Religious Extremism

Africa Shows Increased Instability from Islamist Violence on the Upswing

February 08, 2023

A plethora of Islamist extremist groups is responsible for a steady increase in the incidences of violence in multiple countries and regions across the Africa in 2022, particularly in the West African and Sahelian regions and in Horn of Africa, leading to a precipitous deterioration in the security environment of the African Continent, according to new analysis by the the US National Defense University-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Courts Deliver Guilty Verdict to Michigan Man Who Fought for IS

February 06, 2023

A US District Court in Michigan found a Dearborn man born to Yemeni immigrants guilty on multiple counts of supporting the Islamic State (IS), based on his training, propagandizing, and fighting in Syria and Iraq with the Islamist terror group to establish a global caliphate, in a case underscoring the phenomenon of foreign fighters that reflects the transnational scope of IS.
Iranian Regime Blocks WhatsApp & Instagram with Accusations of Fomenting Anti-Regime Protests

February 04, 2023

Iran’s Islamic theocratic regime is continuing its crackdown on social media platforms, as the country’s Telecommunications Minister announced that WhatsApp and Instagram will be blocked because of their threats to national security as fomenters of the months-long anti-regime protests in response to the death of an Iranian Kurd women held in custody on allegations of violating the country’s sharia dress code for women, with this latest ban coming after the regime’s ban on Facebook, YouTube, Telegram, TikTok, and Twitter.
Islamist Ties Run Deep With Iran’s Direct Influence into Turkey’s Presidential Office

January 31, 2023

The official spokesperson and close advisor of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a long history of deep ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which includes an active network of terror operatives and anti-Semitic publications that function inside Turkey, so that the linkages between upper echelons of the two Islamist regimes raises concerns about Iran’s access to sensitive Transatlantic Alliance security and intelligence information, given Turkey’s membership in NATO.
Islamist Extremist Groups Use African Migration into Europe as Opportunity for Recruitment, Radicalization, & Violence

January 19, 2023

Global Islamist extremist groups are instrumentalizing migration flows from Africa to Europe as a tool for spearheading political Islamism and jihadism in European countries, with IS and al-Qaeda using sophisticated social media mechanisms to target vulnerable African youth migrants for radicalization and recruitment into what are intended as European cells that can carry out the full range the full range of Islamist operations in the countries of arrival.
Controversy at US University Points to Influence of Islamic Laws, Threatening Democratic Freedoms

January 18, 2023

Democratic freedoms in American academe are being challenged by the influence of Islamic blasphemy laws rooted on fundamentalist interpretations of sharia law, evidenced in the recent controversy over a professor’s termination at a Minnesota university because she showed renderings of Islam’s prophet Mohammed in an online course on Islamic art, a move by the university administration that responded to some students’ claims of being offended by the Islamophobia act but that other faculty have condemned on grounds of intellectual and religious freedom.
Pakistan’s High School Textbooks Radicalize Youth With Teachings on Islamic Supremacy, Global Islamist Commitment & Denigration of Non-Muslims

January 17, 2023

Pakistan’s intensifying Islamist militancy and violence is part of the broader radicalization of society in the nuclear-armed South Asian country that is deliberately cultivated in high school textbooks, which teach a triumphalist Islamist nationalism at home that denigrates non-Muslims, and Islamist globalism as a foreign policy project that aspires to establish a dominant, transnational Islamic world.
Iran Shutters French Research Institute as Retribution for Charlie Hebdo Cartoons

January 11, 2023

Iran announced the shutdown of the French Research Institute in Tehran, in retribution for cartoons of the state’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that were published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in solidarity with demonstrators engaged in months-long protests against the violence and repression of the islamist regime.
IS Gets a Boost from Turkey’s Courts

January 03, 2023

The decision by Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals to overturn the case of a Turkish jihadist twice convicted for disseminating IS propaganda on social media sites and for planning to travel to Syria to join IS is a boost to Islamist terror organizations, since the judiciary ruled that social-media dissemination and promotion of IS materials is not an offense under the country’s counter-terrorism laws.
Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Regime cited for Ongoing Religious Freedom Violations in New USCIRF Report

January 03, 2023

According to a new report released by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the reconfiguration in the balance of power favoring Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy at the expense of the fundamentalist Sunni Islamic religious establishment has led to a revised form of Islamist authoritarianism that continues to feature egregious religious freedom violations against non-confirming Muslims.