Free Republic

The Iraqi Security Forces, supported by several Iranian-backed Shiite militias and Sunni tribal fighters, have launched an offensive to retake Tikrit from the Islamic State... Massive columns of Shiite militas, including some groups that are listed by the US as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, have been leading the fight in Tikrit. The operation, which involves more than thirty thousand Iraqi security personnel and militia forces, started on the morning of March 2. According to Al Jazeera, Iraqi forces and allied militias attacked the city from three sides while Iraqi aviation launched an aerial bombardment.

We know Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. He has said he'll stand with the Muslims with things get ugly in his book. He has said the future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet Mohammed. He has said Muslims built America. He has threatened to shoot down Israeli jets. He has given the Muslim "one finger in the air" sign last summer. Obama has justified ISIS actions by saying "The Crusades" just as ISIS has done in many videos. He has a ring that says there is no God but Allah. But what kind of Muslim is...

Three attackers with grenades, Kalashnikovs and explosive suicide vests struck at the Imamia mosque in Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan's restive northwest, around the time of the main Friday prayers. The attack comes two weeks after a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan killed 61 people ... violence has been on the rise in Pakistan in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shiite Muslims, who make up around a fifth of the population. The suicide bombing at a mosque in southern Sindh province on January 30 was the deadliest...

Last summer, the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept from Syria into northern Iraq, routing Iraqi security forces and seizing the city of Mosul. Soon afterward, the group declared the establishment of a dubious "caliphate" in the area it controls and rebranded itself the Islamic State. With Iraq's army weakened and radical militants advancing on Baghdad, the country's Iran-backed Shia militias — which have their own history of sectarian abuses — fought back, halting the Islamic State's progress. The militias have successfully combated Islamic State fighters on the ground with the assistance of air...

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

Fahad Qureshi, who founded Islam Net and is considered an Islamic leader in Norway, told a large group of Sunni Muslims that, contrary to media claims that it is only “radicals” and “extremists” who support barbaric punishments for those who violate sharia, regular Muslims support such things, including the “death penalty for homosexuals” and “stoning for adultery.” Fahad Qureshi, who founded Islam Net and is considered an Islamic leader in Norway, told a large group of Sunni Muslims that, contrary to media claims that it is only “radicals” and “extremists” who support barbaric punishments for those who violate sharia, regular...

Translation of part of article (para 2) "Meanwhile, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious center for Sunni teaching, has asked for the killing and Crucifixion of ISIS terrorists, expressing disdain for the barbaric murder of the Jordanian pilot. In a very tough statement broadcast after the video in which Maaz al-Kassasbeh is seen burned alive, the religious authority has asked for, 'The killing, the crucifixion and the mutilation of the ISIS terrorists' "

NORFOLK Ayaan Hirsi Ali stood before a slide of the caged Jordanian pilot about to be set afire by Islamic State group extremists. That, she said at Chrysler Hall on Tuesday night, will be the norm if they are not defeated. "You are going to see people beheaded, their hands and legs cut off, the mass enslavement of women," warned Hirsi Ali, a sharp critic of Muslim leaders and radicals and an advocate of women's rights. "We have had over a long period of time... even before the Reagan administration, so many warning signs that we have ignored," Hirsi Ali...

When Hasan Erol and other parents learned that their children’s school would be converted to specialise in Islamic education, they hit the streets. Yeşilbahar Middle School is among five in Istanbul’s staunchly secular district of Kadıköy to have been earmarked for conversion into imam-hatips, religious schools in which 20% to one-third of hours are dedicated to Sunni Islamic study. “They want to transform this area into something else,” says Erol, whose 13-year-old son goes to the school. “They want to make it more conservative by bringing imam-hatips here.” Yeşilbahar was spared. Authorities relented in the face of protests and a...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

Two hooded gunmen opened fire at a man in a kebab restaurant at one of Malmö’s largest shopping centres on Saturday afternoon, in full view of several families and their children. Their victim, thought to be Ashkan Moayed Abedi, a member of the Wolfpack Brotherhood criminal gang, escaped into the carpark where he was then gunned down in front of shocked shoppers. He died later in hospital. “They fired perhaps ten or twelve shots," ... Abedi, 30, was a key player in the gang war which took place in Sweden's third largest city between 2007 and 2011, leaving at least...

Sanaa - A Shiite militia on Sunday set a three-day deadline for political parties to resolve the power vacuum in Yemen since the president and prime minister offered to resign last month. The Huthis and their allies urged parties "to reach a solution and fill the vacuum" within three days or "the revolutionary leadership" would "take care of the situation of the state". ... The militia, which overran Sanaa in September, seized the presidential palace and key government buildings on January 20, plunging the country deeper into crisis and prompting President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and his premier to tender their...

the split began during a power struggle of who would lead Islam after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD. A conflict developed between those who wanted the growing religion headed by qualified leaders and those who believed authority belonged to the direct heirs of Mohammed. The Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, ruled as caliph for five years before being assassinated. His sons, Hassan and Hussein, were excluded from the succession and both were later killed. Their adherents evolved into the Shia, whose name derives from the term shi’atu Ali, Arabic for “partisans of Ali,”... Shia devotees would see the...

the seizures came after clashes broke out Thursday night in the eastern city of Marib between tribesmen and army troops. They say the tribesmen suspected that the soldiers were heading to join the Shiite rebels who have been gathering outside of Marib for several weeks ... The Shiite rebels known as the Houthis are backed by ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh. They have overrun the capital and other cities in a power grab that has plunged Yemen into turmoil. ... Sunni al-Qaida has recently intensified its attacks against the expansionist Shiite Houthis, especially in Yemen's predominantly Sunni central region.

Interpol (The International Criminal Police Organization) has requested the arrest of the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and global Sunni Islamist diaspora, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whose radical past includes praising suicide bombers against innocents as martyrs and describing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as Allah’s gift to the world. Interpol is charging the terror Sheikh with agreement, incitement, and assistance to commit premeditated murder, facilitating a prison escape, arson, vandalism, and theft. Qaradawi has been known to espouse horrifically anti-Semitic sentiments, often praising figures such as Adolf Hitler and his Holocaust of 6-million Jews. “he managed to put them [Jews]...

The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60 percent compared to the previous year – from 11,133 to 17,958 – with four Sunni Muslim extremist groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities, according to a comprehensive annual study. Eighty-two percent of fatalities occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, although the number of countries that experienced more than 50 terror-related deaths also rose – to 24, compared with 15 the previous year. ... Four Sunni groups were responsible for 66 percent of all terror fatalities in 2013. In order of...

The vengeance that Iraq's Shiite militias mete out as they fight the Islamic State group can be just as brutal as that of their sworn sectarian enemies. In a grisly video recently posted online, a Shiite fighter shouts the name of a revered imam in victory as he poses beside decapitated bodies. Another militiaman sits nearby, grinning as he maims a corpse. One bearded militiaman explains the bodies are those of fighters who "killed our comrades." Another man shouts, "Our fighters were good guys. These are dogs."

Is the Middle East becoming less Arab? Hisham Melhem Saturday, 8 November 2014 President Obama’s letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which he laid out the foundation of a new relationship emanating from a nuclear compromise, and stressed shared U.S.-Iranian interests in combatting the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is emblematic of a gradual and subtle shift in Washington’s attitudes towards the region in general and its Arab actors in particular. In this rapidly changing Middle East, the U.S. sees a diminishing Arab influence brought about by the erosion of the state system, lack...

Bill Maher has been banned from Berkley due to his Islamaphobic beliefs. He’s been in the hot seat for weeks now because he dared to imply there may be an innate streak of violence within Islam that has nothing to do with our foreign policy. This is blasphemy among the left; they are happy to sacrifice one of their own to the Gods of political correctness if he strays from the path. The “Why they hate us” meme is the myth that will not die. Suicidal maniacs are portrayed by both sides of the American political spectrum as rational adults...

JURF AL-SAKHAR, Iraq - After helping government forces break Islamic State's grip over a strategic town just south of Baghdad on Saturday, Shi'ite militias decided it was time for payback ... As the angry crowd of militiamen around the unarmed militants swelled, shots rang out. The three men lay soaked in blood in the dirt with gunshot wounds to the head. "Those dogs are Chechens. They don't deserve to stay alive. We took confessions from them and we don't need them anymore," said one of the Shi'ite militiamen. The victory could allow Iraqi forces to prevent the Sunni insurgents from...