Free Republic

Note: Video included. January 21, 2009 For hate speech -- after declining to do so last year, which means that Islamic supremacist groups in the Netherlands have kept up the pressure on lawmakers until they got the outcome they wanted. Hate speech, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and hate speech laws are tools in the hands of the powerful that they can use to silence the powerless and crush dissent. And make no mistake: even though the Muslims in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the West present themselves as embattled victims of racism and "Islamophobia," that...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

American School Books Redefine 'Jihad' to Exclude Violence -- Where is Media? By Warner Todd Huston | June 8, 2008 - 21:49 ET In yet another example of why the west could be too weak to fight the sort of global terrorism that takes the form of Islamofascism, a textbook monitoring group is charging that American textbooks have been cleansed of mentioning the violence inherent in the Islamic "Jihad." Now, our children will not be taught what "Jihad" truly means, nor that it has been used as an excuse to kill their fellow citizens because our schools have sanitized Islam...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

It's important for Muslims to keep reminding us that there is absolutely, positively no relationship between Islam and violence. Otherwise it's easy to forget. The latest excuse for Islamic bonhomie is the documentary "Fitna" by Geert Wilders. In the 15-minute film, showing on YouTube and other Internet sites, the Dutch MP says that far from getting Islam wrong, terrorists understand their religion only too well. "Fitna" (Arabic for "upheaval" or "ordeal") has verses from the Koran -- which Wilders calls a "fascist book" -- artfully interspersed with scenes of carnage from 9/11 and the March, 2004 Madrid train bombing, as...

(IsraelNN.com) The long-awaited and controversial movie Fitna, which graphically portrays Islam as a religion seeking to dominate the world and slaughter non-believers, finally debuted on the internet on Thursday night. Within two hours of the film's release on Britain's LiveLeak.com video site, close to two million people had seen it. More than half of them were from Holland, home to the film's producer, Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The screening of the movie had been in doubt after the world's largest website name registrar, Network Solutions, decided to block the movie's home site. The decision to censor the film bolstered concerns...

A court has refused to ban an internet-based film criticising the Koran. A group representing Dutch Muslims had sought an injunction banning right-wing politician Geert Wilders' film "Fitna," which links terror attacks by Muslim extremists with texts from the Koran. In a written judgment a civil judge at The Hague District Court said Mr Wilders' right to free speech allows him to criticise radical Islam and passages from the Muslim holy book. Mr Wilders put the film on the internet the day before lawyers representing the Netherlands Islamic Federation argued it should be outlawed because it was insulting to Muslims.

Cambridge University has been given £8 million by a Saudi Arabian prince to establish an Islamic studies centre. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, ranked in the top 20 richest men in the world, with a fortune of about £10 billion, has donated the cash to the university to fund a centre in his name for the study of the role of Islam in the Middle East and globally. The gift has been recommended by the university's general board and is expected to be announced in June. advertisement The grandson of King Ibn Saud and nephew of King Abudllah, the prince counts...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

A Dutch lawmaker whose anti-Quran film drew worldwide condemnations will edit out a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad after complaints of copyright infringement, his office said Monday. -snip- Geert Wilders used the cartoon by Danish artist Kurt Westergaard twice in the film "Fitna." The drawing, which depicts Islam's prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse, provoked violent protests in Muslim countries when it was published by European newspapers two years ago. The Danish Union of Journalists has said it would sue Wilders for copyright infringement. Wilders' spokeswoman Daphne Rozenboom said in an e-mail that Wilders would replace the...

Geert Wilders’ much-anticipated film on the Qur’an, Fitna, was released on LiveLeak.com on Thursday, pulled by LiveLeak on Friday after death threats, and by Saturday couldn’t be stopped: it had gone viral, having been posted in innumerable places all over the Internet. (You can watch it at my website Jihad Watch.)But many, many people are still trying to make sure you don’t see it. Iran urged European leaders to block the film, and summoned the Slovenia representative in Tehran (Slovenia currently holds the EU presidency) to lodge an official protest, as Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini called it a...

To: The Dutch Government WHEREAS Geert Wilders has exercised his fundamental human right of freedom of expression and spoken out, with facts and evidence, of the threat posed by radical Islam; WHEREAS certain elements within Islamic communities have threatened a boycott of Dutch goods if Geert Wilders is not punished by the Dutch government for exercising his freedom of expression; and WHEREAS certain elements in Dutch industry and the Dutch government are suggesting that Geert Wilders be prosecuted civilly or criminally, in order to prevent such a boycott; IT IS RESOLVED that, in the event that the Dutch government attempts,...

Here is open bloodlust and Islamic supremacism, in a film produced by Muslims for Muslims -- indeed, for Muslim children. Will the OIC denounce this film? Will Ban Ki-Moon and Louise Arbour? If not, why not? Why exactly is Fitna worse than this?

The ambassadors of 26 Islamic countries want the Netherlands to investigate whether the film Fitna made by Dutch right-wing populist MP Geert Wilders can be banned. They asked Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen whether it is possible to start legal proceedings against the anti-Islam film. The meeting at the ministry in The Hague was attended by ambassadors of countries including Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Mr Verhagen told the 26 ambassadors he was pleased that responses from the Muslim world up to now had been moderate. He said the public prosecutor was investigating whether any offence had been...

Muslims and naive Western liberals don't like it, but here's modern Islam in all its glory. WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES

Tehran - Iran has summoned the Dutch ambassador to protest about Fitna, the anti-Qur'an film produced by far-right MP Geert Wilders. Tehran recently asked European governments to ban the film. So far Pakistan has been the only country to summon a Dutch envoy over the film. The controversy has prompted Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen to publish an article in the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, calling on people "to keep their heads cool and relations warm". He also underlined the need for dialogue to explain that freedom of speech and religion are human rights enshrined in the Dutch constitution. Australian...

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed his fear that the posting to the Internet of Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ “Fitna”—a film linking Islamist violence with passages from the Koran—would “incite retribution.” Ban said that “while freedom of speech sounds good in theory, its advocates are overlooking the risks. The Koran bids Muslims to spare unbelievers who submit and pay the jizya. But does Wilders acknowledge this option for peaceful coexistence with Islam? No. He one-sidedly focuses on the consequences to those who stubbornly reject this offer.” “We must recognize that the real fault lies not with the Muslims, but...

It seems the Islamic world will do anything to continue to prove the point that the Dutch parliamentarian was making with his new film "Fitna." The film showed a number of verses in the Koran interspersed with Islamic sermons, footage of terrorism, and Dutch newspaper headlines. It started with liveleak.com, the first website to share the video, pulling the video from their website after only one day because of serious threats to their staff. As LiveLeak put it, "in the end the price was too high." So the response to a video showing an Islamic prediliction toward violence and terrorism...