Free Republic

In an authoritative essay published in The Wall Street Journal, Abdurrahman Wahid, the first president of newly democratic Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, described what constitutes "right Islam" as distinct from "wrong Islam." He warned people of good will to recognize that "a terrible danger threatens humanity." This peril, Wahid wrote, emanates from an "extreme and perverse ideology in the minds of fanatics," specifically "Wahhabi/Salafist ideology -- a minority fundamentalist religious cult fueled by [Saudi] petrodollars." The importance of this essay, and the warning in it, comes from the prestige of the author. Abdurrahman Wahid is an Islamic scholar who...

The revulsion of Iranians for the political system that has imprisoned them for three decades was triggered by the disputed results of the June 12 election. Once, however, the opposition took to the streets and the regime spilled blood to intimidate the people, it became transparently clear the revulsion a majority of Iranians are displaying is not over details of the rigged election. It is directed at the bloody-minded theocracy oppressing them, and its overthrow most Iranians want. Those with the misfortune of living inside totalitarian regimes know -- except for their apologists and the delusional lib-left crowd in the...

Nineteen months or seemingly an eternity ago, in March 2007, the Washington Post published a long background piece by Peter Slevin on senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, and the relationship that connected both to Saul Alinsky (1909-72) of Chicago. The life experience Obama brings as his credentials for the White House is of a community organizer in Chicago. Slevin reported Alinsky's disciples hired Obama to "organize black residents on the south side, while learning and applying Alinsky's philosophy of street-level democracy." In 1985 Obama moved to Chicago and there discovered Alinsky through his disciples and writings. It...

In his final State of the Union address on Monday, President George W. Bush spoke again at length about the war on terror, and the strategic importance of a "free Iraq" in securing a beachhead for freedom and democracy in the Arab heart of the Middle East. Bush reminded Americans and others that the free world is "engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century" against those -- the Islamists and their supporters -- opposed to "every principle of humanity and decency" that free people hold dear. Iraq and Afghanistan liberated from the clutches of tyranny will be...

The recent release of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report on Iran's nuclear program has been received by critics of the Bush administration as vindication of their insistence that Iran poses no threat to peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region and beyond. The key judgment -- Tehran halted its nuclear program in the fall of 2003 -- is surrounded by extensive qualifications indicating difficulties in assessing Iranian nuclear intentions, and that the NIE "does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons." In refusing to make such an assumption, the intelligence community does not tell the...

History does not progress in a straight line for people from whichever point they set forth to their desired end. This illusion is served by retrospective view, and then deviations explained as results of people's ignorance or the caprice or duplicity of leaders as those today on the liberal-left -- those on the right in their time displayed the same tendency -- mindlessly repeat the silly phrase "Bush lies and people die." The politics of the Arab Mideast show how improbable is the idea of history's linear progress in the region. More than 500 years of Turkish rule of this...

The upside about the Mideast conference to be hosted by the Bush administration at Annapolis, Md., is the low expectation of all parties for any dramatic breakthrough to bring to an end the Palestinian-Israeli dispute over land and refugees prior to establishing the Palestinian state. The downside is predictable. Failure on the part of the United States to meet the one-sided Palestinian demands -- by leaning on Israel -- without any assurance or evidence that Palestinians cease supporting terrorism, will be grist for terrorists, their supporters and apologists in the region. The plain truth about such Mideast conferences is the...

There comes a point at which diminishing returns on most issues begin to go negative. Such a point in denouncing Islamist terrorism and equally the Muslim majority's silence against this menace was reached sometime ago. As Islamist terrorism, however despicable, became mundane occurrence in the daily news cycle, the deafening silence of Muslims -- except for lonely voices of feeble opposition -- has given credence to growing numbers of non-Muslims that Islam is as much a religion of peace as the Klanmen's politics is an expression of multiculturalism. But there is another side to this abject reality. The Muslim majority's...

Iran's Shiites seek expansion, power By SALIM MANSUR Toronto Sun Saturday, February 3, 2007 Even as Democrats in the U.S. Congress work overtime to manufacture a U.S. defeat in Iraq, and their domestic supporters and well-wishers outside of America cheer them on, there is another devious battle unfolding in the Middle East. The sectarian conflict inside Iraq was ignited with demonic precision by the al-Qaida forces. Their publicly announced purpose was to derail the unfolding democratic process set in motion by elections within a constitutional framework, and wreck the hopes of the Iraqi people for freedom and decent living....

Stay the Course To win the war on terror, we need to be strong. By Salim Mansur The old Brechtian adage, that the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line, is a useful reminder for most observers of American politics to pause and reflect on the situation in post-Saddam Iraq. There has been much doubting recently among those who support President George Bush's bold undertaking in the war on terror about where his policy is now headed after liberating a portion of the Middle East and liberating Iraqis. The reason for such doubting stems from the...

U.S President George Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry will face off in their second election debate tomorrow night. But for Salim Mansur the first debate last week was enough. He's a columnist and a political scientist at the University of Western Ontario in London. On Commentary, he says a Kerry election win would spell victory for terror. Real Audio link: Salim Mansur Audio Transcript Salim Mansur: Once we get past style and engage in content analysis of last Thursday's presidential debate between George Bush and John Kerry, it becomes clear Americans will be voting on distinct alternatives...