Free Republic

More than a thousand Islamic extremists recently marched through the streets of Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, demanding that the European Union’s most populous and powerful country be reconstituted as an Islamic state governed by sharia. The demonstration, organized by a fast-growing Islamist group called Muslim Interaktiv, was allowed to proceed after left-wing parties in Hamburg’s legislature rejected a petition by right-wing parties to prohibit the event. During the April 27 march in Hamburg’s multicultural Sankt Georg district, the Islamists — mostly young men, but also women in chadors, hijabs, niqabs, and jilbabs — complained about an alleged surge in “Islamophobia”...

Two of the suicide bombers who caused carnage in the Paris massacre are thought to have sneaked into France by posing as refugees from Syria. The disclosure, which came amid claims of French intelligence failures, inevitably raised new security concerns about Europe’s borders. Police said the two men, who arrived in Greece last month, were among seven attackers, one as young as 15. One of the attackers was last night named by French media as Mostefai Ismaël Omar, 29, from Courcouronnes, in Essonne. Serbian media last night reported that one of the terrorists was named as Ahmed Almuhamed. The newspaper,...

Pew Poll: Majority of Muslims supports death for anyone leaving Islam. In a new poll by Pew, a majority of Muslims in many of the world’s Islamic countries says they are very much in favor of killing any person who converts from Islam to any other religion. The new poll also exposed mainstream Muslim attitudes regarding other aspects of their life. For instance, the poll found that a majority in the Muslim world are in favor of cutting off hands for theft, stoning people to death for adultery, and insisting that Islam play a major role in politics. This recent...

• –––––CONWAY — Pvt. William Andrew “Andy” Long, 23 of Conway, died Monday, June 1, 2009. Andy was born June 26, 1985, in Long Beach, Calif., to Daris and Janet (Roberson) Long. Andy recently finished Army training at Ft. Benning, Ga., and was on his way to Korea. He attended Sunny Gap Baptist Church in Conway. His family says he had an infectious smile, a great sense of humor, and a brilliant mind. He is a hero. Andy is survived by his parents, Daris and Janet Long of Conway; sister Vanessa Rice and husband Robert of Conway and brother Triston...

The Palestinians who took over the Jewish greenhouses in the Gaza Strip when Israel withdrew its communities from the area now are asking expelled farmers for advice after reportedly failing to reproduce the region's famous insect-free vegetables, WND has learned. Prior to Israel's August withdrawal, the residents of Gaza's Gush Katif slate of Jewish communities ran greenhouses known for producing high-quality insect-free vegetables. The Gush Katif gardens featured some of the most technologically advanced agricultural equipment and accounted for more than $100 million per year in exports to Europe. The greenhouses also supplied Israel with 75 percent of its own...

Samar Hasson was murdered for dating the wrong man. The main suspects in her murder are her father and two uncles. No one is surprised. When news spread through the Druse section of Shfaram that Samar Hasson had been found hanging from a tree in a local olive grove, drivers on the streets began honking their horns. "Everybody was celebrating, it was beautiful," recalled a young man who works at the Hasson clan's auto parts shop in this hillside, Muslim-Christian-Druse town northeast of Haifa. "She caused her family a lot of problems," nodded a co-worker. Aside from the family members...

In late January, I uncovered a password-protected Arabic-language website, Barsomyat.com, that was frequented by Middle Eastern Muslims, predominantly Egyptians. The purpose of Barsomyat.com was to systematically track Christians who were active in religious debates against Muslims on the internet chat service PalTalk. Barsomyat featured pictures of these Christians (some of which were obviously obtained by hacking into the Christians' computers) along with death threats and attempts to track down the subjects' physical addresses. Even Barsomyat.com's banner showed the website's intentions toward Christians, as it pictured a sheep--obviously intended to represent Christianity--getting its throat slit.

One of the few positive effects of 9/11 has been renewed American interest in Islam and the Middle East. Unfortunately, much of the information disseminated in the media about those topics is ignorant and misleading. This is unfortunate because any hope that the predominantly-Christian West and the Muslim world might transcend conflict requires that the former be accurately informed about the latter (and vice-versa, but that's an issue for another column). There are in particular seven myths about Islam and Islamic history that have been repeated so often in the media that they've achieved conventional wisdom status. First, it is...

STRASBOURG, France - A top Islamic official on Tuesday criticized the West for what he called "demonizing" Islam following the Sept. 11 attacks, warning against attributing individual crimes to an entire religion. Even though the attacks were condemned by Muslims, "the majority in the West ... never paused for one second to look back and ask since when an act of individuals could be the reason to condemn one fifth of humanity," said Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Muslim group. Addressing the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the continent's leading...

Toy pigs must go at council Oct 1, 2005 (photo mine -YD) Novelty pig calendars and toys have been banned by bosses at Dudley Council in case Muslim staff are offended. Workers in the council's benefits department have been told to remove or cover up all pig products including toys, porcelain, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. It comes after a Muslim worker said they were offended by pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the authority. Muslims are forbidden from eating pork in the Koran and staff were asked to remove the items. The...

Sickening plunder of Gaza's green gems By CORKY SIEMASZKO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Originally published on September 22, 2005 GAZA - A week after they descended like locusts on the greenhouses that Jewish settlers nurtured in Gaza, looters continue to pillage what should be a prize asset for a fledgling Palestinian state. And the Palestinian Authority, which took over Gaza after the Israelis evacuated the territory, appears powerless to stop them. When a Daily News correspondent visited abandoned Jewish settlements in Gaza, he found brazen vandals dismantling farms that once produced some of the world's finest tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers....

Fast-Food Company to Drop Logo After Muslims Gripe By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor September 19, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - In the latest example of Western business interests giving in to pressure by offended Muslims, Burger King reportedly has withdrawn an ice cream product after complaints that a label design looks like the Arabic script for "Allah." British media reported at the weekend that the fast-food restaurant chain pulled the "BK Cone" and pledged to redesign the label after Muslim customers complained. The product label bears a pattern representing a stylized swirl of soft serve ice cream. But some customer looked...

Sunday, September 18, 2005 22:50 IST JNW HEADLINE NEWS Israeli Arab: Temple Mount Islam's forever By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff September 18th, 2005 The Judeo-Christian world's holiest site, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, will forever remain under Islam's dominion, vowed a venerated Muslim Israeli Arab Friday. Speaking to some 70,000 supporters in the northern Israel town of Umm el-Fahm, Islamic Movement leader Sheikh Raad Salah urged all Muslims to converge on the Temple Mount to defend it against “Jewish aggression.” The sea of Israeli citizens appeared united in their hatred of their state, chanting in unison their intention and desire to oppose...

Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough in today’s Washington Times provide the perspective of Army Colonel H.R. McMaster, who is leading the campaign in Iraq to retake the border town of Tal Afar, on the Islamo-fascists he is confronting: Col. McMaster appeared in the Pentagon this week via a video hookup to describe how his 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, joined by 3rd Iraqi Army Division, routed most of the extremists. But it was his description of how the enemy occupied their safe haven that got the most attention. Col. McMaster told of beheadings, gunshot killings, a booby-trapped dead child and kidnappings....

The fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim. The man claimed the design resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah, and branded it sacrilegious, threatening a "jihad". The chain is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid with backing from The Muslim Council of Britain. It apologised and said: "The design simply represents a spinning ice-cream cone." The offending lid was spotted in a branch in Park Royal last week by business development manager Rashad Akhtar, 27, of High Wycombe. He was not satisfied by the decision...

Chaos in Gaza as Arabs riot, loot, get shot, fire rockets, drown in sea By Israel Insider staff and partners September 12, 2005 Palestinians flooded into empty Jewish settlements Monday and climbed ropes and clambered over walls into Egypt to join a chaotic celebration of the end of 38 years of Israeli military rule over the Gaza Strip. Plans by Palestinian police to bar crowds from the settlements quickly disintegrated. Militant groups hoisted flags, fired wildly into the air and set abandoned synagogues ablaze. Further marring the day, Egyptian border guards shot and killed a Palestinian along the Gaza-Egypt border,...

MORAG, Gaza Strip - Triumphant Palestinians poured into abandoned Jewish settlements Monday, setting empty synagogues on fire and shooting in the air, while Israeli troops left in convoys in the final phase of Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation. Palestinian police stood by helplessly as gunmen raised flags of militant groups in the settlements and crowds smashed what was left in the ruins or walked off with doors, window frames, toilets and scrap metal. Initial plans by Palestinian police to bar the crowds from the settlements for the first few hours quickly collapsed, illustrating the...

An article charging that Switzerland is the “most contemptible among the enemies of Islam” was recently disseminated across several jihadist and password-protected al-Qaeda affiliated forums. The document, originally authored by Colonel Doctor Muhammad al-Ghanam, the former Director of Legal Investigations in the Egyptian Ministry of Interior and a political refugee in Switzerland, explains the alleged false guise of Swiss neutrality, not only on a political level, but on a personal level in light of al-Ghanam’s own experiences. Switzerland is branded one of the “most dangerous links in the ‘international pact of the cross’,” due to its continued participation in the...

In an apparent Sept. 11 communiqué broadcast on ABC News, an al Qaeda operative threatens new attacks against cities in the US and Australia. "Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, God willing. At this time, don't count on us demonstrating restraint or compassion," the tape warns. "We are Muslims. We love peace, but peace on our terms, peace as laid down by Islam, not the so-called peace of occupiers and dictators." In response to the threats against their city, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the city's police department released a statement this morning. They admitted to...

Al-Qaida has a master plan to take over the world and turn it into an Islamic state - by the year 2020. Wishful thinking? Not in the minds of the top terrorist lieutenants interviewed by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein for a new book - including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, mastermind of many atrocities in Iraq. The plan, which is revealed for the first time in the Australian publication The Age, has seven phases: Phase 1: The "awakening" in the consciousness of Muslims around the world following the 9/11 attacks, which were aimed at provoking the U.S. into declaring war on the...