Free Republic

While some dubious policies linger from the Biden administration years, even some Trump administration policy steps in the Middle East — Gaza, Iran, and Syria especially — raise questions about this administration’s and its envoys’ understanding of realities of Islam, jihad, and sharia. ...So far, so good for the Trump administration, but then:“‘No Idea’ of Threat Posed by Afghan Parole Program, Senator Warns” by Virginia Allen at the Daily Signal, January 15, 2026“The Trump Administration’s Delusional Gaza ‘Master Plan’” by Khaled Abu Toameh at the Gatestone Institute, February 3, 2026At the recent annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF)...

While candidate Trump was demanding that the enemy be named, and me-too Hillary was thus goaded into the occasional mention of “jihadists,” Obama tried to defend his refusal to invoke radical Islam. The defense was classic Obama. Part One was flat wrong: “There’s no religious rationale,” he maintained, that would justify” the “barbarism” in which terrorists engage — something that could only be right if we ignore scripture and adopt Obama’s eccentric notion of “religious rationale.” Part Two drew on Obama’s bottomless supply of strawmen: “Using the phrase ‘radical Islam,’” he lectured, will not make the terrorist threat “go away”...

The Associated Press published a “fact check” of Donald Trump’s claim during Thursday’s GOP debate that “Islam treats women horribly,” saying it is untrue, even though there is ample evidence for such a statement. “No such generalization is supported by the diverse circumstances for women in the Muslim world,” writes the AP’s Calvin Woodward. Woodward backs up his argument with several statements. “The United States has yet to see a woman as president, many years after Muslim women achieved national leadership in other countries, most prominently Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto back in the late 1980s and in the 1990s,”...