Free Republic

In Arab-Muslim countries limited-free speech is the norm, due to political and religious constraints. Tunisia and Morocco are not as severe as others. Middle Eastern governments often speak highly of liberty and democracy, especially when addressing the West. However, in reality, these regimes are totalitarian and dictatorial. Islamic religious doctrine governs the state to a lesser or greater degree. The Quran and the Sharia forbid freedoms that are taken for granted in the West. Islam is a hyper-sensitive ideology with severe ramifications built into its doctrine. The world knows this, and our way to respond to it should be made...

Consider the ancient human fossils from a Moroccan cave called Jebel Irhoud, which were described just last year. These 315,000-year-old bones are the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens. They not only pushed back the proposed dawn of our species, but they added northwest Africa to the list of possible origin sites. They also had an odd combination of features, combining the flat faces of modern humans with the elongated skulls of ancient species like Homo erectus. From the front, they could have passed for us; from the side, they would have stood out. Fossils from all over Africa have...

A Syrian-born German national accused of helping to plan the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States has been detained by Kurdish forces in Syria, a senior Kurdish commander told AFP on Wednesday. “Mohammed Haydar Zammar has been arrested by Kurdish security forces in northern Syria and is now being interrogated,” the top official said, but did not provide further details. Zammar, who is in his mid-fifties, has been accused of recruiting some of the September 11 hijackers. He was detained in Morocco in December 2001 in an operation involving CIA agents, and was handed over to the Syrian...

“QUEEN ELIZABETH must claim her right to rule Muslims.” So ran a recent headline on the Arab Atheist Network, a web forum. It was only partly in jest. According to reports from Casablanca to Karachi, the British monarch is descended from the Prophet Muhammad, making her a cousin of the kings of Morocco and Jordan, not to mention of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.

About 15,000 years ago, in the oldest known cemetery in the world, people buried their dead in sitting positions with beads and animal horns, deep in a cave in what is now Morocco. These people were also found with small, sophisticated stone arrowheads and points, and 20th century archaeologists assumed they were part of an advanced European culture that had migrated across the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa. But now, their ancient DNA -- the oldest ever obtained from Africans -- shows that these people had no European ancestry. Instead, they were related to both Middle Easterners and sub-Saharan Africans,...

Andrej Babiš has said there is ‘no way’ the Czech Republic will agree to Brussels’ demand that the nation accept a quota of migrants from the third world. Speaking in the country’s parliament on Thursday, the recently elected Czech Prime Minister slammed the European Union’s (EU) mandatory quota scheme as “ineffective” and divisive. “It is certain that we will not accept anyone, and we are fundamentally against anyone dictating to us who should live and work in our country,” local media reported him saying. “We consider it absurd that the European Commission sues us for something that is nonsense,” Babiš...

The number of deportations from Sweden to Morocco has increased thanks to the use of fingerprint records in the identification process. Swedish authorities now have access to the records thanks to a new partnership with Morocco, making it easier to identify people who have been given a deportation order then send them to the country, public broadcaster Sveriges Radio reports. The number of deportations carried out to Morocco increased from 75 in 2016 to 135 in 2017. …

Since opening its doors in 2015, no unaccompanied minors have been deported from Germany. That is soon set to change, as Berlin has started building centers in Morocco to house deported minors, according to a report. The German government started constructing two youth centers in northern Morocco to house local “street children” as well as unaccompanied Moroccan minors who have been deported by Germany, according to a report from the Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday. The pilot project creates a legal pathway for Germany to start deporting youths without needing to necessarily locate their families first. In recent years,...

Over dinner with convicted felon Peter F. Paul and Stan Lee in 2000, Hillary revealed her motive for the illegal email server she used from 2009 to 2013: to hide from investigators.

The North American bid to stage the 2026 World Cup seems like a sure thing. From stadiums and infrastructure to commercial opportunities and organizational experience, the joint effort by the United States, Mexico and Canada appears to meet all the necessary requirements (and then some) to host soccer’s premier competition. The proposal would mesh more than a half-billion people from three countries that have put on 12 FIFA tournaments (men and women, senior and youth). With European and Asian countries ineligible to bid and South America waiting for 2030, the only challenger is Morocco, a country of similar size and...

The woman approached President Emmanuel Macron on the street and asked him for help acquiring French citizenship papers, according to Morocco World News. Macron acknowledged the woman’s situation, but replied that France cannot realistically help everyone who asks, nor is the nation obligated to do so. Likewise, France must put its own people first: "In France, we will protect all people who are in the asylum [system] and who are not safe in their country. But we can not accommodate everyone who comes with working or student visas and who stay after. To be completely frank, you have to go...

The removal of the Jews from the Arab world has been all but ignored, says Tom Gross It is not surprising, given the sheer scale of the Holocaust and its sadism, that it has dominated contemporary discourse among Jews and others. But, while the extermination of European Jews has rightfully (though belatedly) generated a great deal of study and research, the removal of the Jews from the Arab world has been all but ignored. This ignorance extends to policy-makers at the highest level. Some journalists and politicians I have spoken to have expressed surprise when I even mentioned that Jews...

Police in Spain shot and injured an unarmed Frenchman on Saturday at a toll station near the French border, who officers said was shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. The officers mistakenly suspected he had a weapon, a police statement said, adding that they do not expect to open a terrorism investigation. The man, of Moroccan origin, was travelling with a woman in a vehicle registered in France and approached the toll by the border town of La Jonquera in the north of the country in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Archaeologists have discovered an 'exceptional' treasure trove of precious objects at the Abbey of Cluny, a former Benedictine monastery in France's Saône-et-Loire More than 2,000 objects have been found, including silver deniers - or pennies - Islamic gold coins, a signet ring and several gold items. The discovery is the first time that gold coins from the Arab lands, silver French deniers and a signet ring have ever been found together in a single, enclosed complex. Researchers from the Universite Lumiere Lyon discovered the items as part of an archaeological dig at the Abbey of Cluny, which started in 2015....

Italy said on Saturday it had deported two Moroccans and a Syrian on security grounds, lifting to 202 the number of potentially dangerous Islamists expelled since January 2015. The announcement came as security was raised after vehicle attacks in Barcelona and elsewhere, and a widely-reported warning from the Islamic State group that Italy is next on its hit list. Administrative expulsions, which are not subject to any appeal, are one of the main planks of Italy’s strategy for preventing the kind of jihadist attacks suffered by other European countries. Sicily decided Saturday to introduce barriers preventing vehicular access to six...

Rabat – Fifteen minors who sexually assaulted a donkey in the small rural town of Sidi Kamel in the communal providence of Sidi Kacem have been treated for rabies infections received from the animal. The sexually frustrated children and teenagers stayed at the Mechraa Belksiri Hospital for one week to receive rabies vaccinations after the animal transmitted the disease to them, explained Moroccan daily Al Akhbar in its August 10 edition. The incident has put the families of these fifteen young people into distress and horror, reports the daily.

Police have raised concern after groups of youths aged under 15 — one thought to be as young as nine — were caught robbing or trying to rob people in Stockholm last night. A reveler reported being robbed of their mobile phone at a bar in the popular Södermalm district of Stockholm at around 2 am on Monday, getting hit in the face when trying to get their phone back. The victim did not need an ambulance, said police. The suspects, two young boys, ran off but were caught by police. An hour later, youths on a bike tried to...

AN illegal immigrant with an “abysmal” criminal record has won £40,000 compensation after he was locked up for nearly a year. It is the second time Moroccan Khalid Belfken, 27, got a huge payout after efforts to deport him failed. The drug addict snuck into Britain illegally in 2005. He has committed more than 40 crimes and been jailed four times, most recently for burglary. The Home Office tried to kick Belfken out six times but authorities in Morocco refused to take him back.

I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. There I was, an Orthodox Israeli Jew, at a 500-year-old synagogue in Marrakesh, distributing food parcels to Muslims for Ramadan, representing the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship) on behalf of millions of Christians in the U.S. and worldwide. It just didn’t make sense. It seemed too good to be true. But as I quickly learned, it was just another day in mystical Morocco, a country that defies norms, defines tolerance and is home to a dwindling population of 2,500 Jews. Though Morocco is a Muslim country,...

48 of 50 Moroccan child immigrants in Sweden were recently found to be adult men. Fingerprint analysis was used to check the age of the migrants. Fria Tider reported (translated) via Religion of Peace: Almost all so-called unaccompanied children from Morocco who are controlled by the Swedish police are lying about their age and identity, Svenska Dagbladet reports. SvD has taken part in a PM that was sent in May from the border police to the Ministry of Justice. The document shows that out of a total of 77 people expelled and Morocco agreed to withdraw, 65 were used as...