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Raising doves and pigeons is a deadly pursuit in ISIS-controlled Iraq. The popular hobby is in the sights of extremist Islamist fighters, who this week rounded up 15 boys and young men in the eastern province of Diyala for pursuing a pastime now deemed un-Islamic. Three have already been executed. The recent crackdown on bird breeders stems from ISIS' need for new fighters to battle the Iraqi and Syrian governments, as well as residents' growing desperation, according to the security official. Suspicion of bird-breeders stems from the fact they tend to feed their animals at the same time devout Muslims...

About 500 protesters gathered at an anti-Islam demonstration in Prague on January 16. The demonstrators carried signs and banners with slogans like “Europe, wake up!” “Islam is evil,” and “Moderate Islam does not exist.” The organizers of the rally were from a group that calls itself “We Do Not Want Islam In The Czech Republic.” About 20 people attended a counterdemonstration against racism and xenophobia that was held nearby.

Op-ed: The distorted mutation that is Islamic fundamentalism has to be acknowledged; many Muslims recognize there is a problem, which is not just a handful of Jihadists involved in terrorism. Any debate on Islam in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in the West is like stepping into a minefield. When it comes to the media outlets and academe, for the most part, the subject of Islam sparks a convoluted and apologetic discourse; on the social networks, on the other hand, the discourse it prompts is a racist one. The thing is there's a problem. It's hissing and bubbling. Many...

There is "heightened concern" about the risk to the UK's Jewish communities following last week's terror attacks in France, counter-terror police say. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said police were holding talks over "more patrols in key areas" after "anti-Semitic rhetoric from extremists". Authorities are also considering enhanced security measures to protect police officers, he added.

The International Criminal Court has begun considering whether to investigate alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Hague-based ICC said on Friday it had "opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine". It is an automatic step taken by the court upon a referral. The Palestinians have asked the ICC to investigate Israeli "crimes" since June 2014. Israel and the US have strongly criticised the Palestinians' move. After the Palestinians applied to join the ICC, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they had chosen "a path of confrontation" and that Israel would "not sit idly by". Israel...

Three people have died in an anti-terror raid in eastern Belgium, according to reports. Federal prosecutors were quoted as saying there had been a police operation near the centre of Verviers. The Belga news agency said there were several casualties and police activity was continuing. Explosions and gunfire were apparently heard near the station, according to Belgium's public broadcaster RTBF "An operation is under way," a source in the mayor's office told AFP without giving further details. Another official said separately it was "jihadist-related".

Opinion: White House Obama's Paris snub wasn't an oversight By Byron York | January 12, 2015 | 4:33 pm The uproar over whether President Obama or another top administration official should have attended the massive unity rally in Paris has obscured an important point about the White House's reaction to the latest terror attacks in Europe. The administration no-shows were not a failure of optics, or a diplomatic misstep, but were instead the logical result of the president's years-long effort to downgrade the threat of terrorism and move on to other things. "The analogy we use around [the White House]...

Muslim leaders from across America will gather in Texas this weekend to hold the annual Stand With the Prophet in Honor and Respect conference, a weekend forum that is being billed as a “movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message,” according to event information. The Saturday event, which seeks to combat “Islamophobes in America” who have turned the Islamic Prophet Muhammad “into an object of hate,” according to organizers, comes just a week after radicalized Islamists in France killed 17 people.

Anti-Islam protesters gathered Monday in the German city of Dresden, with some carrying banners with the names of those killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. It is the 12th march in Dresden called by the protest group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA, since October. Dresden police say the number of people attending these rallies has increased from an estimated 350 protesters on October 20 to 18,000 on January 5 and 25,000 people on Monday. The PEGIDA movement emerged last year in the eastern German city. About 2% of Dresden's inhabitants are foreigners. On...

Human rights activist, Harvard Kennedy School Fellow and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali is on Al Qaeda's hitlist for producing a film in 2004 about life for women under Shariah Law. The director of that film, called Submission, was shot in the street and his Jihadist killers pinned a note to his chest with a knife naming Hirsi Ali as "next." Regardless of the fatwa put on her head by Islamists, Hirsi Ali still boldly speaks out and recently made an appearance on The Kelly File to discuss the horrific murders of Charlie Hebdo editors last week. "It could have been...

Dozens of Muslim men in Algeria took the streets outside of a mosque to celebrate the murders of 17 innocent lives in France at the hands of fundamentalist Islamist terrorists. Shouts of “strike France and the Jews,” “Allah is the greatest,” and “Charlie is dead” clamored throughout the streets in the Belouizidad district of Algiers, according to Haaretz.

CNN host said that there may be a "backlash" against Obama for his failure to join world leaders today in Paris, condemning Islam, Muslim terror. Most likely Obama was on the golf course today.

FULL TITLE: Paris policeman’s brother: ‘Islam is a religion of love. My brother was killed by terrorists, by false Muslims’ Ahmed Merabet, the police officer gunned down in the Charlie Hebdo attack, was killed in an act of barbarity by “false Muslims” his brother said in a moving tribute on Saturday, where he also appealed for unity and tolerance. Speaking for a group of relatives gathered in Paris, Malek Merabet said the terrorists who ignored his brother’s plea for mercy as he lay wounded on the street may have shared his Algerian roots, but had nothing else in common. “My...

The misleading interpretations of Islam as a cruel religion have sparked a fear of Islam in Malaysia, says Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. “Before this, there was no controversy over the teachings of Islam. But now, a lot of things and reactions have surfaced where people do things that may not be agreeable to the Muslims. “They like to portray Islam as a cruel, unreasonable or unjust religion and that makes non-Muslims in Malaysia afraid of Islam, when the reality is, there is nothing to fear,” he added. “For example, the verse that allowed Muslims to kill non-Muslims only touched on...

Even as local Islamic scholar Imtiaz Mohammed condemned Wednesday’s attack at Charlie Hebdo he says freedom of expression cannot be exercised without religious sensitivity. Mohammed, president of the Islamic Missionaries Guild, said the rampage, which left 12 people dead, was not “Islamic behaviour.” In the same vein Mohammed said the media must exercise its use of freedom of expression with cultural sensitivity. “It is fine to criticise Islam. We do not have a problem with that, everybody is free to criticise everyone’s religion. But not with the words and images and so on to degrade and disrespect the individual or...

Yemen: Another Failure The Obama Administration Touted As a Success Katie Pavlich | Jan 09, 2015 As law enforcement officials hone in on two Islamic terrorists who carried out an attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier this week, we're learning more about where the terrorists came from, what their backgrounds are and where they received their training. There are three suspects total. Two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, are still on the run but officials know where they are and have been in contact with them throughout the morning. The youngest of the terror suspects turned himself in earlier...

Western media acts free of any legal and moral constraints to spread bigotry against Muslims, attack Islam, insults Prophet Mohammad, for no reason other than it can do so in the name of “ freedom of press” and with legal and moral sanction from the political establishments there. To attack Islam and Prophet Mohammad in the name of freedom of press is irresponsible and is a form of racism and intolerance. In the minds of millions of decent and law abiding Muslims everywhere in the world, only Islam is treated in such irresponsible and racist manner by the western media....

It would be a big mistake to see the terror attack in Paris as an attack on the freedom of the press. Such a statement puts the massacre in the French capital in line with attacks against journalists by members of a Colombian drug cartel or the Chechen mafia. That's not the case. The goal of the attack on the office of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was not to frighten newspaper editors so that they would not publish one cartoon or another. The goal was to show and prove who controls the streets and consciousness of the French Republic: The...

Where does the story begin? Quite simply with colonialism. It's no mere coincidence that at least two of the Charlie Hebdo attackers are reportedly of Algerian descent and the third from Senegal. France's 1830 invasion of Algeria began a 130-year odyssey of murder, expropriation, racism, exploitation and misrule that only ended after a vicious anti-colonial struggle costing well over one million Algerian lives. It's no more shocking that some Muslims have become psychotic enough to murder, rape and pillage their way across eastern Nigeria and eastern Paris than it is that France, home of "liberty", "equality", and "fraternity", sells billions...

Police are hunting for the girlfriend of one of the three gunmen who brought three days of terror to France, saying she may be "armed and dangerous". Hayat Boumeddiene, a suspect in the murder of a Paris policewoman on Thursday, is on the run after her partner Amedy Coulibaly was killed when armed officers brought his kosher supermarket siege to a violent end. The 26-year-old could hold the key to the ongoing terror investigation, as police admit they may be dealing with a larger extremist cell and authorities brace for more attacks. Details are emerging of the young woman of...