Free Republic

For most Americans, February 14 was Valentine's Day, the most insipid holiday on the calendar. The date deserves to be better known for another reason. On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader and revolutionary dictator of Iran, pronounced a fatwa (an Islamic legal judgment) against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. It said: It is not outlandish to think of the World Trade Center towers as The Satanic Verses, magnified immeasurably but not beyond all recognition. "In the name of Him, the Highest. There is only one God, to whom we shall all return. I inform all zealous...

A prominent Islamic apologist named Jamal Badawi, renowned as a moderate Muslim has offered one million dollars to anyone who can find references in the Qur'an that condone religious war, or jihad. The Bergen Record reported this at face value, so even though it noted that Badawi made the challenge jokingly, Badawi's point was made: the Qur'an does not teach religious warfare, and it is only media distortion that gives any other impression. Badawi almost certainly knows better. But his joking offer only obfuscates the truth about how jihadists use the Qur'an to recruit and motivate terrorists thereby blindsiding gullible...

City Journal Our Islamic Fifth Column Farrukh Dhondy Autumn 2001 My first name gives rise to confusion. It’s a common Muslim name, so people I meet, or who read my byline, assume that I am of the faith. Most recently, in response to a column I write for an Indian paper, in which I confessed to having met a few terrorists in my time and attempted to analyze their limited grasp of the world, I received a lot of hate mail. Some of the e-mailers clearly thought I was a Muslim apostate and reminded me that the penalty for that...