Free Republic

My Gloom By Daniel Pipes FrontPageMagazine.com | December 20, 2005 Unlike most Americans, 9/11 made me feel more secure. Finally, the country was focused on issues that had long worried me. “The FBI is engaged in the largest operation in its history,” I wrote in late 2001, “armed marshals will again be flying on US aircraft, and the immigration service has placed foreign students under increased scrutiny. I feel safer when Islamist organizations are exposed, illicit money channels closed down, and immigration regulations reviewed. The amassing of American forces near Iraq and Afghanistan cheers me. The newfound alarm is healthy,...

Unlike most Americans, 9/11 made me feel more secure. Finally, the country was focused on issues that had long worried me. “The FBI is engaged in the largest operation in its history,” I wrote in late 2001, “armed marshals will again be flying on US aircraft, and the immigration service has placed foreign students under increased scrutiny. I feel safer when Islamist organizations are exposed, illicit money channels closed down, and immigration regulations reviewed. The amassing of American forces near Iraq and Afghanistan cheers me. The newfound alarm is healthy, the sense of solidarity heartening, the resolve is encouraging.” But...

There is a right way and a wrong way, strangely, to call for the elimination of Israel. Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, provided an example of each in recent weeks. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, stated on October 26 that “the regime occupying Jerusalem must be eliminated from the pages of history,” Annan replied by expressing “dismay.” Again on December 7, when Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be moved to Europe, Annan responded with “shock.” But dismay and shock at Ahmadinejad’s statements did not prevent Annan from participating on November 29, just between the Iranian’s outbursts,...

There is a right way and a wrong way, strangely, to call for the elimination of Israel. Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, provided an example of each in recent weeks. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, stated on October 26 that “the regime occupying Jerusalem must be eliminated from the pages of history,” Annan replied by expressing “dismay.” Again on December 8, when Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be moved to Europe, Annan responded with “shock.” But dismay and shock at Ahmadinejad’s statements did not prevent Annan from participating on November 29, just between the Iranian’s outbursts,...

Shareholding prince claims change made after he called Rupert Murdoch

Converts to Islam are taking over the terrorist operations previously carried out mainly by Muslim-born immigrants and their children. This was dramatically illustrated when a Belgian convert to Islam, Muriel Degauque, 38, blew herself up near Baghdad on Nov. 9 in a suicide attack on U.S. troops, becoming the first Christian-born Western woman to kill herself for Islamist purposes. And of the fourteen people arrested because of connections to Degauque, half were converts to Islam. In neighboring Holland, a just-published government report specifically worries about radicalized converts. Islamist terror organizations particularly prize converts. They know the local culture and blend...

In an article two days ago, "Muhammad Ali v. George W. Bush," I castigated President Bush bestowing a prestigious award on former boxer Muhammad Ali and for lavishly praising Ali's beautiful soul, his compassion, and his being a man of peace. I offered some evidence to the contrary and concluded by calling this incident "the nadir of his presidency."The column prompted a fair amount of comment, positive and negative. I'd like to note here two noteworthy responses. One is from Judea Pearl, father of the late Daniel Pearl, murdered by Islamists in Pakistan in 2002: When Danny was in captivity,...

George W. Bush honored the boxer, Muhammad Ali, and 13 others with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called "the nation's highest civilian award," on November 9 at the White House. The president praised Ali for his sports accomplishments and called him "The Greatest of All Time."Fine, but he then proceeded to laud Ali's character: "The real mystery, I guess, is how he stayed so pretty. It probably had to do with his beautiful soul. He was a fierce fighter and he's a man of peace. … Across the world, billions of people know Muhammad Ali as a brave, compassionate, and...

I was at a tribute sponsored by Center for Popular Culture (David Horowitz) honoring Oriana Fallaci, the Italian Journalist now living in NYC who has come out strongly against Islam in the post 9/11 world. Attending were Daniel Pipes, who introduced her, Robert Spencer who will be writing about the event in Frontpage, Norman Podhoretz, Frank Gaffney, Phyllis Chessler, John Fund of WSJ, Josh Gerstein of NY Sun, and assorted other who I probably did not recognize. It was an honor to be there. Fallaci is very sick and near death. But you would never know it from the fire...

The rioting by Muslim youth that began Oct. 27 in France to calls of “Allahu Akbar” may be a turning point in European history. What started in Clichy-sous-Bois, on the outskirts of Paris, by its eleventh night had spread to 300 French cities and towns, as well as to Belgium and Germany. The violence, which has already been called some evocative names – intifada, jihad, guerilla war, insurrection, rebellion, and civil war – prompts several reflections: End of an era: The time of cultural innocence and political naïveté, when the French could blunder without seeing or feeling the consequences, is...

"Iran’s stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.” No, those are not the words of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking last week. Rather, that was Ali Khamene’i, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, in December 2000. In other words, Ahmadinejad’s call for the destruction of Israel was nothing new but conforms to a well-established pattern of regime rhetoric and ambition. “Death to Israel!” has been a rallying cry for the past quarter-century. Ahmadinejad quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, its founder,...

A courageous speech by George W. Bush last week began a new era in what he calls the “war on terror.” To comprehend its full significance requires some background. Islamists (supporters of radical Islam) began their war on the United States in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran and later that year his supporters seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. For the next twenty-two years, however, Americans thought they faced merely a criminal problem and failed to see that war had been declared on them. For example, in 1998, when Islamists attacked two U.S. embassies in East Africa,...

Indian media have been publishing exposés documenting the foul behavior of Gulf Arabs in the southern Indian town of Hyderabad “Fly-by-night bridegrooms,” by R Akhileshwari in the Deccan Herald and “One minor girl, many Arabs,” by Mohammed Wajihuddin in the Times of India are two important examples. Wajihuddin sets the stage: They are old predators with new vigour. Often bearded, invariably in flowing robes and expensive turbans. The rich, middle-aged Arabs increasingly stalk the deprived streets of Hyderabad like medieval monarchs would stalk their harems in days that we wrongly think are history. These Viagra-enabled Arabs are perpetrating a blatant...

One would think that Mahmoud Maawad, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt living in Memphis, Tennessee, would lay low and stay out of trouble. But no, he defiantly did just the opposite. He used a fake Social Security number to open a bank account, arrange for household utilities, and enroll in the University of Memphis business school. He worked off-the-books at a convenience store and in early 2005 sold alcohol to a minor, for which he was arrested. And then, he ordered US$3,300 worth of airline-related goods in mid-2005 from Sporty's Pilot Shop, including such items as an airline pilot’s...

In 1991, the Canadian province of Ontario passed what seemed at the time to be an enlightened, multicultural piece of legislation. Called the Arbitration Act, it stipulates that if two parties agree to engage a commercial, religious, or other arbitrator to settle a civil dispute, the provincial authorities will then enforce the verdict, so long as it is in accord with Canadian law. “People can use any arbitrator they want and can use a religious framework if it is mutually acceptable,” notes Brendan Crawley, spokesman for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. “If the award is not compatible with...

Christianity Dying In Its BirthplaceBy Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | September 13, 2005 What some observers are calling a pogrom took place near Ramallah, West Bank, on the night of Sep. 3-4. That’s when fifteen Muslim youths from one village, Dair Jarir, rampaged against Taybeh, a neighboring all-Christian village of 1,500 people.The reason for the assault? A Muslim woman from Dair Jarir, Hiyam Ajaj, 23, fell in love with her Christian boss, Mehdi Khouriyye, owner of a tailor shop in Taybeh. The couple maintained a clandestine two-year affair and she became pregnant in about March 2005. When her family learned of her...

It ain't just the Jews, folks. A sustained assault on Palestinian Christians has led to their fleeing their homeland. The birthplace of Christianity is likely to be reduced to empty church buildings and a congregation-less hierarchy with no flock.

The contented ineptness of law enforcement, the danger of American prisons, and the emergence of African-Americans Islamist terrorists The Jewish High Holidays this year fall in early October, and that's when a massacre was planned against two Los Angeles synagogues, as well as other targets, according to an indictment just handed down against four young Muslim men. Law enforcement traces the origins of this plot to 1997. That's when Kevin Lamar James, a black inmate at New Folsom Prison, near Sacramento, California, founded Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS, Arabic for "Assembly of Authentic Islam"). JIS promotes the sort of jihadi version...

Jamie Glazov: When it comes to the agitations of the political left over the war in Iraq, Patriotism and Treason are the elephants in the room. And not just for the political left. Even the words “appeasement” and “capitulation” have been absent from the political debate over the war in Iraq, although although there have been prominent advocates for both. Have we seen, as Daniel Pipes has titled a recent column, “The End of Treason” because people identify with causes like Islam and Social Justice and no longer feel allegiance to nation states? In fact, no one has been prosecuted...

Why do so many corporations capitulate to the demands of CAIR and its ilk? How does the Council on American-Islamic Relations (and others in the Islamist victimization industry) fare so well when it complains to a corporation? That’s the question Margaret Wente, the Globe and Mail’s star columnist, takes up in an insightful analysis fraught with implications. Wente’s article looks at the high-profile case of Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist for the World Markets division of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. In an April 5, 2005, report to clients, he accurately predicted that oil prices would keep rising: The first...