Jihad Watch By Robert Spencer The speech that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi recently made calling for Islamic reform is getting quite a bit of attention, and warrants close examination. Here are the excerpts that Raymond Ibrahim posted here at Jihad Watch a few days ago, with my comments interspersed:   I am referring here to the religious clerics. We have … [Read more...]

FrontPage Magazine By Bruce Thornton The three Muslim gunmen who killed 12 journalists in Paris targeted not just those people and their satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, but a core ideal and human right of the West––the right to free speech in the public square defined by tolerance for different opinions. That’s why the killers, after they had called out the names of their … [Read more...]

Hurriyet News By Burak Bekdil Turkey’s leaders have the habit of chasing conspirators who they claim add fuel to Islamophobia in Europe. Those who ridicule the Islamic faith may not be the ones who conspire against Islam in faraway lands. The final week of the year featured the usual scenes in Turkey: A man dressed as a janissary chasing another dressed as Santa Claus in … [Read more...]

PJ Media By Michael Ledeen I had lunch yesterday with three gentlemen who are very well read, who follow the news attentively, and who would shudder to think they are victims of ideological censorship. Yet not one of them — and the trio includes a very famous former reporter (a first-class reporter at that) for one of the country’s top newspapers — had heard a word about … [Read more...]

Investors Business Daily Reform: To many in the West, Islam seems mired in a pre-medieval mindset that makes it unable to reconcile the fundamental precepts of its faith with those of the modern world. But there are encouraging signs of change. In what Roger L. Simon rightly called "an extraordinary" New Year's speech that got virtually no attention in the West, Egypt's … [Read more...]