Violence and Security

Saudi Arabia's Position on Islamist Extremism Is at Odds with Counter-Terrorism Policy

September 16, 2015

Saudi Arabia's cooperation with Western allies in counter-terrorism policy is unlikely to produce durable results in countering violent Islamism because Riyadh's counter-terrorism efforts are aimed solely at consolidating the Saudi regime's legitimacy claims as the fountainhead of legitimate, Sunni Islam and have been accompanied by massive funding to export fundamentalist Wahhabi initiatives that endorse violence against all those who disagree with a world organized according to sharia principles.
IS Ripple Effects Expand Inside America

September 14, 2015

American law enforcement and intelligence reports reveal that a worrying pattern of complex, nuanced ripple effects of Islamic State ("IS") ideology, social media recruitment, and supply networks inside the United States are becoming complex and increasingly apparent.
Muslim Clerics in India Counter Radicalization with Condemnation of IS as Un-Islamic

September 14, 2015

Muslim religious leaders from mosques, educational institutions, and civic groups across India have signed a formal religious writ condemning the ideology and actions of the Islamic State ("IS") as un-Islamic, with India's imams hoping that the fatwa will help to counter IS's efforts to radicalize and recruit Indian Muslim youth to jihadi activities.
Gulf States Blame and Avoid over Syrian Refugees

September 09, 2015

Blaming Western governments for Syria's protracted civil war and refugee crisis, the plutocratic Islamist monarchies of the Arabian Gulf are coming under sharp international criticism for funding Syria's extremist Islamist ideologues and militias and for refusing to absorb refugees except as low-paid laborers with no political or economic rights.
Mideast Gulf Countries Fund Islamist Extremism and Turn Back on Region's Refugees

September 09, 2015

Although Mideast Gulf countries have led the public condemnations against the EU for its policy failures in responding to the grotesque humanitarian crisis of millions of Syrian and Iraqi refugees from wars in those two states, human rights organizations have compiled data indicating that significant elements within those same petro-plutocratic Gulf countries "have invested heavily in funding and arming a constellation" of rebel and Islamist totalitarian militias and religious leaders and have not granted official refugee and/or asylum status to a single Syrian citizen.
IS Targets Protestant Christians in Turkey

September 09, 2015

Protestant Christians report that their leaders and congregations are being targeted with systematic death threats by the Islamic State ("IS") on social media, noting that longstanding violations of their religious freedom "are not anything new" for Christians in supposedly secular Turkey, a country whose Islamist government has only recently shifted from tacit and active support to opposition to IS.
UN Reports Childhood Education a Massive Casualty of Islamist Violence

September 09, 2015

A comprehensive new report by the UN Children's Fund ("UNICEF") indicates that childhood education is a massive casualty of the Islamist-related violence creating upheaval across the Mideast and Africa region, with upwards of 13 million children currently without access to any form of educational services.
Boko Haram Targets Cameroon in Latest Lethal Attack

September 09, 2015

Militants from Boko Haram carried out twin suicide bombings that killed at least 30 civilians in Cameroon, the latest assault by the Islamist extremist group in African Union countries cooperating against the jihadi group's war to install sharia law throughout West Africa.
Islamic Autocracies Turn Blind Eye to Mideast Refugees While Fueling Islamist Extremism

September 09, 2015

Data show that the wealthiest of the Islamic oil regimes, while funding extremist Islamist groups abroad and violating human rights at home, have refused to provide haven to a single refugee from Iraq and Syria, and instead have been quick to blame Western countries for rigid refugee and asylum policies responding to what amounts to Islam's wars of religion in the Mideast.
Refugee Crisis Highlights European Hypocrisy on Humanitarian Catastrophe in Mideast and North Africa

September 09, 2015

The urgent refugee crisis spreading across EU member states, provoked by radical Islamist violence against states and civilians in the Mideast and North Africa ("MENA"), has provoked cries about Europe's hypocrisy in failing to both respond to the human security needs of MENA countries and to live up to the human rights discourse on which the EU project is premised.