Free Republic

...Any serious evaluation of the war on terror must gauge the balance of power between the U.S. and its enemies, not the level of American popularity with the Arab public. It is a fatal miscalculation to treat the war as a zero-sum game, with every mistake by the Bush administration somehow translating into a victory for Osama bin Laden. In order to win the war, America need not be popular. In fact, it can afford to be hated. What it cannot tolerate is a global balance of power that favors al Qaeda, kindred groups, and rogue regimes that might be...

The Sayyid Qutb Reader Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society Edited by Albert J. Bergesen Routledge, 2008 0415954258 (paperback; $34.95) 041595424X (hardback; $135.00) Preface It has been said that perhaps no writer has occupied so central a place within the universe of political Islam in the second half of the twentieth century as Egypt's Sayyid Qutb, and if one wants to understand the mind of radical Muslims, one needs to know what they read, or have read, and they read Sayyid Qutb. In general, his work has been divided into three periods. The earliest (1920-1947) centers on more literary...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, April 26 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia released 500 al-Qaida sympathizers after they underwent religious counseling to bring them back to the moderate path of Islam.

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi security forces arrested a suspected militant on Tuesday after five policemen were killed in a shooting spree in the kingdom's ultra-conservative Muslim heartland, the Interior Ministry said. Three policeman were shot dead at a checkpoint in the northern province of Qassim, site of several shootouts with al Qaeda-linked militants, a statement on state media said. Earlier, two policemen on patrol in the nearby town of Buraida were killed by gunshots, it added. The forces "arrested a man who was in a car", the ministry said, adding he had been wounded during his arrest. Saudi-owned Al Arabiya...

Subject: Historical Review of Iraq Situation A California Lawyer's Perspective on Iraq War Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials. Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor. The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or...

Iraq's interior minister lashed out yesterday at a Saudi minister who voiced worries about growing Iranian influence and Shi'ite power, saying Iraq would not be lectured by "some Bedouin riding a camel." Ethnic tensions within Iraq's governing coalition also heightened, with the nation's Kurdish president called on the Shi'ite prime minister to step down. Prince Faisal, foreign minister of Sunni Saudi Arabia, had expressed concern about growing Shi'ite influence in Iraq during a visit to Washington last month. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a member of the Shi'ite Islamist Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, fired back during a...

Accusing President Bush of "misleading" the American people, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden made the first direct admission of responsibility for the 9-11 attacks in a video aired today by the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera.

A bill is slowly wending its way through the US, called the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act. The act is similar to the one passed against Syria. What is interesting about it is that some congressmen want to use it to cut off all foreign aid provided by the US to the Saudi government. Foreign aid? To the Saudi government? Yet again the learned men and women of the US Congress demonstrate their breathtaking ignorance of the world outside of their individual constituencies. They seem to have confused us with Israel. For many years we in Saudi Arabia have invested huge...

Some Shiites Blame Traditional Enemies Wahhabis for Latest Atrocities Mar. 6, 2004 By Hamza Hendawi / Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Some Iraqi Shiites suspect this week's deadly bombings of pilgrims may have been the work of Wahhabis, traditional enemies who consider Shiites heretics and whose warrior ancestors often raided their holy cities during two centuries of animosity. Born on the Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century, Wahhabism is among the strictest Islamic movements and considers Muslims who do not follow its teachings to be heathens and enemies. Al-Qaida terror network leader Osama bin Laden was raised as...

MOSCOW (AP) - A Saudi-born warrior so zealously Muslim that he's traumatized by even touching nonbelievers has risen to the top echelon of rebels in Chechnya, Russian officials and rebel sources say, a symbol of how a once-secular fight has come under the influence of radical Islam. To the Russian security services, the rebel commander known as Abu Walid embodies Chechnya's place in the chain of international terrorism - a connection they stress to win Western support for their military campaign in the southern Russian region. He has surfaced as a suspect in myriad terrorist attacks in Russia, from the...

JEDDAH, 15 January 2004 — Saudi Arabia will not allow anybody to attack the Islamic faith in the name of freedom of expression, Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, declared yesterday. “This country will never accept anybody, whoever he may be, to hurt the Islamic faith, in the name of freedom of opinion or any other name,” the crown prince said in an address to the nation aired live on state television. Prince Abdullah was giving guidelines for the national dialogue forum, which has so far held two sessions in Riyadh and Makkah with the...

An outspoken evangelical Christian leader who has called Islam a "wicked religion" plans to bring relief aid to post-war Iraq amid early signs that his efforts will not be appreciated by American Muslim leaders. Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham, says the main objective of his group, Samaritan's Purse, will be to assist Iraqi refugees and others who are displaced, sick and hungry.