Free Republic

Like most religions, Islam in general, forbids lying. The Quran says, "Truly Allah guides not one who transgresses and lies." Surah 40:28. In the Hadith, Mohammed was also quoted as saying, "Be honest because honesty leads to goodness, and goodness leads to Paradise. Beware of falsehood because it leads to immorality, and immorality leads to Hell." However, unlike most religions, within Islam there are certain provisions under which lying is not simply tolerated, but actually encouraged. The book "The spirit of Islam," by the Muslim scholar, Afif A. Tabbarah was written to promote Islam. On page 247, Tabbarah stated: "Lying...

Islamabad - A tribal council in central Pakistan has ordered the surrender of the wife of a rapist to the child victim's father for retribution, media reports said on Tuesday. The council, called a punchayat, was convened in a village near the Punjab Province city of Multan, located 380km south of Islamabad, after police refused to register a case against a local man for assaulting the minor. Brothers of the accused man had initially offered one of their four daughters in compensation for the crime, the newspaper Daily Nation said. But the council decreed that the father of the victim...

HONOLULU — Astronomers have discovered 28 new planets outside of our solar system, increasing to 236 the number of known exoplanets, revealing that planets can exist around a broad spectrum of stellar types, from tiny, dim stars to giants.An artist's concept of the Neptune-sized planet GJ436b (right) orbiting the M-class dwarf star Gliese 436 at a distance of 3 million miles.

MILWAUKEE- A thief found out the hard way that robbing a woman isn't the best way to capture her heart. Two men robbed a U-Haul store around 3 p.m. Sunday, taking an unspecified amount of cash, according the store's owner. But instead of fleeing, one man lingered and tried to strike up a conversation with the woman he had just robbed. "He stuck around and was trying to get the female employee's number," U-Haul general manager Patrick Sobocinski said. "She said he was just saying, 'Hey baby, you're pretty fine.'" According to Sobocinski, one robber went behind the counter, put...

Los Angeles - A man trying to kill himself and his girlfriend by stopping a car on railroad tracks died on Monday when a commuter train crashed into the vehicle, police said. The girlfriend survived. The man drove the car in front of a group of other vehicles stopped at a railroad crossing in the San Fernando Valley neighbourhood of Sunland, said officer Mike Lopez. The driver, who was seen arguing with his girlfriend, parked the car on the tracks moments before a northbound Metrolink train crossed the road, Lopez said.

Port Moresby [New Guinea] - Thousands of villagers fled their homes in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea after a volcanic eruption triggered a tidal wave that flattened homes and sowed panic among residents, reports said on Tuesday. No casualties were reported, but ocean surges destroyed four houses and a boat after a volcano on Ritter Island exploded into life at the weekend spewing ash and smoke over islands off eastern Morobe province, The National newspaper said.

Not every harassment against Muslims comes out of Islamophobia. Secular, nationalistic, but not religious are the Quebecers. The founder of CAIR-CAN reflects on how the nature, culture, and history of Quebec make it hard for Muslims to live normally in the province.The latest high-profile incident involved the expulsion of five Muslim girls, aged 10 to 14, from a Tae kwon do tournament, by Quebec sports officials who ruled their hijab to be against regulations of the sport, in spite of the fact that hijab-clad Muslim women have competed worldwide in this martial art without any incident. In the neighboring province...

BOSTON --A judge refused to grant a mistrial Monday for a defendant who punched a juror as other jurors watched in court. Richard Glawson, 46, is on trial in Suffolk Superior Court for a list of charges stemming from a crime rampage in 2001 that allegedly included shooting a Dedham police officer in the hand. On Friday, as jurors were filing out of the courtroom at the end of the day, Glawson punched an elderly male juror in full view of the 15 other jurors hearing the case. The punch knocked the juror to the floor, but he was not...

Philadelphia - A travelling exhibition on King Tutankhamun drew about 50 protesters in Philadelphia who denounced the popular display as racist. Molefi Asante, a professor of African-American studies at Temple University, led the demonstration on Sunday outside the Franklin Institute, claiming the exhibit has no mention of Africa and that it suggests the ancient Egyptian king was white.

RALEIGH, N.C. - MySpace.com will provide a number of state attorneys general with data on registered sex offenders who use the popular social networking web site, the company said Monday. Attorneys general from eight states demanded last week that the company provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live. MySpace initially refused, citing federal privacy laws. MySpace obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders.

Berkeley -- A simple method of flash-heating breast milk infected with HIV successfully inactivated the free-floating virus, according to a new study led by researchers at the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California. Notably, the technique - heating a glass jar of expressed breast milk in a pan of water over a flame or single burner - can be easily applied in the homes of mothers in resource-poor communities. The findings, to appear in the July 1 print issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, but now available online, provide hope that mothers with HIV...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton is ready to propose a new federal plan that would offer high-quality preschool to every 4-year-old in America. The Democratic presidential candidate says the universal Pre-K plan would cost about ten billion dollars. Speaking on NBC's "Today Show," she said evidence shows such preschool programs save money in the long run -- and that students have fewer behavioral problems and stay in school longer. The New York senator says she'd pay for universal preschool by closing tax loopholes and eliminating Bush administration programs she disagrees with. The proposal would give federal funds to states...

Kuala Lumpur - A baby girl declared stillborn by a Malaysian hospital shocked her grieving parents when she started moving as they prepared to bury her, a report said on Monday. The father, Azmi Masiron, said he and other mourners in a village in northern Kedah state noticed a tiny movement from the baby as she lay on a funeral shroud, shortly after being declared dead on Sunday. "When my father-in-law placed the baby on the burial shroud, she suddenly moved, shocking about 200 villagers who had gathered for the funeral," Azmi was quoted saying by the New Straits Times....

A GP is being urged to call in police over suspicions that a patient had her healthy baby aborted more than a month after the legal limit of 24 weeks. The 22-year-old woman requested a termination in February, when she was 28 weeks pregnant, but the doctor told her it would be illegal. She was referred for counselling to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service - a charity which also runs private abortion clinics. Several weeks later she returned to the surgery about a different matter and was no longer pregnant. All she would say was that she 'had it sorted...

They beamed him up and now, after a three-week search, they have found the rocket that had carried ashes of Star Trek actor James Doohan briefly into space. The remains of Doohan, whose Star Trek character Scotty inspired the television catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty," were blasted off to the edge of space from New Mexico on April 29, two years after his death at the age of 85. The payload also included ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper, who first went into space in 1963, and another 200 people. But the UP Aerospace Spaceloft XL rocket carrying the capsules...

Widespread use of a damaging conservation technique has seen many of Italy's Renaissance frescoes darken and crumble. That degradation can now be stopped in its tracks. In the 1960s conservators began coating frescoes in clear acrylic polymers to preserve them, but the treatment has had the opposite effect. "The acrylic makes the fresco look brilliant and well preserved initially," says Piero Baglioni, a chemist at the University of Florence. "But as the plaster can no longer breathe, degradation beneath the coating actually speeds up, due to calcium salt and humidity build-up."

Images that show how fingerprints can be used to reveal whether you are a smoker, an avid coffee drinker or even a drug addict have been revealed by UK scientists. They were produced using a novel forensic technique that could in future be used on fingerprints collected at a crime scene. If the prints in question are not on file, this would still give police a powerful way to shrink their pool of suspects, by identifying their lifestyle habits. The technique was developed by a team of forensics experts at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, and King's...

For the first time, astronomers have glimpsed one of Uranus's 27 moons passing in front of one of its siblings – a fleeting alignment that can reveal information about the moons, such as their mass, that cannot be gleaned in any other way. Researchers hope this will be the first in a bonanza of data returned from Uranus in the next year. That is because Uranus, which orbits the Sun every 84 years, is in an ideal geometry to view its moons. Such periods come around only once every 42 years, and the next will not occur until 2049.This series...

HOLLYWOOD - Fresh from his appearance as Captain Jack Sparrow's father in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards says he wants to play Shrek's father in Shrek Four: The Donkey's Revenge because he doesn't want to wind up being typecast. "Papa's got a brand new bag," snorted Mr. Richards in the library of his neo-Victorian Connecticut house, "but let's face it, who wants to play a spaced-out, ragamuffin drunk all the time?" Such is Mr. Richards' fear of being typecast that he has informed Pirates star, Johnny Depp, that he doesn't want to be included...

CBNNews.com - JERUSALEM, Israel - Shevet Achim, a non-profit Christian organization based in Israel, has been saving the lives of babies and children who would otherwise die without critical heart surgery. Since its founding in 1994 by Jonathan Miles, Shevet Achim (Brothers United) has provided medical care for Palestinian children. In more recent years they've been able to transport children with critical heart conditions from Iraq to hospitals in Israel, as Iraqi medical centers aren't equipped to perform these complex procedures. Reading profile after profile and seeing photos of the children evoke a profound sense of humility. If a picture...