Free Republic

America’s unrivaled prosperity and freedom make it hard for us to understand why everyone doesn’t want to live and think as we do. Even leftists in the United States who routinely assail our history and institutions share this mindset. Their true ideology might be said to be cognitive dissonance. While they spout Marxist dogma, their very viability hinges on keeping the blessings and fruits of our current system. The difference is their belief that they should be the ones to command and distribute them. The problem, of course, is that they may likely kill the golden egg-laying goose in the...

We’re told that most Muslims oppose Islamic terrorism and that it’s only a tiny fringe of radicals and extremists who practice “radical Islamic terrorism” (as opposed to‘moderate Islamic terrorism’ in which the moderate participants moderately detonate bombs, moderately stab civilians and moderately ram cars into pedestrians) and that their actions don’t reflect Islam. Even those who correctly identify the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Koran and Islamic teachings still firmly insist that most Muslims oppose terrorism and only a minority support it. Is that really true? The answer is that it depends on which Islamic terrorism we’re talking about....

Tehran saw its leverage slipping away — and expanded the battlefield to attack the United States and its allies from a different angle. That’s the takeaway from this week’s fighting in Yemen, as Iran-aligned Houthi terrorists took aim at Saudi Arabia’s critical oil infrastructure and shipping routes. When the US military proved it could escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that leads to the Indian Ocean, the regime was in a bind. It lost its ability to choke off the exports of its Gulf neighbors, while remaining unable to export its own oil due to the...

A viral video on social media shows men wearing swastikas and claiming to be national socialists, chanting pro-Hamas and anti-Jewish slogans near the 9/11 memorial. This is the result of decades of Islamists exploiting Western empathy against us, along with leftists joining forces with racist antisemites. Don’t expect this story to last long in the media, because it shows that leftist ideology, not MAGA, is neo-Nazi.

On the cover of its latest edition, The Economist promises to uncover “the truth and the lies” about “Islam in Europe.” The story it presents is, for the magazine’s readership, a reassuring one: a crisis of two extreme fringes fighting across a sensible middle. But this is a false framing that betrays the complexity of Islam in Europe it promises to untangle, just when honest understanding is urgently needed. Allow me to explain why. The editors offer a soothing symmetry: on one side, a small minority of Islamist extremists; on the other, a small minority of far-right extremists. “Islam poses...

What good are all our 9/11 memorial services if we allow sharia law to take over our country? Many ardently claim that we shall never forget the heinous murders of 9-11. But in fact, we need to constantly remember the goal of jihadists and actively repel their evil. The mastermind of 9/11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed designed the September 11 attacks. He told Dr. James Mitchell they did not need another massive Islamic attack to conquer us. They would use our civil liberties, our openness, and our hunger to honor other cultures — he called them gifts from Allah. The practical...

Hamtramck Mayor Adam Alharbi and the city council are facing yet another legal battle as Alharbi filed a lawsuit challenging the recent firing of City Manager Adel Al-Adlani. Standing outside Hamtramck City Hall on Monday alongside attorney Nabih Ayad, Alharbi argued the council's decision to terminate Al-Adlani violated the city's charter and state law. "An action of that magnitude at City Hall can't be taken last minute like that without providing sufficient justification. It's not how we should or will do business in City Hall," Alharbi said. Last week, the Hamtramck City Council voted 4-2 to remove Al-Adlani from his...

But as Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. The media narrative has been set in stone for years: the real victims of 9/11 were Muslims in the U.S., who for a quarter-century now have suffered from unreasonable suspicion, hatred, harassment, discrimination and worse at the hands of racist, bigoted “Islamophobes.” And yet in reality, if Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta were alive today, they would look at what is happening in the United States with a deep sense of satisfaction. This year, one of the primary drivers of the message that Muslims in the U.S. are...

Islam is an ideology of war and conquest, not a religion of peace. Last Thursday, President George W. Bush sat down with his former secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to discuss the September 11, 2001, Islamic terror attacks on the United States. While reflecting on his actions twenty-five years earlier, Bush went out of his way to defend Islam: “I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that these people subverted their religion.” Bush’s absurd statement echoed a similarly absurd statement he made days after the attacks when he told...

In Canada, the punishment for being found trading with Israeli settlements is up to five years under the nation's Special Economic Measures Act. In the UK, the punishment is up to 10 years. Individuals or companies found trading with Israeli settlements could face up to three years in prison under the proposed Norwegian trade restrictions bill, expected by Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide to be passed in the fall. *** "The arguments have only become stronger because the situation in the West Bank has become even worse," Eide told the country's public broadcaster, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). "In...

Müller warns of an "internal apostasy" in the West in the face of the expansion of Islam Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller has warned that the expansion of Islam in Europe coincides with a profound identity crisis in the West, which is abandoning its Christian roots. “Muslims do not respect a weak Christianity that is ashamed of the Cross and reduces itself to a charitable organization or an environmental watchdog body,” stated the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.Müller made these remarks in a prepared address for the Tavole di Assisi 2026, a gathering held on...

As the United States prepares to mark 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, a major press release distribution service rejected an announcement for a campaign devoted to victims of jihadist terrorism, warning organizers that the initiative could be viewed as inflammatory or prejudicial toward Muslims. PR Newswire, which is owned by the communications company Cision, refused to distribute the announcement for a campaign called “Infidel Awareness Month,” according to an email obtained by The Daily Wire. It is scheduled to run from September 11 through October 7, using the anniversaries of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hamas’s 2023...

Democrats are embracing Islam's incompatibility with civilization. Perhaps the primary issue with Muslim immigration into America—beyond the importation of terrorist sleeper cells, that is—is the cultural differences, informed by Sharia, that make Islam fundamentally incompatible with American liberty. Democrats not only don’t care about that, they’re embracing it. The Danbury, Connecticut, City Council recently voted to allow non-citizen legal residents to become police officers, despite their being ineligible under federal law to possess or carry guns. Apparently, the Council is “sending a message” about ICE immigration enforcement. The former Muslim police chief of Detroit suburb Hamtramck took a big step...

The failures that led to 9/11 remain unaddressed to this day. uch has been written about 9/11 on the 25th anniversary of this attack on our soil. To my mind, the most prescient was by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Tablet Magazine. Before I get to it (and I hope you will take time to read more than I can summarize here), we need to review failures that led to the attack and failures that followed. In this regard, we are aided by this week’s CIA declassification of 71 Presidential Daily Briefs from 1998 through December 2001. SHOCKING DECLASSIFIED CIA FILES...

The Justice Department announced Friday that an Afghan woman whose sons were connected to the 2024 Election Day terror plot has been deported from the United States through the never-before-used Alien Terrorist Removal Court. Nazira Haji Zada, 47 years old and living in Fort Worth, Texas, was deported last month through the unusual court, and she agreed to accept the "terrorist" label that bars her from ever returning to the United States, the department said. The Justice Department accused Zada of working to “indoctrinate her children with ISIS ideology and have them pledge loyalty to ISIS," which resulted in her...

Remember all that weaponry Joe Biden’s administration ordered our soldiers to leave behind when we pulled out of Afghanistan? Well we just armed terrorist groups around the world. Sorry to spoil your morning coffee, but let’s recall that terrible day when thirteen U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Remember that day when President Biden back in 2021 decided to walk away and leave a ton of military equipment behind? It was bad, really bad. Well, whatever happened to those weapons anyway? Many of us predicted that they’d fall in the hands of the bad guys. Here is one story I...

A wealthy Washington, D.C., suburb's public school district is advising teachers not to link 9/11 with radical Islam and to be sure to create "safe spaces" for Muslim students as the nation somberly marks the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The guardrails in a six-page instructional guide, "25th Anniversary and Commemoration of 9/11" and distributed to teachers, has prompted critics to accuse Fairfax County (Virginia) Public School's liberal leaders of coddling post-9/11 sensitivities rather than teaching history. "It's sort of a vanilla way to do things," retired Navy Vice Admiral Lou Crenshaw, who was...

On September 12, just one day after the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will convene its annual conference, CAIRCon, in Washington, D.C. The notable timing has brought renewed attention onto CAIR itself. The organization has faced years of controversy over its history and affiliations, including terrorism-related designations or restrictions in Texas, Florida, and the United Arab Emirates that have raised questions about CAIR’s support for organizations such as Hamas, and its leaders’ praise for antisemitic events such as October 7. Its continued partnership with academic figures under scrutiny for antisemitism, such...

September 11, 2001, was just an ordinary Tuesday. That morning at around 8:30 a.m. on the East Coast, most people were either at work or on their commute. Kids were settling in at school. Whether the TV or radio news was background chatter or the focus, suddenly there were interruptions announcing that at 8:46 a.m. an American Airlines Boeing 767 (with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel) had crashed into New York City’s World Trade Center’s North Tower. The jet hit between the 93rd and 99th floors of the 110-story skyscraper. Hundreds of people were instantly killed, and others were trapped...

Reading The Economist often reminds me of listening to David J. Bier of the CATO Institute blather about the wonders of open borders. I keep meaning to write about Bier and will get to it soon, but the essential quality in both cases is a stubborn determination to build cases on theoretical principles, unleavened by any grasp of the real-world realities that shape how those principles play out once implemented. Bier caught my attention several times, but the most emblematic moment that stuck with me was that many of the objections we have to open borders leading to masses of...