Free Republic

January 18, 2005 -- An emotional holy war broke out yesterday on the streets of Jersey City, where Muslims and Christians clashed and lobbed insults at the funeral for a devout family of Egyptian immigrants who may have been slain for their religious beliefs. While mourners inside the St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church prayed for peace in the wake of a murder that escalated religious tensions at home and abroad, fights erupted amid the crowd that spilled outside the church, where angry Coptic Christians pointed accusing fingers at their Muslim counterparts. Hossam Armanious, 37, his wife, Amal...

The contrast could not have been clearer. The day President Bush recruited former presidents Bill Clinton and G.H.W. Bush to generate private tsunami-relief donations (www.freedomcorps.gov), Osama bin Laden’s comrades detonated three bombs in Baghdad, killing 16 Iraqi cops and soldiers toiling to rebuild their country. Once again, "the Great Satan" rescues endangered Muslims while Islamic zealots blew their co-religionists to bits. As the South Asian recovery unfolds, American public diplomacy should highlight this comparison to Muslims worldwide. Countless Muslims were battered on "Black Sunday." Indonesia, Earth’s most populous Islamic nation, was lashed hardest with 94,200 fatalities by Wednesday. Sri Lanka...

How did Indonesia react to the September 11 attacks? The next day, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri called the attacks “brutal and indiscriminate” and spoke of “the need for international cooperation to fight terrorism.” She was the first Muslim head of state to visit Washington after the attacks but remained reluctant to crack down on domestic Islamist militants. Public reaction in Indonesia was mixed: there were anti-American demonstrations at the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, threats by radical Islamist groups to search Indonesian hotels for Americans, and brisk sales of T-shirts and posters featuring Osama bin Laden. Megawati also tried and failed...

Mr. Powell was visibly annoyed later on Thursday when asked about other nations, with far smaller economies, which had initially committed more funds than the United States. "I don't know yet what the United States' contribution will be," he said on ABC's "Nightline," "and what we have to do is make a needs assessment and not just grasp at numbers or think we're in some kind of an auction house where every day somebody has to top someone else."

Sen. John Kerry has gotten the white-glove treatment from the press, garnering more praise from journalists than any other presidential candidate in the last quarter-century, according to a new analysis of almost 500 news stories released today by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "It's not just that John Kerry has gotten better press than President Bush before this election, he's gotten better press than anyone else since 1980. That's significant," said Bob Lichter, director of the D.C.-based nonpartisan research group. "Kerry also got better press than anyone else in the days before the primaries as well," Mr. Lichter...