Free Republic

The words are chilling, especially to non-Muslim ears. "(We) will pursue this evil force to its own lands, invade its Western heartland and struggle to overcome it until all the world shouts by the name of the Prophet, and the teachings of Islam spread throughout the world." This missive, found in a Houston mosque, was identified by the Washington-based human rights organization Freedom House as an example of Wahhabism, a fundamentalist Muslim philosophy that is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. Outside that country, Wahhabism is often regarded as an extremist interpretation of Islam that calls for the violent defeat...

MALAPPURAM’S peculiar demography provides perfect cover for groups that seek it. It is one of only two Muslim-majority districts in India, outside Jammu and Kashmir (the other being Murshidabad in West Bengal). Since the early 1990s, fundamentalists appear to have had a concerted plan to win over the community. Kerala Nadvathul Mujahedeen’s leader Ahmed Kutty paints a grim picture: ‘‘The method of the extremists to take control of a mosque is always the same. It begins with a small cell of adepts praying with the others and trying to rally them. If there is not much headway, relentless arguing and...

Flash: Newseek has apologized. The magazine's editor says he is sorry for printing a possibly "mistaken" article that accused U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo of throwing copies of the Koran into prisoners' toilets. Evidently, Newsweek particularly regrets the murderous anti-American rioting the erroneous report set off in various parts of the Muslim world. Ironic though it may seem, we might just owe Newsweek a debt of gratitude for its shoddy reportage. After all, it provided a wake-up call to see how quickly and how skillfully our enemies seized upon evidence of American purported hostility to Islam to advance their own agenda.

The conviction of Ali al-Timimi crystallizes a disease and the medicine needed to cure it. Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - These thoughts emerge from a location I consider among the highest intellectual points of contemporary Islam: from within the walls of the Gazi Husrevbeg Medresa in Sarajevo. It is therefore a message from inside the Islamic umma, or world community, to the umma, and above all to American Muslims. I have written and spoken in the past of Wahhabism, the Saudi state cult, as a cancer within Islam. I have lately perceived a better parallel. Stalinism was once called “the syphilis of...

Facts are stubborn things - except when you create your own. When I was asked about the "Jenin Massacre" by a Muslim student during an event at Norfolk's Old Dominion this week, it became clear we were coming from two very different perspectives: reality vs. mythology. There was no "Jenin Massacre." Period. The only "massacre" that took place at Jenin was that of the truth. Palestinians, long masters of media manipulation, went by the hundreds to foreign media - whom Israel kept outside of the armed conflict - to claim that over 500 innocents had been slaughtered. The man at...

I wrote late last year, in a TCS column about the death of a leading Sufi, or spiritual Muslim teacher, who had lived for many years under repressive conditions in the Saudi kingdom. His name was Syed Mohamed Alawi Al-Maliki. As I described him then, he was "a leading representative of the Hejazi tradition in Arabia -- that is, of the culture of Mecca and Medina before its takeover by Wahhabism," the state religion of Saudi Arabia, which is more an ideology than a manifestation of faith. Since then, I have studied an important work of Shaykh al-Maliki, on the...

Should be required reading by all Americans, please pass it on to all the Patriots you know. (About the Writer: Raymond Kraft is a lawyer and writer living and working in Northern California.  Raymond receives e-mail at rskraft@vfr.net.) 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...

One day after the death of Aslan Maskhadov, a little-known Chechen cleric from Argun, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, became the new leader of Ichkeria. Sadulayev openly condones terrorism and murder as legitimate methods in the conduct of jihad. Maskhadov's very existence was the last obstacle preventing the war for Chechen independence from turning into a Wahhabi revolution in the North Caucasus. Moscow has removed that obstacle.

A recent criminal case in Virginia threw some light on a worrisome aspect of Muslim life in America. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen, was charged with working with al-Qaeda in an attempt to assassinate President Bush. Abu Ali’s family and friends have protested that the accused is a model young man and valedictorian of his high-school class. But it turns out that Abu Ali’s high-school career at a private Islamic school might not be the wisest thing for his family to mention. According to the Associated Press, “The private school’s teachings have come under scrutiny since the September...

All of Europe is in the process of a methodical conversion to Islam. For the last 25 years France's immigration policy toward muslims has been very similar to our view of Mexican immigration into the southwestern states.

There are thousands of Saudi-funded Islamic schools in America. While we have been aware of this for years, Americans were ignorant about what was being taught in those schools to American children who just happen to be Muslim. The Saudi Ministry of Education has been creating a network of sleeper-cells right in the heart of America. For a modest investment, the Saudi government has had total access to thousands of young American minds and has used that opportunity to corrupt and mold those young minds into its view of the perfect Muslim. The perfect Muslim is full of hate for...

WASHINGTON - The federal indictment of a graduate of a Saudi-backed Islamic school in suburban Virginia for plotting to kill President Bush is the latest example of the school's links to troubling activity, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., charged on Wednesday. Schumer said he is asking Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to explain where the school receives all of its funding, and whether the school may be "a breeding ground for anti-American sentiment - and, possibly even terrorist activities." It has been widely reported the school receives substantial funding from the Saudi kingdom. Schumer...

Apt Pupil By Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | February 24, 2005This week, the Justice Department accused 23-year-old Virginia native Ahmed Omar Abu Ali of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush. Media coverage has predictably centered on Abu Ali’s claims of torture while he was held in a Saudi Arabian prison and on the fact that the accused was “his high school’s valedictorian.” Largely omitted from this coverage is the fact that his high school operates under the authority of the Saudi Arabian government, teaches an extremist form of Wahhabi Islam, and has direct ties to at least three other terrorists...

Concerned about Saudi Arabian influence on American religious life, a Washington-based international watchdog group visited 15 American mosques to check for Saudi-published tracts, magazines and books. The researchers found the literature in all 15 mosques, including the Muslim Community Center on the North Side. In all, they documented more than 200 pieces of literature promoting Wahhabism, a puritanical Muslim movement that dominates Saudi Arabia, denounces democracy and criticizes other faiths, including moderate forms of Islam. The Freedom House Center for Religious Freedom conducted the study to examine one way by which the Saudi kingdom promulgates its unique brand of religious...

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- A powerful Saudi charity under scrutiny for alleged terrorist financing is expanding operations in tsunami-ravaged areas of Indonesia, importing a hard-line religious message that the West fears could spread extremist Islam in the world's most populous Muslim nation. The presence of the International Islamic Relief Organization could complicate relief efforts in Indonesia, which is desperate for help but also under pressure to contain Islamic militants. Attacks have included nightclub bombings in 2002 that killed 202 people. It also offers a high-profile test of Saudi promises to closely monitor its major aid societies. Many have faced probes...

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...

“This perverse ideology [Wahhabi Islam] has spread all over Saudi Arabia, in the schools, the mosques … [and] satellite channels… There’s a videotape now circulating in Saudi Arabia of a boy age 10 or less [in a Saudi orphanage]. He is asked, 'who is your role model?' And he answers, 'Osama Bin Laden.'” This damaging statement was not spoken by an opponent of the Saudi regime, but by Saudi Prince Khaled Al-Faysal on Al-Arabiyya TV on July 14th. As part of MEMRI’s TV Monitoring Project (www.memritv.org), Saudi government-controlled television channels are continually monitored. These channels include shows with leading Saudi...

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...

Citing only alleged European "secret reports," an article in a Saudi government daily accused the U.S. Army of harvesting the organs of Iraqis and selling them. The story in Al-Watan also was published in the Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Islami and the Syrian daily Teshreen, reports the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.

This op-ed was inspired by the D.C. Watson piece, (Tuesday AFP), which was a real eye-opener. [Posted on FR:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1297063/posts] Hopefully by now, all who read his piece have become acutely aware that the threat is real. Prior to 9/11, I had never heard of a man named Dr. Daniel Pipes. Then again, most of us hadn't. For years prior to 9/11, Dr. Pipes was discussing Islamism - the rise of Islamic fundamentalism against the West, via books and articles. While we were aiding the Mujahideen by giving them arms and logistics in Afghanistan against the invading Soviet Union, Dr. Pipes...