Free Republic

Sister Inés Nieves Sancho a sewing teacher, the nun that was decapitated. Image: elespanol.com Tuesday’s slaughter took place after an armed group called 3R attacked two villages in the Central African Republic. At least 26 people have been killed, and many more wounded, in a massacre representing one of the biggest single losses of life in the Central African Republic (CAR) since a February peace deal. The UN’s peacekeeping mission in CAR (Minusca) reported on Wednesday that Tuesday’s slaughter took place after an armed group called 3R attacked two villages Koundjili and Djoumjoum, in the north-west of the country. The...

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[video of Arab female singer] Tough to imagine anything more moronic than MTV nor anything more oxymoronic than the term “Arabic MTV.” Walk down the street in any Arab capital and you’ll see burkah-covered women. Yet turn on the TV in any Arab living room and you’ll find a dozen music video channels filled with bared flesh. Enter Ahmed Abu Haiba, the founder of 4Shbab TV, which calls itself “Islam’s own MTV.” The idea behind 4Shbab is simple, he says. Mainstream music videos are “lewd” and do not represent the Arab world’s cultural values. He says they are haram, or...

Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 My Spiritual Journey By Barack Obama Two days after I won the democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School. "Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win," the doctor wrote. "I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you." The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to...

Reflecting the seriousness of the crisis, the reclusive Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani allowed himself to be shown on television, meeting with other religious authorities in the holy city of Najaf in his first public appearance since the Shiite uprising there in August 2004. Sistani later issued a statement calling on Shiites to stage peaceful demonstrations, and "not to be dragged into committing acts that would only please the enemies, namely, the sectarian sedition." But Sistani also warned that if government security forces prove unable to halt attacks against Shiite targets, "then the believers themselves are able to do this, with...