Free Republic

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia has revealed the country will return to moderate, open Islam. Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud also announced the kingdom would do more to tackle extremism today. Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh he said: "We will not waste 30 years of our lives dealing with extremist ideas, we will destroy them today". The conference, which runs until Thursday, aims to show how the country is opening itself up to the modern world and diversifying economically. Prince bin Salman was appointed heir to the throne of Saudi Arabia by his...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – In the largest US arms deal ever, the administration of US President Barack Obama is ready to notify Congress of plans to offer advanced aircraft to Saudi Arabia worth up to 60 billion dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The newspaper said the administration was also in talks with the kingdom about potential naval and missile-defense upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more. [....] In its notification to Congress, expected to be submitted this week or next, the administration will authorize the Saudis to buy as many as 84 new F-15 fighters,...

Messages from Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants have been published on the Bosnian Muslim web site putvjernika.com. Titled “Usama bin Laden: Call to Jihad to stop aggression in Gaza” the text warns that Muslims “have ignored the requirement of Jihad!”. The web site putvjernika.com is ran by Bosnian Muslims from Gornja Maoca, a village that was ethnically cleansed of Serbs and now occupied by Bosnian Muslims who believe in Wahabism. The Muslims of Gornja Maoca have been involved in several terror attack plans on Europe, including the attempted bomb attack on the Pope John. The web site is...

(IsraelNN.com) A new Islamist jihad group that may become as much of a threat to Hamas as it is to Israel is gaining strength in Gaza. The Gaza-based group of Salafi Muslims, known as the Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam), first made headlines a year ago when it kidnapped British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reporter Alan Johnston near his Gaza City bureau office. "It was nothing personal," commented their leader, Abu Mustafa, in an interview published over the weekend by the German Der Spiegel. "It was a message to the West that they should release imprisoned Muslims." He added that at...

remove militant sympathies in Osama bin Laden's homeland. Officials in the kingdom have sought to manage hardline beliefs within the state-sponsored Wahhabist tradition in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on America. For years senior ministers alternated between outright denial of endemic militancy and the adoption of reforms demanded by the West. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a newspaper close to the reformist wing of the royal family, yesterday reported that Saleh al-Sheikh, the minister of Islamic affairs, planned to run seminars for every prayer leader. Clerics will be required to attend lectures at the Centre for National Dialogue, which also operates a...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) ― Danish police said Tuesday they have arrested three people suspected of plotting to kill one of the 12 cartoonists behind the Prophet Muhammad drawings that sparked a deadly uproar in the Muslim world two years ago. Two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin were arrested in pre-dawn raids in western Denmark, the police intelligence agency said. The Dane was suspected of violating Danish terror laws but likely would be released after questioning as the investigation continues, said Jakob Scharf, the head of the PET intelligence service. The two Tunisians would be expelled from Denmark, he...

With such a headline, you'd be excused for assuming this piece is just another attack on our failing schools, just another screed against the evils of teachers unions, or a whack against the left wing lunatics who run our universities. No, this time the title is no mere hyperbole. This time it says exactly what it means for in the state of Virginia a school is being run by radical Islamists, funded by a foreign nation, and under condemnation from the U.S. government. In this time of war, the State of Virginia really is allowing our enemies to run a...

Islam has flourished in the Balkans over the centuries with a peaceful and modern outlook but over the last decade, especially now with the talk of Kosovo independence, there are questions being raised about the external influence in once-tranquil religious relations. Wahhabism, a fundamental form of Islam with origins in Saudi Arabia has been rearing its ugly head of intolerance in the Balkans starting from Bosnia a decade ago. With the recent manifestation of its hardcore modus operandi in Kosovo, which has more than a 90 percent Muslim population, the ongoing impact of Wahhabism demands serious attention. First, lets look...

CORDOBA, Spain (AFP) — Islamophobia gathered pace in the West with the end of the Cold War, long before the September 11, 2001 attacks against the US, participants at a two-day OSCE conference that began in Spain Tuesday said. "After the end of the Cold War, certain people took Muslims and Islam to be the new scapegoat and enemy," Mustapha Cherif, an expert on Islam at the University of Algiers, told AFP on the sidelines of the gathering. "But after the senseless act of September 11, this has been amplified," added Cherif, who is known for his commitment to battling...

The bottomline verdict on yesterday's election is that the majority of American's no longer believe that our democratic republic and western culture (whats left of it) are worth actually fighting to save. It is a terrible shame that we have managed to squander our entire political and cultural inheritance in less than 20 years. But it is the simple fact of the matter.Whether the whore's names are Bush or Clinton really doesn't matter. Our children's birthright has been sold out, lock, stock and barrel for Saudi/Wahabist treasure. Money talks, BS walks.Usama's Wahabist vision of the future of the USA/West is...

Saudi Arabia on Monday rejected linking Muslims with fascism, days after U.S. President George W. Bush spoke of a "war with Islamic fascists". "(Saudi Arabia) warns of accusing Muslims of terrorism and fascism without considering the history of the pure Islamic civilization," the cabinet of the major U.S. ally said in a statement after a meeting chaired by King Abdullah. The Saudi cabinet statement said: "What Islam is being charged with today, such as fascism, is primarily the result of Western cultural heritage. "Terrorism has no religion and no nationality," said the statement, carried by state media. It made no...

JERUSALEM -- The leadership of a West Bank Palestinian city now controlled by Hamas has warned a local Young Men's Christian Association to close its offices and leave town or face likely Muslim violence, WorldNetDaily has learned. The move highlighted long-standing fears Hamas would use its win in last January's Palestinian parliamentary elections to impose an anti-Christian, anti-Jewish hard-line Islamist regime in the West Bank and Gaza.

A U.S.-based Saudi professor and former U.N. fellow says he agrees with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust is a "myth" and says America eventually will collapse like the Soviet Union. Abdullah Muhammad Sindi, who has taught at four American schools, told Iran's Mehr News Agency Dec. 26, "I agree wholeheartedly with President Ahmadinejad."

Saudi television featured an interview with a young Palestinian girl who called Jews "villains" and "dogs" and said the Palestinians have no desire for peace with Israel. In the segment on Iqra TV aired Dec. 7, the young girl said that in 1948, "the Jews occupied our land, our country. They drove us out of our homes, and put us in tents. Then they would destroy our homes. They'd put our clothes out on the sand, and then demolish the homes. They would get them out, destroy their homes, demolish and bring them down." The excerpt, translated by the Middle...

Bill Clinton was wrong and still so I received an email from Donna P. asking the following question: Hi, It's just been reported that ex US president Clinton, has said that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. I was wondering if you'd care to share your views on that statement . If you could talk to Bill Clinton, what would you have to say about his statement? Thank you, Donna P. . During the time of Bill Clinton presidency the following happened: 1. Talaban became very strong and Al-Qaeda finalized its attacks against in NY in 11/9/2001 2. Saddam...

With the latest world events--fighting in Fallujah, gun battles in southern Thailand, and an attack on the diplomatic quarter of Damascus--attention is turning even more intently to radical Islam. In March, after the Madrid train bombings, Beliefnet talked with Michael Sells, a renowned comparative religions scholar whose specialty is Saudi Salafism, also known as Wahhabism, about the state of play in global Islam and terrorism. We are reprinting it today because his comments are, if anything, more accurate now than they were a few weeks ago. What does this mean for the landscape of worldwide Islam? If it’s true that...

An American-hosted soft porn Internet site also doubles as a cyber home for radical Islamic video propaganda. One approximately six-minute video housed on the Japanese site which we will not list because it so horrendous. Titled, "The Ambon Massacre," it starts with a picture of the ocean waves lazily lapping at dusk. The scene soon shifts to video of a burning building and people being massacred. Then viewers see rows of dead bodies covered with newspaper, followed by scenes of burning, decimated houses. The horrifying footage is followed by graphic video of burned, dead bodies with holes in their heads,...

The terrorist bomb attacks on London which killed at least 53 people and injured 700 again highlighted the unpleasant fact that, despite two wars, an international crackdown on its network, and arrests of hundreds of its cadre and high ranking leaders, the Al Qaeda terror group and its affiliates are not out of business. Robert A Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, has argued in his Straits Times article, "Al Qaeda's strategic objective" set by Osama bin Laden, are to target the close allies that supported the United States in the Iraq War. That may well...

Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad is the leader of one of the most controversial Islamist groups in the U.K., Al Muhajiroun (which means "the emigrants" in Arabic). He attracted global media scrutiny on the first anniversary of 9/11 by staging a meeting entitled "A Towering Day in History," and unveiled a poster that depicted the second airplane advancing toward the World Trade Center. This month in Britain, Scotland Yard officials said they were investigating Sheikh Omar on suspicion of his support for "global jihad," including inciting Muslim youth to join the insurgency in Iraq. Omar, a Syrian, resides in Britain, which...

Of all the media myths about Islamist extremism prevalent in the West, none is hardier than the claim that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida seek to overthrow the Saudi monarchy. This cliché is repeated time after time by network and cable television anchors, newspaper reporters, columnists and other pundits, and government experts on all sides. It is, of course, also assiduously purveyed by the Saudis themselves through their diplomatic representatives and spin experts, who never tire of telling Americans they are targets of the same enemy, and on the same side as America, in the war on terror. Yet the...