Free Republic

Eleven years ago, the Anti-Defamation League surprised many by opposing an Islamic center planned for Lower Manhattan, blocks from the World Trade Center site the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even as its leader denounced anti-Muslim bigotry. Now, the ADL’s CEO says the position, taken four years before he joined the civil rights organization, was a mistake. “We were wrong, plain and simple,” Jonathan Greenblatt wrote in an op-ed published Saturday morning on CNN. […] The apology comes days before the 20th anniversary of the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania It...

Berlin Builds Rome-Backed Interfaith ShrineJewish-Muslim-Christian temple heralds Pope Francis' 'Abrahamic House' BERLIN (ChurchMilitant.com) - In a historic first Thursday, a coalition of Jews, Christians and Muslims laid the foundation stone of a 47-million-euro interfaith shrine on the ruins of the 12th century St. Peter's Catholic Church in Berlin.A model of the interfaith House of One in Berlin Hailed by the Vatican as a "house of prayer bringing the three world religions together under one roof," but slammed by faithful Catholics as "gnostic" and "syncretistic," the House of One anticipates Pope Francis' own pet project of an Abrahamic House.The federal and...

The news was buried under two dense paragraphs and five large photos in an article in New York YIMBY about a different project: "Construction has also yet to begin on 51 Park Place, which is slated to become a 71-foot-tall, 16,000-square-foot Islamic cultural center." The infamous Ground Zero Mosque project, a long buried effort to build a triumphal mosque at the site of the worst jihad terror attack in American history, is back. Construction has yet to begin, but it will: the shady developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque scheme, Sharif El-Gamal, has been working to build this sinister structure...

A nine foot sculpture has risen on the site of the World Trade Center terror attack of 9/11 in New York. It’s a Saudi Arabian candy monument inscribed with the words, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet.” Those are the same words used by the 9/11 terrorists who blew up the Twin Towers at that site. Most of the terrorists were Saudis and the government itself has been implicated at high levels. The Saudi monument is one of the statues representing the 20 nations — the G20 — that artist Laurence Jenkell thought appropriate for...

STANBUL – Turkey's president has recited an Islamic prayer in the Hagia Sophia, a historic Istanbul landmark that has become a symbol of interfaith and diplomatic tensions. Speaking for an art festival opening Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recited the Quran's first verse, dedicating the prayer to the "souls of all who left us this work as inheritance, especially Istanbul's conqueror." The Hagia Sophia was built during the 6th century Christian Byzantine Empire and served as the seat of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was converted into an imperial mosque with the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453.

Earlier this year it was clear that the municipality in Halmstad sells land to a new mosque building in the city. But now, history professor Dick Harrison rages because the mosque will be built on a historic Swedish battlefield – one of the most important in our history.

“We are still building an Islamic museum and sanctuary,” says the shady developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque scheme, Sharif El-Gamal. An Islamic sanctuary is a mosque. The article adds: “An Islamic museum ‘is just as much of an insult,’ Pamela Geller, a blogger and one of the center’s most vocal opponents, wrote in an email. ‘It will be like having a museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor.’” This is what I actually told the New York Times: “The 16-story mosque that El-Gamal initially planned to build there has not been built. Our efforts in...

The original owners of the Ground Zero mosque site mysteriously spurned dozens of higher bids before selling the prime downtown real estate at a bargain-basement price. The Pomerantz family, which had owned the building since the late 1960s and fielded offers after the patriarch died in 2006, rejected at least one bid that was nearly four times what prospective mosque builder Sharif El-Gamal eventually paid, The Post has learned. El-Gamal did offer what could be viewed as a sweetener to his $4.8 million bid in July 2009 -- a job as a property manager for a son of the family,...

Roughly a year ago, Fr. Bob Betz, pastor of Divine Mercy Parish, South Milwaukee, believed the property of the old St. Adalbert Parish would never be sold. It had been largely empty for about six years and various proposals to sell the 2.5-acre site near 16th and Minnesota avenues fell through. On Monday, Dec. 23, however, Divine Mercy Parish closed a deal and sold the St. Adalbert property for $600,000 to Masjid Al-Huda, a Muslim congregation. The selling of St. Adalbert began with the merger of four South Milwaukee parishes 12 years prior. "They were all viable parishes at one...

The Paris, France-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is making “an attempt to distort history” in favor of Palestinians by voting to declare Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, a Muslim holy site. The JTA notes that the proposal seeks to confirm an earlier UNESCO decision that the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb–which are two West Bank sites holy to both Jews and Muslims–are part of a Palestinian state. On Friday, a Palestinian mob set fire to the Joseph’s Tomb, a Jewish holy site located in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Fatah still takes direction from the...

The troubles for the “Trinity Root” began with an inquiry about touching up the sculpture’s patina. (snip) But according to Mr. Tobin and his manager, Kathleen Rogers, the conversation about patina opened a larger discussion about the sculpture’s placement: Now, they fear it will be moved or “just disappear,” said Ms. Rogers. (snip) Ms. Rogers is unconvinced. “There’s something in the works for them to find a way to get rid of it,” she said. “Trinity Root” was inspired by the story of a massive sycamore tree that shielded—and some say helped to save—the nearby St. Paul’s Chapel from the...

Nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition protesting a proposal to turn a Catholic hospital chapel into a Muslim prayer room.

France’s top Muslim official has suggested turning empty or abandoned Catholic churches into mosques, saying as many as 5,000 are needed for the country’s Muslim population - the largest in Europe. “It’s a delicate issue, but why not?” Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris and the president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, told Europe 1 radio on Monday. There are currently about 2,500 mosques in France with another 300 under construction, but the number falls short of what is needed, he said. With roughly 5 million Muslims in France, at least 5,000 mosques are needed,...

Republicans are criticizing efforts by liberal organizers to set up voter registration booths at the site where Missouri teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a local police officer.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State stretching across Iraq and Syria, has vowed to lead the conquest of Rome as he called on Muslims to immigrate to his new land to fight under its banner around the globe. Baghdadi, who holds a PhD in Islamic studies, said Muslims were being targetted and killed from China to Indonesia. Speaking as the first Caliph, or commander of the Islamic faithful since the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, he called on Muslims to rally to his pan-Islamic state. "Those who can immigrate to the Islamic State should immigrate, as...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — One of the oldest Catholic churches in St. Paul had to close down because of a dwindling congregation, but it's been given new life as an Islamic community center. The Church of St. John parish, built in 1886, closed in 2013. It reopened Friday as the Darul-Uloom Islamic Center, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported (http://bit.ly/1z0o5In ). "There are a lot of East Africans in the area, and we want to give them a place to worship, a place to be educated, a community space," center spokesman Feisal M. Elmi said. The former church held...

As the world continues to suffer the onslaught of jihadi wars and Islamic supremacist revolutions, Obama chooses to subtly sanction supremacism and savagery with a Presidential visit to a victory mosque. Will Obama address the oppression of Christian in Malaysia? Will Obama address the persecution of Christians ... Obama’s unquestioning support for and encouragement of Islam’s jihad and sharia only serves to increase the human toll the brutal supremacism demands. ... Barack Obama will be knocking on the doors of one of Malaysia’s most iconic landmarks – Masjid Negara – on Sunday. The visit to the mosque, built in 1922...

Students of the GOP establishment take note: new documents revealed by ProPublica, the George Soros-funded "investigative journalism" outfit that supplies free content to media outlets, reveal that Rove's fundraising behemoth Crossroads GPS supplied $26.4 million of the approximately $31 million Norquist's outfit, Americans for Tax Reform, spent in 2012.  That's about 85%. In the corporate world, if one company owns 85% of another, that company is properly called a subsidiary. Grover Norquist, a veteran conservative since his college days, is best known for his group's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, offered to candidates for office, in which they promise to "oppose any and...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will be honored on Monday as the first recipient of a $1 million award that organizers are calling the “Jewish Nobel Prize.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will present the award, named the Genesis Prize, to Mr. Bloomberg at a ceremony in Jerusalem in May. The award, established by a charity founded by Russian Jewish billionaires, aims to honor “exceptional people whose values and achievements will inspire the next generations of Jews.” The announcement of the inaugural award will be made at a news conference in New York on Monday. The charity, the Genesis Philanthropy...

No matter who is elected mayor next month, city kids will likely find two new vacation days on the school calendar: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, the holiest days of the Muslim year. Both Democrat Bill de Blasio and Republican Joe Lhota say schools should close on the two holidays, just as they do for major Jewish and Christian days. It's a matter of "respect" for a religion practiced by an estimated 13 percent of city school kids, de Blasio said Wednesday at a campaign rally with Muslim groups in Brooklyn. "The origins of this nation (are) people of many...