Free Republic

At a fundraiser in Milwaukee on Monday, President Barack Obama said in a speech, “Let’s reach for hope.” Apparently hope is all he has left. While he “inherited”—a word he loves to use as if the economic woes of the country came to him by surprise—an economy that was in freefall due to Federal Reserve interest rates set at near zero and government policies that benefited Wall Street and Big Banksters while absolving them of risk, he supported most of those policies while a back-bencher in the United States Senate. Obama has officially been president for 19 months, and his...

DETROIT — A Muslim leader from Ohio who was convicted of lying about his involvement with a group the U.S. government designated a terrorist organization has been deported to his native Palestinian territories, immigration authorities said Friday. Fawaz Damra, 46, was convicted in June 2004 of concealing his ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad when he applied for U.S. citizenship in 1994. Click here to read the indictment (pdf) Damra, who served imam at Ohio's largest mosque, the Islamic Center of Cleveland, was deported on Thursday, said Tim Counts, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was...

Dr Zaki Badawi joined other faith leaders in condemning the London bombings. British Muslim leader Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi has said he has been refused entry to the US without explanation. The head of the Muslim College said he flew from London to New York to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York but was turned back. Dr Badawi said he was detained for six hours on Wednesday and that immigration staff were "very embarrassed". US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had information indicating Dr Badawi was "inadmissible". Spokeswoman Janet Rapaport said that when problems arose...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Police arrested a Shiite Muslim leader in connection with the assassination of a rival Sunni lawmaker amid a crackdown on several Islamic groups, officials said Sunday. Allama Sajid Naqvi, the leader of Tehreek-i-Islami Pakistan, was arrested late Saturday in Rawalpindi, a city neighboring the capital, Islamabad, Interior Ministry spokesman Abdur Rauf Chaudhry said. Naqvi was arrested in the killing of Maulana Azam Tariq, the leader of Millat-e-Islamia who was fatally shot Oct. 7 as he drove on the outskirts of Islamabad, Chaudhry said. His alleged role in that killing was not clear. On Saturday, President Gen....

KUALA LUMPUR, October 18 (IslamOnline) - Abu Bakar Basyir, the Muslim cleric high on the list of suspects of the USA Singapore and Malaysia for terrorism activities, is ready to surrender to Indonesian police after being named as a suspect in a series of deadly church bombings across Indonesia in 2000, news reports said on Friday, October 18. Considered the spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) based in Singapore, he is also linked to the Bali bombing, another unconfirmed report said. A report on Wednesday in several Indonesian newspapers revealed that the U.S. was prepared to...

Hasyim Muzadi, the chairman of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama, said the group strongly opposed any U.S. attack on Iraq. "We totally oppose a U.S. attack on Iraq. What would it be based on? There's never been a clear argument from the United States, and even their allies oppose it," Muzadi was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying on the sidelines of a seminar on terrorism in Jakarta. "If the U.S. strikes, they will lose significant value as a democratic country, and we will protest," he said. Nahdlatul Ulama is said to have some 40 million supporters across...