Free Republic

Shia populist cleric and Iraqi nationalist Moqtada al Sadr won the May 12 Iraqi elections to the surprise of Iran, Turkey, the United States and many Iraq experts. Sadr is against Israel, the United States and Iran, and also opposes the presence of Turkish troops on Iraqi territory. Now he is the kingmaker of Iraq’s elections, winning 54 out of 329 seats in the Iraqi parliament. Washington was hoping Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al Abadi would win as a result of his defeat of Islamic State (ISIS), while Iran backed the Conquest alliance headed by the leader of the paramilitary...

Trudeau may have violated the federal ethics code during his holiday with the Aga Khan, the philanthropist and hereditary spiritual leader to the world’s Ismaili Muslims who Trudeau says is a family friend. It is the first time the ethics commissioner has opted to investigate the actions of a sitting prime minister. In a letter to opposition Conservative politician Blaine Calkins, who was among those who filed formal complaints, Dawson said she was looking into Trudeau’s stay at the island and his use of the Aga Khan’s private helicopter to get there. ... The Conflict of Interest Act and Trudeau’s...

Prime minister says it's not up to him to determine who the Aga Khan invites to his residences Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he and former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry talked about the then-incoming Trump administration and the general state of the world when the two of them were on the Aga Khan's private island in late 2016. During an interview this week with The Canadian Press, Trudeau shed a bit more light on his direct interactions with Kerry, who happened to be at the spiritual leader's island in the Bahamas at the same time as the prime...

On December 8, 2017, the leader of Iraq’s Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq Qais al-Khazali paid a visit to the Lebanese-Israeli border to inspect Lebanese “Hezbollah” resistance positions and to issue a threat to the southern neighbor. In a leaked video, he was shown as saying: “We are here with ‘Hezbollah’ and we announce our complete readiness to stand side by side with the Lebanese people and Palestinian cause against the Israeli occupation.” Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, or Khazali Network, is affiliated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). -excerpt- His statement however demonstrated the common interests of pro-Iran regional militias to allow Tehran...

Many observers have warned that Putin’s military campaign in Syria may backfire at home. Russia’s 144 million people include about 20 million Muslims; the overwhelming majority are Sunnis. Some analysts believe that these Russian Sunnis will recoil from Russia’s support for Assad’s Alawite-dominated regime and its attacks on Sunni rebels, and from Russia’s effort to lead a coalition of Shiite powers, Iran, Iraq and Syria. If pundits’ predictions were true, Muslims would be more likely to choose the anti-war response and less likely to support Putin’s intervention. But that’s not exactly what we found. ...There wasn’t a consensus among any...

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - The Latest on Iraq, where federal forces have attacked the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk (all times local): 2:30 p.m. A spokesman for Iraq's state-sanctioned militias says they have "achieved all our goals" in retaking areas from Kurdish forces in and around the disputed northern city of Kirkuk. Ahmed al-Assadi says federal forces came under fire from "some rebels" after launching the operation early Monday and returned fire. He says federal forces have been deployed in the area of the K-1 military base, the Kirkuk airport and a number of oil fields and installations. But he says...

In vino veritas. And with failed actor, Shia LaBeouf, we learned that a lot of vino led to a lot of veritas when he was arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct in Savannah, Georgia on July 8. The leftwing LaBeouf, while heavily under the influence of his alcoholic truth serum revealed himself as the worst stereotype of the one percent rich folks when he drunkenly boasted of his "millionaire lawyers." It is unknown at this writing what his sentence will be but his worst punishment is that the highly embarrassing police bodycam footage obtained by TMZ will follow him around...

Turkey's parliament is expected to fast-track on Wednesday a draft bill allowing its troops to be deployed to a Turkish military base in Qatar, officials from the ruling AK Party and the nationalist opposition said. The move appears to support the Gulf Arab country as it faces diplomatic and trade isolation from some of the biggest Middle Eastern powers.

THE Iranian Parliament is under fire with a gunman shooting guards, with at least eight injured. Iranian state TV has reported that there were four attackers in parliament with one person killed and eight people injured. The situation is still ongoing, according to the broadcaster. [Snip] [Additionally] an armed man opened fire at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in southern Tehran and wounded a number of people. A gunman opened fire at pilgrims at the late Imam Khomeini mausoleum in southern Tehran on Wednesday injuring a number of people. There are reports of witnesses saying that they heard an explosion...

Anti-Trump actor Shia LaBeouf has a new art project that involves him and two of his friends sitting by themselves in cabins in Finland with their only contact with the outside world through text messages to patrons of a local museum in Helsinki…

Shia's little flag was taken in less than 24 hours this time. Pepe Team 6 escaped the police pursuit and have the flag.

Yesterday, the He Will Not Divide Us flag was moved from Tennessee to Liverpool, England. Why a flag referencing the American "Resistance" would be moved to England is beyond me, but it seems to have been stolen again.

Shia LeBoeuf's failed first and second iterations of his He Will Not Divide Us camera was translated into a third camera of a flagpole with a He Will Not Divide Us flag with NO PHYSICAL LANDMARKS. 4chan tracks down the flag, steals it, and replaces it with a Trump Hat and shirt within 24 hours.

Israel's defense minister said on Sunday Iran had an ultimate objective of undermining Saudi Arabia in the Middle East and called for a dialogue with Sunni Arab states to defeat "radical" elements in the region. Iran aimed to "undermine stability in every country in Middle East ... their main destination at the end of the day is Saudi Arabia," Avigdor Lieberman told delegates at the Munich Security Conference, saying he was looking forward to hearing comments from Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. "The real division is not Jews, Muslims ... but moderate people versus radical people," he said.

The social makeup of Iran’s population is very complex, because there is actually no such thing as an Iranian people. There are, instead, Iranian citizens divided into many ethnic groups: Persians make up about 60% of the population, while the rest are Azars, Kurds, Blouchis, Arabs, Turkmen and tens of smaller ethnic groups. The main religion in Iran is Shia Islam, adhered to by 90% of the country’s people, while Sunnis – mainly Kurds and Blouchis – make up about 10%. The country recognizes Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism and reserves a parliamentary seat for each religion. Zoroastrianism is based on...

Obama is again illegally arming and training known terrorists to fight other terrorists he previously armed and funded in violation of U.S. law, unleashing more violence and terror across Iraq, Syria, and all over the Middle East. Unfortunately, the developments are neither “fake news” nor “Russian propaganda.” The schemes are highly illegal, though, with the punishment for aiding designated terror organizations ranging from 20 years to life in federal prison.Under the guise of battling the Frankenstein terror monster of “moderate Syrian rebels” Obama unleashed on the people of Iraq and Syria in recent years — “moderate rebels” that even Vice...

War On Terror: The head of U.S. Southern Command has warned lawmakers that IS is radicalizing converts and other Muslims in Latin America and could train and send them north via human traffickers. Gen. John Kelly issued his warning in a hearing Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee on defense appropriations for fiscal 2016. He's concerned that in addition to the Iranian terrorist puppet Hezbollah being active in Latin America, the Islamic State is promoting and recruiting for jihad against the United States in the region. "Last year, IS adherents posted discussions on social media calling for the infiltration...

The militia of the fundamentalist Shiite preacher Yasser Habib, whose men train in a suburbs of London, parade in military uniform with flag raising. In the video Al Jazeera below, it is possible to see this parade from 1mn34 to 3mn48. Read More Twitter: @zlando

Iraqi Shia militias have launched an offensive to the west of Mosul in an operation intended to tighten the noose around Islamic State’s Iraq stronghold. But the move has alarmed Turkey and could inflame tensions in the mainly Sunni area A spokesman for the Shia militias, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, said thousands of fighters “started operations [on Saturday] morning to clean up the hotbeds of Daesh [Islamic State] in the western parts of Mosul”. The militias aim to capture villages west of Mosul and reach the town of Tal Afar, about 35 miles from the city,...

The Sunni-Shia Divide and Islam’s Puzzling Originsby Emmet Scott In my Impact of Islam (2014) and Guide to the Phantom Dark Age (2014) I argued in some detail that Muhammad was a fictitious character conjured to life by the Umayyad Caliphs in the late seventh century in order to justify and legitimize the Arab usurpation of the Persian Sassanid Empire. In the above studies I also suggested that the earliest “Islam” was spread by the Sassanid Empire and that the great “Arab Conquests” of Anatolia, Syria and Egypt were in reality carried out by Persian armies. Certainly the earliest...