Religious Extremism

Mauritania Mandates Death Penalty for Blasphemy

May 09, 2018

A group of human rights-focused nongovernmental organizations have criticized Mauritania's adoption of a law requiring the death penalty for anyone found guilty of "blasphemous speech" and "sacrilegious acts" and providing for a prison sentence for the act of "offending public indecency and Islamic values."
Pakistan Revokes National Honors from Religious Minority Member

May 08, 2018

Pakistan’s National Assembly voted to revoke posthumously all national honors bestowed on a Nobel Prize winner because he was a member of the country’s Ahmadiyya religious minority, a sect considered heretics by the country’s Sunni majority, in a move to satisfy demands from an extremist-militant Islamist group called Movement in Service to the Prophet.
Iran Blocks Telegram App in Effort to Silence Critiques

May 04, 2018

Iran’s judiciary, in a branch of the "Culture and Media Court," has ordered the suspension of the Telegram messaging and video app, under the guise of "protecting national security," after state authorities determined the app had been used to organize a recent series of public protests considered to be crimes against the Islamist theocratic regime.
Iranian Media Accuses US of Collaboration with IS, al-Qaeda

April 26, 2018

Iran's Islamist theocracy has launched a media disinformation campaign accusing the US of cooperating with the Sunni jihadi groups Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda, using state propaganda to push Shiite sectarian interests in the aftermath of Western airstrikes in Syria that were aimed to deter the Assad regime from future use of chemical weapons.
Turkey Plays Hostage Diplomacy with OSCE

April 26, 2018

Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is playing hostage diplomacy with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), threatening to block the dates of the annual OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting unless the OSCE agrees to Turkey's demand to bar the anti-Ankara Gulenist movement from participation.
Saudi Sectarianism Increases Mideast Instability

April 26, 2018

Bruce Riedel of the Brooking Institution writes on Saudi Arabia's intensification of Sunni-Shiite sectarianism in the Mideast in an effort to contain Iran and consolidate Saudi regional hegemony, while destabilizing the Mideast and threatening US strategic interests by enabling jihadi groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda and aggravating state fragility.
Welch: Turkey Does Not Belong in NATO

April 25, 2018

David Welch of the Centre for International Governance Innovation argues that the "increasingly authoritarian" Turkey, which is resorting to Islamist crackdowns on civil, political, and religious liberties, no longer belongs within the ranks of the successful alliance and "club of like-minded states" the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Iranian Morality Police Assault Sparks Public Outrage

April 24, 2018

Mobile footage of Iran’s morality police assaulting a young woman whose head was only partially covered has sparked public outrage across the country against the religious police unit and has led to renewed public criticism of the compulsory Islamic dress code and, more generally, against the Islamic theocratic regime governing the country since 1979.
Turkey's Islamist Government Uses Hostage Diplomacy

April 17, 2018

Turkey's Islamist regime has offered to trade American pastor Andrew Brunson, who is on trial in Turkish courts on muddled espionage and terrorism charges that could put him in prison for life, for the US's extradition of Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen, part of a hostage diplomacy policy that Ankara has also deployed by kidnapping and detaining a range of citizens in other countries.
Arab League Supports Funds for Islamic Sites in Jerusalem

April 17, 2018

National leaders from the Arab League membership stretching from the Mideast and Africa, meeting in Saudi Arabia for a "Jerusalem Summit" to protest the US decision to transfer America's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, united behind Saudi Arabia's commitment of $150 million to preserve Islamic cultural and religious sites in East Jerusalem.