Free Republic

We are in a time of the first ever mass conversions of Muslims,” Father Mitch Pacwa SJ told me in a phone interview. “God is doing a mighty work among them.” Pacwa said that mass conversions are happening even in very fundamentalist countries. There is rapidly growing number of conversions especially on the edges of the Muslim world in the western and southern parts of Africa, he said. “Africa is now growing predominantly Christian despite crackdowns,” Pacwa said. Some of the noteworthy countries he mentioned include Iran, reported to have 3 million Christians, and Indonesia with reports of 2 million...

A Minneapolis man pleaded guilty to charges after authorities say he stabbed two men in a Macy's dressing room at the Mall of America in November, according to court records. Twenty-year-old Mahad Abdiaziz Adbiraham pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree assault. Abdiraham is expected to be sentenced on Feb. 16 Police responding to a report of a stabbing at the Mall of America Macy's store on Nov. 12 arrived to find "a chaotic scene with a lot of blood," according to a criminal complaint. The complaint says the two men stabbed were with seven other family members on a...

The Mexican government has been sending thousands of Central American asylum seekers back to their conflict-ridden countries where they fear persecution, a new Amnesty International report claims. The report, based on a survey of nearly 500 people, said Mexico's National Migration Institute, INM, is violating the non-refoulement principle, an international law which bars a country to send back the asylum seekers in fear of persecution. Nearly 40 percent of those detained were in violation of non-refoulement, Amnesty International said in its report, whereas 75 percent of those detained by the INM were not informed of their right to seek asylum...

German leader Angela Merkel said that multilateralism was under threat and said that protectionism is not the answer to the world's problems. "Frankly speaking, the country I have the honor to represent and where I am chancellor has difficulties. And polarization is something that we see in our country as well, which we haven't had for decades," Merkel said. She attributed increasing populism and polarization to both the euro zone crisis and migration crisis seen in Europe over the last few years following an influx of refugees, but said Germany would not shrink from the world stage. "Germany wishes to...

Are we diverse enough yet?This “Afghan asylum seeker” has acted in accord with Islamic teaching. The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law. It’s based on the Qur’an: “They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.” (Qur’an 4:89)A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57)....

An eastern German city has imposed a temporary ban on new refugees in an effort to stem a number of recent violent incidents. Cottbus, about 120 kilometres southeast of Berlin, has been rocked by violence from refugees and right-wing extremists since the start of this year. Earlier this week, Brandenburg state police reported that two male Syrian teenagers were arrested under the suspicion of injuring a German teenager in the face with a knife. The 16-year-old sustained non life-threatening injuries in what started as an altercation between Syrian and German school acquaintances near a tram station. The incident happened just...

A rabbi in Israel is calling on fellow Jewish activists in the country to protect the thousands of African asylum-seekers the government is threatening to deport. Religious leaders from the advocacy group Rabbis for Human Rights expressed their willingness on Tuesday to open up their own homes to shelter the migrants. Rabbi Susan Silverman, sister of the American comedian Sarah Silverman, promoted the idea during a conference in Jerusalem and received the support of about 130 religious leaders who had assembled there, Haaretz reports. Silverman said the rabbis’ activism is driven by their Jewish faith ― and the fear that...

San Salvador, El Salvador - It's not every church service that includes homilies about Pablo Escobar and Al Capone. But at a church in El Salvador, the message of sin and redemption is tailored to a different kind of parishioner: reformed members of the notorious gangs in the Central American nation. All the men are former members of Barrio 18 or the 18th Street gang, which, along with MS-13, began in Los Angeles but is now responsible for much of El Salvador's widespread violence. The Trump administration announced last week that in 18 months it will revoke Temporary Protected Status...

Last winter, the local media was touting Imam Abdullah Khadra as a victim of President Trump’s travel ban. Khadra, a Syrian, was here on a religious worker visa and was applying for political asylum. The refugee Imam living in North Carolina called Trump's move, "absolutely inhumane and ridiculous." Jewish leftists agreed. Lucy Dinner, the clergywoman from Temple Beth Or in Raleigh, denounced "singling out an entire group of people based on their faith." Lucy Dinner had previously signed a letter in support of anti-Israel activism by Eric and Jennifer Solomon. Eric Solomon was affiliated with the anti-Israel hate group, T’ruah,...

They clean federal office buildings in Washington and nurse older people in Boston. They are rebuilding hurricane-wrecked Houston. And working on the Atlanta Falcons’ new stadium. The plumbing and heating systems at Fannie Mae’s new headquarters, the porterhouse at Peter Luger Steak House and even the Disney World experience have all depended, in small part or large, on their labor. They are the immigrants from Haiti and Central America who have staked their livelihoods on the temporary permission they received years ago from the government to live and work in the United States. Hundreds of thousands now stand to lose...

Does anyone in or nearby Mississippi know if a conservative challenger is rising to kick out that pro-amnesty RINO scum Roger Wicker for the 2018 Senate race? If not, I'll make the case here on why it's so urgent to Cantorize this backstabbing quisling sellout to the conservative cause and American people. As reminder, Wicker was one of the GOPe RINO traitors who voted for that treasonous 2013 Obama comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have amnestied 20 million illegals and flooded the USA with job-killing h1b visas and Muslim refugees. I just got back from a long run of...

According to the most recent Maryland census data, Salvadorans make up the largest number of Hispanics in the state of Maryland, at 26.3 percent, which is significantly larger than the national percentage of 3.3. This week, the Trump administration announced its decision to end temporary protected status for Salvadoran immigrants living in the U.S., forcing nearly 200,000 people to gain permanent residency or leave by September 2019 or face deportation. Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin is one lawmaker who voiced strong disapproval. "These are legal immigrants. They came here seeking refuge from tragedy. Now, about one-third of them are U.S. homeowners....

In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that the "the migrant crisis" is, in effect, "an invasion." When asked by Bild why Hungary hasn't deemed itself able to welcome two thousand refugees while Germany has let in two million of them, Orban answered: "[T]he difference is: you want those migrants. We do not. We do our job by closing the Schengen-border with Serbia. Doing so has cost us one billion euros since 2015 and Brussels pays us nothing for it." "The solution to this problem isn't to divide people who are illegally in...

SHELBURNE, Vt. (AP) — Police say a man in Vermont has used a machete to attack a woman in her 70s as she delivered meals to a motel being used as emergency housing for the homeless. WCAX-TV reports 32-year-old Burlington resident Abukar Ibrahim is accused of attacking the 73-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer who was dropping off meals at Harbor Place, which serves as a temporary emergency housing facility. The attack happened Friday in Shelburne.

The United States administration froze a $125 million grant to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN’s agency for “Palestinian refugees”, which was supposed to be delivered on January 1, Channel 10 News reported on Friday, citing three Western diplomats. The amount frozen is one-third of the annual funding the United States provides the organization, according to the report. The three diplomats, who asked to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity of the issue, told Channel 10 the grant had been frozen until the end of the reexamination of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, which began...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Young male refugees in Germany got the blame on Wednesday for most of a two-year increase in violent crime, adding fuel to the country’s political debate over migrants. Violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, a study showed. It attributed more than 90 percent of that to young male refugees. It noted, however, that migrants settling from war-torn countries such as Syria were much less likely to commit violent crimes that those from other places who were unlikely to be given asylum. Migration will be a key issue in forthcoming coalition talks between...

A Germany university found that a 10.4 percent increase in violent crime was linked to an influx of migrants into the country's southern region. The increase in crime took place in 2015 and 2016 at the height of the European migration crisis, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel ignored E.U. rules and allowed an open-door policy for migrants entering the state from war-torn Syria.

Refugees, which is it: Meatpacker laborers or helping the “oppressed?” Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 4, 2018 Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum tries both arguments in USA Today. Ali Noorani on twitter: @anoorani https://twitter.com/anoorani?lang=en I wasn’t planning to post on one more hysterical story about Trump refugee numbers being low and thus decimating the refugee contractor industry, but I can’t resist mentioning one little bit of the story entitled: Refugee admissions to U.S. plummet in 2017 Before I get to Noorani, Mark Krikorian summed it up with this: “Elections have consequences,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of...

An army of security and emergency forces on the streets of France could not prevent a rise in the number of cars that were torched. Compared with last year, the number rose by 96, from 935 to 1,031 this year. The statistics from the ministry of the interior also say that more arrests were being made: from 456 to 510 this year. At least 140,000 security and emergency forces were at work during New Year’s Eve in France. One incident that particularly shocked the nation was the attempt by a group of youth to lynch two police officers in a...

President Trump reduced foreign refugee admissions by roughly 70 percent in nearly the first year of his presidency, a new report reveals. Center for Immigration Studies researcher Nayla Rush released a new study comparing refugee admissions to the United States under Trump versus those under former President Obama between Jan. 20 to Dec. 20, 2017, and the same time period in 2016. During the first 11 months of Trump’s presidency, the populist-nationalist president cut the number of foreign refugees entering the U.S. by about 70 percent, according to Rush’s research. In his first 11 months, Trump admitted 28,875 foreign refugees...