Religious Extremism

IS-Affiliated Boys in Detention Centers Suffer Sexual Exploitation, Radicalization, Trafficking

February 28, 2023

According to The Daily Beast, young boys who were IS fighters and/or children in IS families currently held in two large detention centers in former caliphate territories of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) are experiencing sexual exploitation, ongoing radicalization, and human trafficking, with boys reporting to international and human rights organizations that they are forced to impregnate IS-sympathizing women in order to increase the Islamist population.
Iran Metes Out Death Sentence to German-Iranian Dual National Regime Opponent

February 28, 2023

Iran’s Revolutionary Court handed down a death sentence to a German-Iranian national resident of the United States, based on charges of plotting terrorist activities against the triune because of his leadership position in an international opposition group to Iran’s Islamic theocratic regime.
U.S. Supreme Court Hears Cases on YouTube & Twitter Liability for Online Spreading of Islamist Violence

February 28, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing two cases that underscore expanding concerns about online and social media promotion of violent Islamism with decisions on the cases likely to have a significant impact on how Islamist extremists groups are able to use online platforms in radicalization and recruitment and propaganda efforts.
Malaysian Islamist Youth Parade Provokes Controversy Over Radicalization

February 22, 2023

A two-day event centering on a military parade by the youth wing of the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), an Islamist organization whose platform promotes Malaysia's conversion to a sharia state also promotes ethnic Malay supremacy, has provoked social media debate and political controversy about the extent of popular support for political Islamism in the religiously and ethnically diverse Southeast Asian country.
Trends in Taliban Afghanistan in 2023

February 22, 2023

The consolidation of Afghanistan's Islamist regime under the Taliban will remain unchanged in 2023, but the durability and impacts of the group's grip on power, as well as the extent of human suffering already caused by the Taliban's repressive social policies and absolute oppression of women and girls, will be shaped by Talibani leadership disagreements over relations with Western states and humanitarian organizations, violence among competing jihadist groups, and the economic consequences of the regime's continuing international isolation.
Polish Foreign Fighters for IS Suggests Broader Pathways for Islamist Radicalization

February 18, 2023

Analysis of the cases of foreign fighters from Poland who went to join the jihadist operations of IS in the caliphate territories of Iraq and Syria shows that both Polish citizens and Muslim immigrants to Poland were radicalized through local and transnational networks of ideological extremism and recruitment, suggesting that there are multiple pathways and risks for Ilamist radicalization, regardless of the vigilance of local security services and the religio-cultural fabric of specific countries.
IS Pakistan Branch Takes Aim at State as "Cancer State in Islam" in Propaganda Magazine

February 18, 2023

The main propaganda magazine of the Islamic State - Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Pakistani branch of the IS, has condemned the state establishment as a "cancer state in Islam" and as a geopolitical pawn of the United States, promising to wage continuous jihad against both, in a move that signals the group's ongoing push to marginalize the local Taliban and, therefore, to secure hegemonic status as the only authentic Islamist voice in the South Asia state.
Paris Rally Calls on EU to List Iran’s IRGC as Terror Group

February 15, 2023

A massive rally by Iranian-Europeans was held in Paris this last weekend, in a call for European Union (EU) officials to add Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to the EU terror list, with protestors condemning the IRGC as perpetrators of widespread human rights crimes and also urging a decisive expansion of the European sanctions list and suspension of diplomatic relations with the Islamic theocratic regime.
Pressures Grow for Islamist Autocrats to Support Islamic Legal Reform

February 15, 2023

A spate of journalists and opinion makers in Saudi Arabia has begun to exert public pressure on the country’s Islamist auotocratic leadership whose grip on power has long depended on fundamentalist Islamic jurisprudence, with critics and changemakers in Saudi Arabia, viewed as the worldwide center of Islamic orthodoxy, echoing the move by Indonesia’s massive Islamic civil society movement Nahdlatul Ulama to condemn the Afghan Taliban’s totalitarian repression of women by using sharia justifications and to call for reforms of Islamic law that continue to be instrumentalized for dictatorial Islamist rule and jihadist violence.
Indonesia’s Largest Islamist Movement Rejects Caliphate

February 13, 2023

Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama (ND, Revival of Islamic Scholars) issued a public challenge to the world’s leading religious experts, scholars, and organizations of Islam to undertake foundational reforms in Islamic jurisprudence, including a rejection of universal caliphate as a necessary system of governance, revision of social laws and human rights practices in order to conformity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and endorsement of ND’s jurisprudential concept of “Humanitarian Islam” that accepts and engages non-violently in the world’s reality of religious pluralism.