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Foreign ministers from 22 Arab countries agreed to form a unified military force on Thursday, approving a draft resolution designed to counter growing security threats in the region. "The Arab ... ministers agreed on adopting an important principle, which is forming the unified Arab military force. The task of the force will be rapid military intervention to deal with security threats to Arab nations," Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby told reporters after the meeting, Reuters reported. The agreement, which Elaraby described as “historic,” came shortly after airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and its Arab...

Yemen's beleaguered government said Saudi-led airstrikes against its Houthi militia opponents would not last long on the second day of a Gulf Arab-led campaign against the Iranian-allied militia that could escalate a proxy conflict spreading through the region. Warplanes targeted Houthi forces controlling Yemen's capital and their northern heartland on Friday and, in a boost for Riyadh, fellow monarchy Morocco said it would join the rapidly-assembled Sunni Muslim coalition against the Shi'ite Muslim group. Tribes in Yemen's oil producing Marib region said they supported the air campaign, but Houthi forces advanced south despite the airstrikes and Pakistan, named by Saudi...

In the latest undercover sting operation from investigative filmmaker James O’Keefe, an assistant dean at Cornell University has advised a journalist posing as a Moroccan student all about how to launch a campus club with the express intent of supporting ISIS. The Ivy League administrator, Joseph Scaffido, also provides counsel on how to fund the pro-Islamist militant club so it can send “care packages, whether it be food, water, electronics” to ISIS and Hamas — both terrorist organizations, according to the State Department. Scaffido even lays out how the club can bring an ISIS “freedom fighter to come and do...

This guy is either the dumbest Ivy League bigwig ever or politically correct to a fault — for welcoming offers to bring ISIS and Hamas to Cornell University. A video sting operation shows Cornell’s assistant dean for students, Joseph Scaffido, agreeing to everything suggested by an undercover muckraker posing as a Moroccan student. Scaffido casually endorses inviting an ISIS “freedom fighter’’ to conduct a “training camp” for students at the upstate Ithaca campus — bizarrely likening the activity to a sports camp. Is it OK to bring a humanitarian pro-“Islamic State Iraq and Syria” group on campus, the undercover for...

Migration, the mass movement of communities for natural, economic, political, religious reasons or because of oppression, dates back almost as far as the history of mankind. It is certainly a difficult thing to leave the land where one was born and is familiar with and to move somewhere entirely different. Forced relocation is the most ruthless and painful form of migration. World history is full of stories of forced migration in which millions of people were obliged to leave their homes and live in places they had never been before. The violence and troubles suffered by these people forced from...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 19 — As Iraq confronts the possibility of a new war with the United States, its leaders appear to have concluded that they have one decisive advantage that they lacked during the countdown to the Persian Gulf war 12 years ago: this time, they seem convinced, the world is on their side and against the United States. "The world has abandoned America; it has become isolated," Saddam Hussein's No. 2 man, Izzat Ibrahim, boasted as he announced the result of this week's election: Iraqis, by official reckoning, had re-elected Saddam Hussein to his position of absolute power...

Monday, February 16, 2015 A Revisionist Muslim History of America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blogTurkish President Erdogan’s claim that Columbus encountered a mosque in Cuba (the explorer actually saw a rock whose shape he compared to the dome of a mosque) and a Saudi Imam claiming that Columbus had sailed to America to attack Muslims are typical of an emerging genre of Muslim revisionist history that lays claim to America based on an imaginary earlier Muslim presence here. While these examples may be laughable, Muslim historical revisionism has taken root in academia. It can be found...

Greek police have arrested several people over alleged links to a suspected terror plot in Belgium. One of the men is alleged to have been in contact with the cell in Verviers, Belgium, where a shootout with police left two suspects dead on Thursday. Europe is on high alert after Islamist gunmen killed 17 people in Paris. More than 20 people have been arrested in Belgium, France and Germany. SNIP Earlier on Saturday, Belgian media said authorities were seeking Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Brussels resident of Moroccan origin suspected of being the ringleader of the jihadi cell, and in hiding...

In a major positive development, Egypt's President Al Sisi has made an impassioned plea for a "religious revolution" in Islam. Speaking at Al Azhar University in Cairo, Sisi spoke directly to the religious establishment of Egypt: Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible! I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema – Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I'm talking about...

Speaking before Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry on New Year's Day, 2015, in connection to Prophet Muhammad's upcoming birthday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date on the subject. Among other things, Sisi said that the "corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years" are "antagonizing the entire world"; that it is not "possible that 1.6 billion people [reference to the world's Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so...

Egypt Bans 'Zionist' Film Exodus And Cites 'Historical Inaccuracies' A day after Morocco bans film, Egypt says it’s rife with mistakes, including an apparent claim that ‘Moses and the Jews built the pyramids’ Exodus: Gods and Kings review – holy Moses, wholly acceptable for the devout 26 December 2014 Egypt has banned the Hollywood biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, citing historical inaccuracies, the culture minister said on Friday. The decision comes a day after a similar move by Morocco. The film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Christian Bale, relates how Moses helped Israelite slaves flee persecution in Egypt...

A Moroccan teen forced into marrying her alleged rapist last year has been attacked with a razor blade and beaten by him for seeking a divorce, media reported Tuesday. The 17-year-old only identified as Khaoula was attacked in Marrakech on Saturday after filing for divorce, the Tel Quel weekly said, citing the AMDH independent rights group. She suffered multiple cuts which "disfigured" parts of her body and required about 40 stitches, the French-language weekly reported. Al Aoula television quoted a doctor at Marrakech's Ibn Tofail hospital, where she was treated, as saying that the teenager had been "struck in the...

The Duke of Wellington said of his close-run victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo that the French "came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way." Something like that happened to the Democrats in Tuesday's midterm elections, as they lost the Senate, a few more seats in the House and additional governorships. They came on with the same old strategy, but this time they went down with it. Obama and the Democrats chose not to defend the administration's record of the last six years. On foreign policy, no Democratic chorus...

CAIRO — The Arab League warned Sunday that Israel has reached a “red line” after fresh clashes in Jerusalem, urging international pressure to stop what it branded “violations” in the holy city. Clashes around the flashpoint Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound — the third holiest site in Islam and Judaism’s holiest — prompted Israel on Thursday to close the site for a day. The Temple Mount and adjacent neighborhoods have seen months of violence, with the mosque compound a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to perceived Jewish attempts to take control of it...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

Karen Hughes, President Bush’s newest undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and the caretaker of America’s image abroad, has her work cut out for her. A Zogby survey of 3,900 Arabs in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates has uncovered massive distrust of U.S. motives in the Middle East. Unkindest cut of all, Arabs would prefer that President Chirac and France lead the world rather than us, and, rather than have us as the world’s lone superpower, they would prefer the Chinese. While Arabs are not as rabidly anti-American as in the aftermath of the...

Moroccan police arrested a Koran teacher on charges of raping seven boys studying at his centre in the north African Arab country. Medical tests on his latest victim showed the 11-year-old boy was raped by the 36-year-old teacher at the centre in the northern town of Tetouan. Newspapers said the teacher confessed during interrogation that he had molested and raped six other boys.

A group of over 50 European Parliament members has nominated a controversial Egyptian activist for the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, despite his having advocated the assassination of Israelis and political leaders in Egypt and called for an end to the State of Israel. Alaa Abdel Fattah, 32, an Egyptian blogger and political activist, has been arrested numerous times by Egyptian authorities since the eruption of a popular revolution in the country in early 2011. Abdel Fattah, who boasts 626,000 followers on Twitter and 156,000 on Facebook, was released on bail September 15 after being charged with organizing...

US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet foreign ministers from around the world in Paris on Monday to discuss how to defeat Islamic State (IS) militants. French President Francois Hollande said the beheading of a British aid worker showed the world must act against IS. About 40 countries, including 10 Arab states, have signed up to a coalition to help fight IS in Iraq and Syria. Several Arab countries have offered to take part in air strikes on IS fighters in Iraq, US officials say. Mr Kerry says he is "extremely encouraged" by promises of military assistance to tackle...