Free Republic

Sri Lanka: Muslim cleric identified as mastermind of 2019 Easter jihad massacre that killed over 300 peopleWhat’s that? A Muslim cleric? How did a man who has dedicated his life to understanding Islam properly and communicating it effectively so spectacularly misunderstand the Religion of Peace? Why does no one other than me ever ask this question?“Easter Terror attack 2019: Radical cleric identified as the mastermind of the deadly terror attacks,” by P C Thomas, News Track Live, April 7, 2021 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):Colombo: A top Sri Lankan minister said on Tuesday that a radical cleric, who is...

More than a dozen people were injured when a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Catholic church in the Muslim-majority archipelago of Indonesia on Palm Sunday, the first day of the Holy Week. The bomb exploded in front of the Cathedral Church in the city of Makassar in South Sulawesi province at about 10.30 a.m. on Sunday as the church was preparing for its third service, according to reports. Agence-France Presse quoted local police as saying that at least 14 people were wounded in the bombing. “There were two people riding on a motorbike when the explosion happened...

Captured live after the shooter killed a couple in the parking lot. Viewer discretion is advised.

After the latest round of bloodletting began on March 15, the Nigerien army sent reinforcements to the Tillaberi regionScores of people have died in the deadliest suspected jihadist massacre ever to hit Niger, the government said Monday, underscoring the huge security challenge facing new President Mohamed Bazoum. Government spokesman Zakaria Abdourahamane said 137 people had died in Sunday's raids in villages near Niger's border with Mali. "In treating civilian populations systematically as targets now, these armed bandits have gone a step further into horror and brutality," Abdourahamane said in a statement read on public television.

A French teacher says he was threatened with a beheading by a student and then suspended by the headmaster for defending beheaded teacher Samuel Paty. Paty was beheaded because a 13-year-old girl had lied about his course on free speech to her Muslim father. ============================================================= Le Parisien reported that the Muslim teenager had lied because she did not want her father to find out that she had been suspended for skipping classes. She claimed instead that her history and geography teacher Samuel Paty, had suspended her from classes after she had a disagreement with him over caricatures of the prophet....

SOCIAL MEDIA has been awash with calls for action to keep women safe following the disappearance of Sarah Everard. But will the UK implement a 6pm curfew for men?Women have been expressing their fears and need for change following the disappearance of 33-year-old Sarah Everard as she walked home in south London last week. A Metropolitan Police officer has been arrested on suspicion of murder, and human remains - which have yet to be identified - have been found in woodland in Ashford, Kent. Following the news of Sarah’s disappearance, women across the UK have taken to social media to...

A fire at a French cloud services firm has disrupted millions of websites, knocking out government agencies’ portals, banks, shops, news websites and taking out a chunk of the .FR web space, according to internet monitors. The fire, which broke out on Wednesday shortly after midnight at OVHcloud, destroyed one of four data centres in Strasbourg, in eastern France, and damaged another, the company said. There was no immediate explanation provided for the blaze, which erupted just two days after the French cloud computing firm kicked off plans for an initial public offering. Europe’s largest cloud services provider told clients...

Farah, a 12-year-old Christian girl, says she was taken from her home in Pakistan last summer, shackled, forced to convert to Islam and made to marry her kidnapper. It's a fate estimated to befall hundreds of Pakistani Christian, Hindu and Sikh girls yearly. On 25 June, Farah was at home in Faisalabad, Pakistan's third most populous city, with her grandfather, three brothers and two sisters when they heard knocking on their front door. She remembers her grandfather going to open it. Then three men burst in, grabbed Farah and forced her into a van outside. They warned the family that...

Nigerian authorities are searching for hundreds of schoolgirls who were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in a raid early Friday morning, according to police in the northwestern state of Zamfara. Police Commissioner Abutu Yaro told reporters that 317 girls had been kidnapped from Government Girls Science Secondary School in the town of Jangebe, according to its principal. He said efforts to trace the kidnappers and retrieve the students are underway, and that authorities were looking into information that they had been moved to neighboring forests. "All of us are angry, and all of us are sad," he said. "Despite that we...

TUNIS (REUTERS) -Islamist militants kidnapped and beheaded a young shepherd in mountains in Tunisia near the border with Algeria on Sunday, security sources and residents said. Troops found the body of Okba Dhouibi after he had been seized by militants, the sources said. Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi said that act would not go unpunished.

GHAZNI (Afghanistan) • At least 15 children were killed when a motorbike laden with explosives blew up near a religious gathering in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, officials said. The children had gathered at a home in Ghazni province to recite Quran verses, a regular activity on the Islamic holy day of Friday, when the blast happened. Mr Wahedullah Jumazada, spokesman for the province's governor, said: "Unfortunately, as a result of this incident, 15 people - all children - were martyred." Ghazni police confirmed the blast and that all the victims were children. Twenty other people, including some children, were wounded....

Radical Islamists have killed at least 30 Christians, raped 10 young women and girls, and kidnapped fifteen others in a spate of recent attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Christian Post reported Wednesday. Between November 20 and December 3, jihadis carried out violent raids on five villages in North Kivu province, northeastern DRC. Armed with guns, machetes, clubs, swords, and axes, the Islamists surrounded churches in each of the five villages and proceeded to assault the Christians inside. “There was a throng of Christians flooding the streets in a helpless situation, as well as radical Muslim extremists...

Beatrice Stockli was kidnapped by Islamist extremists in Timbuktu, Mali, in January 2016. A Swiss missionary Beatrice Stöckli—kidnapped from Timbuktu, Mali in January 2016—was killed only weeks before other hostages were freed by Islamist extremists, in an apparent prisoner-hostage swap negotiated by the new transitional government in Mali. ... The Swiss Foreign Ministry expressed its sorrow that Stöckli, a single woman in her late 40s, was “apparently killed by kidnappers of the Islamist terrorist organization Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslim (JNIM) about a month ago.”... .... the missionary settled in Timbuktu in 2000, working for a Swiss church,... The...

Boko Haram jihadists on Sunday killed 12 people and abducted seven others in a raid on a village near the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok, local sources said. Chibok is the scene of the mass kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in 2014 by Boko Haram which drew global outrage and international attention to the group. Fighters in six pickup trucks drove into Takulashi village on Sunday, 18 kilometres (12 miles) from Chibok, shooting residents and setting homes ablaze. “The terrorists killed 12 people, including two of our members who engaged them in a gunfight,” Abwaku Kabu, the leader of a local...

Russian police shot dead a 16-year-old boy as he attacked police with a knifeCredit: social media Vitaly Antipov threw petrol bombs at a police station in Kukmor in Eastern RussiaCredit: social media According to investigators, Vitaly Antipov had tried to set fire the police station in the town of Kukmor in Eastern Russia on Friday. The 16-year-old threw two Molotov cocktails at the station before stabbing an officer three times in the hip and arm. Another police officer fired warning shots into the air before being forced to open fire. Antipov was hit with six bullets after a dozen shots...

Boko Haram fighters have killed a pregnant woman and five others in an attack in Damboa, Borno State. According to the civilian joint task force who confirmed the attack, 22 insurgents were killed while five soldiers died. The attack which reportedly took place on Sunday left seven others injured. The fighters stormed the town in seven gun trucks and 12 motorbikes and headed straight for the army base, residents said. Several Boko Haram fighters were also killed by Nigerian soldiers. “The army engaged the insurgents for hours after which the Boko Haram fighters ran away. The people that were killed...

One of the benefits of Adel Guindy’s new book, A Sword Over the Nile: A Brief History of the Copts Under Islamic Rule, is that it implicitly answers an important question: how and why did non-Muslim nations become Islamic?  In this case, how did Egypt go from being overwhelmingly Christian in the seventh century to being overwhelmingly Muslim in the twenty-first century?  To understand the significance of this question -- and because pre-Islamic Egypt’s profoundly Christian nature is often forgotten -- a brief primer is in order: Before Islam invaded, Egypt was home to some of Christendom’s earliest theological giants and...

The center of the country has been caught in a whirlwind of violence since the emergence in this region in 2015 of a jihadist group led by the Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, who recruited widely from his community. Twelve civilians, including two women and a child, and at least as many Malian soldiers, were killed in a double attack Tuesday, October 13 in central Mali, the deadliest in the country since the putsch of August 18. This new attack comes a few days after the release of four hostages - an opposition leader, Soumaïla Cissé, the French Sophie Pétronin and...

A history teacher who had allegedly shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed in class was decapitated and his assailant shot dead by French police as they tried to arrest him on Friday, police and prosecutors said. French anti-terror prosecutors said they were investigating the assault which happened on the outskirts of Paris at around 5:00 pm local time near a school in Conflans Saint-Honorine, a western suburb of the French capital. Le Parisien and Reuters reported the teacher recently gave a class on freedom of expression and showed cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which are considered by Muslims to be...

The French president Emmanuel Macron has announced a curfew during which everyone must be at home between 9pm and 6am for the Paris region, as well as the cities of Rouen, Lille, St Etienne, Lyon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Marseille and Toulouse. The curfew will begin on Saturday and will last for four weeks, he said.