Free Republic

Shooting has broken out in the southern Russian city of Nalchik, five days after 130 people were killed in clashes between security forces and rebels. Officials said they were in the middle of a fresh operation against militants, who are believed to have Chechen links. There were reports of gunshot in three districts of the city, including close to the morgue where the bodies of dozens of those killed are being held. Residents are being urged to stay in their homes. Parents are also being advised to collect their children from school. Russian media reports say police killed a...

ALARM - men armed in a school with Naltchik VLADIKAVKAZ (Russia) - armed men entered a school of Naltchik, the capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Kabardino-Balkarie, and shootings were heard there, brought back a witness, questioned by telephone by AFP since the republic close to Ossétie of North.

"Wahhabi Prison Fellowship" (The teaching of jihad in American penitentiaries) BY DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-Ross IN AUGUST 31, four men were charged with participation in a terrorist plot hatched in a California prison. The six-count indictment describes a conspiracy to attack military and Jewish targets in the Los Angeles area, including mili­tary bases and recruitment centers, synagogues, the Israeli Consulate, and El Ai airline facilities. It also spodights a problem that has surfaced repeatedly since 9/11: that of jihadist indoctrina­tion in prisons and jails. The roots of this latest alleged con­spiracy reach back to 1997, when Kevin James, an inmate at California...

During Israel’s dramatic eviction of its settlers, it went almost unnoticed that on Aug. 15, armed men in Gaza kidnapped a soundman who worked for a French state television station. I’ll bet you’ve already assumed the kidnappers were Arab Muslims. Shame on you. And yes you’re right, they were. The week before, three foreign workers were kidnapped by members of Fatah, founded by the late Yasser Arafat. “Fatah” means “conquest by means of holy war.” No matter what our political views, we all agree on two things: 1) Israel and the West on the whole follow the norms of civilization;...

During Israel’s dramatic eviction of its settlers, it went almost unnoticed that on Aug. 15, armed men in Gaza kidnapped a soundman who worked for a French state television station. I’ll bet you’ve already assumed the kidnappers were Arab Muslims. Shame on you. And yes you’re right, they were. The week before, three foreign workers were kidnapped by members of Fatah, founded by the late Yasser Arafat. “Fatah” means “conquest by means of holy war.” No matter what our political views, we all agree on two things: 1) Israel and the West on the whole follow the norms of civilization;...

During Israel’s dramatic eviction of its settlers, it went almost unnoticed that on Aug. 15, armed men in Gaza kidnapped a soundman who worked for a French state television station. I’ll bet you’ve already assumed the kidnappers were Arab Muslims. Shame on you. And yes you’re right, they were. The week before, three foreign workers were kidnapped by members of Fatah, founded by the late Yasser Arafat. “Fatah” means “conquest by means of holy war.” No matter what our political views, we all agree on two things: 1) Israel and the West on the whole follow the norms of civilization;...

IN THE FIRST FEW DAYS after the horror in London on July 7, media in Britain and abroad focused considerable attention on "Londonistan"--the local zoo of Islamist agitators, almost entirely Arab, who have made headlines for years with their extremist preaching. Analytical lines, many of them useful, were drawn to al Qaeda and Iraq, but almost nobody looked at domestic Muslim extremism in the United Kingdom. Close observers of the British Islamic community, however, few of whom seem to have been consulted by reporters or the government, had been discussing for months a dramatic increase in radical agitation by Pakistani...

A Saudi woman has defied the country's ban on female drivers to save her husband after he collapsed at the wheel, a Saudi newspaper has reported. The couple were driving from the city of Dammam to Riyadh when the man suffered breathing problems and passed out, the al-Watan newspaper said. His wife grabbed the wheel and drove 15km (10 miles) to a petrol station where he was treated and recovered. The man had reportedly taught his wife to drive during trips to the desert. The kingdom imposes severe restrictions on women, including barring them from voting or going out in...

Is there or isn't there a Saudi megaplot to thwart democracy in the Middle East and spread fundamentalism in its place? Is Lebanon the staging ground for a fundamentalist Sunni restoration in Syria to be orchestrated by the Saudis? 'snip' A few weeks ago in downtown Beirut, and a short distance from Hariri's grave, the espresso-sippers at trendy cafes got the privilege of first-row seating to the spectacle of fellow Lebanese demonstrating for an Islamic state and the imposition of Islamic law. They were Sunnis from the furthermost northern region of Lebanon around Akkar that hugs the Syrian border. Some...

Coverage of Islam : How the press misleads the public about agression in Islam June 2, 2005 MIM: How the press dangerously misleads the public about the true nature of Islam. Coverage of Islamby Marvin Olaskyhttp://www.leaderu.com/popculture/coveringislam.htmlMany newspapers and magazines offered crash courses in the basics of Islam following the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, and WORLD went deeper in a special issue the month after 9/11. Sadly, newspaper presentation of the basics was generally done in the context of stories that advocated the positive, toleration, without coming to grips with the negative, the existence for centuries of a...

The words are chilling, especially to non-Muslim ears. "(We) will pursue this evil force to its own lands, invade its Western heartland and struggle to overcome it until all the world shouts by the name of the Prophet, and the teachings of Islam spread throughout the world." This missive, found in a Houston mosque, was identified by the Washington-based human rights organization Freedom House as an example of Wahhabism, a fundamentalist Muslim philosophy that is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. Outside that country, Wahhabism is often regarded as an extremist interpretation of Islam that calls for the violent defeat...

While Islamist fanatics and ignorant Westerners sow panic over the alleged desecration of a Koran at Guantanamo Bay, no one mentions a startling fact: When it comes to destruction of the Koran, there's no question who the world champion is--the government of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi state religion is the primitive and austere Wahhabi version of Islam, which defines many traditional Islamic practices as idolatrous. Notably, the state bans the importation of Korans published elsewhere. When foreign pilgrims arrive at the Saudi border by the millions for the annual journey to Mecca, what happens to the non-Saudi Korans they are...

MALAPPURAM’S peculiar demography provides perfect cover for groups that seek it. It is one of only two Muslim-majority districts in India, outside Jammu and Kashmir (the other being Murshidabad in West Bengal). Since the early 1990s, fundamentalists appear to have had a concerted plan to win over the community. Kerala Nadvathul Mujahedeen’s leader Ahmed Kutty paints a grim picture: ‘‘The method of the extremists to take control of a mosque is always the same. It begins with a small cell of adepts praying with the others and trying to rally them. If there is not much headway, relentless arguing and...

RIYADH, May 18 (KUNA) -- Security spokesman in the Saudi Ministry of Interior Major General Mansour Al-Turki denied the presence of thousands of Saudi fighters in Iraq. Al-Riyadh daily cited Wednesday Al-Turki denying recent media reports which claim that the majority of fighters in Iraq are Saudis and that their numbers reach around 2500.

The conviction of Ali al-Timimi crystallizes a disease and the medicine needed to cure it. Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - These thoughts emerge from a location I consider among the highest intellectual points of contemporary Islam: from within the walls of the Gazi Husrevbeg Medresa in Sarajevo. It is therefore a message from inside the Islamic umma, or world community, to the umma, and above all to American Muslims. I have written and spoken in the past of Wahhabism, the Saudi state cult, as a cancer within Islam. I have lately perceived a better parallel. Stalinism was once called “the syphilis of...

A new look for President Bush's global war on terrorism sits atop Condoleezza Rice's early to-do list at the State Department. Expect fairly soon some useful new handles on the problem and a more coherent overall strategy to guide the struggle that the bureaucracy abbreviates as GWOT.

Facts are stubborn things - except when you create your own. When I was asked about the "Jenin Massacre" by a Muslim student during an event at Norfolk's Old Dominion this week, it became clear we were coming from two very different perspectives: reality vs. mythology. There was no "Jenin Massacre." Period. The only "massacre" that took place at Jenin was that of the truth. Palestinians, long masters of media manipulation, went by the hundreds to foreign media - whom Israel kept outside of the armed conflict - to claim that over 500 innocents had been slaughtered. The man at...

Americans' Tax Dollars Fund the Wahhabi Lobby March 15, 2005 Americans' Tax Dollars Fund the Wahhabi Lobby In a startling article today, "Federal Money Goes to Controversial Muslim Group," Sherrie Gossett reveals for Accuracy in Media that the Bush administration has sent $50,000 to the Islamic Society of North America, a leading organization in the Wahhabi lobby's American division. Mohamed El-sanousi, director of community outreach and communications for ISNA, told Gossett his organization received grants in 2003 and 2004 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services. The money did not...

Little-known Chechen cleric Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev will take over as interim rebel leader after Aslan Maskhadov's death earlier this week, rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev said Thursday. Analysts said, however, that the announcement was probably an attempt by radical warlord Shamil Basayev to buy time as he figures out his next move. The Federal Security Service announced Tuesday that Maskhadov had been killed that day in a bunker during an FSB sweep in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village near Grozny. Zakayev, who served as Maskhadov's representative and lives in exile in London, called on all rebels to line up behind Sadulayev, a Wahhabi born...

WASHINGTON - The federal indictment of a graduate of a Saudi-backed Islamic school in suburban Virginia for plotting to kill President Bush is the latest example of the school's links to troubling activity, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., charged on Wednesday. Schumer said he is asking Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to explain where the school receives all of its funding, and whether the school may be "a breeding ground for anti-American sentiment - and, possibly even terrorist activities." It has been widely reported the school receives substantial funding from the Saudi kingdom. Schumer...