Free Republic

In another sign that people have had it with leftism, Geert Wilders’ has finally won the prime ministership. The Netherlands was, for decades, a bastion of Europe’s soft socialism. However, the disconnect leftist politicians had from the needs of their countrymen and the effects of a huge influx of Muslims have changed the country. Now, there’s a new sheriff in town. When my mother was a little girl in Holland in the 1920s and 1930s, it was a conservative country with self-controlled but still famously tolerant people who were required, if they lived in Amsterdam, to scrub the stairs and...

A Dutch lawyer in a major gangland case has been shot dead outside his Amsterdam home - a crime described by police as exceptionally brutal. Derk Wiersum, 44, was the lawyer for a state witness in a case against members of a violent drug gang, who are accused of five murders between 2015 and 2017. A hoodie-wearing suspect fled on foot. Police chief Erik Akerboom said "with this brutal murder, a new limit has been crossed: now even people simply doing their work no longer seem safe". Jan Struijs of the NPB police union said "organised crime has got totally...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Theo Van Gogh. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Theo Van Gogh, a great-great-nephew of Vincent Van Gogh, was an influential media figure in the Netherlands, working in all aspects of movie and TV production, and was an outspoken nationalist. He was assassinated by a Muslim for infidel beliefs in 2004. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent...

These are some of the things that Oriana Fallaci wrote after 9/11. So little has changed that she could have written them now, after the Paris attacks, which also confirm how right she was. ~~~~~~~ The enemy is in our home The canard of "moderate" Islam, the comedy of tolerance, the lie of the integration, the farce of multiculturalism continue. And with that, the attempt to make us believe that the enemy consists of a small minority and that small minority lives in distant countries. Well, the enemy is not a small minority. And he's in our home. He's...

New York was recently the scene of a heated debate on the status of Muslim women under Islamic law. In it, one of the bravest women in the world, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, faced off against three other Muslim women and a hostile moderator, Barkha Dutt. Dutt, known for her soft spot for Muslims in her own country of India, ... Hirsi Ali immediately recognized she was being set up to run a gauntlet of criticism and so chose to go for the jugular. “I reject Islamic law because it’s totalitarian ... because it’s bigoted and especially bigoted against women… Where...

A mob of some 20 Islamists stormed a debate in Amsterdam that was featuring two Muslim liberals, the Canadian writer and Muslim feminist Irshad Manji and the Dutch-Moroccan Green Left MP Tofik Dibi. Muslim extremists belonging to the group Sharia4Belgium, which seeks to establish Islamic Sharia law across Europe, yelled "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is Greater") and threatened to break Manji's neck. Waving an Islamist jihadist flag, they then demanded that Manji and Dibi be executed for apostasy. The December 8 debate on how liberal Muslims can prevent Islam from being hijacked by Muslim extremists was held at the De Baile...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali should be the perfect feminist hero. In theory, she fits the role on multiple levels: She’s an escapee from an abusive patriarchy. She’s an African immigrant who made her own way in a Western country, the Netherlands. She’s a fierce advocate for women’s rights. She’s a target for deadly violence by angry men who want to shut her up. She left her religion and became a scourge of its repressive practices. Except for the blemish on her record: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a dissident from the wrong religion. Raised a Muslim in Somalia, subjected to genital mutilation...

...Al-Muhallab said, “You must use deception in war, for it is more effective than reinforcements.” Some methods of deception include: a. Planting spies. b. Reconnaissance. c. Feigning an intent to attack an area other than the actual target, for when the Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam) wanted to attack one area, he would give his army the impression they were going to attack another. “If a man’s chest is too narrow to hold his own secret, then the chest of the one with whom he stores the secret is even narrower” [Poetry]. And be on guard against your enemy at...

SNIPPET: "British Jihadi Anjem Choudary Tweets On March 19, 2011, British jihadi Anjem Choudary, spokesman for the banned Islam4UK organization, co-founder of Al-Muhajiroun, and spiritual advisor to the UK Islamist group Muslims Against Crusades (MAC),[18] launched a Twitter account and began tweeting. MAC made headlines last week for threatening a British MP who subsequently called on their activities to be closely monitored by law enforcement.[19] According to his Twitter account, Choudary is "a Muslim who believes that Islam is something we must believe in (Tawheed), live by (Shari'ah) and struggle and sacrifice for (by way of Daw'ah and Jihad)."[20] In...

Geert Wilders: "I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands" Final remarks of Geert Wilders at his trial in Amsterdam, June 1st, 2011 Mister President, members of the Court, I am here because of what I have said. I am here for having spoken. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak. Many have kept silent, but not Pim Fortuyn, not Theo Van Gogh, and not I. I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology...

When one considers all of the people and places in the West targeted by transnational jihadists over the past few years, iconic targets such as New York’s Times Square, the London Metro and the Eiffel Tower come to mind. There are also certain target sets such as airlines and subways that jihadists focus on more than others. Upon careful reflection, however, it is hard to find any target set that has been more of a magnet for transnational jihadist ire over the past year than the small group of cartoonists and newspapers involved in the Mohammed cartoon controversy. Every year...

Angela Merkel does not make the covers of Dutch newspapers very often. But the German chancellor's assertion last week that "multiculturalism has absolutely failed" in her country was headline news in the Netherlands. As far as the Dutch are concerned, the Germans - whom they consider to sometimes be politically behind the times - have finally woken up. The Netherlands' dream of a happy, harmonious multicultural society burst on a grey autumn morning six years ago in Amsterdam. On November 2, 2004, an Islamic extremist gunned down Dutch filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in the street, then slit...

Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, set to become a shadow partner of the next coalition government, goes on trial in Amsterdam on Monday for inciting hatred against Muslims. The controversial politician with his signature shock of blonde-dyed hair risks up to a year in jail or a €7,600 fine, according to prosecutors, for calling Islam "fascist" and likening the Quran to Hitler's Mein Kampf. "This is about freedom of speech," Wilders' lawyer Bram Moszkowicz told AFP. "My client believes that in the Netherlands, one must be able to say whatever one wants, barring incitement to violence." Wilders, 47, will stand...

NEW YORK (April 22) -- After a radical Islamic group issued a thinly veiled threat against the creators of "South Park," the network aired an episode with references to and depictions of the Prophet Muhammad blocked out. A note on the show's website said Comedy Central had inserted "numerous additional audio bleeps throughout" the show, adding "we do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show." The episode was the second half of a storyline that began last week with an episode depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. A day later, a blog post...

A Web site that promotes Islam is warning the creators of the television cartoon "South Park" that they could be killed for airing a recent show that depicted the Muslim prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. The site says in an entry posted Thursday that the authors of the irreverent cable show, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, could wind up like Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. He was killed by a radical Islamist in 2004 after making a movie that featured a beaten, naked Muslim woman covered in writings from the Quran. The post includes a photograph of van Gogh...

Episode 1406 Press Release From the Comedy Central Press Release: WHO IS ERIC CARTMAN'S FATHER? AN ALL-NEW EPISODE PREMIERES WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21 AT 10:00 P.M. ON COMEDY CENTRAL® NEW YORK, April 19, 2010 - "South Park" is in danger from angry celebrities, violent Ginger kids and Mecha Streisand in an all-new episode titled "201," premiering on Wednesday, April 21 at 10:00 p.m. on COMEDY CENTRAL. It's a tense situation in South Park as Muhammad has become the pawn in the game to save the town. The Ginger kids are threatening to destroy the city if Stan and Kyle don't hand...

In 2006, Thailand announced it was blocking access to YouTube for anyone with a Thai I.P address, and then identified 20 offensive videos for Google to remove as a condition of unblocking the site. ‘If your whole game is to increase market share,’ says Lawrence Lessig, speaking of Google, ‘it’s hard to . . . gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or in ways that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.’ In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s entire life has been a battle of opposing beliefs. She was raised in a strict Islamic household where at a young age she was tormented by the religion’s abusive teachings towards women and violence towards non-believers. As she grew up, she was tempted by the allure of Western cultures, but had been taught to hate Americans and their alliances with the Jews. one... decision she knew she had to make: To denounce her faith in Islam; a religion she now viewed as completely cruel and intolerant, or side with the same religion the hijackers of 9/11 claimed...

Officials in the Netherlands, where tensions have been high since a Muslim murdered a filmmaker more than three years ago, are bracing for the release of a new movie by a controversial politician that aims to show Islam's holy book "is an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror." In 2004, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim avenging his film critical of Islam. Two years later, riots protesting the publication of cartoons about Islam's prophet Muhammad left about 100 people dead. Now, the Dutch government is warning of a 10-minute film to be released this month by parliament...

Sculpture For Slain Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh Unveiled In Amsterdam; Depicts Him Screaming ___ Friends and fans of the Dutch filmmaker found dead with a note pinned to his chest with a knife unveiled a memorial sculpture Sunday that depicts him screaming near the spot where he was murdered by an Islamic extremist. Mayor Job Cohen and a Dutch comedian praised the controversial Theo Van Gogh and his work as the sculpture by Jeroen Henneman was revealed to hundreds of people gathered at a park in eastern Amsterdam. Titled "The Scream," the memorial took the form of a series of...