Free Republic

Thirteen-year-old Fadel Hasan has memorized the entire roster of his favorite football team, the Minnesota Vikings. He usually has an opinion about draft picks and trades that he doesn’t hesitate to share, his dad says. Now, the youngster is using his memorization skills to learn and recite every word of the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book. He is one of a dozen Muslim boys who have left conventional junior and senior high schools for a period of time to attend the intensive Qur’an school Darul Arqam Center For Excellence in Blaine. The parents who founded the Qur’an school say it...

The rural Nevada showdown between federal government officials and militia members protecting rancher Cliven Bundy has evolved into a battle of government “tyranny,” with many newly arriving militiamen rolling in to draw a line in the dirt about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. ... “This is a better education than being in school! I’m glad I brought you. I’m a good mom,” Ilona Ence, a 49-year-old mother from St. George and Bundy relative who brought her four teenage children to the ranch, told the Las Vegas Sun. “They’re learning about the Constitution.” Ence’s teenage sons posted up a sign...

A 6-year-old got the birthday surprise of a lifetime when he found out he would be a Navy SEAL for a day. Mason Rudder has already endured 10 surgeries for a rare genetic disorder that affects his range of motion, but that hasn’t stopped him from dreaming of becoming an elite Navy SEAL one day. Navy SEAL Jared Ogden spent a day training Mason. They went through demolition and sniper training, and during their lunch break, Mason led the SEALs on a mission.

Moscow (AFP) - Russia Saturday dismissed as a "low blow" claims that Moscow had failed to provide intelligence over one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, blaming anti-Russian sentiment in Washington over Ukraine. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Russia declined requests from the FBI for information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a gun battle with police after a four-day manhunt following the bombing. Citing a review of how American intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have thwarted the bombing, the Times said Russia shared additional information on Tsarnaev only after the attack. "They found that...

The daughter of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is claiming that she is “certain” that the televised footage showing the ousted leader in prison is not of her father, Al Arabiya reports. According to the report, the daughter Alshymaa shared two pictures of Morsi on her Facebook page, one while he was president and the other of him during his trial. She claimed in a comment that the one in prison does not resemble her father. …

Each side in the Syrian conflict blamed the other Saturday for an alleged poison gas attack that reportedly injured scores of civilians in the central province of Hama. There was no independent confirmation of a chemical strike, which reportedly hit the village of Kfar Zeita, an agricultural center northwest of the provincial capital, Hama. Fierce clashes between rebel and loyalist forces have been reported in the area. Various pro-opposition accounts said a government air raid Friday in Kfar Zeita included bombardment with an unspecified chemical agent, causing choking and suffocation among scores of residents. But state-run television said Al Qaeda-affiliated...

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Staff Sgt. Shannon Hutto thought his bomb sniffing dog Eddie was just being lazy when he wouldn’t move from a certain spot one hot day in Afghanistan in 2012. But Hutto then saw what Eddie smelled: a homemade bomb, partially buried in the dirt. It was six inches from Hutto’s foot.

Protesters gathered at the site of a Hillary Clinton event in San Diego. The group included Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith who was one of four Americans killed in a terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Smith says she holds Clinton accountable for what happened to her son. "They abandoned my son," she said. "And that's exactly what it was, an abandonment. They abandoned the guys on the roof top also. Please everybody, don't let Hillary be president. Don't let Hillary be president, whatever you do!"

(Reuters) - Iranian-American Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine whose previous death sentence in Iran on espionage charges was overturned, has been secretly retried, convicted of collaborating with the U.S. government and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the New York Times reported on Friday, quoting his lawyer. The newspaper quoted lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei as saying Hekmati, held since 2011, was not told by Iranian officials about the retrial, conviction or prison sentence. The Times quoted Tabatabaei as saying Hekmati was retried by a revolutionary court in December and convicted of "practical collaboration with the American government." :snip: The...

Boston Marathon bombing survivor Adrianne Haslet-Davis allegedly walked out of the set of Meet the Press with David Gregory. A survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing stormed off the set of NBC’s Meet the Press in tears on Friday after being asked to comment on Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev — after she was allegedly promised their names would not be mentioned. Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a dancer who lost part of one leg during the attack, tweeted after the taping: I feel so disrespected @meetthepress I asked politely yesterday and you said yes. Now you choose to use the name instead.

For better or worse, ours is today a warlike nation that depends on volunteers to fill the ranks of its armed forces. Young men and women have a variety of motives for signing up. No doubt some do so for high-minded, even idealistic reasons. For many, however, more pragmatic considerations figure: a job with salary and benefits, a chance to escape from a humdrum or dispiriting existence. In all likelihood, few volunteers know what they are getting into, particularly in wartime. Fully disclosing what service in a distant war zone might entail is not a high priority for recruiters trying...

Al Jazeera America, which launched last August with nearly 850 employees and 12 news bureaus in the United States, has laid off dozens of employees as part of restructuring. The channel is disbanding its sports unit and scaling back its social-media-driven show The Stream from a daily show to a once-a-week program. our editor recommends Al Jazeera America: Can Oil Money Buy Relevance for the Controversial Network? CNN's Jeff Zucker: Larry King/Piers Morgan-Style Interview Shows 'No Longer Viable' MSNBC Host Ed Schultz Must Again Face Partnership Lawsuit Inside Roger Ailes' Fox News Suite (Photos) CNN Announces Primetime Lineup, New Shows...

April 11, 2014, 01:06 pm Obama denies visa to Iran diplomat By Justin Sink The White House said Friday it would not issue a visa to Iran's next ambassador to the United Nations, who has ties to the Iranian hostage crisis. “We have informed the United Nations and Iran that we will not issue a visa to Mr. Hamid Abutalebi,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. Abutalebi has admitted that he worked as a translator and negotiator for the student group that held Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 444 days. "We’ve confirmed what we’ve conveyed....

Oberlin College professor Eunjung An sued her employer last month, alleging that Oberlin failed to protect her from Ali Yedes, a fellow French Department professor whom An alleges has harassed her and threatened her life. ... According to Prof. An, Prof. Yedes — who also serves as the faculty adviser of Oberlin’s Muslim Students Association (MSA) and as a “religious life affiliate” for the Islamic Center of Cleveland (ICC) — has “engaged in a pattern of severe or pervasive unwelcome harassment directed at Plaintiff and other female employees at Oberlin” since January 2006. An alleges that last August, Yedes told...

The White House announced today that it would refuse to issue a visa to Hamid Aboutalebi, the Iranian envoy to the United Nations, over his connection to the 1979 hostage crisis in Tehran. Aboutalebi belonged to the “student group” who seized Americans from the US embassy despite having diplomatic immunity, and the Iranian government held them captive for 444 days:

“You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere…” - ​​​​​​Fethullah Gulen Later this month, organizations affiliated with the Turkish-based Gulenist Islamist movement will hold a reception lobbying Louisiana’s lawmakers. Why would a Turkish-based Islamist movement seek to lobby lawmakers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA? For the same reason they have conducted similar influence operations in almost every state capitol...

When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber? After some hesi­ta­tion, the military briefers answered with three letters: FBI. The wounded agent in Iraq was Jay Tabb, a longtime member of the...

Minneapolis is a hub for Somali Muslims, so much so that they have taken to politics to "get a seat at the table." It's not too hard to get in, because the powers that be have already kowtowed to Sharia. Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges took sharia submission a step further, in donning a full hijab when meeting with Somali Muslims. Was this to appeal to a lobby that is growing in power and prominence? It's likely, but she also importantly positions herself to fill in her city staff. Any bets on who will fill one of these positions? Wearing a...

Balaclava-clad far-right paramilitaries fire into the air at the funeral in Ukraine of an anti-government protestor. This is not a tribute to a fellow right-wing nationalist, but to a Jewish construction worker, Alexander Scherbanyuk. Of the approximately 100 people killed during the protests in Kiev that swept Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich from power in February, three were Jews, according to Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Ukrainian anti-Semitism expert. The same day, snipers in Kiev killed two more Jewish anti-government protesters, Josef Shiling, a 61-year-old construction worker from Drogobych and Evgeniy Kotlyar, a 33-year old ecological activist from Kharkiv. Each of the three...

An American commentator who appeared on state-owned Iranian Press TV suggested that Israel was responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went missing on March 8. “Why are they giving us photoshopped pictures of Iranian passengers?” said Barrett, referring to the two Iranian nationals who boarded the flight with stolen passports. “Obviously there was some kind of a set-up to try to blame this on Iran,” he continued. “Precisely what that is we don’t know, but the Israelis have been using their assets, including the head of El-Al security, who was a 9/11 suspect – he lives...