Free Republic

CAIRO — There is a strong undercurrent of competition in Egypt these days, an unstated contest among people eager to prove just how religious they are. The field of battle is the street and the focus tends to be on appearance, as opposed to conviction. It is not that the two are mutually exclusive, but they are not necessarily linked. As Egyptians increasingly emphasize Islam as the cornerstone of identity, there has been a growing emphasis on public displays of piety. For women, that has rapidly translated into the nearly universal adoption of the hijab, a scarf fitted over the...

One man's relentless search for his missing son led him to uncover one of the most shocking crimes in post-war Italy - a tale of satanism and violence that has gripped the country for more than a year. In January 1998 Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino, both just 16, disappeared. They had been drinking at a pub called the Midnight - the centre of the heavy metal scene in Milan - and they never came home. The police and many of their friends just thought they had run off together. But their parents refused to accept this. Michele Tollis, Fabio's...

Corporate radio sucketh, whole and large and true. . . .

Part of the hard work of civilization is teaching young to be able to distinguish between the good and the bad in all aspects of life. If we teach our young children to obey the 10 Commandments and to obey the laws of the land, but don't teach them to realize that Johann Sebastian Bach is superior to Dimebag Abbott, we have failed as parents and mentors. If a person has gone through 12 or 13 years of education and has not developed an appreciation for the greatest artistic achievements of mankind, that education has been an utter failure. While...

The man who shot former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three other men to death at a nightclub was obsessed with the popular heavy metal band and made bizarre accusations against it, a onetime friend said in reports published Friday. Jeramie Brey said gunman Nathan Gale once showed up at a friend's house saying he wanted to share songs he had written. The pages of lyrics were copied from Pantera, but Gale claimed he had written them, Brey said. "He was off his rocker," Brey told The Columbus Dispatch. "He said they were his songs, that Pantera stole them...