Free Republic

For nearly 1,000 years the minaret of the Great Mosque of Aleppo soared above Syria's largest city. But it now lies in ruins - one of the many victims of Syria's civil war. The minaret of Aleppo's Great Mosque was unusual - unlike traditional cylindrical minarets, it was square in cross-section. At 45m high, its pinkish-beige stone, wrapped in intricate Arabic inscriptions, stood out on the city's skyline. It tells the story of Aleppo - or Halab as it's called in Arabic - one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The mosque was said to hold the...

After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops on Thursday captured the ruined mosque at the heart of Islamic State's de facto capital Mosul, and the prime minister declared the group's self-styled caliphate at an end. Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in coming days as remaining Islamic State fighters are bottled up in just a handful of neighborhoods of the Old City. The seizure of the nearly 850-year-old Grand al-Nuri Mosque -- from where Islamic State proclaimed the caliphate nearly three years ago to the day -- is a huge symbolic victory. "The...

You’ve probably seen the video of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announcing the creation of his caliphate in 2014. He made that announcement in an 850-year-old mosque known as the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul. Thursday, Iraqi troops recaptured the mosque, or what is left of it, and the Prime Minister declared the caliphate was over. From Reuters: “The return of al-Nuri Mosque and al-Hadba minaret to the fold of the nation marks the end of the Daesh state of falsehood,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement, referring to the hardline Sunni Mulsim group by an Arabic...

Iraq's prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, called the destruction of the mosque an "official declaration of defeat" by IS. ...The explosions happened as Iraq's elite Counter Terrorism Service units, which have been battling their way through Mosul's Old City, got within 50 metres of the mosque, the statement said. ...Al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself "caliph," or ruler of all Muslims, from the pulpit of the mosque on 4 July 2014, after the group's fighters overran parts of Iraq and Syria.

Kawa Omar and Ahmed Rasheed | MOSUL/BAGHDAD, IRAQ The leaning al-Hadba minaret that towered over Mosul for 850 years lay in ruins on Thursday, demolished by retreating Islamic State militants, but Iraq's prime minister said the act marked their final defeat in the city. "In the early morning, I climbed up to the roof of my house and was stunned to see the Hadba minaret had gone," Nashwan, a day-laborer who lives near the mosque, said by phone. "I felt I had lost a son of mine." His words echoed the shock and anger of many over the destruction of...

ISIS has blown up the iconic mosque where it announced its own so called caliphate in 2014, an Iraqi officer has said. The terror's group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance on the balcony of the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul that year. Iraq's Joint Operation Command today released a satellite image showing the mosque lying in rubble.

Late last week, a bulldozer toppled a minaret that has watched over the city of Basra, Iraq, for nearly three centuries, leaving local residents dismayed.Minarets like this one serve as the beacons from which Muslims are called to prayer five times each day. At roughly 36 feet tall, this particular minaret has stood since 1727. Cultural officials say that the initial plan had been to preserve and relocate the Siraji Mosque's minaret, which was reportedly contributing to traffic jams, according to Reuters.Officials from the Sunni Endowment Office, which oversees Sunni religious sites, say they had no knowledge of the impending...

Operatives of a secretive Iran-backed terrorist network in Turkey scouted the area hosting a radar site in Malatya's Kürecik district that is part of a NATO early warning radar system, an ongoing investigation has revealed. According to an 854-page police investigation on the Tawhid-Salam terror network obtained by Today's Zaman, witness testimony provided to the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office on March 22, 2013 indicated that suspects tied to Iranian intelligence had collected information about Kürecik. The witness said many front companies with the cover of legitimate businesses such as real estate agencies or bookstores had been established in Malatya by...

A video showing a small girl's reaction after hearing the Muslim call to prayer for the first time has gone viral on the internet. The incident reportedly took place in a shopping center in Dubai.

A mosque in Stockholm has received initial approval to begin sounding public prayer calls from its minaret, the first time such permission has ever been granted in Sweden. A majority of the members of the city planning committee in the southern Stockholm suburb of Botkyrka voted on September 25 to repeal a 1994 prohibition on such prayer calls, thereby opening the way for a muezzin to begin calling Muslims to prayer from the top of a 32-meter (104-foot) minaret at a Turkish mosque in the Fittja district of the city. The issue was put to a vote after Ismail Okur,...

Several Likud ministers oppose a bill proposed by MK Anastasia Michaeli (Israel is Our Home) for limiting the noise from mosque minarets. As a result, the bill did not come up for a vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation Sunday, and its fate is unclear. Lack of support in the ministerial committee usually spells doom for Knesset bills. Ministers Dan Meridor, Michael Eitan, Limor Livnat and Benny Begin are reportedly opposed to the law, which leftists call "the law for muzzling Muezzins," and ministers Gideon Saar and Moshe Cachlon are reportedly also expected to vote against it. Unnamed sources...

The 12-Century Wonder and Mystery of Afghanistan Built back in 1190s by the once great Ghorid empire, this enigmatic and intricately-ornamented ancient "skyscraper" stands like a missile pointing at the stars - a 65-meter high minaret, the second biggest religious monument of its kind in the world. Originally it was topped by the lantern - making it a sort of the dry land lighthouse (!), surrounded by the 2400m high mountains: (Note a white jeep crossing the river in photo above: there was a bridge before, but it was destroyed during wartime...) Amazingly, this imposing structure was standing forgotten for...

The Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch is the new Official heading the Vatican Office for Ecumenism. A discussion about Christian in the Holy Land, Minarets in Europe and the current Islam-Debate. Rome (kath.net/DieWelt) As the successor of the Curial Cardinal, Walter Kasper, the former Basel Archbishop Kurt Koch will become the next President for the Papal Adviser for the Promotion of the Unity of Christians -- a kind of "ecumenical minister" of the Vatican. Koch was born in 1950 in Emmenbrucke in the Canton of Luzern. As his first challenge was a two week Synod in the Vatican on the situation...

As US President Barack Hussein Obama continues on his seemingly endless quest to appease Muslims, with instructions to NASA to ‘find a way’ to reach them, Iftar dinners at the White House and the US State Dept.’s sponsorship of Ground Zero Mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s forthcoming ’speaking tour’ of Muslim countries (without knowledge of what exactly he’ll be talking about); it emerges that that his administration is also planning to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on the restoration of dozens of Muslim sites around the world... Throughout his administration, Obama has been fervent in his support of Islam and...

Hello Freepers ! Not all churches have steeples, and not all mosques have Minarets. What is the purpose of a Minaret ? My internet research is taking me into places I would rather not dwell (Like Islam conversion sites and other mind-numbing dreck) I see a few Mosques on US soil - But this Minaret thingy seems to suggest that a mosque is special in some way. Anyone know ?

In another step forward towards the Islamification of America, a Santa Clara Mosque has been given the OK to put up a sign of Islamic dominance, in a 64 Ft minaret. The Muslim Community Association runs the Mosque, and it sure would have been nice if the people of the community, would have taken the time to gather some back round information on them. From the MCA “constitution”… Whereas we, the Muslims of the San Francisco Bay area, recognize Islam as a total way of life and have pledged to endeavor practicing it as such, we do hereby adopt and...

RABAT, Morocco - A minaret collapsed during Friday prayers at a crowded mosque in the old town of the historic Moroccan city of Meknes, killing 36 people and injuring 71, the official MAP news agency said. Officials blamed the accident on heavy rain that had weakened the minaret at the Bab Berdieyinne Mosque, according to a statement released by the Interior Ministry. King Mohammed VI sent the interior minister and religious affairs minister to Meknes, a UNESCO heritage city and one of Morocco's four imperial cities, some 60 miles east of the capital Rabat.

Last month the Swiss voted in a referendum to ban minarets, the prayer towers attached to some mosques. To the astonishment of the media, the churches and the politicians, it was approved by a clear overall majority of 57.5 percent of the vote, with 22 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons backing it. If it survives a legal challenge in the European Court of Human Rights, a paragraph will be added to Article 72 of the Federal Constitution: "The building of minarets is forbidden." The news was swiftly condemned around the world, not only by Muslims, but even by Swiss Catholic bishops,...

The architect of the controversial Swiss referendum that resulted in a ban on the construction of minarets has a Turkish heritage, daily Milliyet reported on Wednesday. Born in the Aegean province of Ä°zmir to a Turkish father and a Swiss mother, Soli PardoÂ’s family moved to Switzerland when he was 5 years old, the daily said. Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Nov. 29, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population. The referendum by the nationalist Swiss...

# Freedom of religion is fundamental to Swiss law and European human rights treaties. # A minaret is a simple and common architectural feature of a mosque, and is neither a safety risk nor a public nuisance. # A minaret carries no political symbolism or significance. # Advertising campaigns to promote the law were racist. # The law may alienate Swiss Muslims, who are largely of European origin and are known to be moderate. # The international outcry against the law may have a negative influence on the Swiss economy and foreign relations