Hundreds of radicalized Muslim inmates to be released from prisons: ‘We run a huge risk’
Hundreds of inmates radicalized during the war in Syria and the rise of Islamic State are set to be released from French prisons before the end of next year, the Wall Street Journal reports. Of those set to be released, about 50 were serving terrorism-related sentences, and a further 400 were classified as “radicalized” while in prison. According to the WSJ, “That group includes inmates finishing longer sentences who were convicted before the Syrian war, such as Djamel Beghal, who left prison on Monday.” “Mr. Beghal was handed his first terrorism-related conviction in 2001, another in 2013, and French magistrates…
Theodore Roosevelt on Assimilation and Multiculturalism: “There Is No Room in This Country for Hyphenated Americans”
Theodore Roosevelt once said: “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all… “This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to…
The Case for the Crusades
“What about the Crusades?” If you’ve ever criticised the unprovoked brutality of Islam, you’ve probably been asked that question. What’s implied is that Christianity was just as cruel as Islam, if not worse. This, however, is merely a twentieth-century creation, prompted in part by post-World War I British and French imperialism and the post-World War II creation of the state of Israel. In his book, God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades, Rodney Stark summarized the current understanding of the Crusades as follows: “During the Crusades, an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalized, looted, and colonized a tolerant and peaceful Islam.” But that’s…
For we are dumb and policed
“For we are Young and Free.” What a lovely line. I think of swimming at the beach, a cheering crowd at a concert, a happy family eating Christmas lunch. Or we might think of the freedom to live where we want, to study what we want, to work where we want, and to buy what we want. Below these delightful tip-of-the-iceberg freedoms, lie the four foundational freedoms of conscience, assembly, religion, and expression. Freedom of conscience is your freedom not to be coerced to act against your convictions about what is good and what is evil. Mel Gibson’s 2016 movie Hacksaw Ridge, for…