Free Republic

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.west-midlands.police.uk/latest-news/press-release.asp?id=2915 Birmingham man sentenced to three years for terrorism offences 12 December 2011 Updated: 13 December 2011 A bookshop owner from Birmingham has been sentenced to three years in prison for possessing and distributing terrorist publications, following a nine-week trial at Kingston Crown Court. A jury yesterday (Monday 12) found the 32-year-old Ahmed Faraz guilty of seven counts of dissemination of terrorist publications and four counts of possession of information likely to be of use to a person committing or preparing for an act of terrorism. Seven other similar charges will lie on...

The BBC is reporting that clashes are continuing into Monday morning between protesters and the regime security forces in Tehran and perhaps other cities, marking the first decisive failure of the basij paramilitary to control the streets by early morning of the day of a big demonstration. The number of protesters allegedly killed by security men rose to 9, with dozens wounded and 300 persons allegedly arrested. This video is allegedly from Monday morning and shows protesters freeing others taken prisoner in a basij van: The chanting on Sunday turned against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, not just against President Ahmadinejad....

SHEIK Taj el-Din el-Hilaly, Australia's leading Muslim cleric, supports Islamic fundamentalists fighting wars with suicide bombers and terror. Sheikh el-Hilaly admires Egyptian writer and cleric Sayyid Qutb -- the founder of violent Islamic fundamentalism and spiritual guru to al-Qaida. Qutb was also mentor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the brains of al-Qaida and lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. Zawahiri's uncle was Qutb's lawyer and a close family friend. Sheikh el-Hilaly made his feelings known in a radio interview this month. And another Sydney Muslim cleric, Ibrahim el-Shafie, of the Bankstown mosque, said he heard el-Hilaly preach that Qutb was a great leader...

Until modern times, there existed no form of legitimacy in the Middle East outside of Islam. Rulers ruled in the name of God; assassins struck them down in the name of God. The assassinations of the early caliphs and the struggle between the Sunni rulers and the Assassins in the Middle Ages took precisely this form: each side claimed to act in accord with divine will, revealed in divine texts. Religion played a crucial role in the rationale of assassination, but it also played a crucial role in the rationale of government, law, and warfare—indeed, of everything. This invocation of...

THE DISCOVERY of Saddam Hussein in a crypt-like hole, hidden by bricks and dirt, in a farm house in a small town near Tikrit, brings to mind the story of another Iraqi who also hid from the authorities by literally going underground. That Iraqi would be Jawad Amir Sayyid, 45, of Karada, a town south-east of Baghdad. He dwelt for an astonishing 21 years in a cell below his family's kitchen, entering it on Dec. 2, 1981, and never once emerging from it until April 10, 2003, a day after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. Sayyid disappeared from the...