Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – A group of radical clerics in Pakistan wants the country’s Supreme Court to declare certain passages in the Bible blasphemous – because they depict as flawed certain biblical characters whom Muslims regard as Islamic prophets. If the court fails to do so, they said, then lawyers will submit an application for the Bible to be formally banned in Pakistan. The campaign, announced by the clerics at a Lahore mosque and reported Tuesday in the Karachi daily The News and the Urdu-language Roznama Islam, is the latest attempt by radicals to use the country’s blasphemy laws to shield Islam...

A large number of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters "have lost all hope" and are seeking peace deals with the Afghan government since U.S. commandos killed Osama bin Laden last month, a senior Afghan official told The Washington Times this week. He also confirmed reports that the United States has stepped up contacts with the Taliban, which sheltered the al Qaeda leader until U.S. forces toppled the brutal Afghan regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ghulam Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan's education minister and a member of a peace council in charge...