Free Republic

The US Department of Defense is sponsoring an essay contest to honor the Saudi King. Here is mine: Dear King, It is sad that you died of natural causes. I had an appointment in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It was cancelled at the last minute. If only you could have been there in my place. How much you could have learned. Or perhaps you could have been a passenger in one of the planes that hit it. No doubt you would have had a first class seat, right at the front of the plane. After all,...

LOS ANGELES — Backstage on Friday night at CBS Studio Center, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro was about 30 minutes from appearing live on the edgy HBO comedy show “Real Time with Bill Maher.” He was cramming for his spot on the show’s panel, reviewing topics with Scott Carter, the show’s executive producer. Castro should expect to talk about the Koch brothers, Mitt Romney, Saudi Arabia. Carter peppered the congressman with questions. Castro, 40, offered one-sentence answers. “Do not feel like you have to be concise for us,” Carter said. “If anything, be expansive.” Another topic Maher might cover: The Iowa...

Islamic history is a pretty unique thing. It’s the story of how everyone hates and conspires against Muslims. Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian state. If the authorities found his views unacceptable, he wouldn’t have been able to preach them. This is mainstream stuff. Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon given by Imam Issa Assiri of the Sa’eed bin Jubair Mosque in Jedda, Saudi Arabia snip While the Imam might seem insane, he’s actually promoting a revisionist form of Islamic Supremacism in which the American Indians and the Australian Aborigines were really Muslims. So was everyone. Which is why they...

Saudi Preacher Fayhan al-Ghamdi Released After Raping and Killing Daughter Because he 'Doubted her Virginity' A Saudi preacher accused of raping, torturing and killing his five-year-old daughter, has reportedly been released from custody after agreeing to pay "blood money". Fayhan al-Ghamdi was sentenced to eight years in prison and 800 lashes in 2013. The court also ordered al-Ghamdi to pay his ex-wife, the girl's mother, one million riyals ($270,000) in "blood money". According to some reports, al-Ghamdi had suspected his daughter had lost her virginity and had tortured her accordingly. Al-Ghamdi's daughter Lama suffered multiple injuries including a crushed skull,...

The debate over Islamic terrorism has shifted so far from reality that it has now become an argument between the administration, which insists that there is nothing Islamic about ISIS, and critics who contend that a minority of Islamic extremists are the ones causing all the problems. But what makes an Islamic radical, extremist? Where is the line between ordinary Muslim practice and its extremist dark side? It can’t be beheading people in public. Saudi Arabia just did that and was praised for its progressiveness by the UN Secretary General, had flags flown at half-staff in the honor of its...

MEMRI January 9 and 16, 2015 Clip No. 4745 Saudi Imam on Paris Attacks: This Is the Only Language Jewish and Christian Infidels Understand (and Muslims Discovered America) For video: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4745.htm Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon given by Imam Issa Assiri of the Sa'eed bin Jubair Mosque in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, which was posted on the Internet on January 9 and 16, 2015:p> Issa Assiri: [The papers that published the cartoons] talked about freedom of speech, but after the French journalists were killed for mocking the Prophet Muhammad in their cartoons, what did the papers have to say?...

... Arsenault and others refuse to believe Cramer, 50, who was found dead in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia on Jan. 15, committed suicide by leaping off the third-floor balcony of his hotel — as family members were originally told by representative of his employer, Kollsman Inc., of Merrimack, and its parent company, Elbit Systems of America. Family members suspect foul play after receiving suspicious text messages from Cramer just minutes before his death. ...

Israel and Hezbollah are at war. On top of everything else that is going on in the world, now we have a new war in the Middle East, and nobody is quite certain what is going to happen next. Israel has been preparing for this moment for more than 8 years. So has Hezbollah. According to some reports, Hezbollah has amassed an arsenal of 50,000 rockets since the end of the Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006. If all-out warfare does erupt, we could potentially see tens of thousands of missiles rain down into an area not too much larger than the...

Well here’s the verdict from the Newspaper of record, it’s another case of much ado about nothing: Michelle Obama Praised for Bold Stand She Didn’t Take in Saudi Arabia. So we’re officially bored with the story now that archival evidence has emerged of not just former Secretaries of State, Madeline Albright and Condoleezza Rice meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia sans headscarf, butt - quelle surprise! – former SOS and president-in-waiting herself:Did you have a question Abdul?My favorite headshot from the archives though has to be Nancy Pelosi from 2007, because you can tell that she’s been recently plastered....

More than 25 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall, Russian lawmakers are mulling a proposal to condemn West Germany’s 1990 “annexation” of East Germany as Moscow’s answer to Western denunciation of its seizure of Crimea. Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of Russian parliament’s lower house, on Wednesday ordered legislators to consider an appeal from a Communist Party deputy to denounce the reunification of Germany as an illegal land grab of East Germany by its western neighbor. The collapse of Socialist rule in East Germany—officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—heralded the end of the Cold War, and was met with jubilation...

ON JAN. 9, the government of Saudi Arabia publicly whipped a liberal Muslim writer, Raif Badawi, flogging him 50 times outside a mosque in Jeddah. It was the first installment of the 1,000 lashes to which Badawi had been sentenced — in addition to 10 years in prison and a fine of more than $250,000 — for the crime of "insulting Islam" on his former website, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum.Two days later, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Saudi ambassador to France joined in the great Paris solidarity march in defense of freedom of expression.Such hypocrisy was more than...

She was just criticized in Saudi Arabia for not wearing a headscarf, but even at home she’s not allowed to say what she wants. First ladies should be more than decorative.It must be very strange to be Michelle Obama. You are intelligent, capable, you have opinions and charisma, and yet you are fundamentally mute—your public utterances are scripted and tightly controlled. You are allowed to talk about broccoli and children’s exercise, and safe, non-inflammatory topics. The only time the public sees the Michelle Obama fire, thrillingly, is when she is on the campaign stump for her husband. Even when scripted...

She didn’t do anything that Laura Bush didn’t do (although Bush did once don a scarf in Jeddah when a group of cancer survivors presented her with one), but as the west’s elite slowly assimilate Islamic norms on blasphemy, affronting the Kingdom by eschewing a scarf feels more transgressive than it used to. I wonder if she’ll be the last FLOTUS to maintain this tradition. If the future must not belong to those who would slander the prophet of Islam, presumably it also shouldn’t belong to women who would offend his inheritors by their immodesty. On Twitter, Saudis used...

Every girl’s life matters to Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett only so long as those lives can be exploited for publicity Are first lady Michelle Obama and her mentor Valerie Jarrett, who is her husband’s senior advisor, complicit in a publicity stunt making it appear that they champion women’s rights? While Michelle Obama seized the spotlight by not wearing a head scarf when meeting with Saudi officials in Riyadh yesterday, Jarrett was sending out this message on Twitter: “Every girl’s life matters. Every woman should be able to go about her day and be safe and treated with respect.” The...

Talk about a fierce frown from FLOTUS! Michelle Obama's disapproving expression while meeting the new leader of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Jan. 27, said it all -- and it's gone viral. The First Lady, 51, was snapped alongside her husband Barack Obama in Riyadh, paying respects to King Salman bin Abdulaziz, the successor of the late King Abdullah, during what was a quick stop in the country for the funeral. As King Salman shook hands with the President, the First Lady was photographed frowning at the royal. At times, she looked rather uncomfortable and annoyed, even, as she and her...

**SNIP** As noted by the Associated Press, Michelle Obama did not wear a headscarf or veil Tuesday. In Saudi Arabia, that's unusual: The country is one of the few on Earth where women are expected to cover their heads, and most Saudi women wear niqabs. Exceptions are made for foreigners, however, and Michelle – who did wear loose clothing that fully covered her arms – appears to have been one of them. In photographs from the official events, other foreign female guests are also shown not wearing headscarves. More than 1,500 tweets using the hashtag #ميشيل_أوباما_سفور (roughly, #Michelle_Obama_immodesty) were sent...

First lady Michelle Obama faced backlash from Twitter users in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for not wearing a head covering during her brief visit there with the president. Obama wore loose-fitting clothes including a long blue jacket and dark pants while accompanying President Barack Obama during their four hours on the ground in Riyadh to offer condolences on the death of King Abdullah and for the president to meet with new King Salman.

Three Words Explain Obama’s Visit To Saudi Arabia: Stability Is King Almost 70 years ago, a fading President Franklin Roosevelt, returning from Yalta, held a historic meeting on board a U.S. destroyer with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama met with King Salman, one of Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud’s sons. Much has changed in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. But the elements that drove FDR and all of his successors to maintain and strengthen those ties—oil and regional stability–are still in place. The United States and Saudi Arabia never shared common values. The arrest and...

First lady Michelle Obama’s face was reportedly blurred by Saudi state television Tuesday as she and the president met with new Saudi King Salman in Riyadh.

Michelle Obama did not look happy today when she had to cut short her visit to India to accompany her husband on a trip to a country where women aren't even allowed to drive cars. The First Lady bowed and beamed as she boarded Air Force One in New Dehli on Tuesday, but by the time she landed in Saudi Arabia a few hours later, she had traded her floral dress for a more conservative long-sleeved jacket and slacks - as well as a new scorned expression. In pictures at the airport and Egra Palace, Mrs Obama pursed her lips...