Free Republic

A large explosion tore through a Shi'ite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar during Friday prayers, killing at least 33 people and wounding 73, officials said, the second massive attack in a week targeting worshippers from the minority sect. A local reporter in Kandahar told Reuters that eyewitnesses had described three suicide attackers, one of whom blew himself up at the entrance to the mosque with the two others detonating their devices inside the building. ... The blast took place just days after an attack claimed by Islamic State militants, which killed scores of Shi'ite worshippers at a...

This morning, Iraq hanged 36 men in Nasiriyah prison for a 2014 sectarian massacre perpetrated by the emerging Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL). After months’ gestation in the Syrian civil war, the Sunni ISIS in June 2014 burst out of its enclaves and in the course of a few jeep-racing weeks gobbled upper Mesopotamia. It publicly declared its border-straddling conquests the Caliphate on June 29, 2014. Iraq’s army mostly melted away ahead of the onrushing threat that summer, abandoning weapons and fleeing while ISIS overran Mosul on June 10, then advanced another 200 km to snatch Saddam Hussein‘s birthplace of...

At least 40 people - most believed to be female students - have been killed in a bomb attack on a school in west Kabul, according to Afghan government officials. At least 50 are also reported to have been injured by the blast, which happened in the Shia-majority neighbourhood of Dasht-i-Barchi. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied involvement and condemned the incident. He said only Islamic State group could be behind such an atrocity.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan on January 10 claimed that India is backing the Islamic State (IS) and facilitating attacks in the country. Khan’s statement came a week after 11 Shia Hazara coal miners were brutally massacred by IS affiliated militants. In the interim, the Pakistani premier labeled the mourning families as “blackmailers” for refusing to bury their dead until Khan visits them to hear their demands for justice and security. Protesting with unburied coffins has become a means of expressing outrage against the state for the Shia Hazaras, thousands of whom have been targeted and killed since the turn...

When you meet the unbelievers, strike necks.” (Qur’an 47:4).. “Islamic State claims responsibility for attack on Pakistan’s Shi’ite Hazara minority that kills 11,” by Gul Yousafzai, Reuters, January 3, 2021 (thanks to Henry): QUETTA, Pakistan -Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on Sunday that killed 11 miners from Pakistan’s minority Shi’ite Hazaras in Baluchistan province. The attack took place early on Sunday morning in the Mach area of Bolan district around 100 kms southeast of Baluchistan’s capital Quetta, killing the miners who were in a shared residential room near the coal mine where they worked, officials said. “The throats...

Director David Ayer responded to backlash over the alleged 'brownface' casting of Daytime Emmy winner Shia LaBeouf as a 'Cholo' gangster in his upcoming movie, The Tax Collector. MO 'Shia is playing a whiteboy who grew up in the hood,' the 52-year-old filmmaker - who boasts 479K Twitter/Instagram followers - explained. 'This is a [half-Jewish, half-Cajun] dude playing a white character. Also the only white dude in the movie.' The 34-year-old Echo Park native wore a three-piece suit in the trailer depicting his character as a 'terrorizing devil' collecting 'taxes' for a crime lord called Wizard. Ayer spent all Wednesday...

When U.S. missiles killed Iran’s most important general and its most important militia leader in early January as they were visiting Baghdad, it looked like American forces would be kicked out of Iraq... More than four months later, not only are U.S. forces still there, but it’s clear that the killings have created space for a new Iraqi government to assert some independence from its powerful neighbor. The signs of this new approach have been building over recent months, and the ascendance last week of Mustafa Al-Kadhimi to the post of transitional prime minister is the latest and most profound......

Earlier this week senior defense officials in Israel announced that after years of Israel’s war-between-war campaign to drive Iran out of Syria, the Islamic Republic was finally withdrawing from the war-torn country. The news came just hours after an airstrike blamed on Israel targeted a research facility in Aleppo in Syria’s north. But the announcement also came as Iran is still regrouping from the targeted killing of Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani in January and as it continues to deal with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and a disastrous economic crisis hitting the country... Almost on a weekly occurrence foreign publications...

Appearing as a guest on Sunday's AM Joy to discuss white evangelical Christians who steadfastly support President Donald Trump, former CNN contributor and religion expert Reza Aslan likened pro-Trump white evangelical Christians to a "doomsday cult" after recalling that there have been a limited number of pastors who have tried to illegally hold services with parishioners in defiance of the pandemic. At 11:28 a.m. Eastern, after playing a clip of the Reverend Robert Jeffress explaining why he was supporting Trump from 2016, citing his stand against abortion, host Joy Reid posed: JOY REID: Abortion is the key to support for...

Savagery. This is the second FGM doctor arrest this week. Obviously these Muslim doctors skipped the part about the Hippocratic Oath. Perhaps that’s because of hakimiyyah – the principle of Allah’s exclusive power and right to govern, legislate, and pass judgement. The gruesome practice of female genital mutilation is at record highs and on the rise in America, due to the influx of Muslim immigrants. Last week, two Muslim doctors were charged with mutilating the genitalia of little girls — the first arrests of this kind. Finally. Barbaric sharia practices are not being sanctioned with silence and avoidance. The...

BREAKING: Iraqi Parliament votes to expel U.S. troops from the country, after airstrike that killed top Iranian military leader Iran-backed militias in Iraq demanded lawmakers attend a session of parliament to vote on the possible expulsion of U.S. troops from the country, after the killing of an Iranian general there put the country at the center of an escalating conflict between its two most important allies. Inside the parliament hall Sunday, lawmakers chanted, “America out! Baghdad remains free!” The vote poses a pivotal test to an American troop presence that has been instrumental in the defeat of Islamic State, even...

BEIRUT (AP) — The latest on U.S.-Iran tensions (all times local): 4:45 p.m. Iraq’s parliament has voted to expel the U.S. military from the country. Lawmakers voted Sunday in favor of a resolution that calls for ending foreign military presence in the country. The resolution’s main aim is to get the U.S. to withdraw some 5,000 U.S. troops present in different parts of Iraq. The vote comes two days after a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani inside Iraq, dramatically increasing regional tensions. The Iraqi resolution specifically calls for ending an agreement in which Washington sent troops to Iraq...

New York (AFP) – An American of Lebanese descent was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Tuesday for buying weapons and plotting attacks on behalf of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Ali Kourani, 34, was found guilty in May of gathering intelligence on potential attack targets, including New York’s JFK International Airport and a federal building in Manhattan. A federal court in America’s financial capital convicted him of eight allegations including conspiracy to use weapons in a violent crime. Born in Lebanon but naturalized by the United States in 2009, Kourani attended several Hezbollah training camps in his country...

UK: Man who used sledgehammer to smash windows of mosques turns out to be Shia targeting Sunnis DEC 1, 2019 3:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER LEAVE A COMMENT How many of these attacks on mosques were presented by the political and media elites as instances of “Islamophobia”? In any case, the Sunni-Shi’ite jihad, having been fought for fourteen centuries in Muslim countries, has now come to diverse Britain. How far gone is Britain? This far gone: the non-Muslims are aware of Sunni-Shia hostility, and fear the consequences. In 2014, an 84-year-old non-Muslim, Kenneth Peters, who lived in a Shi’ite area,...

I address some of the faulty arguments used to claim Islam isn't a false religion. I also explore how we should examine truth claims and compare Islamic growth rates with the popularity of previous heresies.

Turmoil in Baghdad, paralysis in Beirut and flames of unrest in Tehran; it has been a bad few months for Iran at home and elsewhere in the Middle East, where more than a decade of advances are being slowed, not by manoeuvrings on battlefields or legislatures – but the force of protest movements. Early last week, Iran went dark for four days by closing its internet connections down. Even for the country’s autocratic leadership, this was a drastic step. But such are the stakes for a regime that is increasingly facing obstacles across its hubs of Shia influence. And those...

New York (CNN Business) .US stocks hit historic highs again on Monday. But this time the Dow joined the record-setting club as well. All three major stock indexes -- the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite -- finished at their highest level on record. Markets around the world were trading higher on hopes that the United States and China will reach a full trade agreement. The Dow (INDU) closed up 0.4%, or 115 points, at 27,462 points, succeeding the record its set on July 15.

Chaos and horrors followed President Trump’s needlessly abrupt withdrawal of US forces from northern Syria, but much of the mess was baked in long before Trump ever took office. In other words, this president played the anti-ISIS hand that the last president had left him: An American exit was always in the cards, and all the players are falling into positions prompted by Obama-era US policy. Thus the Syrian Kurds have allied with bloody Bashar al-Assad in the face of the Turkish invasion. This is less strange when you realize that the Obama administration chose the Kurds as its anti-ISIS...

I look at the recent BBC investigation of mutah wives in Iraq's Shia heartland, and explain why this is not a Shiite practice so much as an Islamic practice. One that is still embraced by millions of Muslims throughout the Middle East.

Full title: 20,000 Sign Petition Demanding BBC Remove ‘Pleasure Marriages’ Expose On How Iraqi Muslim Clerics Sell Little Girls for Sex“According to Sharia, there’s no problem [with child marriages for sexual pleasure],” said one cleric. Of course not, they are following Muhammad, “the perfect example” whose favorite wife Aisha was six years old when he married her, nine when he consummated the marriage. Related: Undercover with Imams: little girls sold for sex in temporary ‘pleasure marriages’ that can last as little as an hour – cleric says ‘no problem at all’ to wed a nine-year-old As Robert Spencer points out:...