Free Republic

A rising number of young German women are being converted to Islam through hardline Salafist outreach on social media, according to Berlin’s domestic political intelligence agency. The fundamentalist Salafism branch of Sunni Islam is making gains in Germany through increased proselytising on social media, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has said. According to figures shared with Die Welt, the number of Salafist followers in Germany in 2023 stood at 10,500. This rose to over 11,000 last year, nearly three times the number recorded in 2011. The political spy agency claimed that conversions of German women...

Two years ago this month, the U.S. television network NBC had the bright idea to create a reality show about vigilante terrorist hunters who would do something unspecified to terrorists who had evaded the long reach of justice. The first episode of the execrable series, "The Wanted," put the spotlight on Mullah Krekar, an Iraqi national flagged by the United States, the U.N., and Interpol for his involvement with Iraqi terrorist groups. The program showed NBC's terror team stalking Krekar on the streets of Oslo, a venture that was depicted as extremely dangerous, although Krekar was always just a phone...

Tariq Ramadan raped her with “untold violence”; she said she’d tell cops, he said “You don’t know how powerful I am” NOV 10, 2019 2:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER Whether or not he actually raped her, that part is undeniably true. Tariq Ramadan is or was extremely powerful. As a moderate Muslim who told Westerners soothing fictions about how Islam was reforming and perfectly compatible with democracy, he commanded handsome sums to speak and top positions at Western universities. The world was at his feet. And for similar charlatans, it still is. “Disabled woman who claims she was raped by...

On both sides of the Atlantic, the Salafist form of Islam exists in all its complexity. THE word “Salafism” is often used loosely, especially in continental Europe. When the relationship between Islam and jihadist violence is discussed in, say, France or Germany, the assumption is often made that the problem begins and ends with the Salafis—who put overwhelming emphasis on the first three generations of Muslims and who are thought to have professed the faith at its purest. This Franco-German sloppiness can be bewildering to Islam-watchers in Britain where Salafis have at times been encouraged to play a part in...

The number of Salafists in Germany has risen to its highest ever level, according to the country’s intelligence chief, sparking fears radical Islamist extremism is on the up. Hans-Georg Maassen said people adhering to the fundamentalist Islamic ideology had ‘risen to an all-time high’, with the German intelligence agency BfV claiming it is now at 10,800 – it was at 9,700 in December last year. He said recruitment to Salafism is now taking place in ark corners of the internet, which is hard to police. Maassen also said Islamists coming from the North Caucasus were especially dangerous as many of them had...

The choice of Barcelona as a target for terrorists came as little surprise to security experts in Spain and elsewhere in Europe because of Catalonia’s links to jihadists and Salafism, a radical form of Islam. Catalonia has been the main hub of jihadist recruitment in Spain for more than a decade and radical Islamists consider it to be occupied land that should be part of a future Islamic caliphate. The region is home to approximately 510,000 Muslims, more than a quarter of the total number in Spain, according to a demographic study by the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain....

With the number of women in Hollywood coming forward and exposing Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual harassment and rape, another case has been gripping the Middle East after prominent Islamist thinker Tariq Ramadan was accussed of raping Salafist-turned secular liberal activist Henda Ayari.Ayari has accused Swiss-Muslim thinker Ramadan, the grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood founder, of raping and sexually assaulting her in a Paris hotel room in 2012. Ramadan’s lawyer said that his client denies the allegations and intends to file a complaint for slander.But who exactly is Henda Ayari? The Tunisian-Algerian author currently leads Libératrices, a charity that supports...

Barcelona’s strong ties to radical Islam A quarter of those arrested in Spain for having jihadist ties in recent years were in Catalonia. By GIULIA PARAVICINI 8/18/17, 8:44 PM CET Updated 8/20/17, 12:57 PM CET The choice of Barcelona as a target for terrorists came as little surprise to security experts in Spain and elsewhere in Europe because of Catalonia’s links to jihadists and Salafism, a radical form of Islam. Catalonia has been the main hub of jihadist recruitment in Spain for more than a decade and radical Islamists consider it to be occupied land that should be part of...

French Minister Warns of the Dangers of Salafism — In 1928The following letter was written in 1928 by the French Colonial Minister, Léon Perrier, to the Governor General of French West Africa. Mr. Perrier could see clearly then what Western officials are unable to see, or refuse to see, or are in active collaboration with in the year 2017. Mr. Perrier was warning against the dangers of Salafism, which at that time was confined to North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Now it has penetrated almost the whole of Western Europe, and there is no obvious way to get...

One of Germany’s best-known Islamist preachers went on trial in the western city of Düsseldorf on Tuesday on charges of backing “a terrorist group” fighting in Syria. Sven Lau, 35, stands accused of supporting and recruiting fighters for the Syria-based Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (JMA), or Army of Emigrants and Supporters, which Germany lists as a terrorist organization. A convert to the ultra-conservative Salafist branch of Islam, Lau gained notoriety in 2014 when he organized a vigilante “Sharia Police” group that patrolled German streets seeking to enforce Islamic law. …

In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people rightly warn against blaming the entire Muslim community in Britain and the world. Certainly one of the aims of those who carry out such atrocities is to provoke the communal punishment of all Muslims, thereby alienating a portion of them who will then become open to recruitment by Isis and al-Qaeda clones. This approach of not blaming Muslims in general but targeting “radicalisation” or simply “evil” may appear sensible and moderate, but in practice it makes the motivation of the killers in Manchester or the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015...

...Saudi Arabia has, for decades, been making investments of a different sort—those aimed at influencing Indonesian culture and religion. The king’s current visit is the apex of that methodical campaign, and “has the potential to accelerate the expansion of Saudi Arabia’s cultural resources in Indonesia,” .. Since 1980, Saudi Arabia has devoted millions of dollars to exporting its strict brand of Islam, Salafism, to historically tolerant and diverse Indonesia. It has built more than 150 mosques (albeit in a country that has about 800,000), a huge free university in Jakarta, and several Arabic language institutes; supplied more than 100 boarding...

Here is the fulcrum around which so much of the problem turns: the belief that Islamic law has every right to be put into practice in non-Muslim countries, and the insistence that a parallel, if unequal, legal system can function alongside civil and criminal law codes adhered to by a majority of a country's citizens. Salafism is a form of Islam that insists on the application of whatever was said or done by Muhammad or his companions ... The greatest expression of this failure to integrate, indeed a determined refusal to do so, may be found in the roughly 750...

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...

Former DIA director: Obama White House made “willful decision” to support Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Mehdi Hasan is a highly suspect analyst and Foreign Policy Journal appears to be a pro-jihad paleocon publication, and Al Jazeera is certainly a pro-jihad propaganda outlet. All that is noted, but if this transcript is accurate, former DIA director Michael Flynn is confirming that the Obama Administration knowingly decided to support al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, and directly enabled the rise of the Islamic State. And given the Obama Administration’s general stance toward the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, what...

Global Warming? The Pope is Wrong April 27, 2015 Alan Caruba My thoughts regarding the Pope are rooted in my knowledge of the long record of lies, false predictions, and claims by various environmentalists over the years. When the Vatican announced it would hold a conference on April 28 called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development”, I wondered why the Vatican is not holding a conference to organize the protection of Christians—particularly in the Middle East—against the wholesale genocide that is occurring. The Pope is not alone in this. There appears to...

Salafists who caused outrage by mounting patrols in western Germany as "Shariah Police" have ditched their vests and changed their name, but pledged to continue to take action. It comes as political leaders were accused of creating a "safe zone" for Islamists. North Rhine-Westphalia has become the national front runner in imports and exports of holy warriors,” Christian Democratic Union (CDU) state parliament member and interior policy spokesman Theo Kruse said on Friday. Kruse argued that the state had become a “national space of peace and recovery for Salafists" and a "safe zone" for Islamists. ... Salafism is the fastest-growing...

A jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda has threatened to carry out terrorist attacks in Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain that is home to the largest concentration of radical Islamists in Europe. The threats were issued by a group called "Africamuslima" in response to efforts by Catalonian lawmakers to increase surveillance of radical Salafists seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law in Spain and other parts of Europe. Catalonia -- a region of 7.5 million people centered on the Mediterranean city of Barcelona -- is home to the largest Muslim population in Spain. Most of the estimated 450,000 Muslims...

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...

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”...