Free Republic

Charges of unlawful assembly and use of uniform in public were brought against 11 members of a group trying to enforce aspects of strict Islamic Sharia law in the North Rhine-Westphalia city, a spokeswoman for the Wuppertal police told The Local. Officers stopped the 11-man group on the street on Wednesday. Some were wearing orange vests bearing the words 'Shariah Police', in violation of federal German law, the spokeswoman said. The group has been stopping young people at local drinking and gambling establishments and urging them to abstain from activities deemed to be ungodly according to Islam. The Wednesday incident...

The number of fundamentalist Salafi Islamists in Germany - those who aim to practice their religion according to 7th century norms - is rising at an unprecedented rate. A survey commission by Germany security services estimated that there were around 7,900 active Salfis in Germany this June, Focus Online reports.In January, there was thought to be 6300: meaning there was a 25 per cent leap in just four months.For the past three years the number has been rising more steadily, at around just under 6 per cent every four months.Before January the number rose by 2,500 - form 3,800 to...

The Telegraph reported: The FBI “most wanted” mugshot shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US custody four years ago may now be regretting it… …Well-organised and utterly ruthless, the ex-preacher is the driving force behind al-Qaeda’s resurgence throughout Syria and Iraq, putting it at the forefront of the war to topple President Bashar al-Assad and starting a fresh campaign of mayhem against the Western-backed government in Baghdad. On Tuesday, his forces achieved their biggest coup in Iraq to date, seizing control...

Women with uncovered faces might give the little tykes all sorts of ideas. This isn’t happening in Afghanistan… but in Tunisia. The heartland of the Arab Spring. A group of Salafites has issued death threats against teachers at an elementary school in Djerba, Tunisia, if they will not start wearing the Islamic veil within a week. ... Some might complain that it’s unfair to call Salafis moderate. But I’m not being sarcastic. If the Muslim Brotherhood can be repeatedly referred to as a moderate group as well as many of the Salafist militias in Syria that aren’t Al Qaeda… that...

Fatwa: Women who swim in the sea commit adultery, should be punished • "When a woman goes swimming, as the word for sea is masculine, when "the water touches the woman's private parts, she becomes an 'adulteress' and should be punished." - Summary of a report titled "The misguided Fatwas of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis", as published in the Al Masry Al Youm. A report by a committee set up by Al Azhar, one of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic universities in Cairo, to study the fatwas issued by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis reveals how Islamists view...

Days before protests,Obama admin asked the Coptic Pope to urge the Copts in Egypt not to protest-supporting sharia subjugation of Christians. "AFRICA/EGYPT - After the deposition of Morsi, reprisals against Christians," from News.va, July 4: Minya - Among the episodes of violence in Egypt after the overthrow of President Morsi there is also the attack against the Coptic Catholic parish of St. George, in the village of Delgia, 60 kilometers from Minya. Since Wednesday evening, July 3 groups of fanatical Islamists first looted and then burned down the pastor’s house and church group buildings.

The Egyptian army has set a deadline of 4 p.m. Cairo time for the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Morsi to compromise with the people of Egypt (by stepping down.) Morsi refuses. 18 people were killed and 200 were wounded in clashes at Cairo University last night.A Washington Post report from Cairo on dueling statements from Morsi and the army: Waving his hands and shaking his fists in a 45-minute speech on national television late Tuesday, Morsi swore that he was committed to the democratic process that brought him to power and said that any attempts to subvert the constitution...

Sunni Muslim villagers killed four Shiite men on Sunday, accusing them of trying to spread their version of Islam, according to Egyptian security officials. ... A Salafi preacher, Mohammed Hassan, called on Morsi "not to open the doors of Egypt" to Shiites, saying that "they never entered a place without corrupting it." Salafis consider Shiite as heretics.

A banner showing al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and former emir Osama bin Laden is placed outside the French Embassy in Cairo, Egypt during a protest organized by Mohammed al Zawahiri. Image from Euronews. Within the past few days, Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, has threatened France and the West while condemning the intervention in Mali. The younger Zawahiri promised that if France and its allies continue to fight in Mali, then Westerners will be the "first to burn." During an interview broadcast by Euronews on Jan. 22, Mohammed al...

One empire falls and another rises in its place. It’s an old story and it is what we are seeing in the Middle East. The Islamist resurgence was fed by the collapse of two world powers, the USSR and the US. The fall of the Soviet Union robbed the Arab Socialist dictatorships of their support. The last of these, Syria, is now under siege, by Sunni Islamist militias. Egypt’s Sadat had made the move to the American camp early enough to avoid the fate of Syria or Iraq, but instead his successor, Mubarak, encountered the fate of the Shah of...

It’s not often during a papal trip that a Catholic bishop and one of the pope’s official hosts actually corrects the boss, or at least strikes a slightly different note, but it happened Saturday night to Benedict XVI in Lebanon vis-à-vis the most important movement in this part of the world, the “Arab Spring.” Last night, Benedict visited the headquarters of the Maronite church, by far the largest of the seven Catholic churches in the country, to celebrate a youth rally that drew an estimated 20,000 young Lebanese, mostly Catholics but with some Muslims in the crowd as well. Prior...

Hopes that deaths of four US diplomats won't be the last The United States is positioning military forces so that it can respond to unrest in as many as 17 or 18 places in the Islamic world, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced late Friday. "We have to be prepared in the event that these demonstrations get out of control,” he said. Those words dashed hopes in Washington that the anti-US Islamist rampage by now sweeping 21 countries over a video deriding Islam had passed their peak. In fact, by their sixth day Saturday, Sept. 15,the street protests against American embassies...

If Americans are going to understand what’s going on and process it effectively, the first thing we’ve got to realize is that this isn’t all about us. The riots in Cairo are basically part of a local power struggle. Radical Salafists are in a power struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood; attacking the US embassy forces President Morsi (as the radical strategists presumably expected) to side with the US, however slowly or reluctantly. That’s a win for the radicals, who want to tar the Muslim Brotherhood as soft appeasers who side with the Americans against their own outraged people. Striking at...

At least three people were hurt on Friday as dozens of armed terrorists, affiliated with the Salafi movement of Islam, stormed the international peacekeeping force base in the Sinai Peninsula, near the Gaza-Israel border. They were protesting the controversial film mocking the prophet Mohammed which has resulted in protests throughout the Arab world. Channel 10 News cited reports in the Egyptian media which said the Muslims broke into the base and torched it. The report quoted one senior official as having told the Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Saba that shots were fired from within the base at firefighters who came to...

His inflammatory chat show on satellite television has long prided itself on baiting liberals, Christians and Jews, but last week saw Sheikh Khalid Abdullah stage the broadcasting controversy of a lifetime. The rabble-rousing Egyptian tele-Islamist knew he had found a ratings-grabber when he found an obscure, badly-made film on the internet called the Innocence of Muslims. It had actually been online since July, but nobody had paid attention to its crude libels against the Prophet Mohammed until Mr Abdullah's show broadcast clips from it last weekend, calling for the film-makers to be executed. Within hours the hardline Salafi Islamists who...

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Islamist and leftist students fought running battles at a Tunisian university Wednesday in the latest incident involving rising religious sentiment in the North African country. Competing demonstrations in the morning by hundreds of conservative students, known as Salafis, and leftist members of the national students' union erupted into violence when the former tore down the national flag flying at the university entrance.

Other countries’ propagation of a stricter form of Islam in Albania is causing tensions with Christians and with other Muslims, a charity leader says. Peter Rettig, head of the South-East Europe Section of the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, said that young imams trained in Turkey and Saudi Arabia are spreading “a different form of Islam from what is customary” in Albania. The countries are strongly promoting the building of Islamic schools. “This is leading to tensions,” he told Aid to the Church in Need. The Catholic charity’s project partners have reported incidents that are “not dramatic”...

Egyptian armed forces and protesters clashed in Cairo on Friday, with troops firing water cannons and tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones as they tried to march on the Defense Ministry, a flashpoint for a new cycle of violence only weeks ahead of presidential elections. For the first time in Egypt's stormy transition, hardline Islamists were in the forefront of street fighting with the troops, a shift for groups that previously had largely stayed out of direct confrontation with the ruling military. The clashes centered around a sit-in that has been held for a week in a square several...

After their "strong showing" in the Egyptian elections, Salafis are a hot topic. But despite all the talk of Salafis, we still have a difficult time defining Salafism. Take Wendell Steavenson’s recent New Yorker piece, “Radicals Rising,” a portrait of Salafi politicians in Alexandria, Egypt. Steavenson defines Salafism as “a strain of Islamic fundamentalism that emphasizes the original tenets and practices of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions.” Steavenson’s essay is worth reading—don’t get me wrong. But her definition doesn’t actually distinguish Salafis from most other Muslims. Islam is rooted in the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad. This applies to Salafis (usually considered Sunni)...

In recent years, we've begun to brace ourselves for news of bombings, burnings, and other attacks on churches full of Christian worshipers on religious holy days — for example, in Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Ethiopia. This violence comes out of the growing community of Salafi Muslims, adherents of the radical brand of Islam that is Saudi Arabia's official doctrine and which Saudi Arabia exports throughout the Sunni world. We've also come to expect the willful blindness of the Obama administration about the religious implications of these horrific events. Last weekend's Easter Sunday was no exception. On...