Free Republic

Islamic terrorists are having a sometimes violent debate among themselves. It's all about the use of violence. Islamic terrorists, as their title implies, are all about violence. But many of the terrorists have noted that over 90 percent (often over 98 percent) of the violence victims are Moslems. This has caused public image problems. In areas where Islamic terrorists kill people, the friends and family of the victims tend to become hostile to the Islamic warriors. This can cause serious problems if the Islamic terrorists are being energetically pursued, as the local people will have an incentive to pass on...

ANKARA: An attack by Islamists on a young Turkish woman wearing a bikini on a beach has reopened the question of the direction that the country, overwhelmingly Muslim but traditionally secular, is now taking. The incident happened earlier this month at the resort of Karaburun, near Izmir in the west of the country, the most Europeanized part. The young woman had asked a group of headscarf-wearing women and their families not to soil the beach with the used diapers of their children, only to be called a prostitute because she was wearing a bikini. She was then attacked by the...

The danger of multilateralism Posted: March 18, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Since the first Persian Gulf War, American leaders have sworn by multilateralism in foreign policy. It has become an article of faith that military actions should only be undertaken with the help and cooperation of allies – even when those allies don't have all that much to contribute and even when those allies are brought in kicking and screaming. Let me be the first to point out that one of the dangers of multilateralism was just illustrated in Spain. Spain didn't necessarily contribute much significant in...

The suicide bombs that slaughtered dozens of people in four separate blasts within 45 minutes yesterday took terrorism in Iraq to fresh levels of sophistication and co-ordination. Brig Gen Mark Hertling of the US 1st Armoured Division was clear. "The bombings seem to have been the operations of foreign fighters," he said. "We have not seen attacks we could attribute to foreign fighters before. We have seen them today." While it would be in America's interest to portray terrorist attacks as the work of foreigners bent on undermining stability, the methods used in recent weeks certainly indicate a ruthlessness against...

MANILA: US hostage Martin Burnham and a local nurse were killed in a rescue attempt yesterday, but Mr Burnham's wife was freed from Abu Sayyaf rebels, a Philippine military commander said. Colonel Renato Padua told reporters Christian missionary Mr Burnham, 42, was executed by the rebels when they realised a rescue attempt was under way. Mr Burnham's wife, Gracia, was in hospital, being treated for wounds received after she was grazed by a bullet. Four Abu Sayyaf gunmen were killed and seven soldiers wounded in the gun battle, which continued in the mountainous area into late afternoon, Colonel Padua said....