Jihadist propaganda offline
Insurgent strategic communication has rarely posed as great a threat to regional and international security as it does today in Syria, where jihadists are using it to aggressively advance their… Read more »
Category: Islamists
Why leftist-Islamist alliance won Iraq’s elections
Failure to predict the emergence of the leftist-Islamist alliance that won Iraq’s May elections resulted from a focus on elite politics and sectarian dynamics that obscured these underlying cross-ideological… Read more »
Reason to Hope? Turkey’s Elections Under State of Emergency
Turkey’s snap presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24, 2018, will take place under a state of emergency and will bring in a new presidential system whatever the outcome, Human… Read more »
Middle East has ‘too much democracy’?
Tunisians are aware of their country as the only one in the Arab world trying to make the Islamist–non-Islamist divide work in a genuinely democratic way, notes Thomas Carothers,… Read more »
Pakistan’s ‘second democratic transition’?
A former Pakistani Supreme Court chief justice has been chosen as the caretaker prime minister until late July, when Pakistan is to hold general elections, the New York Times reports:… Read more »
‘Marshall Plan’ program would counter extremist distortions of Islam
In his new book, The House of Islam, former Islamist radical Ed Husain arrives at the conclusion that the spread of this rigid, literalist interpretation of Islam “rejected by the vast majority… Read more »
Iraq and Lebanon elections energize civil society
The elections in Iraq and Lebanon earlier this month present a fragile but important counterpoint to a region in turmoil, notes Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Senior Fellow at Brookings’ Center… Read more »
Bernard Lewis, R.I.P. – opposed Arab autocrats, studied Islam-democracy relationship
Bernard Lewis, an eminent historian of Islam who traced the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to a declining Islamic civilization, a controversial view that influenced world opinion and helped… Read more »
Violent Extremism in Indonesia: Vulnerabilities and Sources of Resilience
The recent suicide bombings in Surabaya, Indonesia highlight the country’s continued struggle with radicalism and terrorism. Claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), these attacks typify… Read more »
Populism replacing sectarianism as defining force in Iraqi politics?
In all the turmoil of the Middle East, the most significant development of the year thus far may be the democratic election Iraq held on Saturday. It was competitive,… Read more »