Free Republic

Iran hanged a woman on Saturday who was convicted of murdering a man she said was trying to rape her, the official IRNA news agency reported. ... The victim's family could have saved Jabbari's life by accepting blood money but they refused to do so. Iranian media reports say the family insisted on their legal rights under the Islamic principle of "an eye for an eye" partly because Jabbari accused Sarbandi of being a rapist

Afted Islamic extremism with “Zionist extremism” in remarks on Monday regarding the fight against terrorism. He made the comments during a meeting with Jordan’s president and members of the Lower House’s Democratic Gathering Bloc. While saying that there was a civil war taking place between moderate and extremist camps within Islam, the Jordanian monarch added that at the same time, “there is Zionist extremism,” and that “stakeholders should acknowledge there is extremism in all camps,” The Jordan Times reported...

Nearly two months after President Obama first vowed to eradicate ISIS, this cancer is spreading in North Africa — within striking distance of Europe’s soft underbelly.  On Sept. 15, a group of Algerian jihadists broke away from the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb network to pledge allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The self-proclaimed “Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria” proved their worth days later, ambushing a group of French tourists in a popular Algerian national park, kidnapping and beheading one of them.  On Sept. 23, the new group Soldiers of the Caliphate in Egypt popped...

Nations intone “Never again,” but we are watching a human catastrophe happen as Western powers fail to employ their massive resources. It is time for the world to wake up and do something to aid the Kurds in their battle with Islamic State before it is too late.

Today in predictable news: The teenage girls who abandoned their families in Austria to become jihadis for ISIS feel they’ve made a terrible mistake by joining the barbaric lifestyle and they want to come home. Samra Kesinovic, 17, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, are believed to be married, pregnant and living in the Islamic State-controlled city of Raqqa in northern Syria, Central European News reports.Evidently, the move didn’t work out as the pair had hoped: The change of heart is a much different tune than the note they left behind for their parents when they fled back in April, which read:...

The blogosphere and cable channels are all atwitter over a discussion Bill Maher had with Sam Harris, Ben Affleck, and Michael Steele last week. The topic? Whether too many Americans are engaged in Islamophobia in their criticism of Islam. At one point, Affleck said, “We've killed more Muslims than they've killed us, by an awful lot.” At another, he called the criticism of Islam “ugly,” “gross,” and “racist.” He compared the criticism of Islam with someone calling a Jew “shifty.” Is he right? He is not—and neither is the decade-plus shutting down of this important discussion. The shibboleths used to...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday the besieged Syrian city of Kobani was in imminent danger of falling to Islamic State and called on the U.S.-led coalition fighting the radical group to bolster its air raids with ground operations. The U.S.-led air campaign hit Islamic State positions Tuesday near the Syrian border city of Kobani, known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab, but officials and Syrian opposition members said the militants were still advancing against Syrian Kurdish fighters. During a visit to a refugee camp in the border province of Gaziantep, Mr. Erdogan declared Kobani was “about to fall” and...

When Christian villagers from the Iraqi town of Caramles fled advancing IS forces, 80-year-old Victoria was among a dozen or so unable to leave. The widow, a Chaldean Catholic, knew nothing about the sudden evacuation that had suddenly emptied this ancient village she had known for so long. Next morning she went to church – St Addai’s – as she did every day. She found the place locked; the streets deserted. She knew IS had come. We met Victoria on our first evening in Erbil at the start of a fact-finding and project assessment trip for Catholic charity aid to...

Translated from TV2 (note: strong language is included in this account). Sign up for more translations and support at 10news.dk Christians with Middle Eastern backgrounds in Denmark experience harassment, verbal attacks and in some cases direct violence from Muslims. TV2 News has been in contact with a number of Christians here in Denmark who tell of violent experiences.Jojo was born in Denmark of Lebanese parents. She lived in Gellerupparken (a major Muslim area) until she was eight.One day she sat in her car in Nørrebro (a Muslim-dominated area in Copenhagen). Seven young people with Arab background surrounded the car. One...

A beheading video of French hostage Hervé Gourdel was released on September 24, 2014 by the Algerian group Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate). The video is significantly different than the three previous high production Islamic State beheading videos of Americans James Foley and Steve Sotloff and British hostage David Haines. The Algerian jihadist group kidnapped Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide, while he was hiking in the Djurdjura National Park in Algeria. They released a video two days prior to the beheading giving France an ultimatum, either stop the aggression against the Islamic State or Gourdel would die within 24-hours....

Asiya Ummi Abdullah doesn't share the view that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group rules over a terrorist dystopia and she isn't scared by the American bombs falling on Raqqa, its power center in Syria. As far as she's concerned, it's the ideal place to raise a family. In interviews with The Associated Press, the 24-year-old Muslim convert explained her decision to move with her toddler to the territory controlled by the militant group, saying it offers them protection from the sex, crime, drugs and alcohol that she sees as rampant in largely secular Turkey. “The children...

Recent revelations of significant financial ties between the Brookings Institution and Qatar’s government are raising new questions about the policy positions of the influential Washington think tank—including one top scholar’s writings about an al Qaeda-linked group, known as Ahrar al-Sham, that is funded by a terrorist financier linked to the Qatari royal family.The New York Times reported earlier this month that Qatar has pledged a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, making it the “single biggest foreign donor” to the think tank. That money will help finance Brookings’ Doha Center in Qatar and its project on U.S. relations with the...

DER ZOR, Syria (A.W.)—The Islamic State (also known as ISIS) destroyed the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Der Zor, news agencies in the Middle East reported. The reports surfaced as Armenia was celebrating the 23rd anniversary of its independence on Sept. 21. Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian issued a statement condemning the destruction of the church, which housed the remains of victims of the Armenian Genocide, calling it a “horrible barbarity.” Nalbandian called upon the international community to cut the Islamic State’s sources of supply, support, and financing, and eradicate what it referred to as a disease that “threatened civilized...

In one of the great epics of Western literature, the hero, confronted by numerous and powerful enemies, temporarily gives in to weakness and self-pity. “I wish,” he sighs, “none of this had happened.” The hero’s wise adviser responds, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.” The old man continues, “There are other forces at work in this world … besides the will of evil.” Some events, he adds, are “meant” to be, “And that is an encouraging thought.” Indeed it is. Perhaps, today, we are meant to live in these...

ANKARA: Tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds flooded into Turkey on Saturday, fleeing an onslaught by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, as Kurdish and opposition officials called for international help. The massive influx came as 49 Turks kidnapped by ISIS jihadists in Iraq in June were freed and returned to Turkey for emotional reunions with their families. On Saturday, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said at least 45,000 Syrian Kurds had crossed into the country. "As of now, 45,000 Syrian Kurds have crossed the border and entered the Turkish soil from eight entrance points," he said....

Christianity In Iraq Is Finished By Daniel Williams September 19 In the part of his Sept. 10 speech on confronting the Islamic State that probably drew the least attention, President Obama mentioned the need to help Christians and other minorities, expelled from cities and villages in northern Iraq, return from where they came. “We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homeland,” he said. Obama got that wrong. Christians, of whom around 120,000 have taken refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, will not be going home even if their tormentors suddenly disappear. I spent 10 days talking with Christian...

Displaced Syrians will likely make up the next big wave of Muslim refugees coming to America. Since the early 1990s, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees has selected more than 200,000 refugees from Islamic countries to be resettled in the United States. Most of them have come from Somalia and Iraq. Syria could soon be added to the mix in the midst of that country’s brutal civil war. The Obama administration has been greasing the skids for the Syrian refugees for months, WND has learned, and the refugees will soon be dumped on American cities throughout the U.S. In...

Saudi authorities have swooped on a house in the eastern province city of Khafji, on the border with Kuwait, and arrested 27 people for using the premises as church last week. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia) also confiscated copies of the Bible and various musical instruments from the people during the raid. The swoop was prompted by a tip from a citizen, reported the English-language newspaper Saudi Gazette. Those arrested on September 5 were of various Asian nationalities, including women and children, the newspaper reported. "A citizen reported suspicious activities in...

Murdered journalist Steven Sotloff was kidnapped and sold to the radical Islamic State terrorist group, or ISIS, by one of the "moderate" rebel groups to whom the US government has considered offering support, according to his family's spokesman. Barak Barfi told CNN that Sotloff - who was Jewish and a joint US-Israeli citizen - was sold for a sum of money in the tens of thousands of dollars at the Syrian border. He said credible "sources on the ground" had provided the dramatic and tragic details of the abduction. "For the first time, we can say Steven was sold at...

Every day around sunset, dozens of residents of this small Lebanese Christian village on the border carry their automatic rifles and deploy on surrounding hills, taking up positions and laying ambushes in case Muslim extremists from neighboring Syria attack. "We all know that if they come, they will slit our throats for no reason," said one villager as he drove through the streets of Qaa, an assault rifle resting next to him. For months, Lebanese Christians have watched with dread as other Christians flee Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq, fearing their turn will come next. Fears multiplied after militants...