Free Republic

“The Jewish religion is under attack in Europe”, declared the Conference of European Rabbis president Pinchas Goldschmidt. Many polls (such as the study on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation) bring an iconic number measuring the disaster: 150,000,000 Europeans have a delegitimizing and demonizing view of the State of Israel and its citizens. For a large sector of Europe, the cities, skyscrapers, hospitals, cinemas, and schools on that tiny sliver of land named "Israel" are merely real estate that will be restored to Islam once this malefic Jewish form is swept away. This is a popular mobilization...

This is a pretty horrific story that comes out of Afghanistan. The source for it is Mustafa Kazemi, an Indian war correspondent, who has been operating in Afghanistan since 2010 and has worked for AFP. Due to the horrific nature of the story, I am only excerpting a few parts of it. If you want to read the rest, you’ll have to follow the link. But keep in mind that child marriages like these are happening all the time, not just in Afghanistan, but increasingly even in Europe.

Report: Russia sends Assad 'ship killing missile' Russia delivers Yakhont missiles, warships to Assad; Lavrov: Arms deal won't change regional balance of power Russia sold advanced Yakhont antiship cruise missiles to Syrian President Bashar Assad, outfitted with an advanced guidance system that makes them more effective than the older version of the missile Russia sold to Syria, The New York Times cited two American officials as saying on Thursday. These missiles will allow Syria to thwart any attempt by international forces to reinforce Syrian rebels by imposing a naval embargo or no fly zone, Nick Brown the editor in chief...

"If you believe Islam is the truth, why don't you believe Islam can compete in the marketplace of ideas?"

U.S. officials charged an Uzbek citizen in Idaho with providing bomb-making knowledge and other support to an Islamist militant group, knowing that it would be used in an attack, authorities said on Thursday. Fazliddin Kurbanov, 30, a national of Uzbekistan living legally in Idaho, was arrested in Boise and faces a three-count grand jury indictment in Idaho and a single-count indictment in Utah, prosecutors said. They said Kurbanov provided information and money to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The group supports establishing strict Islamic rule in Uzbekistan. Authorities said...

Campaigners urged President Obama to raise press freedom concerns with visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Thursday, but the only media freedom issue raised during their joint press conference was much closer to home—the secret seizure of Associated Press phone records. Under Erdogan’s Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, press freedom has deteriorated sharply. In its annual international assessment of press freedom, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders this year ranks Turkey 154th out of 179 countries, and calls it “currently the world’s biggest prison for journalists.” On the eve of Erdogan’s visit, Reporters Without Borders head Christophe Deloire...

BELCHERTOWN (CBS) – Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir. State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.

A Philadelphia woman was indicted this week, accused of abducting a 5-year-old girl from her school by posing as her mother, raping her and leaving her barely clothed and crying at a playground. Christina Regusters was charged Monday with aggravated assault, kidnapping, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and several other offenses in the January incident that had police searching door to door and parents clutching their children tightly. The little girl's ordeal began January 14 when a woman wearing a burqa -- a head-to-toe covered garment with a slit for the eyes -- went to a West Philadelphia school shortly after...

The ghastly video shows how barbaric the Syrian civil war can be. A man, said to be a well-known rebel fighter, carves into the body of a government soldier and cuts out his heart and liver. "I swear to God we will eat your hearts out, you soldiers of Bashar. You dogs. God is greater!" the man says. "Heroes of Baba Amr ... we will take out their hearts to eat them." He then puts the heart in his mouth and takes a bite. Opinion: Is Obama failing on moral leadership? A group loyal to President Bashar al-Assad posted the...

Syrian Rebel Bites Heart of Dead Soldier: Video BEIRUT (Reuters) - A video of a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a soldier and biting into is emblematic of a civil war that has rapidly descended into sectarian hatred and revenge killings, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. The New York-based group said an amateur video posted on the Internet on Sunday shows Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Farouq Brigade who is well known to journalists as an insurgent from Homs, cutting into the torso of a dead soldier. The video has caused outrage among both...

Federal agents arrested a Saudi Arabian traveler who arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with a pressure cooker, a key component used in the Boston Marathon bombings last month. Hussain Al Kwawahir will be arraigned at 1 p.m. in federal court for allegedly using an altered passport and lying to a Customs and Border Protection Agent about the pressure cooker.

Women on UK university campuses are being discriminated against as more and more events force separate attendance and seating arrangements. ... The events in question have been primarily hosted by Islamic societies on campuses, who often use separate telephone numbers for men and women to book their attendance, and either advertise each individual event as segregated, or have blanket policies enforcing the move. Events with speakers such as Zahir Mahmood, Abu Usamah, Lauren Booth, Hamza Tzortzis and Adnan Rashid have all been segregated.

The Qur'an allows for the owning of sex slaves: ... This is by no means an eccentric or unorthodox view in Islam. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that as they waged jihad warfare against infidels, Muslims would take slaves ... on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality. ... While the savage exploitation of...

Kurt Schlichter notes that conservatives have been vindicated quite often in the past several weeks: Kurt Schlichter @KurtSchlichter Things Conservatives Have Been Proven Right About Lately: ☑ Benghazi; ☑ Pigford;☑ Obamacare; ☑ IRS. Next up: The immigration reform scam. 6:43 PM - 10 May 2013 357 Retweets 90 favorites I suspect that list will grow longer. The common thread in each of these scandals is corruption and a willingness to abuse the expanded powers of big government--while failing to carry out the most basic responsibilities of any government. In Benghazi, Obama a) failed to take action to save American diplomats...

Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who registered on Saturday for next month’s presidential election, is disliked among regime hardliners for criticizing the crackdown that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in 2009. This pragmatic moderate, who in 2011 lost the post of head of the Assembly of Experts that supervises the activities of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never hidden his intense opposition to Ahmadinejad who beat him in the 2005 presidential election. … Rafsanjani—president from 1989 to 1997—is considered to favor rapprochement with the West. He played an important role in the election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami,...

Israelis by a 4-to-1 margin are more confident than Palestinians in how President Obama handles his foreign policy, a poll found. The Pew Research Center poll released Thursday found that 61 percent of Israelis “express confidence in the American president to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” as opposed to 15 percent of Palestinians. … Pluralities in both polities want greater engagement from the president in the peace process. …

Six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, just 25 percent of Americans said Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions. That number has climbed to 42 percent, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. The survey, conducted after the Boston bombings, found that opinions have not changed much as a result of those attacks. In March, 40 percent of Americans said Islam is more violent, 42 percent disagreed.

Israel has no right to exist, a radical Muslim cleric visiting Gaza declared on Thursday, encouraging rocket attacks on the Jewish State. Yusuf al-Qaradawi warned that nobody was allowed to cede “any part of Palestine” during his visit to the Hamas-controlled region, according to AFP. “No one is allowed to give up any part of Palestine,” the Egyptian-born Qardawi said during a meeting with Gaza’s prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and members of the government. Qaradawi, who is a citizen of Qatar and close to the Muslim Brotherhood, was heading of a delegation of 50 clerics from 14 countries. “Palestine was...

WASHINGTON: The problems that plague the Middle East, including Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria's civil war, require "political, not military" solutions, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday. Saying the "old order" was vanishing in the region, Hagel stressed in a speech that the United States would work to promote democratic reform while bearing in mind the "limitations" of American power. Although the Pentagon chief made clear that Washington had not ruled out potential military action against Iran or Syria, his remarks highlighted President Barack Obama's cautious stance on resorting to armed force in the volatile region. He said that...

Pathetic. Last year Barack Obama repeatedly warned that chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime against its own people would be a “game changer.” But since evidence was found that the Assad regime used chemical weapons so far Obama has not acted. Today he blamed Bush for his inaction. “We have evidence that there has been the use of chemical weapons inside Syria. But, I don’t make decisions based on ‘perceived.’ And, I can’t organize coalitions around ‘perceived.’ We tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out well.” It’s Bush’s fault.

More than 1,000 Jordanians have signed a petition opposing the idea of a confederation between the kingdom and a future Palestinian state. The petition also opposes using Jordan as a launching pad for Western military intervention in Syria. … Some Palestinians have also voiced opposition to the confederation idea, saying it should be discussed only after the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. …

First paragraph excerpt: Of all the moral precepts instilled in Buddhist monks the promise not to kill comes first, and the principle of non-violence is arguably more central to Buddhism than any other major religion. So why have monks been using hate speech against Muslims and joining mobs that have left dozens dead?

Aerosmith canceled a show in Indonesia after authorities there said they had foiled a bomb plot targeting the Myanmar Embassy. Concert promoter Ismaya Live cited safety concerns as the reason for the cancellation, but it wasn’t clear if there was a direct connection to the alleged embassy plot. The American rockers were scheduled to perform this coming Saturday for a nearly sold-out crowd of 15,000 in the capital, Jakarta, said Helmi Sugara, event organizer spokesman. …

When Pakistani voters go to the polls later this week, the choice they face includes parties tainted by corruption allegations and those led by politicians appealing to anti-Western sentiment. The man favored to become Pakistan’s next prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, on Saturday called into question the U.S.-backed campaign by the Pakistani military against Taliban insurgents in the country. “I think guns and bullets are always not the answer to such problems,” Sharif, a former two-term prime minister who was overthrown in a 1999 military coup led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told the Reuters wire service. In a separate interview with...

Israel needs to reach peace with the Palestinians to avoid becoming a binational state, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday. He stressed, however, that the core of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians was not territory, but rather a Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel’s legitimacy within any boundaries. Netanyahu’s comments at a meeting with top Foreign Ministry officials came amid signs of revived motion on the Palestinian track. He made similar comments during a meeting later in the day with five US congressmen, giving the impression that he was staking out a pre-negotiation position. “We’re engaged right now in an...

Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood’s epigrammatic founder, was never at a loss for the chilling turn of phrase. His rally cry, the Brotherhood’s signature pledge that “Jihad is our way” and “Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope,” is the soundtrack of the “Arab Spring.” It speaks for a region over two-thirds of whose putative liberty lovers prefer to kill apostates than to abide freedom of conscience. Their embrace of the very sharia chauvinism that ties together Banna, bin Laden, the Saudi royals, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev explodes the Western myth of the moderate Muslim majority. Yet the...

Muslim leaders criticized on Saturday the agenda of the German Islamic Conference taking place next week. They do not want terrorism as a key subject, nor should Islam critics attend, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. They are also unhappy that the entire agenda has been drafted by the interior ministry. The event, which debuted in 2006 with the proposed aim of promoting dialogue between the government and Muslim communities, has witnessed a loss of support over stalled talks and lack of progress. Erol Pürlü of the Association of Islamic Cultural Centres (VIKZ) which says it represents 300 Muslim communities nationwide, told...

A new Pentagon assessment of Iran’s military power maintains that in two years time, Iran could flight-test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the United States, given “sufficient foreign assistance”, is provided to Tehran. The new assessment reiterated a longstanding estimate of the U.S. intelligence community. Iran could test such a missile by 2015 with assistance from nations like North Korea, China or Russia. Pyongyang is already in the process of developing the KN-08, an extended range ballistic missile that can reach the US West Coast. The missile’s range could be extended to provide the missile an intercontinental strike...

Al Jazeera gets exclusive access to Boko Haram terrorists and then complain that self-proclaimed members of this group should either be charged or released by the Nigerian government. For those who don’t know, Boko Haram is a particularly barbaric Jihadist organization. They have made a practice of targeting Christian worshippers on Christian Holy days, such as Easter Sunday and Christmas. We have covered these horrible atrocities from time to time on TTB… http://terrortrendsbulletin.com/2012/04/08/boko-haram-islamikaze-car-bomb-kills-38-christians-outside-easter-service-in-kaduna-nigeria/ Boko Haram has sometimes been described as an Al Qaeda affiliate, but it is actually an independent organization. It may have received forms of support from Al...

Two women have been rescued from a U.S. diplomatic mansion owned by Saudi Arabia amid concerns they were being kept as domestic slaves. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided the villa in McLean, Virginia - which is owned by the Saudi Armed Forces Office and believed to house its defence attaché - on Tuesday night and removed two workers from the Philippines who are suspected to have been the 'victims of domestic servitude'. One woman reportedly tried to flee by squeezing through a gap in the front gate as it was closing.

The Obama administration is quite worried about stereotyping Muslims as violence-prone terrorists. They fear that any acknowledgment that some Muslims commit acts of terror because they are religiously motivated (however twisted the terrorists' interpretation of Islam may be) is to encourage a backlash of intolerance (at best) and violence (at worst) against Muslim Americans. It's not crazy to worry about anti-Muslim violence. There have been vicious attacks on innocent Muslims. Last November, a Queens, N.Y., man was stabbed six times as he stood outside his mosque by an attacker who shouted "F------ Muslim, I'll kill you." In the wake of...

McLean home owned by Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, real estate records say A case of "possible human trafficking" at a Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia is under investigation, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to News4. Homeland Security Special-Agent-in-Charge John Torres, who is leading the probe, said Fairfax County Police responded to a tip Tuesday night citing a possible case of modern slavery. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations were called to a home in the 6000 block of Orris Street in McLean and -- in the words of a source familiar with the investigation -- "rescued" two women....

We saved them from the nazis and latterly helped them get rid of Gaddaffi, and this is what we get?

Hamas Urges Children to 'Martyrdom' CBNNews.com Thursday, April 25, 2013 JERUSALEM, Israel -- A leopard doesn't change its spots, nor does Hamas seem to waiver in its ideology. While seeking reconciliation with Fatah to establish an independent Palestinian state living in peaceful coexistence with Israel, Hamas continues indoctrinating children from an early age to aspire to "martyrdom." All this takes place while simultaneously petitioning the United States and European Union to remove its designation as a terror group. The Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) recently provided a translation of a children's television program aired on the al-Aksa network. It's not...

Prominent Egyptian activist Ahmed Douma was arrested and immediately referred to trial for allegedly insulting the country’s president in a TV interview, a prosecutor said Thursday. Douma is to stand trial on Sunday—less than a week after being arrested. He is the first prominent opposition activist to be tried on charges of insulting Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. There have been a myriad of complaints levied against journalists and TV personalities, including well-known satirist Bassem Youssef, for insulting Morsi. Rights groups say such charges restrict freedom of expression. …

Feds Investigating A Saudi Compound In Virginia For Possible Human Trafficking Rebecca Baird-RembaMay 2, 2013Screenshot via NBC Washington Immigration officials rescued two women from this Saudi-owned home in McLean. Immigration officials are investigating a possible case of human trafficking at a home in McLean, Va., owned by the Saudi government, according to various media sources. Department of Homeland Security agents rescued two women, possible victims of domestic servitude, from a Saudi diplomatic compound early Wednesday morning, a local NBC affiliate reports. One woman tried to escape by "squeezing through a gap in the front gate as it was closing," according...

Federal authorities have launched an investigation into a Saudi Arabian compound in Northern Virginia over suspicions its residents may be engaging in human trafficking. Federal and local police responded to a call from a house in the D.C. suburb of McLean and found “two potential victims of trafficking” who hailed from the Philippines, Raw Story reported. One of the women tried to run. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the investigation could move sluggishly because of complications from diplomatic immunity rules.

For seven minutes, five Dagestan rebels spoke into a video camera about killing infidels and how the “good deeds” they were doing would absolve them of “700 sins” committed during their lifetimes. Filmed by a Canadian jihadist fighter before he was killed by Russian security forces, the video offers a disturbing glimpse of the fanaticism of the rebels who may have inspired Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev does not appear in the footage, which was obtained by the National Post. But it was recorded and narrated by William Plotnikov, a Canadian whose alleged links to Tsarnaev are now under...

A woman kidnapped from Pembroke Pines and driven to a Davie mobile home park avoided being raped by fighting off her attacker and trying to shoot him with his own gun. The 22-year-old woman had been driving west along Pines Boulevard about noon on Tuesday when she was targeted by a man who, police say, would later tell investigators that he decided to kidnap and rape a stranger. Before the afternoon was over, the woman would be driven at gun- and knifepoint 10 miles along two interstates to the mobile home park, where she resisted an attacker who left her...

The February 17th Martyrs Brigade, a Benghazi-based militia with Islamist elements that the State Department hired as a “quick reaction force” (QRF) to protect the department’s mission in Benghazi, warned the State Department that it would not protect the movements of Amb. Chris Stevens when he visited there last September. That warning was relayed to the regional security officer (RSO) at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli—the top security adviser to the ambassador—in an internal State Department email dated Sept. 9, 2012. That was one day before Stevens departed Tripoli for Benghazi—for what was scheduled to be a five-day visit. …

Two Kazakh men and a third man have been arrested by federal authorities in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings, a law enforcement official familar with the case said this morning. The two men, Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, came to America from the Central Asian nation to study at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was also enrolled. The law enforcement official did not release the name of the third person arrested. … The White House and law enforcement authorities have previously suggested that the Tsarnaevs may have acted alone without clear ties to foreign governments...

The former mayor of London took to Press TV, an Iranian state-run network, recently to express his disdain for the Bush White House and his assurance that the Boston Marathon bombings were brought upon the United States because of its injustices abroad.

Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries, but they disagree on what it includes and who should be subject to it, an extensive new survey says. Suicide bombing was mostly rejected In the study by the Washington-based Pew Forum, but it won 40 percent support in the Palestinian territories, 39 percent in Afghanistan, 29 percent in Eygpt and 26 percent in Bangladesh. Three-quarters of respondents said abortion is morally wrong and 80 percent or more rejected homosexuality and sex outside of marriage. Over three-quarters of...

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi says that there will be no further privatization of state-owned companies. … Egypt privatized key companies in the 1990s under Mubarak, but the program stalled in recent years. Critics say the sales were tainted by corruption. …

It seems that migration policies of a leading country in Europe, France, are seriously changing. The country is no longer able to hold back the crowd of migrants, many of whom do not want to integrate into the social and economic life of their new home country. The upcoming radical changes for migrants were announced by French Interior Minister Manuel Valls. After a meeting on the National Immigration and Integration, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls announced significant changes in the countryÂ’s migration policy. The government will reduce financial assistance to immigrants, and this reduction will be substantial. Starting March 1...

Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada rose by 3.7 percent in 2012, and Holocaust denial rose 77 percent, revealed the Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents released by the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada. According to the audit, there were 1,345 anti-Semitic incidents in Canada in 2012, up from 1,297 in 2011. …

It was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: After capturing his second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States citizen.

Egypt’s Islamist-led parliament on Wednesday pushed ahead with a law that could force into retirement many of the nation’s most senior judges, despite an uproar by the judiciary over fears the president’s allies want to control the courts. … The judiciary, with mostly secular-minded professional judges, is seen by many Egyptians as the one of the only remaining buffers against Islamists’ monopoly on power following the ouster of authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Since then, Islamist parties have swept elections and dominated legislative councils and the presidency. President Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood party counters that many judges are holdovers...

It looked like the backlash was starting even before the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were identified as Muslim. Hours after the explosions, a Bangladeshi man told police he was dubbed an “Arab” and beaten in New York. A veiled Muslim woman in a city near Boston said she was struck in the shoulder and called a terrorist. When the public learned days later that the FBI was pursuing two Muslim men of Chechen descent, American Muslims feared the worst. But the worst didn’t happen. Muslim civil rights leaders say the anti-Islam reaction has been more muted this time...

The United Nations has been a “major disappointment” in the 21st Century and has “inverted right and wrong,” human rights scholar and activist Anne Bayefsky tells Arutz Sheva in a special interview. The UN “was founded in the middle of the 20th Century to offer a new world order based on peace and security and protection of human rights, and it has inverted right and wrong so that Israel becomes the villain and the victims become those who are some of the most intolerant people in the region,” said Bayefsky. …