Free Republic

An elementary school in the Twin Cities suburb of Burnsville is selling “school spirit hijabs” to students at school events and online. William Byrne Elementary introduced the new “school spirit hijabs” this academic year. Like the school’s T-shirts, the hijabs are marked with the school logo featuring its mascot, Buster the Bulldog. Unlike the T-shirts, which cost $10 each, the hijabs only cost $6 each. KARE reports that the idea originated with Maryan Ali, the elementary school’s “Somali cultural liaison,” who pitched it to a mother who volunteers as the spirit wear coordinator for the school’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO)....

PARIS - France’s lower house of parliament is voting Tuesday on a bill that would strengthen government oversight of mosques and religious schools and crack down on polygamy and forced marriage, among other measures aimed at rooting out Islamic radicalism. The bill is part of broader French efforts to fight extremism in recent years that gained new urgency after a teacher was beheaded in October and other attacks. President Emmanuel Macron says the efforts are also needed to protect French values like gender equality and secularism from encroaching fundamentalism in some communities. But many French Muslims say the draft law...

Half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians are gone due to the unleashed forces of jihad, many of them fleeing to nearby Syria; yet, as the Assad regime comes under attack by al-Qaeda and others, the jihad now seeps into Syria, where Christians are experiencing a level of persecution unprecedented in the nation’s modern history. Likewise, some 100,000 Christian Copts have fled their native Egypt since the overthrow of the Mubarak regime; and in northern regions of Nigeria, where the jihadi group Boko Haram has been slaughtering Christians, up to 95 % of the Christian population has fled.Meanwhile, the “big news” concerning...