Free Republic

University Middle East expert Hussein Mousavian was a former Iranian official A former Iranian official who is a faculty member at Princeton University recently bragged in an interview about how his hardline government’s death threats against a former top Trump administration official had him and his family "trembling" with fear. Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, said in a recent interview that the Iranian regime’s threats to murder Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Iran, have heavily impacted Hook’s family...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- In Garland, Texas, on 3 May 2015, Gregory Stevens, a veteran police officer with the Garland Police Department, was working off duty as armed security for the “Draw the Prophet” cartoon contest event. Pamela Geller organized the Draw the Prophet event as a response to Islamic demands that Western Civilization submits to Islamic censorship. The particular demand was no one would be allowed to draw images of the Prophet Mohammed or to mock him or make fun of him. The infamous attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris had occurred just five months earlier, by two Islamists...

The House of Representatives has passed a bill which seeks to eradicate blasphemy against Islam. The bill, H.R. 5665, is truly remarkable as it amounts to Congress making a law respecting the establishment of Islam and reducing the United States government into a tool of the world’s ayatollahs. The actual text of the bill not only seeks to eradicate blasphemy against Islam around the world – and solely against Islam at that – but even requires the federal government to reorganize some portions of the State Department along the lines of an Islamic religious institution which will be responsible for...

Islamabad apparently bought peace with the TLP. As in its frequent mobilisations over the last few years, the TLP has once again forced the Pakistani state onto the backfoot and enhanced its own political clout. A relatively new phenomenon, the TLP, was founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. It now has a strong following among Pakistan’s Barelvi sect. At the heart of TLP’s ideology is the protection of the Prophet’s honour and a vigorous defence of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In Pakistan, anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or the Prophet...

The trial of Austrian anti-Sharia activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for “denigrating” Islam has major implications for free speech in Europe. (Also read Michael Ledeen: "Islamophobia") The “hate speech” trial of the Austrian housewife and anti-Islam activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff resumed at a Vienna courthouse on January 18, following a two-month break in the hearings. Sabaditsch-Wolff, who has been charged with “incitement of hatred” and “denigrating religious teachings” after giving a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam, faces a possible three year prison sentence. Her case, which is eerily similar to the one involving the Dutch politician Geert Wilders,...

Lahore (Agenzia Fides) - Imran Masih, a 38-year-old Christian from Faisalabad, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for blasphemy, was acquitted on appeal today, December 15, before the Lahore Supreme Court. The court overturned the first instance sentence that sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2010. This is confirmed by the Catholic lawyer Khalil Tahir Sandhu, who defended Imran, like many other Pakistani Christians unjustly accused of blasphemy. "This is good news for justice, for Christians, for the country. We are happy for the positive outcome of the process which, ultimately recognizes freedom for an innocent person. But on the...

Moscow, December 11, Interfax - Russian President Vladimir Putin has given the Foreign Ministry until March 1, 2021 to initiate discussions on international forums concerning measures to prevent actions insulting religious feelings of believers and fomenting interfaith enmity and conflicts. The presidential instruction was published on the Kremlin's official website on Friday, following Putin's recent meeting with representatives of religious groups. The Foreign Ministry has also been told "to consider the possible conclusion of international agreements and (or) the adoption of a UN General Assembly resolution on such matters." Ismail Berdiyev, the head of the Coordinating Center of Muslims of...

Moscow, November 5, Interfax - A ban on insulting the feelings of the faithful should be enshrined in international law, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. At his meeting with representatives from religious organizations on the National Unity Day on Wednesday, one attendee, Ismail Berdiyev, head of the North Caucasus Muslims' Coordinating Center, suggested that the president present to the UN Security Council an idea that all countries introduce a law making it unacceptable to offend religious feelings. "It is a good proposal. I don't understand, who could be against a ban on insulting the feelings of the faithful in any...

Scholars gathered October 24 and 25 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to discuss free speech—and focused on its alleged pernicious effects. The takeaway was that the problem is not enough free speech in public, but too much free speech in public. The conference, “Finding Expression in Contested Public Spaces,” featured a keynote address and seven panels of scholars who presented their research and gave their thoughts on free speech. Keynote speaker Eric King Watts, an associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, opened the event with a speech entitled, “Tribalism, Voicelessness, and the Problem of Free Speech.” “There is...

When I was a journalist, I loved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s assertion that the Constitution and the First Amendment are not just about protecting “free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to...

Strange days, indeed, when America’s free press opposes free speech. “Free speech is killing us,” headlined a New York Times op-ed. Its author, New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz, argued that “hate speech” leads to violence. Worse, he claims it can cause totalitarianism and even genocide. To avoid this fate, Marantz says we must rethink the First Amendment, which would include government and private companies striving to limit “hate speech.” He agrees with a former American Civil Liberties Union official that one day in the not-so-distant future, legal “protection of hate speech” will “seem ridiculous in retrospect.” Some governments have...

The United Nations Security Council wants a global "framework" for censoring the Internet, as well as for using government propaganda to "counter" what its apparatchiks call "online propaganda," "hateful ideologies," and "digital terrorism." To that end, the UN Security Council this week ordered the UN "Counter-Terrorism Committee" — yes, that is a real bureaucracy — to draw up a plan by next year. From the Obama administration to the brutal Communist Chinese regime, everybody agreed that it was time for a UN-led crackdown on freedom of speech and thought online — all under the guise of fighting the transparently bogus...

This is truly one of the most troubling news stories I have come across since President Obama took office, and that says a lot from my point of view. I have tried to warn people in general, but Christian in particular about the evil fruit that Liberalism cannot but produce. We may be about to witness this on a global scale as President Obama will have the United States join the United Nations backed Alliance of Civilizations. From the Associated Press: “The Obama administration is preparing to join an international advisory group that the U.S. has largely shunned due to...

The city council of Saonara, a town with 10,000 inhabitants just outside Padua, has introduced a new law making it illegal “to blaspheme against any faith or religion” and utter foul language in public.

Just over a year ago, French President Emmanuel Macron came to the United States to import two different species to Washington. One was a French oak tree and the other was a crackdown on free speech. Ironically, soon after the tree was planted, officials quickly dug it up to send it to quarantine. However, the more dangerous species was his acorn of speech controls, a proposal that resulted in rapturous applause from our clueless politicians. Ultimately, the tree died and the acorn has not fared much better. While our politicians may applaud Macron like village idiots, most Americans are hardcore...

"You can see the lengths they go to silence us all. They're not just censoring me. they're censoring you. They're censoring you from the ability to make up your own mind whether you agree with me or not...." TOMMY ROBINSON 'YOU TUBE' VIDEO AFTER HIS REMOVAL FROM FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM 2/27/2019 "....high-level pressure is growing for the official adoption of this definition of something called 'Islamophobia' in this country...Once they can get the police to accept this, then any criticisms of Islam will become risky, quite possibly a 'hate crime'. This is absurd. Islam is a set of political opinions,...

A new Android app has launched with the focus of allowing Muslims to report individuals who commit blasphemy, or insult Islam. No, this is not a joke. The app, “Smart Pakem”, which launched in Indonesia last month at the request of the Indonesian government, will allow users and government officials to uphold Sharia law and target and report people who hold “misguided” beliefs in violation of Islamic law, which forbids insults of Islam, insults against the Prophet Mohammed, or the recognition of any other religion besides Islam.

Pressure is mounting against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its controversial partnership with the San Diego Unified School District in developing an anti-Islamophobia bullying initiative that was enacted last April. Investigative subpoenas were issued Wednesday afternoon to CAIR’s chapter in California that seek all communications and documents concerning its involvement in creating the allegedly unconstitutional initiative. CAIR-California will need to produce the documents within 10 days, or it risks facing legal penalties for being held in contempt of court, according to the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF), a religious liberty group that issued the subpoenas.

How is this any different than Islamic law in, say, Turkey (Obama's favorite and most trusted ally)? In October, 43-year-old Fazil Say went on trial in Turkey for "denigrating" Islam for a series of tweets earlier that year. In one of his messages he had retweeted a verse from a poem by Omar Khayyám, in which the 11th-century Persian poet attacks pious hypocrisy. This is the same thing. If the DoJ pursued the vicious, offensive, racist, antisemitic tweets directed at me (and others) by Muslims and leftists, they would be pursuing little else. But they wouldn't and they shouldn't. Note...

VIDEO (Robert Spencer discusses FBI foreknowledge and physical presence at Garland TX terrorist attack at the Draw Muhammad contest.) Video: Robert Spencer on Newsmax’s Malzberg: FBI Wanted Pamela Geller and Me Dead in Garland Jihad Attack MARCH 28, 2017 4:21 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER 54 COMMENTS On Newsmax’s Malzberg show today, I discuss how the FBI knew of the Garland jihad plot beforehand, and not only did nothing to stop it, but actively encouraged it. I explain in more detail... Although we were co-organizers of the event, neither Pamela Geller nor I appear, except in one still photo, in this...