Free Republic

As Islamist terrorists are being arrested in Baku for a plot to attack both the American and Israeli Embassies; as Muslims torture, murder, and exile Christians from their native Arab lands; as Hamas constantly bombards Israeli civilians with rockets launched from Gaza; even as Iran is threatening to send many "caravans of tens of thousands" of hostile Iranians to march on Jerusalem—guess what subject drew 225 eager audience members and the media to an upper west side Jewish Community Center? The subject du jour was:"Combating Islamophobia," which featured panelists Rabbi Marc Schneier and Imam Shamsi Ali. The moderator: None other...

Announcing the successful assassination of Osama Bin Laden on May 1, 2011, President Obama declared that the United States is “not – and never will be – at war with Islam….our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader, he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, Al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own.” In that same speech, Obama stated that “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader” because, according to Obama, by definition, a (good) Muslim cannot be a “mass murderer of Muslims.” But this is simply not true....

The Bloody Beast is really back. Only the willfully blind can deny it. Let me spell it out, let me risk, yet again, being accused of “Islamophobia” (which does not exist), and of “racism” which very much does. Let the record show: I am not a “racist.” The Beast is radical, fundamentalist, “Islamist” Islam; the beast is anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Hindu and anti-Jewish Muslim supremacists, who are now also terrorists/jihadists. They—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Moammar Gaddafi, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah—are not wrestling with themselves quietly, spiritually, to overcome lust or hatred. Oh the contrary. They are blowing people up,...

Writer of books and columns, Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies, lecturer and activist ​Phyllis Chesler​ joins me today to discuss feminism in today's turbulent world. ​ ​Plus: Brit Hume's greatest sin and more bias from the (cr)AP. Call-ins for the second half are encouraged... (347) 327-9710

No, the debate between Naomi Wolf and Phyllis Chesler isn't dead yet. Quick link summary for those just jumping in: On August 31 Phyllis Chesler wrote a piece at Pajamas Media challenging an article Naomi Wolf wrote about veiled Muslim women for the Sydney Morning Herald. Jamie Glazov, FrontPage's managing editor and a blogger for NewsReal, wrote a post in support of Chesler here. Wolf didn't care for either Chesler or Glazov's characterizations of her position. She left a comment demanding that David Horowitz, NewsReal's Editor-In-Chief, remove Glazov's blog. She also contacted Chesler. Glazov had an additional rebuttal here, Horowitz...

Over at JihadWatch, the remarkable Robert Spencer brings a potent contribution to the debate about the veil in the Muslim world as only he can. Discussing the recent Salon article which defended Wolf, Spencer writes: Clark-Flory goes on to excoriate Chesler, Horowitz and Glazov for their assorted sins against multiculturalist orthodoxy, and then concludes: You might notice that as this conflagration spreads, more and more conservatives -- many of whom do not identify as feminists -- are rushing in to stoke the fire. As they do, the discussion becomes less about defending women's rights and more about supporting their ongoing...

Two real feminist bloggers have weighed in on the ongoing Phyllis Chesler-Naomi Wolf feud over Wolf's apparent apologetic for the burqa and Islamic gender apartheid which NewsReal stumbled into the middle of yesterday morning when Jamie Glazov wrote a post supporting Chesler. (Quick back story: Wolf responded by demanding that David Horowitz, NewsReal's Editor-In-Chief, remove Glazov's post. Glazov wrote a knock-out rebuttal here and Chesler wrote her own post supporting it and expanding the debate. And now Horowitz has weighed in here -- as I very much hoped he would.) Now as the story circulates the blogosphere, Cynthia Yockey and...

Naomi Wolf is “simply appalled” at my “misrepresentation” of her disposition toward Muslim veiling on my recent NewsReal blog. She has asked my boss, David Horowitz, to “remove this falsehood from your site and correct the record.” She has also made similar demands of Phyllis Chesler, who has also touched on Wolf’s totalitarian odyssey in a recent Pajamas Media piece. Wolf insists that she does not find the burqa “sexy” and that she does not wish to institutionalize it, even though her recent piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, is entitled Behind the Veil Lives a Thriving Muslim Sexuality and...

SNIPPET: "Today, I received two emails from an Elly Kilroy on behalf of WLUML, asking me to “please immediately remove the link to Women Living Under Muslim Laws from your list of recommended websites; we do not want to be associated with you in any way.” The email reads as follows: “Dear Phyllis, Please could you remove the link to Women Living under Muslim Laws from your list of Recommended Websites; we are more than uncomfortable about being in the same list as names such as Daniel Pipes, Melanie Phillips and Internet Haganah to name just a few. We are...

Hollywood has spawned a series of propaganda films all packaged as entertaining adventure stories replete with big budgets, big stars, bright colors and amazing technical effects. For example, George Clooney's 2005 film, "Syriana," features a CIA plot to blow up a soft-spoken, highly sympathetic Saudi Prince who, doggone it!, was just about to free all the women in his country and usher in a modern era. Obviously, only dirty American oil politics is holding progress at bay in the otherwise peace-loving and tyrant-free Arab Middle East. In 2006, Brad Pitt (Angelina Jolie's real life partner) and Cate Blanchett starred in...

Another possibility is that Western feminists fail to confront Muslim immigration for ideological reasons. Many of them are silent on Islamic oppression of women because they have also embraced “Third-Worldism” and anti-Western sentiments. I see some evidence in support of this thesis. American writer Phyllis Chesler has sharply criticized her sisters in books such as The Death of Feminism. She feels that too many feminists have abandoned their commitment to freedom and “become cowardly herd animals and grim totalitarian thinkers,” thus failing to confront Islamic terrorism. She paints a portrait of current U.S. University campuses as steeped in “a new...

Islamic terrorists routinely kidnap the most vulnerable civilians and hold them hostage. Hamas and Hizbullah, like Arafat’s PLO, hold their own people hostage as well, and hide both themselves and their weapons among Muslim civilians. For years, Hizbullah held the village of Kana hostage. When Israel finally fought back against Hizbullah’s shelling of Israeli civilians, the Jewish state reaped a whirlwind of condemnation. Israel mourned these civilian deaths even as many Islamists celebrated these deaths as a great propaganda victory. Just as Hizbullah hid behind women and children in Kana, using them as human shields, so too does Muslim culture...

For leftists, Israel is the aggressor and terrorists are the victims, argues Brian Wimborne IN her book The New Anti-Semitism (2005), American feminist academic Phyllis Chesler writes: "The American and European Left have made a marriage in hell with their Islamic counterparts. The same Left that has still never expressed any guilt over its devotion to communist dictators who murdered millions of their own people in the service of a Great Idea has now finally, fatefully, joined the world jihadic chorus in calling for the end to racist Zionism and to the Jewish apartheid state." This is an especially interesting...

Are we winning the war against terror or more precisely, against the death-cult ideology of extreme hate that employs terror as one of its weapons? America, Britain and Israel have all committed significant sums of money to fight back militarily and to ensure civilian safety. However, we must fight another very hot war, one which will ultimately decide whether Western Civilization lives or dies. This is a war we are not winning and some argue that it is a war we have not yet even begun to fight. I am talking about The Culture War, the war that must be...

Are we winning the war against terror or more precisely, against the death-cult ideology of extreme hate that employs terror as one of its weapons? America, Britain and Israel have all committed significant sums of money to fight back militarily and to ensure civilian safety. However, we must fight another very hot war, one which will ultimately decide whether Western Civilization lives or dies. This is a war we are not winning and some argue that it is a war we have not yet even begun to fight. I am talking about The Culture War, the war that must be...

Given that we are under attack and at war, a certain fraying of nerves is understandable, but outright insanity is not. Lately, I have observed some fairly psychotic behavior in public places, mainly among the chattering classes, not among ordinary civilians who better understand that the terrorists mean to kill us and that appeasement is not an option.  For example, in the midst of a quiet cafe dinner, a soft-spoken artist friend suddenly began screaming: "I hate President Bush, I wish he was dead." Her face got red, and she screwed up her eyes. I was taken aback. Her rage...

On March 6, 2005, I delivered this speech at a historic conference that drew more than 500 people to Columbia University. The conference was co-sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and by The David Project, the group that made the film "Columbia Unbecoming." Hundreds of people had to be turned away. At least twenty newspapers sent reporters. Speakers included Minister Natan Sharansky via satellite from Milan, Martin Kramer via satellite from Washington D.C., Charles Jacobs, the founder of The David Project, and Morton Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America, and many others, including speakers...

American feminists, myself included, were horrified by the excesses of the Taliban, but our campaign against them proved ineffective. It took the American military invasion to rid the country--temporarily--of those thugs. However, American progressives, including many feminists, were the first to condemn the American action. Afghanistan has always been a "wild west" of a country. No one has ever colonized or subdued the warring ethnic factions -- or brought freedom to this impoverished and reactionary country. A constitution is a fine thing, but without the will to enforce it, the document remains mere words on paper. The 1964 Afghan...

<p>FOR decades, she was a fierce fighter of the left - an outspoken feminist, friend of the oppressed. But now, best-selling author Phyllis Chesler is more likely to get dirty looks than high-fives as she strolls through her Park Slope, Brooklyn, neighborhood, where she's committed the cardinal sin of flying the American flag.</p>