Free Republic

RIYADH/BEIRUT, 14 May 2008 — Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal yesterday warned that Iran’s support for Hezbollah’s “coup” in Lebanon would affect Tehran’s relations with Arab and Islamic countries. The Lebanese Army, meanwhile, expanded its troop deployment to several tense areas around the country, hours after it said soldiers would use force if needed to impose order after almost a week of clashes between government supporters and Hezbollah followers. “Of course, for Iran to back the coup that happened in Lebanon and support it will have an impact on its relations with all Arab countries,” Prince Saud said, addressing a...

What can a 19-year-old guy in jogging shorts do at Harvard that a rich Saudi sheik who sponsors terrorism can’t? Get banned from the building. Six times a week, Harvard kicks all the guys out of the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center at the request of the Harvard Islamic Society. This is to accommodate those female Muslim students whose faith won’t let them work out in front of men. In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the...

Radical Islam Is Growing in the US: Where’s the American Anger? by Thomas D. Segel It is very difficult to understand why Americans are not enraged at the thought of any radical Islamic movement, particularly in the United States. But, being unconcerned seems to be an understatement, for Islam is rapidly expanding in this country and there is already evidence that from evening prayer to the teachings of Islamic schools the tone is anti-American and anti-Christian. We have already seen the growth of the Muslim faith in Europe. Even in England there are already calls for the country to adopt...

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items coloured scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolising love, newspapers said. "They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying. It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it...

Although the war we’ve been in since September 11 is called “The War on Terror,” in truth it is not terror or terrorism with which we’re at war. Terrorism, after all, is just a tactic or a tool. It’s not a movement or an ideology per se, just the favored weapon of the movement we are truly at war with -- Islamism. Saying we’re at war with “Terror” makes about as much sense as calling World War II “The War on Blitzkrieg.” We’re stuck with “War on Terror” because the media and the administration were made queasy by the idea...

Under assault by Muslims and multiculturalists, free speech and freedom of the press are dead in Britain. The same sorts of people who killed them in Britain are killing them in Canada. They and their allies are using the British and Canadian courts and tribunals to bury our First Amendment rights in America. Muslims -- individually and in pressure groups -- are using British libel laws and Canadian “human rights” laws to limit what is said about Islam, terrorists and the people in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are funding groups such as al-Queda. The cases of Rachel Ehrenfeld and...

JOHN GIBSON, CO-HOST: It is the big outrage. Fifteen hundred terrorists are on the loose after Saudi Arabia sets them free. The United States just gave the kingdom big props for taking part in today's high-stakes summit to broker a peace between neighboring Israelis and Palestinians but the same country that is attempting to make the world a better place has just made the world a more dangerous place. JAIME COLBY, GUEST CO-HOST: The homeland of Osama bin Laden and 16 of the 9/11 hijackers reportedly releasing more than a thousand terrorists and you will not believe the reason why....

DUBAI (Alarabiya.net) American syllabus checkers will revise textbooks from the Islamic Saudi Academy in Washington after a federal human rights panel charged that the books incited violence and hatred, according to America in Arabic news agency. In its report, the committee recommended closing down the school until the syllabus was revised and discriminatory insinuations eliminated. "The texts imply that protecting Islam necessitates the suppression of 'the other,' its findings read." The committee said it sent a delegation to Saudi Arabia to follow up on the kingdom's promises to promote religious freedom and human rights, which included revising its textbooks. The...

United Saudis of Arabia by: Emmanuel Opati, November 08, 2007 The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USIR) has asked the State Department to shut down the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Fairfax County, Northern Virginia for concerns about whether “what is being taught at ISA promotes religious intolerance.” The USIR found that ISA “is the only school in the United States that is operated with direct authority of the Saudi Embassy” and that the Saudi Ambassador is the Chairman of the school’s Board of Directors. However, the major concern of USIR is that the official textbooks used in...

The Saudi Arabian government will temporarily release 55 prisoners recently transferred from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and will give each of them about $2,600 to celebrate the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a newspaper reported Saturday. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz granted the temporary releases from detention centers in Saudi Arabia so the prisoners could spend time with their families during the holiday in mid-October, the Okaz newspaper reported. They will return to police custody after the holiday and will be referred to Saudi courts at end of this month for upcoming...

AIRO, Egypt (AP) - Police have arrested 172 militants who were plotting to attack Saudi Arabia's oil fields, Saudi state television reported Friday, showing video of explosives, ammunition and firearms found buried in the desert. The Interior Ministry said more than $32.4 million was seized in the operation, one of the largest sweeps against terror cells in the kingdoms. Al-Ekhbariyah, the Saudi state television network, showed investigators breaking tiled floors with hammers to uncover pipes packed with weapons. In one scene, an official upends a plastic pipe, and bullets and little packets of plastic explosives spill out. Interior Ministry spokesman...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are bumpy at the best of times, but violence between Shiites and Sunnis in Lebanon and Iraq is prompting the two Mideast heavyweights to engage in new talks seeking to head off a regional crisis. The clearest sign of the new diplomacy has been in Lebanon, where a joint Saudi-Iranian effort defused a general strike called by the pro-Iranian Shiite militant group Hezbollah after the country erupted into violence two weeks ago, according to state-guided Saudi media. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal has said the two nations began working together...

LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that Britain needed Saudi Arabia's help in fighting terrorism, and that ending a probe of Saudi arms deals with BAE Systems PLC was the right decision. Mr. Blair has come under criticism for calling off the Serious Fraud Office's probe of allegations that BAE made unauthorized payments to members of the Saudi royal family to secure a contract in the 1980s. In Paris, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's anti-bribery panel said yesterday that it has asked Britain to explain its reasons for halting an investigation into Saudi arms deals. The...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures tumbled as much as 3% Tuesday after Saudi Arabia's oil minister said major oil producers need not cut production further, disappointing hopes that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would intervene to prop up prices. Crude for February delivery was last down $1.39, or 2.6%, at $51.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract struck a 20-month intraday low of $51.25. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters at an oil conference in India that the market is "significantly healthier" now than it was in October, when OPEC agreed to...

LONDON (Reuters) -- Oil prices plunged more than 3 percent back near $51 a barrel Tuesday after Saudi Arabia said OPEC production cuts were working well and that there was no need for an emergency meeting of the producer group. U.S. light crude for February delivery tumbled $1.78 to $51.21 a barrel after touching $50.93, the lowest since May 2005, in earlier New York Mercantile Exchange trading. In London, Brent futures shed 82 cents to $52.30. The price of crude has plunged more than 16 percent this year in part due to warm weather in the Northeast, the world's top...

Can't post but good news as Saudi Arabia's oil minister rejected calls for more production cuts... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=ap9i3C_FTkR4&refer=energy

LONDON (Reuters) -- Oil prices plunged more than 3 percent back near $51 a barrel Tuesday after Saudi Arabia said OPEC production cuts were working well and that there was no need for an emergency meeting of the producer group.

Britain buckles before Saudi threats Financial Times 12/19/2006 Author: Philip Stephens Consider the dry explanation of Britain's most senior law officer: "It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest." Now translate: "Faced with serious threats to the nation's security from the rulers of Saudi Arabia, I have decided to put aside the fundamental principles at the heart of our democratic system of government." Little wonder that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, sounded almost contrite when he called a halt to the long-running criminal investigation into whether a British defence company...

Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Turkey was characterized by the Associated Press thusly (in one of their increasingly rare exercises in objective journalism): "Benedict's journey is extraordinarily sensitive, a closely watched pilgrimage full of symbolisms that could offer hope of religious reconciliation or deepen what many say is a growing divide between the Christian and Islamic worlds." While we must hope for the former, it is hard not to expect the latter. Lamentably, the time is past (if it ever existed) when mere benign expressions of convivial tolerance could have any lasting, positive effect on inter-religious and inter-cultural relations. Pope...

AL-AWWAMIYA, Saudi Arabia (Nov. 21) - When the teenager went to the police a few months ago to report she was gang-raped by seven men, she never imagined the judge would punish her - and that she would be sentenced to more lashes than one of her alleged rapists received. The story of the Girl of Qatif, as the alleged rape victim has been called by the media here, has triggered a rare debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers are...