Free Republic

President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and most Washington Democrats are desperate to avoid using the term "radical Islam" to describe, well, radical Islamists. Forget reason or logic; toss away reality. What Obama and the Democrats are doing by denying the existence of radical Islam is throwing a bone to Muslims who, themselves, are hostages to a fantasy. The Democratic National Committee has now enabled that fantasy by releasing what Mediaite's Alex Griswold calls a "stupid" ad that criticizes Republicans for connecting Islam with terrorism. Duh: To begin with, the ad is horribly tone-deaf. I don’t doubt that the decision-makers in the...

President Obama wants more Syrian Muslim refugees in the West. Speaking in Turkey on Monday, Obama explained that the West needed to open its heart to Muslim refugees, who after all were fleeing from terrorism in the Middle East to the safe and warm arms of the West. Meanwhile, Obama continued to maintain that Islamic radicalism presents no threat to the world.

Champions of religious pluralism around the world used #MuslimsAreNotTerrorist to refute the idea that Friday's attacks in Paris reflect the views of most Muslims or mainstream interpretations of the Islamic faith. The hashtag was trending on Twitter on Saturday, with more than 267,000 mentions. Many of the tweets are from Muslims, while others are from people in other communities opposed to generalizations about Islam and its practitioners. A similar message from a New York resident that was inspired by his conversation with a Muslim cab driver has gone viral on Twitter. On Saturday, the Islamic State group took credit for...

In a performance of ingratitude so staggering it should almost be satire, a group of newly arrived migrants in the Netherlands have declared their accommodation so poor they want to go back to Syria. Clearly used to appearing in front of a television camera, a glamorous, well-coiffured and made up Syrian migrant launches into a tirade against the generosity of Western European states. Gesturing to the modern accommodation building behind her, the clearly middle-class Syrian complains in perfect English: “This is not a life when you get inside to a room without a TV. Just a bed, there is no...

Any time there is an attack on civilians in the post-9/11 West, demagogues immediately blame it on Muslims. They frequently lack evidence, but depend on the blunt force of anti-Muslim bigotry to bolster their accusations. Actual evidence, on the other hand, shows that less than two percent of terrorist attacks from 2009 to 2013 in the E.U. were religiously motivated. In 2013, just one percent of the 152 terrorist attacks were religious in nature; in 2012, less than three percent of the 219 terrorist attacks were inspired by religion. The vast majority of terrorist attacks in these years were motivated...

<p>Fatalities are reported in an incident involving an explosion and a shootout in Paris, police said. Ambulances were on site, officials said.</p>

The estimated 27 victims of so-called "honor killings" each year in the U.S. don't fit neatly into the FBI's exhaustive Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics. Hidden among thousands of nondescript murders and cases labeled as domestic violence are a mounting number of killings motivated by a radical and dark interpretation of Islam. Honor killings and violence, which typically see men victimize wives and daughters because of behavior that has somehow insulted their faith, are among the most secretive crimes in society, say experts. “Cases of honor killings and/or violence in the U.S. are often unreported because of the shame it...

A protestor holds a poster showing German Chancellor Angela Merkel wearing a head scarf in front of the Reichtstags building with a crescent on top and the writing 'Mrs Merkel here is the people' during a rally of the group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA, in Dresden, Germany. Der Chancellor Merkel is warning of war to those countries that do not lay down and surrender to the Muslim invasion. Ironically, Merkel invoked the Balkan wars in the 90s, in which the US (Clinton) and NATO took the wrong side. Referencing the bloody conflicts in...

Does spray-painting “USA” on the side of a mosque constitute a hate crime? After two drunken teens were arraigned on vandalism charges Monday, Islamic leaders demanded the Sunday incident be classified as a hate crime. Though police in Burlington, Massachusetts are chalking it up to an alcohol-fueled prank by 18-year-olds Cameron Cappella and Derrik Demone, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan has signaled “additional charges” may be possible. How could “USA” be considered a hate crime? According to the Boston Globe, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director John Robbins “has said he believes the graffiti reflects an offensive view...

One more data point on the “When does your religion legally excuse you from doing part of your job?” question — like it or not, under American law, employers sometimes do have to excuse employees from tasks that the employees find religiously objectionable. Tuesday, two Muslim truck drivers who were fired for refusing to deliver shipments containing alcohol were awarded $40,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in punitive damages by the jury in their discrimination claim. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission brought suit on their behalf (EEOC v. Star Transport Co., Inc. (N.D. Ill.)), arguing that the employer had failed...

At a press conference Tuesday morning outside the U.S. Capitol Building, Ahmed ”Clock Boy” Mohamed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, urged the president and Congress to amend the Constitution so that innocent people like his son would not be victimized by authorities ever again. Ahmed brought a suspicious-looking “homemade clock” into MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, last month, allegedly to impress his teachers. After refusing to cooperate with police, he was briefly arrested for bringing to school what authorities suspected was a “hoax bomb.” Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA) organized the press conference so Ahmed and his dad could turn his...

Berlin (AFP) - As the thermometer dips towards zero in Germany, thousands of asylum seekers spending their nights in tents are pleading for authorities to find them alternative housing. "They say they are going to do something, but they are not telling us what. Maybe we are all going to turn to ice," said a 25-year-old Afghan who went by the name Hussein, and who has been living in one of several tent cities set up by authorities in the northern city of Hamburg. "We cannot be under the tent for more than an hour at night," he said....

CINCINNATI (AP) — FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday the recruitment of potential homegrown terrorists by the Islamic State group is widespread and goes on “24 hours a day” across the United States. Hundreds of people are “consuming” social media efforts to either draw them overseas to join the extremists “or if you can’t come, kill where you are,” Comey said. “And that is a two-pronged siren song that goes out through social media.” He said Twitter, other instant messaging, and encrypted communications have made the recruiting efforts of extremists easier and pervasive over the past two years. “So we...

Immigration: As the White House prepares to dump another 10,000 Syrian refugees on U.S. cities, it assures us these mostly Muslim men undergo a "robust screening" process. Not so, admits the agency responsible for such vetting. Under grilling from GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, head of the Senate subcommittee on immigration, the Homeland Security official in charge of vetting Syrian and other foreign Muslim refugees confessed that no police or intelligence databases exist to check the backgrounds of incoming refugees against criminal and terrorist records.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday the Middle East would be more stable if Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq, saying it's "not even a contest". Trump mentioned the countries in comparison to current efforts to drive Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power. "You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there, it's a mess," Trump said on NBC. "If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there, it's a mess. It's going to be...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. After Muslim terrorist attacks, we’re told that the killers just “misunderstood” their religion. They misunderstood the peaceful nature of Koranic verses such as "Kill them wherever you find them", "They should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides" and "Strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them". But the misunderstandings of Islam are just getting started.  Not only are Americans and Europeans being murdered by Muslim terrorists due...

School districts debate closing school for holidays observed by a growing number of students. As Eid al-Adha approaches, how will schools observe the holiday?Public schools in the US close in observance of Christian holidays including Christmas and Easter, and now other religious denominations are asking for their holidays to be respected, too. This Thursday is Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, one of the biggest holidays of the year for Muslims, and school administrators must decide whether or not to close school for the day. In New Jersey, where almost 2 percent of the population identifies as Muslim, several...

Religious groups in the United States have urged the White House to step up its response to the Syrian refugee crisis, with one on Tuesday calling Washington's efforts so far "disappointing."Church World Service, a global humanitarian organization that represents 37 Christian denominations, has called on the government to take in 100,000 Syrians over the next year, said Jen Smyers, who works on the group's immigration and refugee program.The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and the Jewish refugee assistance agency HIAS along with secular groups have also backed that figure.

Straight trippin': Saudi fatwa permits the use of hallucinogenic drugs during sex with ugly wives Saudi social media users have poured scorn on a fatwa that allowed young men married to ugly women to take drugs before intimate relations in order to have the delusion they are as beautiful as houris. The fatwa said that hallucinogenic drugs can be taken for 30 minutes during sexual intercourse and only by men who are less than 40 years old. The drugs can be used only in the evening, it added. “This is the ideal men who are unfortunately married with ugly-looking wives...

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday returned the mandate to form a government to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Anadolu news agency reported. Erdogan received Davutoglu at 7.30 p.m. local (1630 GMT) at the Presidential Palace in capital Ankara, according to the news agency. Davutoglu, who is also the chairman of the Justice and Development (AK) Party, told Erdogan that despite his best efforts he could not find any possibility to form a coalition government. The president thanked the prime minister for his efforts, a statement from the Turkish presidency added. Erdogan is now expected to make a decision...