Religious Extremism

Islamist Nationalism Intensifies in Turkey

January 08, 2018

The recent declaration by an Islamic preacher in Turkey that men must be bearded to avoid being mistaken for women and thus provoking "indecent thoughts" reflects the broader efforts of the country’s political and religious establishment to use legal and social constraints to fuse Islamism and nationalism in Turkey.
Iran Protests Reveal Islamist Theocratic Dilemmas

January 08, 2018

Anti-government protesters in Iran have made clear that they link the country's sustained economic squeeze to the high cost of the theocratic regime’s foreign policy aimed at exporting Shiite Islamism across the Mideast, with the linkage between domestic unrest and the foreign policy export of Islamism also relevant for Iran’s leading Sunni Islamist competitor, Saudi Arabia.
Anti-Semitism Crystallizes as Plank of Turkey’s Islamist Government

January 02, 2018

Anti-Semitic discourse and incitement and the Islamization of Mideast history have crystallized as core domestic and foreign policy planks of Turkey’s Islamist government’s critique of US and Israeli positions on the status of Jerusalem.
IRGC Threatens to Crush Iranian Protests

January 02, 2018

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military vanguard charged with protecting the country’s Islamic theocracy, has warned protesters it will use all means to crush citizen demonstrations demanding economic improvements and has blamed the middle-class-led dissent on a foreign plot to overthrow the Islamist regime.
Turkey's Government Uses Islam to Support Repression

December 29, 2017

Turkey’s government is deliberately drawing on a particular interpretation of political Islamism to justify the repression of its non-Muslim citizens and to support jihad as a foreign policy strategy.
Expert Says Facts Undermine OIC Claims of Muslim Victimhood

December 28, 2017

A security expert on Islam at the US Army War College argues that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) trope of "the Muslim world as victims" of Western discrimination and violence is belied by facts including that only one of the 57 OIC member-states has suspended relations with Myanmar for its cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
Christmas Across Europe Shows Signs of Islamization

December 28, 2017

A review of changes in primary-secondary educational events and public celebrations across many European cities shows a notable tendency to de-Christianize Christmas and to Islamicize the holiday, as governments submit to pressures from recent Islamist terror attacks at Christmas and to calls for multi-cultural sensitivity.
Islamist Mob Attacks Coptic Church in Egypt

December 28, 2017

A mob of Islamists ended Friday mosque prayers by attacking a nearby Coptic Church south of Cairo and condemning the “unregistered” status of the church, which has been in operation for 15 years yet still awaits formal legalization by an Egyptian administration that uses discriminatory property laws to marginalize the country’s Christian citizens.
Islamist Totalitarianism Has Specific Internal Logic and Goals

December 18, 2017

A prominent European human rights NGO defines the internal logic of Islamist totalitarianism as the commitment to uniformity at all levels of society and to the formation of a theocratic sharia state to destroy diversity, with dissenting Muslims and other religious communities as collateral damage to the homogenizing push for absolute sameness.
Indonesian Court Rejects Islamic Push for Extramarital Sex Ban

December 18, 2017

Indonesia's Constitutional Court narrowly rejected a petition by conservative Islamic groups to criminalize extramarital sex, with the court case indicating the expanding footprint of Islamist activism in the country.