Free Republic

Having written countless columns and blog posts arguing that the see-no-Islam counterinsurgency strategy (COIN) has led to failure in two wars in the umma (Muslim world) and the dhimmification of the U.S. military, it's almost funny to see the debate more or less officially joined over my recent column on what appears to be simply the gross-out, PG-13 movie topic of peeing toward Mecca. Or, rather, not peeing toward Mecca. The latter is the lesson that an Afghan Muslim contractor has been teaching Marines before they deploy to Afghanistan, in accordance with an Islamic canonical hadith called "The Prohibition of...

The resounding rejection of the EU constitutional project in France and the Netherlands has triggered much frenzied hand-wringing and anxious bickering about the future of Europe,though it appears to tell us more about the pervasive angst of the continent’s elites than about its future. Completely unnoticed in this noisy brouhaha there appeared in France a short survey that tells us more about what Europe’s future will look like than the collective wisdom of its chattering classes. Innocuously entitled “Signs and Manifestations of Religious Affiliation in the Educational Establishments” and headed by the inspector general of French education Jean-Pierre Obin, the...