Free Republic

Syrian Christians hold up a sign begging for others to save Christians in the Middle East. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) Editor's Note: The following was adapted from an address delivered by the Patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church of Antioch to the 134th Convention of the Knights of Columbus. __________ On the night of August 6-7, 2014, one hundred fifty thousand people—some 40 percent of all Christians still living in Iraq—were driven from their ancestral communities. They had nowhere to flee except nearby Kurdistan. Two years have passed since that catastrophic eradication, and still there is no real solution. In Mosul...

SNIPPET: "The Ottawa Muslim Women's Organization (OMWO) holds its 12th Annual Festival of Friendship Dinner Sunday evening." SNIPPET: "The keynote speaker will be Dr. Ingrid Mattson, Chair in Islamic Studies at Huron University College in London, Ontario, an institutional affiliate of the University of Western Ontario. Mattson, a convert from Christianity to Islam, was president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The United States government designated ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful Holy Land Foundation terror-funding prosecution. ISNA is included in a key Muslim Brotherhood document as one of the "organizations of our friends." Other evidence abounds...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in many parts of the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for probation violations in an unrelated matter, then issued a provocative statement through his attorney. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain between lawyers for Mark Bassely Youssef and federal prosecutors. Youssef admitted in open court that he had used several false names in violation of his probation order and obtained a driver's license under a false name. He was on probation for a bank fraud case....

With eyes on New York, it’s easy to overlook the other ground-zero mosque that is presently being built in Shanksville Pennsylvania at the Flight 93 crash site. That 9/11 site is home to what will soon be the world’s largest open-air mosque disguised as a memorial, contends author Alec Rawls. After five years of insignificant media coverage and minimal public awareness, construction of the Flight 93 Memorial centerpiece is already in progress. The giant half-mile wide Islamic-shaped red crescent of maple trees is slated for completion next year on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when the autumn leaves of the...

Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, by Caroline Fourest; foreword by Denis MacShane (Encounter Books, 262 pp., $23.95) In the 1990s, Western liberals, alarmed at the presence of Islamic fundamentalists in their midst, turned in desperation to Muslims whom they dubbed “reformers” or “modernizers.” They hoped that these figures would have a moderating influence on disaffected Muslim youths who refused to integrate into Western society. One such “reformer” is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born academic. Ramadan has won the confidence of many in the West, including the British government, which asked him to serve on its task force for...

You would be excused for thinking that the Wahabbi religious establishment of Saudi Arabia and the religion guarantees of our First Amendment have no more in common than fire and water. But I think this oddest of odd couples helps to explain two recent events involving American Muslims and the rest of us -- instances of so-called “home-grown” Islamist terrorism, such as the Fort Hood murders, and the resentment being reported among American Muslims at FBI and other law-enforcement-agency activities at U.S. mosques. To be sure, the religious values the First Amendment protects -- freedom of worship, the nonestablishment of...

Thomas Lippman Washington Post November 25. 2007 The subtitle of Yaroslav Trofimov's fascinating and important book about the 1979 takeover of the Great Mosque in Mecca by heavily armed fanatics refers to that event as "the forgotten uprising." Perhaps it has been forgotten here but not in the Muslim Middle East, where it was a seminal event of the region's most traumatic year in modern times. That year began with the Iranian revolution and ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In between, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, radicalizing the Palestinians. Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq. And...

Saudis defend punishment for rape victim RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Saudi judiciary on Tuesday defended a court verdict that sentenced a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape to six months in jail and 200 lashes because she was with an unrelated male when they were attacked. The Shiite Muslim woman had initially been sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicted of violating Saudi Arabia's rigid Islamic law requiring segregation of the sexes. But in considering her appeal of the verdict, the Saudi General Court increased the punishment. It also roughly doubled prison sentences for the seven men convicted of...

Money quotes -- Nidal Na'isa on why 89.6% of the voters voted for the Islamic platform over the modern Western platform: "these voter are a bunch of people misled and numbed by the proselytized, generalized, deceptive, romanticized discourse which promises them Black-eyed virgins and Boys in Paradise" and "If these voters had managed to get a job and Visa to America, none of them would have voted, and nobody would have watched your show. You would be fired from Al-Jazeera and would be left jobless" Response by toothless Egyptian cleric Al-Khouli: When they [Wahabbist Bedouins] entered Andalusia they got Europe...

Saudi executes Egyptian for practising "witchcraft" Fri 2 Nov 2007, 19:44 GMT RIYADH, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia executed on Friday an Egyptian man convicted of "sorcery", desecrating the Muslim holy book and adultery, the official news agency said. The Saudi Press Agency said Mustafa Ibrahim was put to death in Riyadh in a controversial case which has drawn criticism from rights activists. It said Ibrahim had been accused by another foreign resident of practicing magic in order to separate him from his wife and said evidence had been found in his home, including books on black magic, a...

Britons Protest Visiting Saudi King Britain's Queen Welcomes Saudi King; Protesters Condemn Rights Abuses In Kingdom LONDON, Oct. 30, 2007 ---------------------------------------------------- (AP) Queen Elizabeth II welcomed Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Tuesday with an honor guard and rode with him to Buckingham Palace in her gilded carriage, passing protesters who condemned the oil-rich kingdom for alleged human rights abuses. Before arriving Monday for the first state visit by a Saudi king in two decades, Abdullah accused Britain of failing to act on intelligence that might have prevented the 2005 London transit bombings. Analysts said the comments appeared to be an attempt...

Books advocating oppression of women, gays' execution found in British mosques From our ANI Correspondent London, Oct 30: Hate-filled books and pamphlets advocating oppression of women and execution of gays have been distributed in British mosques. Such radical literature was found by researchers at a quarter of the 100 Islamic religious institutions they visited in the country. According to them, much of the literature is linked to agencies of the Saudi Arabian government. The material found in the mosques urges Muslims to lead separate lives from 'non-believers' and makes repeated calls for gays to be killed. It outlines that women...

How a British jihadi saw the light Ed Hussain, once a proponent of radical Islam in London, tells how his time as a teacher in Saudi Arabia led him to turn against extremism Racism was an integral part of Saudi society. My students often used the word “nigger” to describe black people. Even dark-skinned Arabs were considered inferior to their lighter-skinned cousins. I was living in the world’s most avowedly Muslim country, yet I found it anything but. I was appalled by the imposition of Wahhabism in the public realm, something I had implicitly sought as an Islamist.

How will we lose the war against "radical Islam"? Well, it won't be in a tank battle. Or in the Sunni Triangle or the caves of Bora Bora. It won't be because terrorists fly three jets into the Oval Office, Buckingham Palace and the Basilica of St Peter's on the same Tuesday morning. The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who's behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30...

[Islamic virus] Wahhabism: from Vienna to Bosnia http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=17462 Image: ISN Local media reports trace the financial and ideological center of Bosnia's radical Wahhabi movement to Vienna, while the moderate Islamic community prepares for an intensifying battle of influence. By Anes Alic in Sarajevo for ISN Security Watch (06/04/07) Only the funeral of former Bosnian Muslim leader and wartime Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic went down with a bigger crowd and more security than that last weekend of Jusuf Barcic, the informal leader of Bosnia’s radical Muslims of the Wahhabi movement. More than 3,000 Wahhabis arrived in the northern city of Tuzla...

After only being a U.S. Senator for a couple of years, Barak Hussein Obama, Democrat Senator from Chicago, has managed to catapult himself to the status of a messiah in the Democrat Party. The result is that, ever since, he's been walking on water toward the White House. Obama says after his visit with friends and family in Hawaii during the 2006 year-end holidays, he'll announce if he's going to run for president in 2008. Bets are that he will. Who is Obama and what has he done? Independent columnist, Andy Martin (Out2.com) says he believes Obama is a political...

Over the last week, several items in the world news have highlighted the problem of Saudi Arabia, a supposed ally in the War on Terror, funding mosques which promote the same extremism and calls for jihad which create terror. There is a certain hypocrisy about the Saudis exporting any form of Islam abroad, as the undemocratic kingdom prohibits any symbols of other faiths from being imported. Crucifixes, Bibles are forbidden. Guest workers proliferate in the kingdom, but if any of these attempt to hold Christian prayer and worship, they are jailed. Saudi Arabia is listed by the US Commission on...

NPR : Saudi Textbooks Still Teach Hate, Group Says - the textbooks instruct students that Christians and Jews are apes and pigs, and warns students not to greet, befriend, or respect non-Muslims ...

The recent brouhaha surrounding Pope Benedict XVI comments on Islam delivered in Germany should give Muslims a pause. Not one that would conjure the recalcitrant attacks that we have seen recently but rather one that would question why such a prominent religious leader would utter these words. What the Pope said allows me, as a Muslim, to ponder self-examination and not rush into a reaction of condemnation. Islam, throughout its history, delivered its share of great minds to humanity during times of peace and prosperity. Scientists like Mohammad al-Khawarizmi who invented Algebra and Avicenna who contributed greatly to medicine lived...

According to a posting on a message board populated largely by European lefties,;....." I just spoke to my brother in Copenhagen...the situation is extremely serious...Roving bands of muslims are using SMS messages to gather at different places and then to attack defenseless Danes...My brother witnessed them stopping a bus and beating up the driver...He, ( the brother) was walking next to a lefty who's comment was; "I never ever thought I would agree with the Danish Front...( a Danish neo-nazi group)...