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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) waded into the debate over the flying of the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of South Carolina’s state capitol, saying it “should be relegated to the dustbin of history along with the Nazi swastika, burning crosses and ‘whites only’ signs.” “We should not grant legitimacy to disingenuous claims that the flag is a symbol of ‘heritage,’ not hate,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement Sunday, four days after a white man shot dead nine people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. “Removal of the flag...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Terrorist attacks worldwide surged by more than a third and fatalities soared by 81 percent in 2014, a year that also saw Islamic State eclipse al Qaeda as the leading jihadist militant group, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. In its annual report on terrorism, the department also charts an unprecedented flow of foreign fighters to Syria, often lured by Islamic State's use of social media and drawn from diverse social backgrounds. Taken together, the trends point to a sobering challenge from militant groups worldwide to the United States and its allies despite severe blows inflicted...

The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is systematically targeting civilians and hospitals, often with chemical weapons, to reverse recent setbacks in the country’s civil war, witnesses told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. Assad’s forces have suffered a number of battlefield defeats in recent months, with the Islamic State and the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra gaining ground north of the capital Damascus and more moderate rebel groups achieving victories in the south. The Syrian army has also lost about half of its soldiers throughout the course of the four-year civil war and has increasingly relied on outside militant...

In the last week of May, the Qatar-based Arabic news network Al-Jazeera polled its Arabic-language audience on the question: “Do you support the victories of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in your region?” The results were shocking. Of the 56,881 Arabic-speaking respondents, a whopping 81% voted yes. The results of this online survey may not be scientific. But they do provide anecdotal evidence of what many see as a rise in the support of Islamism in the Arab Middle East, among Muslims in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, and in the diaspora in Britain and France. On Monday, a...

This month, the headlines were about a Muslim man in Boston who was accused of threatening police officers with a knife. Last month, two Muslims attacked an anti-Islamic conference in Garland, Tex. The month before, a Muslim man was charged with plotting to drive a truck bomb onto a military installation in Kansas. If you keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in violence here in the United States.But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim...

The United States is considering establishing additional military bases in Iraq to combat the Islamic State, the top American general said on Thursday, a move that would require at least hundreds more American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake cities lost to the militant Sunni extremist group. President Obama’s decision this week to send 450 trainers to establish a new military base to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, could signal the beginning of similar efforts in other parts of the country, said Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint...

Telfs-Buchen, Austria (CNN)President Barack Obama said Monday his top national security advisers were still working to solidify training plans for Iraqi defense forces battling ISIS in their own country. "We don't yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis," Obama said during concluding remarks at the G7 conference in Germany, citing recruitment as a key stumbling block facing the central government in Iraq. Critics of the administration's strategy in Iraq seized upon the President's comments Monday, claiming they indicated a policy failure and referencing similar comments Obama made in August. "What has President...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans appear to be suspicious of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s honesty, and even many Democrats are only lukewarm about her presidential candidacy, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Is she strong and decisive? Yes, say a majority of people. But inspiring and likable? Only a minority think so. Clinton’s struggles to explain her email practices while in government, along with questions about the Clinton Foundation and Republican criticism of her openness, wealth and trustworthiness seem to have struck a nerve in the public’s perception of the dominant Democratic figure in the 2016 campaign. In the survey, 61...

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier charged with desertion after he was returned from the Taliban last year in exchange for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, is seeking to have the officer in charge of deciding his fate removed from the case now that he has been nominated to serve as the new Army chief of staff. Gen. Mark Milley is responsible for deciding whether to charge Bergdahl criminally for leaving his post in 2009 in Afghanistan. Bergdahl was captured and remained a captive of the Taliban for nearly five years.

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Adel bin Muhammad El Ouerghi looked out his apartment window Friday and smiled as he showed off his wedding ring to a handful of cheering onlookers below. The 50-year-old Tunisian married Roma Blanco, a 24-year-old Uruguayan who converted to Islam. The union was the first of two weddings being organized by men resettled in the South American country.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Israel's defense establishment knows that the recent "trickles" of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel must be stopped before it becomes a routine occurrence. But while Israel has officially placed the responsibility for Wednesday night's rocket fire on Gaza's leadership, Hamas is having a hard time reining in Salafi and jihadist groups in the Strip. Minutes after Wednesday night's rocket fire, Hamas operatives rushed from their headquarters to find shelter, fearing Israeli retaliation strikes, which came early Thursday morning with as three militant training camps were targeted. A senior Hamas official sent...

This. This is why we need to kill them. In August, ISIS kidnapped a 17-year-old Yazidi girl . She was kept in a hotel in Mosul, Iraq and guarded by ISIS militants. She recalled their horrifying virgin selection process, and it honestly makes me think that we should chop all of their junk off every time we capture them. Because this is SICKENING. The virgins were taken to a room with 40 men,' she recalled. 'They lined us up and pointed who they wanted... I thought I might be lucky: I was not as beautiful as the others.' A man...

CAIR files lawsuit to prevent ICE from asking Muslims entering US about jihad-related activities, relatives U.S. border officials are using a questionnaire about religion to harass Muslim travelers, a Muslim advocacy group charges. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement questionnaire was released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a lawsuit by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Intercept reports. The questions that were revealed — the document was heavily redacted — include “Have you participated in any formal religious training or schooling?” “What house of worship do you attend?” and “Do you have any relatives or friends...

Breaking tonight on CNN is the news that Pamela Geller was in fact one of the beheading targets of 26-year-old Usaama Rahim, a Muslim jihadi that police shot dead yesterday in Boston: Usaamah Rahim, who was fatally shot after waving a military knife at law enforcement officers, was originally plotting to behead Pamela Geller, an activist and conservative blogger, law enforcement sources told CNN on Wednesday. CNN host Erin Burnett gets Geller on the phone, and during the interview sites the Southern Poverty Law Center suggesting that Pamela Geller is the most visible and flamboyant figurehead of the anti-Muslim movement...

Americans ‘overreacted’ to the 9/11 attacks, according to the newly appointed first female vice-chancellor of Oxford University. Terrorism expert Professor Louise Richardson said the 2001 atrocity provoked such a response because violent extremism was a ‘new experience’ in the US. Widespread panic ensued in America after al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger airliners and flew them into buildings, causing almost 3,000 deaths. In contrast, British citizens have shown themselves to be more ‘resilient’ in the face of terror when dealing with violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, she said.

Speaking via telephone to the summit he was scheduled to attend before his bike accident scrubbed those plans, Kerry forcefully pushed back against any notion that ISIS is a state, despite the group's broad territorial gains. Kerry spoke about the need to "maintain momentum in the battle of ideas," according to excerpts from the call provided by the State Department. "One way is to expose at every opportunity the false nature of Daesh's claim to be the Islamic State. In reality, Daesh is no more a state than I am a helicopter," Kerry said, using another name for ISIS widely...

<p>For years, Ryan Broderick has been trapped inside his mind, watching a constant reel of explosions that rocked the Army vehicles he had scrubbed of blood during three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p> <p>Since January, Broderick has been stuck inside a real jail, fortified by cinder blocks, surrounded by barbed wire. The government that Broderick upended his life to serve locked him up in Edgecombe County, about 75 miles east of Raleigh.</p>

In an interview with CBS News, General (retired) John Allen, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition To Counter ISIL, or the Islamic State, attempted to assure Americans that they should not be concerned with the US providing military and other support for Shiite militias, many of which are backed by Iran. Allen attempts to separate the “extremist elements” from the Popular Mobilization Force (or Committee), when the distinction is practically meaningless. From the interview, which was published on the US State Department’s website (emphasis is mine): With regard to militias, it’s really important to understand that the militias...

A National Guard reservist has been arrested at the Canadian border in Washington for allegedly trying to aid al-Qaida in a plot to attack a Southland subway. Nicholas Teausant, 20, of Acampo, Calif., was charged Monday with attempting to provide material to support a foregoing terrorist organization, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office said. He made his first appearance in a federal courtroom in Seattle Monday afternoon.

Politics: President Obama removed Cuba as a state sponsor of terror Friday, forgetting the dictatorship's long record of killing, smuggling and, yes, terror. If this is the new standard, why not just scrap the list entirely? The lifting of Cuba from the list of nations that support terrorism was a farce that may well come back to the haunt the United States. After all, the ruling Castro regime that benefits from it in the name of normal relations with the U.S. and new access to World Bank loans is the same regime that once tried the first 9/11, aligning itself...