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US Faces Complications from Islamist Infighting in Turkey
November 20, 2017
The intense infighting between Turkey’s Islamist government and the alternative Islamist Gulenist grassroots continues to complicate the relations between the US and Turkey, as Ankara has accused the US of ignoring the Gulenists' "penetration of the American justice system" and of the US consulate in Istanbul.
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Belgian Parliament Debates Control of Grand Mosque
November 20, 2017
The Belgian Parliament is debating the current legal contract with Saudi Arabia that gives the Kingdom control over Belgium's largest mosque, as concerns mount in the EU capital city over Islamist extremism and terror attacks in Europe that experts have linked to the radicalized preaching and networks centered in the mosque.
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Brussels Debate Heightens Europe's Focus on Extremist Funding
November 20, 2017
The current debate in the Belgian Parliament over taking control of the Grand Mosque of Belgium from its current management by Saudi Arabia has intensified concerns in Europe about how to support the development of a European Islam that promotes pluralistic values and non-violence in opposition to Saudi Arabia's export of Wahhabi Islamist extremism and violence.
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IS Loses Final Territorial Remnants in Iraq
November 20, 2017
The anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition and the Iraq National Army have secured the final territorial remnants of the IS caliphate in Iraq as these forces captured the city of Rawa on the border with Syria, thereby definitively defeating IS jihadis in their core territories.
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Saudi Rebranding of Islam Ignores Problem of Islamism
November 20, 2017
As Saudi Arabia promotes the kingdom’s new King Salman Complex for Islamic Scholarship to rebrand Islam as moderate and anti-violence, skeptics charge that continuing state finance and control over the Center’s scholars and output means Wahhabi thought and other forms of extremist Islamist will remain unchallenged and, therefore, pervasive.