Religious Extremism

Proposed Turkish Budget Reflects Islamist Shift

December 18, 2018

Turkey's Parliamentary Planning and Budget Committee has approved a 2019 government budget that includes massive increases in allotments to government agencies responsible for mosque construction, Koranic instruction in public schools, and Islamic schools that train imams.
Egypt’s Islamic Legal Authorities Use Animation to Counter Extremism

December 18, 2018

One of Egypt’s most prestigious centers for Islamic legal research, Dar-al-Ifta, has rolled out a new program of animated shorts and graphics intended as an innovative mechanism for educating the country’s Muslim-majority population about Islam that counters the growing appeal of Islamist extremist forces active from Cairo to the Sinai.
Geopolitics, Sectarianism Motivate Saudi Drive to Nuclearize

December 18, 2018

Saudi Arabia’s leaders are pushing the US to provide the Islamist theocratic monarchy with nuclear technology that can be weaponized in a program much like Iran’s initiative, based on twin rationales of sustaining Sunni over Shiite sectarian dominance and maintaining Saudi Arabia’s Mideast balance of power goals.
Khashoggi Murder Gives Turkey Upper Hand in Islamic Leadership

December 18, 2018

Turkey’s Islamist regime has managed the narrative and politics of the murder of Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a manner that advances its goals of supplanting Saudi Arabia as the hegemon of global Islamism.
Saudi Women Push back Against Wahhabi Islamist Oppression

December 18, 2018

Women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia continue to push back against Wahhabi Islamist canons that impose male guardianship laws on women in virtually all social and family spheres, with the latest act of civil disobedience in the form of wearing the full-body black abaya inside-out as a protest against rigid Islamist dress requirements.
Turkey Engages in Re-Islamization of Culture, Politics, Education

December 18, 2018

NATO ally Turkey’s revitalization of its Ottoman Islamic caliphate roots under the Islamist government that has ruled the country for almost two decades is based on domestic re-Islamization policies that include shifts in culture, education, and politics.
UAE Sentences British Researcher to Life Imprisonment

December 18, 2018

A United Arab Emirates (UAE) court sentenced a British doctoral researcher to life imprisonment over spying allegations after months of confinement without access to legal counsel and a trial lasting less than five minutes, underscoring the human-rights abuses and rule-of-law violations common to Islamist theocratic regimes of the Arabian Gulf Region.
Turkey’s Islamist President Criticizes "Commoditization" of Women in West

December 17, 2018

Turkey’s President has declared that gender equality is intrinsic to Islam and condemned the West for “commoditization of women” in his address to the 3rd International Women and Justice Summit convened in Istanbul by Turkey’s Women and Democracy Association.
Khashoggi Fallout Reveals Turkey-Saudi Struggle for Hegemony

December 17, 2018

Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party, the minority coalition partner to the Turkey’s ruling party, has likened Saudi Arabia to al-Qaeda and the country’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Osama Bin Laden, underscoring that the subtext to the fallout from the Khashoggi murder is the intense Turkey-Saudi rivalry for hegemony for Sunni Islamic global leadership.
Saudi Textbooks Teach Hatred, Incitement

December 17, 2018

According to a study by the Anti-Defamation League, Saudi government-published textbooks used in the Islamic theocratic kingdom’s public schools and exported worldwide to Saudi-funded religious schools promote hatred and violence against Jews and Christians and describe the beating of women as “permissible when necessary.”