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Abductions of Foreign Medical Team in Libya Underscore Terror Tactics of Islamic State
March 18, 2015
The Islamic State ("IS") continues to use abductions as a terror tactic of choice for carrying out their war to expand the territorial coverage of their caliphate, with the kidnapping of a team of 20 foreign medical workers in Libya, the latest victims in the jihadi civil war raging in that country.
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Recruitment Pathways to Violent Islamism Are Complicated Business
March 18, 2015
Analysis of the regular blog posts by the Australian teen who died last week in a suicide bombing attack for the Islamic State ("IS") against Iraqi Security Forces in the city of Ramadi reveals the particularities in the Western youth's conversion "from committed atheist to committed jihadist," suggesting that policy efforts to counter violent Islamist recruiting is a granular, incremental process with no guarantees of success.
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Radical Islamist Websites Flourish in Turkey
March 16, 2015
Turkey's Islamist government is contradicting its growing censorship of free speech on the Internet and social media sites in the country with an alternative, laissez faire policy for radical Islamist sites, which promote, recruit, and celebrate the ideology and operations of the Islamic State ("IS").
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Sweden and Saudi Arabia in Diplomatic Row over Critique of Sharia Incompatibility with Human Rights
March 16, 2015
The diplomatic row between Saudi Arabia and Sweden, after the Swedish Foreign Minister's public critique of Saudi Arabia's sharia-based assault on international human rights, has escalated into bilateral commercial and trade tensions and condemnation of Sweden by Arab League Foreign Ministers.
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Islamist Extremists Unify Efforts for Global Caliphate
March 16, 2015
There is growing resonance and unity across diverse radical Islamists groups and geographic regions, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, for the objective of the Islamic State ("IS") to globalize the caliphate now being consolidated under IS control in Iraq and Syria.