Free Republic

The case of a Muslim pupil refusing to remove her niqab triggered debate in Lower Saxony. Now a new law may mean that full-face Islamic veils will no longer be allowed in state schools. The state of Lower Saxony is expected to announce a ban on face veils such as burqas and niqabs in schools in August, following a unanimous decision by the state parliament on Thursday to amend current education policies, reports the Branschweiger Zeitung. A niqab covers the whole body except for a slit for the eyes, whereas a burqa fully covers the body including the eyes. The...

It comes after a different group earlier said it was also offering a $10,000 reward. The blast occurred around 5 a.m. Saturday at the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington. Police say there were no injuries. The FBI is leading an investigation into the explosion. CAIR's local chapter says its national office is urging Islamic centers and mosques to step up security.

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini participated in the swearing-in ceremony of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. This will be 68-year-old Rouhani’s second term as president. […] In his speech to Iran’s parliament, Rouhani said his country will not be the first to violate the nuclear deal, but will also not stand by the deal if other countries violate it. […] In a pre-ceremony meeting with Mogherini, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Khonsari said the EU must remain alert to Trump’s efforts to “undermine the deal and blame Iran.” In her response, Mogherini promised that the EU...

It’s not a coincidence that national security adviser H.R. McMaster has chosen to eliminate the pro-Israel voices at the National Security Council, three West Wing and defense officials (who chose to speak on background for diplomatic sensitivity reasons) told Conservative Review. In interviews with several current and former members of President Trump’s inner circle, a profile of McMaster has emerged as a man fiercely opposed to strengthening the U.S. alliance with the Jewish state. On Wednesday, American-born Israeli journalist Caroline Glick detailed explosive allegations concerning McMaster’s views on Israel. Glick is a well-known pro-Israel columnist and has established connections with...

Dozens of right-wing demonstrators associated with the Lehava anti-assimilation organization gathered in the capital Thursday to protest the Jerusalem gay parade now underway. The demonstration was led Lehava chief Bentzi Gopstein, attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Hevron activist and 2015 Yahad candidate Baruch Marzel. “You have no reason to [march] here,” Gopstein told parade participants. “You cannot have a [gay] pride march in the Land of Israel. If you have a problem, we will help you; we will treat you. This is not pride; it is an abomination.” Gopstein claimed the parade offended residents, and said the marchers would not have...

The island country of Cape Verde announced on Wednesday that it will no longer be voting against Israel in the United Nations. The decision came following a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Cape Verde’s President Jorge Carlos Fonseca, who then instructed his envoy at the UN that the island in West Africa would no longer be voting against Israel. Netanyahu welcomed the decision on Wednesday evening. …

The European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday blocked Germany’s planned deportation of a Russian 18-year-old, who had been deemed a potentially “dangerous” Islamist. The young man had already been on the way to Frankfurt airport on Tuesday when the court decision was made, forcing the driver to turn around, according to media reports. The European court’s ruling to block the deportation was not a final decision on the case itself, but rather was a way to ensure that the procedure would run properly as the court begins to consider the case, explained a court spokeswoman. Germany’s own Constitutional Court...

From August, a train station in Berlin will be the testing ground for surveillance cameras with biometric face recognition capability. Here is an overview of the most important information and a look at the controversy. The test phase will take place at Berlin’s Südkreuz train station. It will include only selected participants and be conducted by the German federal police, Federal Criminal Police Office and the Interior Ministry in conjunction with Deutsche Bahn, the station operator. […] For the test phase, three specialized cameras have been installed that will film a particular entrance and an escalator leading to the station...

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday met with a delegation of Hamas officials in his offices in Ramallah, Yediot Aharonot reported. Heading the Hamas delegation was former minister Nasser al-Din al-Shaer, the report said. The rare meeting dealt with inter-Palestinian reconciliation efforts. Hamas officials also congratulated Abbas on his handling of the Temple Mount crisis. The meeting is surprising given the longstanding feud between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah, which began in 2007, when Hamas violently took control of Gaza in a bloody coup. …

The number of people in Germany who come from immigrant parents or are immigrants themselves has reached a new high of 18.6 million. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) released a report on Tuesday showing that the number of people in Germany coming from an immigrant background increased by 8.5 percent between 2015 and 2016, reaching about 18.6 million people. The increase of nearly 9 percent was a record high itself since 2005 when such figures were first recorded, as was the size of the population. And that means more than one in five (22.5 percent) people in Germany are either...

A new survey ahead of the national election in September shows Germans are more concerned about the future state of the environment than they are about more headline-grabbing topics like terrorism or the refugee crisis. The survey released on Tuesday, conducted by research group Kantar Emnid Institute on behalf of publishing group Funke Mediengruppe, found that 71 percent of respondents said they were most personally concerned about climate change. This worry ranked higher than the possibility of new wars, listed by 65 percent of survey participants, and also above terror attacks, listed by 63 percent. Crime was noted as a...

29 years ago this fortnight, Pakistan's dictator -- the general who made jihad an integral part of Pakistani State policy -- died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a case of exploding mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else? Kallol Bhattacherjee delves into the persistent puzzle of Muhammad Zia-ul Haq's death. IMAGE: General Zia-ul Haq...

Minneapolis, MN – Raymond Dehn, candidate for Minneapolis mayor, is proposing police officers leave their guns in their cars, but says it’s okay for them to have nightsticks or pepper spray. Raymond Dehn, who is also a State Representative, is running against current mayor Betsy Hodges in this fall’s election, according to Fox9. He said, “Officers don’t need to carry guns on their person all the time…I’m not saying they don’t have access to that, just like they have access to more lethal weapons in their cars, I would believe they would still have access to their guns in their...

France’s highest administrative court on Monday rejected the government’s appeal against an order to provide water and sanitation facilities for hundreds of migrants sleeping rough in the northern port of Calais. In a written decision seen by AFP, the Council of State said the state’s failure to provide for the migrants’ basic needs “exposed them to inhuman and degrading treatment, dealing a serious and clearly illegal blow to a basic right.” […] The court upheld a June 26 order by a court in the northern city of Lille for the state to supply the migrants with running water, toilets and...

France’s first center for deradicalization is set to close after less than a year, the government announced on Friday. The Pontourney center in central France was inaugurated in September 2016 with the aim of working with young people to convince them to turn their backs on extremism. Officially labeled a center for “Reintegration and Citizenship”, it was targeted at 18-30-year-olds who had been exposed to radical ideologies, but the Interior Ministry said on Friday that “the experiment has not been conclusive” and that the center would be permanently closed. The center had capacity for up to 25 people, who were...

The European Union on Wednesday moved ahead with legal action against Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic for refusing to comply with a controversial E.U. scheme to redistribute refugees and migrants for resettlement across the bloc. Hungary’s conservative government has labeled it the “George Soros plan” after the Hungarian-American financier who last year pledged to invest $500 million in support of European migrant resettlement. The E.U.’s executive Commission announced it was moving to the next stage of its “infringement procedure” — the three eastern European countries have a month to respond to a formal request to comply and if their...

A rights group has accused French police of using pepper spray on migrants in Calais on a regular basis but authorities deny the claims. French police are regularly using pepper spray against migrants in Calais, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Wednesday, an accusation denied by authorities. In a report entitled “Like living in hell”, the use of pepper spray against migrants massed in the northern coastal city is described as “routine”. “Police use of pepper spray in Calais is so common that many asylum seekers and migrants had difficulty recalling precisely how many times they had been sprayed,” the report...

The European Court of Justice ruled Wednesday morning that the Gaza based Hamas organization would remain on the EU’s group of terrorist groups. …

Imam Ammar Shahin of the Islamic Center of Davis in California delivered a sermon on Friday in which he quoted an antisemitic hadith and prayed for Allah to “annihilate” Jews “down to the very last one.” The video of Shahin’s sermon was posted to the Islamic Center of Davis’s YouTube channel on Friday (Update: the video has since been removed), and translated and excerpted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), though portions of the sermon were delivered in English. In his sermon at the Islamic Center, Shahin quoted, in Arabic, one of the most notorious antisemitic hadiths (teachings...

Police have raised concern after groups of youths aged under 15 — one thought to be as young as nine — were caught robbing or trying to rob people in Stockholm last night. A reveler reported being robbed of their mobile phone at a bar in the popular Södermalm district of Stockholm at around 2 am on Monday, getting hit in the face when trying to get their phone back. The victim did not need an ambulance, said police. The suspects, two young boys, ran off but were caught by police. An hour later, youths on a bike tried to...