nigeria (AP) — Islamic extremists blew up a bridge, killed an unknown number of people and abducted the wife and two children of a retired police officer in northeast Nigeria, residents said Saturday amid mounting condemnation by Muslims of the Nigerian terrorist network that abducted more than 300 schoolgirls nearly a month ago. News of Friday night's attack came as international efforts to help rescue the 276 missing girls got under way.

It is a tragedy and a shame that it had to take the mass kidnapping and sexual enslavement of 300 Nigerian girls by Muslim jihadists for the world to finally express its outrage over Sharia’s evil deeds. Similar stories of Christian girls being kidnapped, forcibly married and converted to Islam by their Muslim captors, have been a reality for decades. But unfortunately, and tragically, they have been ignored by our mainstream media. Only a few “Islamophobic” journalists have cared enough to report on such atrocities in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere — until reality exploded to such a great magnitude that...

Tony Blair delivered a major speech on April 23 entitled, “Why the Middle East Matters”. In summary, he argued that the Middle East, far from being a “vast unfathomable mess” is deep in the throes of a multi-faceted struggle between a specific religious ideology on the one hand, and those who want to embrace the modern world on the other. Furthermore, the West, blinded up until now as to the religious nature of the conflict, must take sides: it should support those who stand on the side of open-minded pluralistic societies, and combat those who wish to create intolerant theocracies....

NEW YORK -- The developer who once proposed a mosque and Muslim community center near ground zero now plans a museum devoted to Islam at the same site. According to The New York Times, Sharif El-Gamal said through a spokesman he wants to build a three-story museum "dedicated to exploring the faith of Islam and its arts and culture."

Lady Cox spoke of Islamist groups making massive investments in the educational system in UK in order to alter the institutions to serve their purposes. ... Islam is using the freedoms of democracy to destroy it,” as some of its adherents try to “inhibit criticism,” ... In England, if you criticize Islam, you are called a racist, ... Cox spoke of Islamist groups that have been implementing a strategic plan and making massive investments in the educational system in Britain in order to alter the institutions to serve their purposes. For example, she said, is a recent report that allegedly...

Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has called on Muslims to kidnap Westerners, particularly Americans, who could then be exchanged for jailed jihadists including a blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of conspiring to attack the United Nations and other New York landmarks. In a wide ranging audio interview, the al Qaeda leader expressed solidarity with the Muslim Brotherhood which is facing a violent crackdown by the army-backed government in Egypt and urged unity among rebels in their fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

There is very dangerous legislation making its way through both the House of Representatives and Senate that will finish the United States. The sharia bill calls for Islamic blasphemy laws — the criminalization of speech that offends or insults — who, exactly? Well, that is up to the enforcer, is it not? On Wednesday, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced “The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014″ (S.2219), which seeks “to examine the prevalence of hate crime and hate speech on the Internet, television, and radio to better address such crimes.” Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) introduced a companion bill in the...