Free Republic

33-year-old Roya Heshmati accused by Tehran’s judiciary of having ‘encouraged permissiveness’ after violating mandatory dress code in public... TEHRAN — Iranian authorities have whipped a woman 74 times for “violating public morals” and fined her for not covering her head, the judiciary said. “The convicted, Roya Heshmati, encouraged permissiveness [by appearing] disgracefully in busy public places in Tehran,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said late on Saturday. “Her penalty of 74 strokes of the lash was carried out in accordance with the law and with sharia,” and “for violating public morals,” Mizan said. Kurdish-focused rights group Hengaw identified Heshmati as...

Why the Left Is Pro-MaskUnderstand the Left's support for mask-wearing and you will understand the Left.The world’s most trusted evaluator of medical studies, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, has just released as close to a conclusive report on the effectiveness of masks against respiratory viruses such as COVID-19 as we are likely to have for the foreseeable future. The report assessed data from 78 different studies, including 11 new randomized controlled trials involving 610,872 participants.Cochrane concluded, in the words of one of the authors, Dr. Tom Jefferson of Oxford University, “There is just no evidence that they (masks) make...

Emmanuel Macron has claimed that those who criticise French lockdown policy are not living in the ‘real world’, while praising one veil-wearing Muslim woman as a feminist. Incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron has had a strange last 48 hours on the campaign trail, denouncing one voter as not living in the “real world” over her criticisms of the President’s lockdown policy, while praising another woman for being both a feminist who wears an Islamic veil, she said, voluntarily.

The readings at daily Mass this week are from Exodus and say that Moses wore a veil to cover the afterglow of God radiating from his face. In most traditional Catholic settings, we think of the veil as something a woman wears as a sign of traditional modesty. In this sense most of us consider it something good and positive. In Exodus, however, the veil is presented in far more ambivalent terms:As Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become...

A year into the pandemic, a lot has changed. And we're reminded of that every time we go outside (if we go outside). Masks have joined the traditional don't-leave-home-without-them trifecta of keys, wallets and phones - and they are here to stay. There are folks who hate them, who can't breathe through them, or who think they're a sign of political oppression. But for others, the widespread use of masks has made the past year one of liberation. With a mask, you can sing in the grocery store, talk to yourself on a walk, grimace in the gym, leave the...

The CDC on Friday issued its strongest mask guidance yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, calling for "universal mask wearing" in all activity outside of one's home. The new recommendation comes at the end of a week when the U.S. saw its deadliest day of the pandemic so far, with more than 3,100 lives lost on Thursday alone.

Mask scolds have been monomaniacal about this virus as if there is no other way to die. What they don’t seem to understand is that this is no way to live.Those of us who are unsettled by mask mandates often cite the loss of freedoms as the reason behind our concerns, but that doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story. Mask mandates are not just dehumanizing in the context of today’s society, preventing us from reading the faces of others. There is yet another level of dehumanization. Getting “used to” masks suggests something more spiritually sinister: a Borg-like facelessness...

Oslo (AFP) - The Norwegian government on Monday proposed a bill to ban the full-face Muslim veil in all schools, from nurseries to universities, saying it hinders communication between students and teachers. Norway's ruling coalition of conservative and anti-immigration rightwing parties had promised the ban last year, targeting the full-face veil called the niqab as well as burqas, balaclavas and masks. "We do not want clothes covering the face in nurseries, schools and universities," Minister of Education and Research Torbjorn Roe Isaksen said in a statement. "These clothes prevent good communication, which is important for students to receive a good...

RIYADH: Police in the Saudi capital said on Monday they had arrested a woman for taking off her veil in public and posting pictures of her daring action on Twitter. Police spokesman Fawaz al-Maiman did not name the woman, but several websites identified her as Malak al-Shehri, who triggered a huge backlash on social media after posing without the hijab in a main Riyadh street last month. Maiman said in a statement that the police in the ultra-conservative kingdom acted in line with their duty to monitor "violations of general morals".

Obama sent his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, to J Street where he brought the crowd to their feet when he said this: “An occupation that has lasted more than 50 years must end.” Mark Levin was right. Obama is definitely going full Mussolini and he’s using Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric as the excuse to couch it in. POLITICO – White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough made clear in a speech to a left-leaning Israel advocacy group that President Barack Obama isn’t letting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu off the hook for his dismissal of a two-state solution. That stance,...

Vincenzo Giovanni Ruello an experimental photographer from Australia has discovered what he claims to be the second shroud in existance in 2011 when he processed the Vatican Veronica Veil. The disturbing images show an identical face to the Shroud of Turin but tortured and battered with an eye bashed closed, fractured cheek,severe bruising. Gloria tv is screening the historical discovery never since Secondo Pia in 1898 has the world seen such images. http://gloria.tv/media/1cbGFGbq6Je

The Holy Face of Manoppello (L) with direct sunlight from behind the image, and (R) with direct sunlight in front, Jan 10, 2014. Credit: Alan Holdren/CNA. Rome, Italy, Jan 26, 2014 / 04:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Shrine to the Holy Face of Christ tucked into Italy's Appennine mountains is starting to catch the attention of the world, particularly that of American Catholics.   “We have a lot of Italians, of course, and many Germans but now we're seeing more and more pilgrims from the U.S.,” said Sister Blandina Paschalis Schloemer, a Trappist nun and daily pilgrim that lives within...

In most traditional Catholic settings we usually think of the veil as something a woman wears, and as a sign of traditional modesty and prayer. In this sense we think of it as something good and positive, though perhaps some among us are less than enthusiastic.But in the readings of Mass from this Wednesday, the veil is presented in far more ambivalent terms:As Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the LORD….the children of...

[SNIP] The Veil is Thin Between this World and the Spirit World [SNIP] Visitors, seen and unseen, from the world beyond, are often close to us. This is part of eternity which we are living today – part of God’s plan. There is no veil to the Lord. (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p.35) [SNIP] Communication With the Spirit World [SNIP] Parley P. Pratt[SNIP] Again--How do the Saints expect the necessary information by which to complete the ministrations for the salvation and exaltation of their friends who have died? By one holding the keys of the oracles of God, as...

A jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda has threatened to carry out terrorist attacks in Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain that is home to the largest concentration of radical Islamists in Europe. The threats were issued by a group called "Africamuslima" in response to efforts by Catalonian lawmakers to increase surveillance of radical Salafists seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law in Spain and other parts of Europe. Catalonia -- a region of 7.5 million people centered on the Mediterranean city of Barcelona -- is home to the largest Muslim population in Spain. Most of the estimated 450,000 Muslims...

One of Britain's biggest colleges on Friday dropped a ban on Muslim face veils after thousands of people signed a petition against the rule. Birmingham Metropolitan College said on Facebook it would change its policy to allow "individuals to wear specific items of personal clothing to reflect their cultural values". The college had earlier said it would require "the removal of hoodies, hats, caps and veils so that faces are visible", a policy that won support from Prime Minister David Cameron. It would in effect have banned the niqab, a face veil worn by some Muslim women which covers everything...

The Holy Shroud The results of a recent study - completed by Italian scientist, Giuseppe Baldacchini - on the theory of annihilation, are said to prove the authenticity of the Shroud according to the current laws of physics Marco TosattiRome Giuseppe Baldacchini is a physician who has worked for Italian research centre ENEA for a number of years. He is also a passionate scholar of that mysterious object which is the Holy Shroud of Turin and in recent days he has published a book about his findings, which readers can access by clicking on the following link. Of particular interest...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

“When it was my turn, they took me blindfolded,” the thief said. “Suddenly I felt a pain in my right hand that was out of this world. My hand had just been chopped off.” This is Gao, once the seat of an empire, and then a glorified village, and now a city the size of Scranton under the boot of its Islamist conquerors. Gao has become a place where thieves have their hands cut off, where women are forced to wear the stifling Hijab in 113 degree heat or be lashed and where unmarried couples are stoned to death. Borders...

BAMAKO, Mali — Isolated for centuries by the harsh desert that surrounds it, Timbuktu now finds itself even more cut off from the rest of the world. Rebels who captured the city in northern Mali in April have imposed a form of hard-edged Islamic rule, prompting many residents to flee in fear and changing the face of what had been a tolerant and easygoing destination that drew tourists from around the world. Women are now forced to wear full, face-covering veils. Music is banned from the radio. Cigarettes are snatched from the mouths of pedestrians. And the look of the...