In The News

Tears and Destruction Amid Turkey PKK Crackdown

Mark Lowen January 27, 2016
Parts of Turkey’s southeast region, near the country’s border with Syria and Iraq, has transformed into a war zone. For Turkey, the fight is internal, not against Islamic State extremists, but a Kurdish minority group. “The heart of the battle is Diyarbakir, where the Sur neighbourhood has been under curfew for weeks, as Turkish police and military flush out rebel fighters from the PKK – the...

Charsadda Attack: It Is Time to Ask Pakistan Army Some Hard Questions

Umer Ali January 20, 2016
Militants stormed Bacha Khan University in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 20 and injuring 60. A Pakistan Taliban official quickly claimed and then withdrew responsibility. The attack comes just after a year after 134 were killed at a school in nearby Peshawar. Pakistan endures repeated attacks on schools as symbols of progress and idea centers. Pakistan must confront the extremism in its...

Al-Shabab Seizes African Union Base in Somalia

January 15, 2016
Al-Shabab is reported to have attacked an African Union military Base in a small town west of the capital of Mogadishu: “Kenya contributes more than 4,000 troops to the 22,000-strong AU force that is in Somalia helping the UN-backed government battle al-Shabab, which is part of al-Qaeda,” reports BBC News. The African Union is a continent-wide force supported by 54 nations. Al-Shabab may be...

Filipino Catholic Church Continues to Fight Family Planning

Marilen J. Danguilan January 13, 2016
In 2012, the Philippines enacted the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act, providing for family planning. But implementing the law has not been easy with opposition from the Catholic Church. “The law polarized the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, with a growing 100 million population,” writes Marilen J. Danguilan for Asia Sentinel. Opponents have removed funding for...

Iranian-Saudi Tensions Have Little to Do With Religion

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam January 8, 2016
Saudi Arabia miscalculated on how global observers might react to its execution of Shia cleric Sheikh al-Nimr. Reflecting poor judgment and insecurity, the execution “demonstrates that the kingdom has lost its cool,” writes Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a philosophy professor at the University of London. He suggests the notion that the Sunni-Shia divide in Islam spurs conflict is “analytically flawed.”...

The Spread of Wahhabism and the West’s Responsibility to the World

Karen Armstrong December 28, 2015
Colonial arrangements, business deals and support of authoritarian leaders have contributed to the instability of the Middle East, argues author Karen Armstrong for the NewStatesman. She is among the many analysts who key in on Saudi Arabia, using oil wealth to proselytize a fundamentalist form of Islam around the globe: “Wahhabism originated in the Arabian peninsula during the 18th century as an...

Call for US Ban on Muslims and Business Deals: IBT

Sarah Berger and David Sirota December 9, 2015
Bans of any sort are not good for business, perhaps especially so when a leading Republican presidential candidate calls for a blanket travel ban for Muslims seeking to enter the United States. One out of seven people in the world are Muslim, and simply uttering the broad and unworkable proposal could disrupt investment plans for Donald Trump’s business. “His company's on-the-ground dealings...