Free Republic

UN hides naked male sculpture to please Iranians A relief carving of a naked man at the UN's Geneva headquarters was covered up on Monday, apparently to spare the blushes of Iranian diplomats ahead of fresh talks on the country's nuclear drive. UN officials would not comment on why the wall relief, inspired by Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam", had been masked by a large white screen, referring questions to the Swiss authorities. But Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve claimed that the aim was to avoid offending the Islamic republic's delegation for the talks taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday. Iranian...

Nick Clegg today hit out at the Guardian for publishing secret files, which served “no purpose” other than to aid terrorists who want to harm Britain. The Lib Dem leader joined the barrage of criticism that the newspaper released UK’s intelligence secrets of no interest to readers, but highly valued by fanatics and foreign spies. … The publication of secret files leaked by US fugitive Edward Snowden are said to have caused huge “harm” to the capability of Britain’s intelligence services. Security officials fear the data will be used by terrorists to avoid detection when plotting an atrocity. …

Saudi jails, lashes “naked” dancers, reports say A Saudi court has sentenced four men to up to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for dancing "naked" in public, media reported on Thursday. In a video posted on YouTube, several men appear dancing atop a vehicle in the ultra-conservative province of Qassim. None seemed naked. The court in Buraydah, Qassim's provincial capital, sentenced one defendant to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes, and another to seven years in prison and 1,200 lashes, Al-Sharq newspaper reported in what media have dubbed the "naked dancing" case. Their two companions were jailed...

This horrific video shows a police officer flogging a cowering woman in the street as a crowd watches without protesting or intervening. The crime that prompted this horrendous assault? She had ridden in a car with a man who she wasn't related to, an offense that is prohibited by Sudan’s public order law. The video is believed to have been taken in Khartoum, the capital, and shows the terrified and bewildered woman crying out in pain as lash after vicious lash rains down. …

Have you noticed that radical Muslims attack Christians in countries where Christians are in the minority.....and they attack Christians in countries where they are in the majority. Christians living in majority Christian countries, have abandoned Christian minorities in majority Muslim nations, to be slaughtered like dogs. But, guess what? Christians in majority Christian countries are not doing a good job protecting themselves from violent Muslim minorities, either. We are not just talking about massive terror attacks in Madrid, London, New York, etc. But Christians living in majority Christian countries no longer have the right to publicly criticize Islam. Danish cartoonists...

As forensic experts continue to examine the site of al-Shabaab’s Kenyan mall attack, some experts on radical Islam are warning that as long as Western leaders deny the true Islamic agenda driving the group, they will be unable to protect their citizens from its deadly terror campaign. Identifying religious ideology as key factor in the terrorism is not the same as suggesting that the terrorists represent all Muslims or that all Muslims should be held responsible, they argue – but denying it is specious and self-defeating.At least 67 people were killed during the four-day hostage crisis which began when more...

Christians are being deliberately attacked because of their faith across parts of the Muslim world and even martyred for their faith in large numbers, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. The Most Reverend Justin Welby said that there had been more than 80 Christian “martyrs” in the last few days alone. He was speaking about the bombing of All Saints Anglican church in Peshawar, Pakistan, in which 85 were killed and more than 200 injured. But he said that Christians were also being singled out for violence in a string of other countries. …

Some barricaded themselves in storerooms, while others hid in boxes or even played dead. All were fleeing the bloody massacre unfolding around them as they saw terrified fellow shoppers mercilessly executed after being singled out as non-Muslim. Men, women and children were lined up and then gunned down with AK-47s after failing to name the Prophet Mohammed’s mother or recite passages from the Koran – sure-fire proof they were ‘kafirs’, or non-believers. Others fled and sought refuge in shops, bank vaults and store rooms as grenades exploded and bullets fired around them. The fortunate ones managed to emerge blood-splattered and

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has recently compared conservative efforts to defund Obamacare to kamikaze pilots and Gen. George Custer. Thursday, he called the effort "fraud." "There's a wing within our party led by people like (Sen.) Ted Cruz, who have been really, as far as I'm concerned, carrying out a fraud with the people" by saying the strategy will work, King said Thursday on CNN's "The Situation Room." Cruz, R-Texas, has been leading the defund effort along with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. More moderate members of the GOP say the effort will only hurt the...

North Carolina has become the seventh state to prohibit state judges from considering Islamic law in family cases, joining what critics say is a national anti-Muslim campaign. ... North Carolina now joins Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee, according to Religion News Service, in banning Islamic Sharia law. A constitutional amendment seeking the same change in Alabama will be on the 2014 ballot. In Missouri, the governor vetoed an anti-Sharia bill because of its potential impact on international adoptions. But the law in Oklahoma was struck down in court as unconstitutional,

A group of professionals and former army officers launched Monday a petition urging Egypt’s military chief, who ousted the country’s first freely elected leader, to run for president, highlighting the yearning for a strongman to take charge after nearly three years of turmoil. The campaign for Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is propped up by a pervasive personality cult, based on his success in uprooting an Islamist ruling elite. Still, there has been a faint pushback from new political groups calling for a civilian leader for the nascent democracy—despite little public tolerance for criticism of the military and a deepening sense of...

in Egypt, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson was urging Christian Copts not to protest Muslim Brotherhood rule, even though they would suffer under it most. Al Azhar, the world's oldest Islamic university, called on the new Catholic Pope, Francis I, to declare that Islam is a religion of peace. The degradation of Christian women living in the Islamic world continued in the month of June. In Syria, after the al-Qaeda linked rebel group conquered Qusair, a city of the governate of Homs, 15-year-old Mariam was kidnapped, repeatedly gang raped according to a fatwa legitimizing the rape of non-Sunni women by any...

Now Fatwa against photography! India's leading Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband has issued a fatwa branding photography ‘unlawful and a sin’. Mufti Abdul Qasim Nomani, Mohtamim (Vice-Chancellor) of the institution, has said Islam does not permit videotaping of marriages or taking of pictures to save as mementos. "Photography is un-Islamic. Muslims are not allowed to get their photos clicked unless it is for an identity card or for making a passport," he was quoted as telling the Press Trust of India over phone. Saudi Arabia allows photographers inside Makkah and live telecast of namaz and Hajj on TV across the...

South Sudan Breaks Oil Embargo Imposed By Moslem NorthBy Joe OdabyJuba — September 5, 2013 (SSN)... The visit by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir to Sudan’s capitol Khartoum on September 3-4, 2013, might prove a turning point in both bilateral and regional terms. In the climax of the Summit, Presidents Kiir and Omar al-Bashir signed oil export agreement guaranteeing the South Sudanese oil exports will continue “without any impediments” across “flexible but secure borders” between the two countries. The agreement removes the immediate threat of economic strangulation and uncertainty by repeated Sudanese threats to close down the oil exports of...

The former rebels, who seized power in March, were trying to "disarm" residents who lived near the airport, the UN's Amy Martin told the BBC. Peacekeeping troops were now trying to move them from the airport so it can resume normal operations, she said. The UN Security Council recently said the CAR threatened regional stability. Aid agencies have recently warned that undisciplined fighters from the Seleka group which ousted President Francois Bozize had looted the healthcare system, leaving it in ruins. About a third of the country's 4.6 million people need assistance with food, shelter, health care or water, according...

The movement of 37 sunken vessels... unearthed during excavations carried out as part of the Istanbul Marmaray and metro projects, has finally been concluded. The head of Istanbul University’s Department of Marine Archaeology and the Yenikapı Sunken Ships Project, Associate Professor Ufuk Kocabaş, said works had continued for eight years. He added that the structures and tens of thousands of archaeological artifacts found in Theodosis Port, one of the most important ports in the city in the Middle Ages, represented the largest Middle Ages boat collection in the world. Kocabaş said scientific works were still ongoing on the sunken ships...

Sweden has imported huge numbers of Muslim immigrants with catastrophic effect. Sweden’s population grew from 9 million to 9.5 million in the years 2004-2012, mainly due to immigration from “countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia”. 16 percent of all newborns have mothers born in non-Western countries. Employment rate among immigrants: 54 percent. Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States. Statistics now suggest that 1 out of every 4 Swedish women will be raped.In 2003, Sweden’s rape statistics were...

Amanda Lindhout traveled to Somalia hoping to find a story that would launch her career as a television reporter. Four days after arriving in the country with a photographer friend, both were taken hostage by Islamist insurgents. While in captivity, she was “starved, beaten and sexually brutalized” according to her memoir of the 2008 saga set to be released next month... Lindhout spent fifteen months “of harrowing captivity” after being pulled from the car in which she was traveling by a group of masked men. During her 460-day ordeal, the aspiring reporter converted to Islam in order not to be...

“Sire, clear the square with gunfire or abdicate.” That was the message one of his generals gave the young czar Nicholas I in December of 1825, as thousands of civilians and soldiers massed in Senate Square to challenge his claim to the throne. Nicholas gave the order, the cannons fired, and he and his heirs ruled Russia for another century, until Nicholas II was overthrown, and murdered by Bolsheviks. Such was the moment Egypt’s army faced on Wednesday, with thousands of backers of the Muslim Brotherhood encamped in Cairo, challenging its rule. The slaughter that ensued, 500 dead the first...

The rise of the “mostly secular” Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has had a decidedly non-secular effect: Persecution of Egypt’s Coptic Christians is on the rise. In the latest bout of civil unrest, the Brotherhood torched three churches. Copts are a minority in Egypt. They don’t control the military government any more than they controlled Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government. But notice how AFP characterizes the burnings.Supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi torched three churches in central Egypt on Wednesday in reprisal attacks as police dispersed demonstrations in Cairo, reports said.“Reprisal attacks”? They’re attacking Christians, who are largely powerless in Egypt,...