Category: Islamists

Iran’s reformist movement – threatened or already dead?

     

Veterans of Iran’s reformist movement – Mohsen Aminzadeh, Mohammadreza Khatami, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, and Mostafa Tajzadeh – are concerned about the “mortal blow that even a limited military conflict with the United States of… Read more »

A strategy to counter Iran’s growing power

     

Iranian regional advances have opened up a path, both literally and figuratively, for Iran to circumvent U.S. sanctions by interweaving its terror militias deep within the governments and societies of… Read more »

‘Dangerous backsliding’: radicals use Indonesia’s democracy to undermine it

     

  Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and former military general Prabowo Subianto will face off in a presidential election on Wednesday (Nikkei/CFR), with official results expected take up to a month to… Read more »

Algeria’s transition scenarios: ‘dreams of democracy tempered by fear of Islamism’?

     

President Bouteflika’s resignation has left Algeria facing a period of uncertainty replete with hope and fear, The (London) Times reports. The hope is that, at long last, this oil and gas-rich… Read more »

The New Normal? From non-state actors to ‘terrorist governors’

     

The Venezuelan regime’s mobilization of violent colectivo gangs against opposition protesters is only the latest instance of authoritarian regimes orchestrating illiberal non-state actors to counter democratic forces. Some non-state actors… Read more »

Is Tunisia really democratizing? Progress + resistance = uncertain outlook

     

While Tunisia’s eighth anniversary celebrations of the end of the Ben Ali dictatorship were marred by social protests, opinions differ about the country’s state of political development as it gears… Read more »

A new strategy to build resilience to extremism’s corrosive ideology

     

Extremism is enabled by the belief that existing indignities and suffering are the direct result of poor, undemocratic, or predatory governance, notes a new analysis. This sense of injustice aligns… Read more »

Losing legitimacy: Iran’s Islamic Republic ‘on brink of collapse’?

     

“Is the Islamic Republic on the brink of collapse?” was the title of a long interview published by the Iranian news agency Tasnim. To fully appreciate the true explosive power… Read more »

Reclamation: new Arab discourse empowers civil actors

     

ISIS may be defeated and devoid of territory, but its ideology continues to spread, The [London] Times reports. Jihadi fighters are not necessarily driven by religious ideology, disenfranchised or lacking… Read more »

How Khomeini betrayed the democratic promise of the Iranian revolution

     

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini betrayed the principles of the Iranian revolution after sweeping to power in 1979, leaving a “very bitter” taste among some of those who had returned with him… Read more »