Free Republic

WASHINGTON – Former prime minister Tony Blair warned on Sunday that the roots of radical Islam were far deeper than we think and said Al-Qaeda would have killed 300,000 on September 11, 2001 if they could. "This is actually more like the phenomenon of revolutionary communism," Blair said in an interview with ABC News, commenting on the reach of Islamic extremism. "It's the religious or cultural equivalent of it, and its roots are deep, its tentacles are long, and its narrative about Islam stretches far further than we think into even parts of mainstream opinion who abhor the extremism, but...

There is plenty of available, verifiable information that belongs in the GZM debate. The Shariah Index Project seeks to address the religion-politics relationship question that has racked the Muslim World since the death of the Prophet Muhammad. … After two years of work, the Shariah Index Project’s Sunni and Shi’a working team of legal scholars from Morocco to Indonesia achieved consensus on a final structure on philosophy, methodology, and approach to providing the general public, opinion leaders, and state officials in both the Muslim and Western World with an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring “Islamicity” of a state. On their...

The imam behind a plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero is set to depart on a multi-country jaunt to the Middle East funded by the State Department -- raising concerns that taxpayers may be helping him with the controversial project's $100 million fund-raising goal. Feisal Abdul Rauf is taking the publicly funded trip to foster "greater understanding" about Islam and Muslim communities in the United States, the State Department confirmed yesterday. "He is a distinguished Muslim cleric," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, when asked about the journey, reportedly to include stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi,...