Free Republic

April 27, 2009 No. 2329 New Video from Al-Qaeda Maghreb Showcases Suicide Bombers, Young Children Raised in Jihad Camps The media wing of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has released the second video in its "Lovers of the Virgins of Paradise" series, which is devoted to documentation and praise of the organization's suicide bombers, as well as features young children of mujahideen, who grew up in jihad camps.

SNIPPET: "Yemen uses the threat of terrorism and deploys fundamentalists for political gain. Internationally the Yemeni regime exploits the al Qaeda threat in relations with the US and Saudi Arabia. Internally, Yemeni President Saleh uses militants to threaten and physically attack its political opposition, intimidate minority communities and to overshadow domestic crises." SNIPPET: "Even the most ardent of President Saleh’s apologists agree that the Yemeni government has made deals with hundreds of militants, jihaddists and al Qaeda operatives. Saleh used Sunni extremists, many from Jahr, during the Saada war as military trainers and directly against the Shiite rebels. In January,...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

As a group of Swedish Muslims begin their midday prayers in a mosque still blackened by smoke from a recent Molotov-cocktail attack, Bejzat Becirov, director of Malmo's Islamic Center, is talking urgently. "I'm afraid the same thing will happen here as in Paris," says Mr. Becirov, a Macedonian immigrant who opened Scandinavia's first mosque in this city in southern Sweden in 1984. Malmo, which has one of the highest percentage of Muslims of any western European city, illustrates the challenges facing a continent whose native population is increasingly wary of a rapidly expanding and often discontented Muslim population. But while...

Just when you think you know somebody, he goes and gets himself detained by the FBI for questioning in connection with alleged ties to the terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. So, who do you stand by: your country or an individual who you've known all your life-but who may not be what he seems to be? Such is the predicament of the friends and relatives of James Ujaama, a 36-year-old American black Muslim convert also known as James Earnest Thompson and Ahmed Bilal, who was born in Denver, raised in Seattle, and moved to London in 1996 to worship...