Free Republic

Suicide bombers on Iran kids' TV By Toby Harnden, Chief Foreign Correspondent (Filed: 06/11/2005) Iranian state television has broadcast a cartoon that glorifies suicide bombings against Israelis, depicting a young boy blowing himself up after being told: "Go and show the Zionists how brave and heroic are the children of Palestine." The cartoon, one of a series shown by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting on "Jerusalem Day" nine days ago, presents the actions of a boy who kills himself to strike back against Israelis as a noble example for children to follow. The cartoon follows the story of Abd...

Muslims march over cartoons of the Prophet By Kate Connolly in Berlin (Filed: 04/11/2005) A Danish experiment in testing "the limits of freedom of speech" has backfired - or succeeded spectacularly - after newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed provoked an outcry. Thousands of Muslims have taken to the streets in protest at the caricatures, the newspaper that published them has received death threats and two of its cartoonists have been forced into hiding. Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the cartoons a 'necessary provocation' Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's leading daily, defied Islam's ban on images of the Prophet by printing cartoons by 12...

Text of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Speech This is a translation, by Nazila Fathi in The New York Times Tehran bureau, of the October 26 speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to an Islamic Student Associations conference on "The World Without Zionism." The conference was held in Tehran, at the Interior Ministry. The text of the speech was posted online, in Persian, by the Iranian Student News Agency (www.isnagency.com). Bracketed explanatory material is from Ms. Fathi. I thank God that I have had the opportunity to participate in the event today …. We need to examine the true origins of the issue of...

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- A group of Afghan Muslim clerics have threatened to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it hands over military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Quran. The warning on Sunday came after 16 Afghans were killed and more than 100 hurt last week in the worst anti-U.S. protests across the country since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted U.S. President George W. Bush to handle...

CHURCH FORCED TO MOVE HEADQUARTERS Two-million-member Church of Christ seeking to avoid religious violence. April 26 (Compass) -- Devastation caused by religious conflict and the hostile attitude of Muslims toward Christian refugees returning to their villages in the central Nigerian state of Plateau has forced the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) to relocate its regional headquarters from the town of Wase to Kadarko. “The decision to relocate our regional office and the church in Wase town was made by our church council following the complete destruction of all our churches in Wase town and the killing and displacement of...

A pastor who was also an active missionary has been shot dead while he was praying in a chapel.   At 9.00pm on Monday 12 January gunmen burst into a churchyard in Isfara in the north of Tajikistan and fired several rounds through a window at Sergei Bessarab as he was kneeling in prayer. Forum 18 news agency reported that on hearing the gunfire, his wife, Tamara, rushed to her husband’s side but he was already dead. Reuters also carried the story and confirmed he was shot 13 times with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.  A local newspaper had only a...

Iraqi Shi'ite leader al-Khoei assassinated in Najaf KUWAIT, April 10 (Reuters) - Senior Iraqi Sh'ite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei was assassinated at the mosque in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday, a member of his family foundation told Reuters. Ali Jabr, a member of the London-based Khoei foundation, confirmed to Reuters by phone that Abdel Majid was dead. The murder is sure to raise tensions among Iraq's majority Shi'ite population. Majid is the son of the late Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'ites at the time of the 1991 Gulf War. Al-Khoei's nephew, Jawad al-Khoei, told Reuters...

(CBS) Ten U.S. soldiers were injured, six or seven of them seriously, in a grenade and small arms attack at Camp Pennsylvania in northern Kuwait, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann, who is traveling with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. Strassmann said the grenades were rolled into two commanders' tents at the camp. When officers ran from the tents, they were hit by small arms fire. "From our reports it appears that a terrorist penetrated Camp Pennsylvania, one or more terrorists threw two hand grenades into a tent," said George Heath, spokesman at Fort Campbell, home base of the...