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Al Nusra Front officially splits from Al Qaida Group hopes to evade a new cooperation pact between the US and Russia, aimed at annihilating Al Qaida Published: 15:35 July 25, 2016 Gulf News Sami Moubayed, Correspondent Beirut: Abu Mohammad Al Golani, commander of Al Nusra Front, will make a public statement later today announcing his departure from Al Qaida. His new group will be named Jabhat Fateh Al Sham (Sham Liberation Front). By doing so the group hopes to evade a new cooperation pact between the US and Russia, aimed at annihilating Al Qaida operatives on the Syrian battlefield. Originally...

ormer Saudi General Dr. Anwar Eshki visited Israel last week, alongside a delegation of academics and businessmen, all of whom came with the intended goal to encourage further discussion of the Saudi-led 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. The Israeli news source Haaretz reported that the delegation met with Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories Major-General Yoav Mordechai, and several Knesset members from the opposition. ...

“An explosion outside a bar in the southern German city of Ansbach, Bavaria, has left at least one person dead and 12 others injured. A large-scale investigation has been launched into what is believed to have been a “deliberate” act. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees will reveal why the suspect’s asylum application had previously been rejected later in the day Herrmann noted that those who are “seeking protection in Germany, must show full respect for the German legal system and the German population.” “The minister added that the attack demonstrated the need “to strengthen controls on those we...

The pupils, aged between 14 and 17, were made to dress up in camouflage and were handed guns with empty magazines, according to their lawyers Before the coup attempt last week, the pupils, aged between 14 and 17, were made to dress up in camouflage and were handed guns with empty magazines, according to their lawyers. The children have been taken to prison and not allowed to speak to their parents as they were accused of treason against the Turkish State. The mum of a 15-year-old boy caught up in the arrest, Emre, while waiting for news outside Istanbul’s Maltepe...

Iran destroyed 100,000 satellite dishes and receivers on Sunday as part of a widespread crackdown against the illegal devices that authorities say are morally damaging, a news website reported. The destruction ceremony took place in Tehran in the presence of General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, head of Iran’s Basij militia, who warned of the impact that satellite television was having in the conservative country.

Gehad el-Haddad, a top communications official for the Muslim Brotherhood, was seized by Egyptian security forces over his loyalty to former President Mohamed Morsi. However, it’s his previous job that has Americans concerned. Prior to his stint as a senior Brotherhood official and adviser to Morsi, el-Haddad reportedly served for five years as a top official at the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by former President Bill Clinton. El-Haddad was the face of the Muslim Brotherhood and became well-known for supporting the organization’s crackdown on civil liberties in Egypt as part of their Islamist agenda. He achieved this role...

MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah. New York has obtained a confidential document from the Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that shows that the plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished under uncannily similar circumstances. The revelation, which Malaysia withheld from a lengthy public report on the investigation, is the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass murder-suicide. The document presents the findings of the Malaysian police’s investigation into...

A professional swimming association in Germany wants to reduce escalating sex attacks by refugees at public baths by training migrants to become pool lifeguards. The Federal Association of German Swimming Professionals (BDS) says this would be 'an inclusive measure that would benefit everyone.' Last month a secret police document was leaked in Duesseldorf voicing the 'grave concern' of police chiefs about escalating sex crimes carried out by refugees at public swimming baths.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier said on Tuesday evening in response to the Würzburg axe attack that refugees are no more likely than anyone else to commit terrorist atrocities. All the evidence from the last 12 months shows that the danger of terrorism posed by refugees “is not larger or smaller than that in the rest of the population", Altmaier told broadcaster ZDF. The chief of staff was making the comment after a 17-year-old who had arrived in Germany in 2015 claiming to have fled from Afghanistan, attacked passengers with an axe on a train near Würzburg,...

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is in a snit, and on a tear. Having survived last Friday’s military coup, the Turkish president has declared a three-month “state of emergency” and claimed a free hand in steam-shoveling old enemies. As of this writing, he has “detained” 6,000 military personnel and 3,000 judges. Some are being held in a sports stadium, “a development,” observes The Independent, “that has ominous similarities with mass arrests in South American coups in the last century.” Political prisoners are being refused contact with family and legal counsel, even by phone. For good measure, Erdoğan’s revoked the licenses of 21,000...

Right there in an open forum in Trinidad, Imam Muhammed Luqman Abdul-Latif proposed temporary teen marriage as a way to cure promiscuity. What Abdul-Latif is preaching is a Shia practice called mut’ah, in which a man could have a wife for a short period of time while when traveling long distances. The woman needs permission from her father and a dowry is paid for the “service.” It is much like prostitution of women and is termed a “rental” of the woman. In defining “rental,” the Islamic jurisprudents say: “It is to gain possession of a benefit in exchange for a...

A vast majority of Germans believe terrorism will soon strike Germany, with 77 percent fearing an attack will take place in the near future, according to a new survey. That figure has shot up from 69 percent just two weeks ago, although that isn’t a huge surprise, given that the intervening weeks have seen not only a huge attack in Nice, France, on the country’s national day, but also Monday night’s attack on a train in Bavaria which left four people seriously injured. Both attacks were claimed by the terror group ISIS. […] Supporters of the Green Party were the...

The head of the Syriac Catholic Church—an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See—offered strong criticism of “American, French, English, [and] European Union politicians” whose efforts to remove President Bashar al-Assad have led to a nightmare for the region’s Christians. Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan told the National Catholic Register that Syria was a place “where they were fighting against illiteracy, where you had medical care for all, a peaceful country, where you could go wherever you wanted to go, 24 hours a day without any problem — they [the Western powers] find it has a dictatorship...

If today’s Western leaders possess one general trait, it’s a genius for self-deception. Insisting that Islamist terror has nothing to do with Islam, or that religion has no strategic impact, or that all human beings want freedom and democracy, amounts to declaring that up is down, right is left and night is day. And midnight is coming for millions in Turkey, even as we insist that a dying flashlight is the sun. (...)

For example, asked about Russia’s threatening activities that have unnerved the small Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, Mr. Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.” Mr. Trump had nothing but praise for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s increasingly authoritarian but democratically elected leader. “I give great credit to him for being able to turn that around,” Mr. Trump said of the coup attempt on Friday night. “Some people say that it was...

Concerns are growing for the future of Christians in Turkey, the birthplace of St Paul, in the wake of the failed coup. Two churches in eastern Turkey in places already known for historic murders of Christians were vandalised during the attempted coup, reports Middle East Concern. In Trabzon on the Black Sea, ten people attacked the Catholic church of Santa Maria where Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro was murdered in 2006. Muslim neighbours intervened and drove them away. In Malatya, where three Christian workers were murdered in 2007, there was an attempt to smash the windows of the Protestant Church....

"Fighters from a US-backed Syrian militant group have been filmed brutally beheading a child as young as 11. One of the fighters shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’ meaning ‘God is great’ after taking a small knife to the boy’s throat and cutting off his head in the Palesinian refugee Handarat Camp in Northern Aleppo. The child, who is clearly under the age of 12, was arrested by the Islamist militants for allegedly being Palestinian Liwaa Al Quds, al-Quds Brigade fighter, according to Russia News Now. Sickening footage shot immediately before the boy is slaughtered shows him in ragged clothes surrounded by bearded...

Miss Turkey 2006 has been found guilty for sharing a poem that insulted Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan’s dictatorship continues to crack down on potential threats to the Turkish state. This time, the dangerous Miss Turkey 2006 (27-year-old Merve Buyuksarac) has been found guilty for sharing a poem that insulted Sultan Erdogan. The Istanbul court gave Miss Turkey a suspended sentence of 14 months for “publicly insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on condition that she does not insult the Sultan again within the next five years. Merve Buyuksarac is the latest of over 2,000 defamation cases President Erdogan has filed in...

The following anecdotes of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world occurred or were reported in April. They are categorized by theme, or familiar patterns: Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches United States: A pro-ISIS group calling itself the United Cyber Caliphate defaced the website of the Christian Reformed Church in the city of Lamont, Michigan. A 15-year-old teenage girl discovered the website’s defacement—which consisted of a YouTube ISIS propaganda video and Arabic text—while searching for the church’s phone number. The video’s spokesman says, “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women by the permission of Allah,...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday evening declared a three-month state of emergency following last week's failed coup, Sky News reported. In a speech in which he announced the state of emergency, Erdogan warned there "may be more plans" from dissidents to try and overthrow the government again. He added that the state of emergency was in order to "take the most efficient steps in order to remove this threat as soon as possible, which is a threat to democracy, to the rule of law, and to the rights and freedoms of citizens in our country". Earlier, noted Sky...