There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims on Earth. That is approximately 24% of the world population. They live in regions spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and reaching as far as Southeast Asia. There are Muslim communities in virtually every nation – and in many – they have played a pivotal, constructive, and…
Muqtada al-Sadr is up to something. In 2004 occupied Iraq, the nationalist leader who later engineered the Sadrist movement was even demonized as America’s number one enemy – briefly dethroning Osama bin Laden. Now, he’s being painted – by the usual Wahhabi-coddling suspects – as some sort of Reconciliator. Last month, al-Sadr flew to Jeddah…
US President Donald Trump could not possibly have predicted the game-changing after-effects of his triumphal sword dance in Riyadh. Or could he? The fact is the House of Saud went amok, in a flash, going after Qatar and bombing from the inside that glorious Arab NATO project – call it NATOGCC — sworn with pomp over a glowing orb. An excited Trump tweeted…
Mayhem broke out across the southern Philippine city of Marawi where militants besieged it and hoisted flags of the so-called “Islamic State.” Located on the southern island of Mindanao, the city is only slightly removed from Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayaff’s primary area of operation on nearby Jolo and Basilan islands. The UK Independent in…
With the upcoming French Presidential election in France the topic of Islam in Europe has again become central to the political discourse. This is nothing new: we also saw that in the UK, in Holland, in Austria and even in Switzerland, where the Muslim communities were banned – by popular referendum – from building minarets…
Although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century. As the so-called Islamic State demolishes nation states set up by the Europeans almost a century ago,…
