Free Republic

The first thing to do when trying to understand ‘Islamic suicide bombers’ is to forget the clichés about the Muslim taste for martyrdom. It does exist, of course, but the desire for paradise is not a safe guide to what motivated the appalling suicide attacks on New York and Washington last week. Throughout history, political extremists of all faiths have willingly given up their lives simply in the belief that by doing so, whether in bombings or in other forms of terror, they would change the course of history, or at least win an advantage for their cause. Tamils are...

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...

Ostensibly the reasons were because some staff members of various Senators were unprepared, and need to devote their attention to the Harriet Miers hearings. But the hearing has not yet been rescheduled. Here and here are two recent articles I have written on Saudi Arabia that underscore the need for these hearings, and for passage of the Act.

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,...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Jack Wheeler, the publisher and editor of To The Point, a geopolitical intelligence subscription website at www.tothepointnews.com. He has been called the “Indiana Jones of the Right” by the Washington Post, the “creator of the Reagan Doctrine” which dismantled the Soviet Union by the Wall Street Journal, and he holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern California with a specialty in Aristotle. He is the owner of Wheeler Expeditions, leading numerous expeditions to Tibet, Mongolia, the Sahara, Himalayas, the Amazon, 21 expeditions to the North Pole, and is listed in the Guinness...

The Impending Collapse of Arab Civilization Lieutenant Colonel James G. Lacey, U.S. Army Reserve Proceedings, September 2005 Slender minarets with muezzins calling the faithful to prayer symbolize the stability and timelessness of the Muslim world. This one in Rabi'ah, a small town on the Iraqi-Syrian border, is a classic—and the Muslim faith is flourishing. Arabs, however, most of whom are Muslims, are not. If a country wants to be on the winning side of history it first and foremost must get its grand strategy right. With that done, it can make any number of operational mistakes and weather many a...

The restaurant, like all Riyadh eateries, has taken precautions to prevent its male and female diners from seeing or contacting each other. Circular white walls surround each table in the family section, open only to women alone or women accompanied by close male relatives. Other male diners are on lower floors. Yet despite the barriers, the men and women flirt and exchange phone numbers, photos and kisses. They elude the mores imposed by the kingdom's puritanical Wahhabi version of Islam - formulated in the 18th century - by using a 21st century device in their mobile phones: the wireless Bluetooth...

In announcing last week a sweeping crackdown in Britain on the "evil ideology" of coming to be known as Islamofascism, Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that "the rules of the game have changed." So, it would appear has he. In fact, Mr. Blair has become an exemplar of the old adage that a "conservative is a liberal who has been mugged." The two bombing attacks on London's mass-transit systems, perpetrated mostly by home-grown Islamist suicide bombers (actual or would-be), not only mugged Britain's recently reelected leader, but his country, as well.

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.Just a link.

Death of a King Fahd's death provides a chance of Saudi Arabia and a challenge to his successor, Abdullah. by Stephen Schwartz 08/01/2005 2:00:00 PM KING FAHD BIN ABDUL AZIZ of Saudi Arabia has died in Riyadh at 84, after 10 years in a coma. Crown Prince Abdullah, Fahd's half-brother and himself aged 81, has taken the throne. We may expect a flood of praise from credulous Westerners for Fahd, hailing him as a friend of the United States and a moderate. In reality, the 10-year vegetative state in which Fahd survived was characterized by the opposite of either sincere...

On July 22, the day after Phase 2 of the London terror bombings, the domination of American Islam by the Saudi-financed Wahhabi conspiracy was dramatized with the arrest of a Saudi subject, Abdullah Alnoshan, 44, employed by the infamous Muslim World League (MWL). Alnoshan was detained at his Alexandria, Va. residence by agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Washington Post reported that the MWL, an official arm of the Saudi monarchy charged with charitable work to advance global Wahhabism, remains a target of investigation by Treasury and other federal officials....

Muhammad Al-Sheikh put things in proper perspective when he wrote a column in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah entitled ‘Thank you America’ in which he reminded the Saudis of a history with the United States that spans six decades. It was the late King Abdul Aziz (founder of modern Saudi Arabia) who chose to allow Americans to come to the Saudi Kingdom in search of oil. Aziz was also responsible for choosing capitalism over communism after WWII, allowing a country with nothing to grow enormously wealthy and powerful. Muhammad Al-Sheikh writes, “We must admit that our relations with America were the...

Those who read Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed’s chilling remarks wherein he referred to Osama bin Laden as "a sincere man who fights against evil forces," and called for the flag of Islam to fly over the entire free world were likely shocked and horrified. But those who have been following the penetration of Wahhabism into western society have come to expect these comments, and already know what the rest of the world is reluctantly coming around to understand: that the roots of Islamo-fascism in western societies were planted decades ago, and are now beginning to bare fruit. This is not...

An Outpost of Tyranny Rumsfeld goes to Central Asia: What he needs to know about Wahhabism, Karimov, and the 'Stans. by Stephen Schwartz 07/22/2005 3:30:00 PM ON JULY 25, DEFENSE secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to visit Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The topic of discussion will be the continuation of U.S. military activities at Manas, the U.S. base on Kyrgyz territory established after 9/11 propelled Central Asia back to strategic importance. The post-Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan--collectively known to Westerners as "the 'stans"--were remote, somnolent, and impoverished until the fall of the Soviet Union. With...

BYE-BYE, BANDAR By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ WITH the departure, announced this week, of the dean of Washington's diplomatic corps, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, from his post as Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, an epoch has ended. Unfortunately, regardless of praise heaped upon him by the cadre of professional American apologists for the desert kingdom, the 22-year tenure of Ambassador Bandar has seen little more than deceit, corruption and horror in U.S.-Saudi relations.

Good Riddance . . . But Not Much Improvement Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, is out. Prince Turki is in. by Stephen Schwartz 07/20/2005 3:45:00 PM AS ANNOUNCED ON Wednesday, July 20, Saudi Arabia's long-serving ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, is leaving town. Allegedly, he resigned. The dean of the foreign diplomatic corps in Washington will be replaced by Prince Turki al Faisal, the former intelligence chief of the kingdom. Seeing the last of the unctuous Bandar will be viscerally pleasing to many Americans and to Saudi liberal dissidents. The...

A GROUP calling itself "the Secret Group of al Qaeda's Jihad in Europe" has claimed "credit" for Thursday's deadly bombings in London. Some refer to the perpetrators of this latest horror as "an unknown group." But there is nothing mysterious about the background of the London atrocities. First, and foremost, there is nothing secret, unknown or hidden about the prime source of financing for the terrorists: Saudi Arabia. As the leading Saudi human-rights activist, Ali al-Ahmed, of the Washington-based Saudi Institute, puts it, "all the roads lead to Riyadh." The Saudi kingdom continues to channel money and recruits to terror...

A recent article in Britain’s New Statesman magazine warned that, as Britain’s culture war heats up, the religious groups that threaten public tranquility are mostly being supported either by the United States or by Saudi Arabia, two nations that the magazine assumes to be equivalent in extremism. “Puritanical yet wealthy, convinced of their God-given mission to the rest of the world, sure of a divinely inspired history,” the article, titled “Faith Invaders,” declared, Saudi Arabia and the United States are surprisingly similar in their mixture of religion, politics and interference in other countries’ affairs. Saudi Arabia has Wahhabi Islam, Middle...

SINCE MAY 27, THE Saudis have arrested eight Christians from India and seized documents naming others. One of those arrested, Chittirical John Thomas, was pulled away from work and beaten in front of his five-year-old son. He is reportedly in the Shemaissy Detention Center. This followed the March 22 arrest in the Batha area of Riyadh of Indian pastor Samkutty Varghese by the religious police, the muttawa, for not ending a cell phone conversation when the call for Muslim prayer went out. Rev. Varghese, who went to Saudi Arabia as a tourist in January, was apparently not aware of rules...

The Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria is an outpost of militant Islam, say critics who point out that the school's 1999 valedictorian is charged with joining al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush. Two other persons connected to the academy also have been linked to terrorism-related cases, and a U.S. senator has asked the Justice Department to investigate the school. The school was founded in 1984, primarily to serve children of the Saudi diplomatic corps. Today, the student body is more diverse, with nearly three dozen countries represented, but much of the funding still comes from the Saudi government....