Free Republic

Eric Harroun is an Arizona native who rioted with rebels in Cairo and fought in Syria for Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra. **SNIP** Harroun's descent into Islamic fanaticism seems to have begun sometime after his discharge from the military. With seemingly no way to pursue his lifelong dream of being a soldier, he fell in with two Iraqi brothers, Maadh and Hayder Ibrahim, who he met while attending Pima Community College in Tucson, and began to identify himself as a Muslim, according to people who know him.

By wading into politics, the Church abandons its true mission, weakens its authority, and risks becoming just another partisan voice in an already divided world.One of the great tragedies of the Enlightenment and its aftermath was that Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular lost faith in their legitimacy and in the legitimacy of their mission. As a result, they surrendered that mission’s otherworldliness and agreed to fight only on temporal grounds. In other words, when the Church responded to its attackers, it did so not on its own terms but on the terms—and in the terms—of...

Like the Beatles’ Jo-Jo, Ahmed Mahad Mohamed left his home in Tucson, Arizona, but he wasn’t in search of California grass. Instead, young Mohamed had a loftier aspiration in mind: he wanted to become a great warrior for Allah, wielding his righteous sword to cast off the heads of the enemies of Islam until he was killed and taken up to paradise, where the famous heavenly virgins would be waiting to greet him.It wasn’t the most common career path for a young man from Tucson, but this is not Barry Goldwater’s Arizona, and Mohamed was able to find at least...

Former Congressman Jim Kolbe was named by Gov. Janet Napoltano to head a task force working to get a NAFTA superhighway built from Mexico through the Southwest and Mountain West to Canada. Kolbe, who retired at the end of last year, will chair the state’s Canamex Task Force. The Canamex highway is proposed to run from Guadalajara, Jalisco, to Edmonton, Alberta. Through Arizona it would use a combination of upgraded existing highways and new highways from Nogales to the Nevada state line, south of Las Vegas

Border Patrol agents in a single border sector arrested five migrants later discovered to be on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) watch list. The apprehensions occurred on Friday in the Tucson Sector of the United States Border Patrol shortly after the end of Title 42. According to a source within Customs and Border Protection, not authorized to speak to the media, the migrants were referred to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task for further investigation and identity confirmation.

A Middle Eastern woman was caught surveilling a U.S. port of entry on the Mexican border holding a sketchbook with Arabic writing and drawings of the facility and its security system, federal law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. The woman has been identified as 23-year-old Leila Abdelrazaq, according to a Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) report obtained by JW this week. Abdelrazaq appeared to have two accomplices, a 31-year-old man named Gabriel Schivone and a 28-year-old woman named Leslie Mcafee. CBP agents noticed the trio "observing the facilities" at the Port of Mariposa in Nogales, Arizona on December 2. Schivone...

The second of two reports examining who's to blame over the federal anti-gunrunning scheme known as Operation Fast and Furious exonerates top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, but paints a picture of ineptitude, ignorance and mismanagement at the DHS operations in Arizona. A report by the Homeland Security inspector general, obtained Friday by Fox News, concluded many in the agency's Arizona operation knew for a long time the U.S. helped criminals smuggle guns to Mexico in violation of policy, but did nothing to stop it. Further, the report said word of the gun-smuggling operation within DHS never traveled...

"The Communist Manifesto" and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" were among the favorite reading materials of Jared Lee Loughner, the suspected gunmen in today's fatal shooting that reportedly left six dead and gravely injured a U.S. congresswoman. Lougher, 22, listed those tomes among his favorites on his YouTube channel, in which he wrote that "conscience dreams" were a "great study" at his college, Pima Community College. One user on Twitter, Caitie Parker, wrote she went to high school, college and was in a band with the gunman. She said she hadn't seen him since 2007. Parker wrote of Lougher, "As I knew...

ASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying...

Women at Love Field 'acting suspiciously' Dallas police and federal terrorism officials are investigating two women, both dressed in camouflage pants under their traditional Muslim robes and scarves, who were seen conducting what appeared to be surveillance and acting suspiciously at Dallas Love Field. One of the women, Kimberly "Asma" Al-Homsi, 42, of Arlington, who is on probation for a 2005 Garland road rage incident involving a fake grenade, is said to have long-range assault rifle and explosives training, according to a Dallas police intelligence bulletin issued March 5. "I'm a trained sniper and proud of it," Ms. Al-Homsi said...

Mr Amiri, 32, said he was seized and spirited from the country after being offered a lift while walking towards a mosque. He gave his account before flying home to Iran on Wednesday after taking refuge at the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington earlier this week. The US state department has insisted he was in the US of his own free will but Mr Amiri said he was kidnapped by secret agents in Medina, Islam's second holiest city, in May last year. "A white van stopped in front of me... They told me in Farsi that...

One of the Washington D.C. snipers confessed to killing a man on a Southeast Side golf course four years ago, Tucson police said Friday. The confession from Lee Boyd Malvo on Thursday brings a sense of closure to Jerry Taylor's family, who for many years have believed that Malvo and fellow sniper John Allen Muhammad were behind the slaying on March 19, 2002. Taylor's daughter, Cheryll Witz, said she was ready to forgive Malvo for his crime. "I really do need to forgive him and I do believe he was brainwashed" by Muhammad, Witz said Friday. For several years, Tucson...

Terrorism and Security: Major Canadian Media Organizations Possibly a Haven for Single-Issue Activists Government policy analyst lodges request for investigation of lop-sided media coverage of two terrorism related cases. Poor journalism widespread while watchdog bodies ineffective or biased. (I-Newswire) - Literally millions of Canadians have read the newspapers or seen coverage of the cases of Muhammed Mahjoub, a suspected terrorist being held indefinitely on a secret service security certificate, and Maher Arar, also suspected of having terrorist connections. While Canadian media such as the CBC and the Canadian Press have provided ample opportunities for Maher Arar and Muhammed Mahjoub and...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is demanding Congress investigate US Airway's removal last week of six imams from one of its flights. The Muslim-rights group claims the imams, who were behaving suspiciously, posed no threat. It's "very, very inappropriate to treat religious leaders that way," a spokesman fumed. According to CAIR, imams are as harmless as Buddhist monks and deserve no less respect. Tell that to flight attendant Kimberly Banducci. According to police reports I've obtained, the Delta Air Lines veteran was assaulted by a Muslim cleric in a bizarre attack aboard a flight from Miami International Airport three years...

Spokesman for 6 Muslim clerics barred from US Airways flight One of six Muslim imams pulled from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last night by federal authorities is affiliated with a Hamas-linked organization and acknowledged a connection to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. Omar Shahin, who served as a spokesman for the clerics, is a representative of the Kind Hearts Organization, which had its assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury pending an investigation, notes Islam scholar Robert Spencer on his weblog JihadWatch Treasury spokesman Stuart Levey in February said KindHearts "is the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Tuesday for an investigation into the behavior of airline staff and airport security in the removal of six Muslim scholars from a US Airways flight a day earlier. A passenger raised concerns about the imams - three of whom said their normal evening prayers in the airport terminal before boarding the Phoenix-bound plane, according to one - through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways.

WASHINGTON - Counterterror officials suspect that an Arab student linked to one of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have cased the presidential ranch in Crawford, Tex. - six months before the 9/11 attacks. Muhammad Al-Gurashi and three other Arab men suspected of close ties to hijacker Hani Hanjour rented a car in Phoenix and drove to Freeport, Tex., in March 2001, intelligence and law enforcement sources say. They are believed to have stopped near President Bush's ranch to assess security for a possible terrorist attack, the sources told the Daily News. Al-Gurashi, a 28-year-old Saudi who attended Arizona State University,...

Fifteen minutes after KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam for Mexico City on April 8, Mexican authorities forwarded the names of all the passengers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The reason: the flight was scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace. by the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the KLM flight had begun producing "hits" on the screening center's lists of 70,000 suspect foreigners. The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended...

Al-Fuqra Holy Warriors of Terrorism Introduction For over ten years, a secretive Black Muslim sect in the United States and Canada has sought to carry out a self-declared policy of "jihad," or holy war, by taking violent action against its perceived enemies, generally other minorities or other Muslims with whom they disagree. The sect, known as Al-Fuqra, has been linked by law enforcement officials to terrorist violence in Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania, the Pacific-northwest and Canada. Most recently, attention has been focused on the group in connection with a plot to bomb public sites in New York, including the United Nations,...

<p>THERE are a lot of Baptist churches along rural Virginia's Route 615, just south of Appomattox - "where America reunited," as the county welcome signs put it - but there's only one Sheikh Gilani Lane. A gate and a guardhouse prevent the public from driving down it. What lies beyond is a trailer-park compound of black Muslims.</p>