Free Republic

A Mauritanian groom stole from his father-in-law to pay the dowry for his bride, but the theft was discovered by the bride’s father two days after marriage. Newspapers in the north African Arab country said the groom stole nearly 500,000 ougyiya ($1,725) from his father-in-law’s company, where he works, and paid the money to him as dowry (money paid by the groom to the bride under Islamic law). “The bride’s father discovered the theft two days after marriage and knew that his son-in -law was behind it. “He wanted to go and expose him in front of his wife but...

It was the summer of 2011. We were visiting friends in North Carolina one weekend for a lovely wedding on the beach. Our strong-willed, opinionated and hyper-inquisitive children, a boy and two girls, were, at the time, 10, 7 and 6 respectively. My gorgeous, though Chicago-tough and Sicilian-sassy, wife and I were at lunch with the kids at a little seaside café the following day. A late morning ocean breeze puffed through the eatery’s open bay windows, filling our nostrils with that salty pong of damp sand and faint sea life, forecasting a beautiful day ahead. We were discussing the...

FULL TITLE: Ultra-Orthodox Jews who moved from Canada to Guatemalan village to find 'religious freedom' are forced to leave because the locals don't like them A community of Orthodox Jews have been expelled from their homes in a bitter conflict with hostile villagers. Just a few months after fleeing from Canada amid allegations of child abuse, members of the Lev Tahor community were forced to leave San Juan La Laguna in Guatemala yesterday. The village Elder's Council voted to kick them out because the group refused to greet or have physical contact with the community, according to a member of...

It’s the crime no one wants to take responsibility for. The same statements are trotted out time after time. “Missed opportunities” and “lessons have been learned” are the stock phrases we’ve grown tired of hearing from council officers and police chiefs. But the horror stories keep coming. Children being trafficked from one town to the next, raped in dingy flats then beaten, held at gun point, doused in petrol and threatened to be set alight if they so much as breathe a word. This is not happening in some war-torn Eastern Bloc country. It’s happening here in Britain .....

There has been a lot of interest in the current “Crimes Against Humanity” lawsuit against me by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and the so-called Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), but this is not the first time the LGBT movement has tried to silence me by use of the courts. In fact, the SMUG lawsuit is the 5th such attack I have suffered in my career. Following is an excerpt from my privately published book of testimonial stories about the Miracles that God has done in my life, titled My Life in His Hands. This excerpt is from Chapter 8, “The...

A Christian couple fined $13,000 for refusing to host a lesbian wedding on their New York farm has decided to close the venue rather than violate their religious beliefs. Cynthia and Robert Gifford decided not to host ceremonies anymore, other than those already scheduled, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney James Trainor told The Blaze. ”Since the order essentially compelled them to do all ceremonies or none at all, they have chosen the latter in order to stay true to their religious convictions, even though it will likely hurt their business in the short run,” he said

I have long posited that the most important political/social theorist and tactician of the past century was the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who singlehandedly formulated the path to the malevolent political culture that has defeated liberty and under whose heel we suffer. The lineage is clear: Marx inspired Gramsci, Gramsci inspired Alinsky, and Alinsky inspired Hillary and Soetero. It is by Gramsci's design that collectivist central planners have captured every single social institution. If you do not understand Gamsci you cannot fully understand Alinsky and the appeal of fascism to the American Ruling Class. Broadcaster Steve Deace recently presented an...

A legal expert from the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department has clarified Sharia rules on divorce after a case last week where a couple sought to divorce for the third time. Muna Al Raeesi, head of legal aid at ADJD, said that when a husband and wife divorced for the first time, there was a waiting period known as “idda”, which is designed to give the couple time to reconcile without finalising the divorce procedure. The waiting period lasts for three of the wife’s menstrual cycles to ensure she is not pregnant. If she is pregnant, it lasts until the child...

Sorry folks, I'm not sure where to put this, but we've got a prayer request. My 20 year old son has been in the hospital for the last few days. They didn't know what has started all of this, but he had a heart attack last night. Right now, we're waiting for tests to come back and I'm scared out of my mind. He's just too young for this.

Attention gay rights lobby: I read of your latest conquest with great interest. A Catholic couple in New York has been charged and fined for violating the “rights” of a gay couple by choosing not to host a gay wedding on their farm. This story has garnered little interest and virtually no media attention, which is understandable considering that everything in the world had to take a backseat while the entire nation sat enthralled for two weeks by a local police matter in a place called Ferguson. Of course, the media only considers homicide to be a “local crime story”...

Something is just not right with me. In fact, I’m downright rude. I have a tendency to crash protests even though no one invited me. It happened when I donned a burka back in 2003 disguising myself as an Iraqi woman in order to infiltrate a campus protest against the War in Iraq. It happened again in 2009 when I joined a protest against myself at UMASS-Amherst. It happened yet again last Saturday night when I went to Ferguson and protested against the man while holding a sign saying “Hands up, Don’t Shoot!” I learned a lot that night. So...

This year the movie God Is Not Dead preyed on every Christian parent’s fear of sending a child off to college only to have their family’s faith and values undermined by an atheist college professor espousing some form of moral relativism. The movie hinges on a certain cliché, but the cliché is a cliché because many of us took a class with “that professor.” He might not have been so over-the-top, but his prejudices were evident. The American university tends to be fairly hostile to the conservative movement. One of the core tenets of conservatism is the Judeo-Christian teaching that...

“Children are being beheaded, mothers are being raped and killed, and fathers are being hung and crucified. Entire Christian and non-Muslim communities are being decimated by the radical Muslim group, ISIS.” These are the words from reporters out of Iraq. What is our obligation to those under fire from Islamic terrorists? Prayer is good, but not enough. Words of support are welcome, but not enough. What can one do when terrorists are not moved by our prayers or words of support for the hunted? Our religious obligation is to fight. We fight because self-defense is a mandate from the Bible...

It takes a lot to make me angry. But one thing that will do it every time is the occasional college administrator who hides behind a university spokesperson or public relations firm. Last week, Bryan College made the serious mistake of attempting to contact me through a hired public relations firm. They made the additional error of having their public relations specialist ask me questions about the “substance” (that means accuracy) of my reporting about Bryan. To be as clear as possible, I am the reporter in this situation. That means I am the one asking the questions. After Bryan’s...

Watson, Dawkins: What Is It with Scientists Who Become Crusading Atheists and Raging Bigots? Wesley J. Smith August 21, 2014 11:00 AM | Permalink First, there was James Watson who came out as a eugenicist and also remarked about how "some anti-Semitism is justified" (he later apologized). Now Richard Dawkins has let out his own inner bigot by claiming that women have an ethical duty to abort Down babies. From the Telegraph story: Richard Dawkins, the atheist writer, has claimed it is "immoral" to allow unborn babies with Down's syndrome to live. The Oxford professor posted a message on Twitter saying would-be parents who...

James Foley was one of a new breed of activists calling themselves journalists. He didn’t travel to report on a story, but to promote an agenda. And the agenda was obvious from his Twitter feed. [snip] Foley came to Syria to support the Sunni Islamist rebels against the Syrian government. He cheered on the Sunni Muslim terrorists fighting to ethnically cleanse the Christians of Aleppo. In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, his tweets and retweets were chock full of pro-terrorist propaganda. link

Where It All Leads: Professor Death Supports Doctor Death Wesley J. Smith August 19, 2014 2:21 PM | Permalink It is time to start calling Peter Singer "Professor Death."The Princeton moral philosopher -- surely a misnomer in his case -- is the world's foremost proponent of infanticide. He typically uses examples of disabled babies, but the reason he believes they can be killed is that they are supposedly not "persons." Thus, Singer has refused to state that killing a baby because she was ugly would be wrong.Professor Death also supports euthanasia, both voluntary and non-voluntary against ill human non-persons, such as Alzheimer's patients.He has...

The other day, I announced my pregnancy on my Patheos blog. Having used up all my creativity in making the actual baby, I didn't order custom-printed baby announcement M&M's to sprinkle around the house and then video my kids' reaction when they discovered them. I just put a picture of my belly sticking out and wrote, "Hooray!" Because I am lucky, I got dozens of happy congratulations, some from people I know, some from people I've never met or heard of. Then, inevitably, a surprsingly slow 48 hours later, a commenter left the first poo in the punchbowl, saying: "Here's...

There are lots of famous Jewish atheists from Sigmund Freud to Ayn Rand to Isaac Asimov to Woody Allen. How do you think the Jewish community would have reacted if what follows had happened? A Jewish couple, atheists, artists, puts on an exhibit in which they critique five major religions with artworks and commentary. At the end of the first day the gallery owner comes up to them and says, you are attacking Islam and that means you favor the Jews in "Palestine." This is "racism." They try to explain that they are critiquing five major religions equally, did not...

Pharoah, let my people go: How did ancient Egypt become a land of slaves building fantastic monuments to dictatorial leaders? The land of Egypt was rich and fertile, a seeming paradise for egalitarian living. Stephanie Pappas writes in Live Science about how despots “evolved” in ancient societies, but that’s a misleading use of the term; it actually was a series of bad choices by free people. She writes how Simon Powers at the University of Lausanne came up with a mathematical model to explain the shift from egalitarianism to despotism. Whether it actually explains them could be disputed, but he...