Free Republic

With the arrival of approximately two million people from around the world in Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj pilgrimage, there are a group of pilgrims who were not welcomed. The Saudi government has banned the entry of travelers from three countries currently dealing with the Ebola epidemic: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The decision to reject visa requests from these countries has affected 7,400 people, according to the Associated Press. Hospitals in Saudi Arabia are also preparing in the event of an outbreak by setting up isolation and surgery units as well as dispatching medical staff to airports. Despite...

MECCA, SAUDI ARABIA—Saudi Arabia sought to assure the public that the kingdom was safe and free of health scares as an estimated 2 million Muslims streamed into a sprawling tent city near Mecca on Thursday for the start of the annual Islamic hajj pilgrimage. Earlier this year, Saudi authorities banned people from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea — the countries hardest hit in the Ebola epidemic — from getting visas as a precaution against the virus. The decision has affected a total of 7,400 pilgrims from the three countries. Ebola is believed to have sickened more than 7,100 people in...

WHEN Malcolm X visited Mecca in 1964, he was enchanted. He found the city “as ancient as time itself,” and wrote that the partly constructed extension to the Sacred Mosque “will surpass the architectural beauty of India’s Taj Mahal.” Fifty years on, no one could possibly describe Mecca as ancient, or associate beauty with Islam’s holiest city. Pilgrims performing the hajj this week will search in vain for Mecca’s history. The dominant architectural site in the city is not the Sacred Mosque, where the Kaaba, the symbolic focus of Muslims everywhere, is. It is the obnoxious Makkah Royal Clock Tower...

As they gather in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca for the annual hajj, some pilgrims have denounced atrocities by ISIS jihadists as "a virus" threatening the world. But many also expressed concerns about the US-led air war against them. "Islam is innocent from actions of the Islamic State (ISIS)," Kurdish Iraqi pilgrim Alan Abdullah told AFP, describing ISIS as "a virus threatening the whole world". ISIS has seized large parts of Iraq and Syria, declaring a Muslim "caliphate" and imposing its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law. The jihadists have executed captured Iraqi soldiers, crucified people, forced non-Muslims to...

ISIS is leaving a path of destroyed churches, shrines and mosques in its wake as it storms across Syria and Iraq, and has even set its sights on Mecca -- Islam's holiest site. The nihilistic jihadis, led by self-proclaimed descendant of Prophet Muhammad Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, have already bulldozed or blown up some of the most sacred places in Iraq, and seem bent on killing and destroying anyone or anything that does not measure up to their twisted vision of Islam. Experts say the group, which originally stood for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but now simply calls itself "Islamic...

Security men in the sacred Saudi town of Makkah arrested a man wearing strange clothes inside the Grand Mosque, saying his costume detracted worshippers. Many curious men had left their prayers at the mosque and surrounded the man to take a close look at his apparel, prompting the mosque’s security men to intervene. “He was told to go and change his clothes because they are distracting the worshippers from their prayers…he left but returned with the same clothes,” Sada daily. It said police arrested the bearded man for interrogation after he entered the mosque for the second time with the...

Representatives of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) stated that they will ruin the Kaaba after capturing Saudi Arabia. APA reports quoting Turkish media that ISIS wants to take control of Arar city of Saudi Arabia and start operations here. ISIS member Abu Turab Al Mugaddasi said that they would destroy the Kaaba in Mecca: “If Allah wills, we will kill those who worship stones in Mecca and destroy the Kaaba. People go to Mecca to touch the stones, not for Allah.”

In the days before the October government shutdown, the State Department spent $150,000 on “The Black Arch”, an art installation piece referencing Mecca. … A 2011 press release describes the work as a “profound collaboration between Shadia and Raja Alem. It is very much about a meeting point of the two artists; of two visions of the world; from darkness to light, and of two cities—Makkah (Mecca) and Venice.” … The State Department tells CNSNews.com, “The Black Arch will be installed at the new U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.” “The Black Arch” was one of several artworks that were...

Arab American pilgrims from the Metro Detroit area where attacked and assaulted, for what appears to be sectarian reasons, on Wednesday, Oct. 16, while performing the rituals of Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia. Mina is a town near Mecca, where pilgrims sleep in tents and stone three pillars, representing the satan, with seven pebbles, on the last day of Hajj. The Saudi government has built thousand of air-conditioned tents to accommodate pilgrims, during this ritual. A known female community leader said that when the local group entered Tent Section 40, an area designated for American, European and Australian Muslims, a...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Southern California doctors and health officials will be on the lookout for Muslim pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia with flu-like symptoms in the wake of a reported outbreak of a SARS-like virus in the Middle East, according to a report. L.A. County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Jonathan Fielding told the Los Angeles Times severe coughs or other similar symptoms could signal the arrival of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, to the Southland. While MERS-CoV has so far only been reported in the Mideast and Europe, doctors and emergency departments will be...

Virus Hangs Over Islamic Pilgrimage To Mecca Health officials in the U.S. will be on the alert for anyone returning from the Middle East with symptoms of MERS, a mysterious and potentially deadly illness. Laila Shifa, left, helps her daughter, Homaira Hamid, center, and husband Jahan pack in their Northridge apartment for their hajj pilgrimage. The couple are bringing face masks to help guard against the MERS virus, which has been detected in the Middle East. By Eryn Brown October 9 After they got married last year, Homaira and Jahan Hamid decided they would embark on the hajj pilgrimage to...

More than two million Muslims descend on Mecca for the annual Hajj each year. Saudi authorities are advising pilgrims to wear face masks in overcrowded places. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File) (CNSNews.com) – As Saudi and U.N. health authorities report new infections from a troubling new respiratory disease, there are concerns that the approaching Hajj – the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca – could increase the risk of spreading the virus as pilgrims return to their home countries. Meanwhile the U.S. government, in a notice published in the Federal Register Wednesday, declared that the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV, or...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. President Obama's choice to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was approved by the Senate on a vote of 63-34, with thirteen Republicans voting to confirm him. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) created quite a stir with his 13-hour filibuster against the Brennan nomination. Not until he received written assurances from Attorney General Eric Holder that U.S. citizens would not be targeted for killing by drones on U.S. soil would the doughty Kentuckian stand down. Good for him. John Brennan then proceeded to take the Oath of Office, as administered by Vice...

Howls of rage went up after the Joint Terrorism Task Force, guns drawn, arrested Maher Hawash in the parking lot of an Intel Corporation facility in March, 2003, and placed him in solitary confinement. The protests intensified as prosecutors detained him without charges for more than a month in an Oregon jail while they pored over the evidence. Given Maher Mofeid "Mike" Hawash's biography, this all came as a particular shock, for he personified the American success story. A Palestinian born in Nablus in 1964 and reared in Kuwait, he arrived in the United States in 1984, earning degrees in...

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen, leading to theories that there may have once been a church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of Mecca, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Paul Yule, an archaeologist from Heidelberg in Germany, has dated the 5feet 7inch tall relief which shows a man with chains of jewellery, curls and spherical eyes to around 530AD. ... The figure is barefoot, which was typical of Coptic saints....

Nigeria has suspended all Hajj flights to Saudi Arabia after the authorities there deported more than 170 women who had arrived without a male escort. About 1,000 Nigerian women intending to make the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca have been detained since Sunday.

Historian Tom Holland has claimed that Koran makes little or no reference to religious city of Mecca. London : A British channel has come under fire over a programme it broadcast on the history of Islam. The programme, ‘Islam: The Untold Story’, broadcast on Channel 4, triggered nearly 550 complaints to both the television regulator Ofcom and the channel’s presenter Tom Holland. According to the Daily Mail, Holland has been accused of distorting the history of Islam by claiming the Koran makes little or no reference to the religious city of Mecca. He has also been subjected to a number...

A course for U.S. military officers has been teaching that America's enemy is Islam in general, not just terrorists, and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following World War II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima or the allied firebombing of Dresden. The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that it, too, was critical of Islam.

Here me out before you conclude. I have a rational argument for what I am proposing. In WWII, to defeat Japan America used psychological warfare as part of the battle. They knew that the ultimate destruction of the Japanese Empire at that time was to defame their leader/god figure. By humiliating him on national television forcing him to claim to the world that he is indeed not god and that he has been defeated allowed Japan to succeed and renew in the future. What we did is why Japan is such a successful country today. Islam is using that exact...

Saudia Arabia would move quickly to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran successfully tests an atomic bomb, according to a report. Citing an unidentified Saudi Arabian source, the Times newspaper in the U.K. (which operates behind a paywall) said that the kingdom would seek to buy ready-made warheads and also begin its own program to enrich weapons-grade uranium. The paper suggested that Pakistan was the country most likely to supply Saudi Arabia with weapons, saying Western officials were convinced there was an understanding between the countries to do so if the security situation in the Persian Gulf gets worse. Pakistan and...