Syeda Hameed

Next time people tell me I am brave to go to Lahore, I will feel sorry for their timid banality. My session on elegy poetry became, for me, a metaphor for the times we live in. But what has continued to stay with me is the short poem by Zehra Apa, Suna Hai Jungalon Ka Bhi Koi Dastoor Hota Hai, about the law of the jungle where small and big animals co-exist and get together to defend her if the earth is at risk. It ends with invoking Allah to give humans Jungalon Ka Dastoor....

Thomas Joscelyn

The jihadists have long sought to inspire individuals or small groups of people to commit acts of terrorism for their cause. Individual terrorists are often described as “lone wolves,” but that term is misleading. If a person is acting in the name of a global, ideological cause, then he or she cannot be considered a “lone wolf,” even if the individual in question has zero contact with others. In fact, single attackers often express their support for the jihadists’ cause in ways that shows the clear influence of propaganda....

Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi, New Age Islam

Indeed, India’s people expected that demonetization would be a strong move to crash down the funding sources of terror emanating from the global fountainheads of Wahhabism into various parts of this country. Most notably, the global Wahhabi networks, in name of largesse, immensely funded petrodollars to the religious, educational and other charitable institutions in India. In the year 2016, NDTV, an Indian TV channel ran a two-part show on “Saudi Islam in India and Money Trail”. The channel scrutinised the records of funds pouring in to promote Saudi-style Salafist Islam in India and particularly its influence in Kashmir...

Praveen Swami

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the head of the Lashkar and its parent political arm, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, was placed under house arrest last month, though no criminal charges have been brought against him. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s offices in several areas now bear new billboards proclaiming them to belong to an organisation called the Tehreek-e-Azaadi-e-Kashmir....

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Jamie McGoldrick said last month that the civilian death toll in the nearly two-year conflict has reached 10,000, with 40,000 others wounded. This announcement marks the first time a U.N. official has confirmed such a high death toll in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation. Earlier, the U.N. reported 4,200 civilians were killed in the war. In addition, many more are indirect victims of the conflict, including those who suffer from chronic diseases, including high blood pressure and diabetes, and are unable to get treatment.....

Murat Yetkin

Generally speaking, the adjective “Islamic” is used to define a faith, culture and a way of life, whereas “Islamist” is used to define a political line with the ultimate target of the domination of Islamic Sharia law as a political system. Erdogan, like many other Muslims, has been opposing to the use of the term because of his concern that ordinary men would not care too much about the linguistic difference and develop Islamophobic feelings....

Shankar Roychowdhury

So even as the Islamic Military Alliance seeks to coordinate action against terrorism within Islamic countries, it must also ensure that Islamic countries like Pakistan which export and propagate terrorism against secular neighbouring countries like India are brought under control. The two countries with the largest Muslim populations in the world are not part of the Islamic Schindler’s List drawn up by Saudi Arabia....

Dan Bilefsky

In Israel, a promoter for gay events that organizes parties around Tel Aviv drew criticism after publicizing a party using pictures of handsome young men in poses inspired by ISIS beheading videos. But others praised the ads for turning the group’s violent homophobia on its head....

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Arabs and Muslims around the world are as distressed and saddened by these senseless killings and attacks targeting innocent bystanders. Indeed, their pain is even more acute considering these cowardly acts are ostensibly carried out in their name and in the name of their faith....

Dr Ramzy Baroud

Without reserve, I always find comparing massacres – to find out which is worse – tasteless, if not inhumane. What is the point in this, aside from mitigating the effect of a terrible tragedy, by comparing it to a hypothetically much greater tragedy? Or, as the French have done, perhaps exaggerating the human toll to create the type of fear that often leads to reckless political and military action?...

Moreover, as Bangladesh depends on migration of its workforce abroad for remittances, it has also received Wahhabi and Salafi ideology along with these remittances. The Gulf countries have also fuelled extremism through charities and donations for mosques and Qaumi madrasas....

“Jewish extremism has eroded the moral core of Judaism, Islamic extremism has led to deep suspicion of Islam by others and Christians have abandoned the teaching of Jesus to support persecution of others and the use of violence,”...

Alex Thurston

There is no question that Saudi Arabia had significant influence over the development of Salafism in northern Nigeria. One of the key movers in early, proto-Salafist activism in northern Nigeria was Abubakar Gumi, a senior judge and skilled preacher who supervised the creation of the mass-based, Salafist-leaning Izala movement in 1978. ...

Mohammad Taqi

The Uri attack came in the ninth year of uninterrupted democracy in Pakistan and yet the thrice-elected prime minister was not able to utter a word about the shenanigans of his generals. This begs the question of whether the world has a credible civilian partner in Pakistan? Modi and Ghani seem to have concluded that the answer is no....

Praveen Swami

Faced with the fall of the so-called caliphate in ongoing offensives targeting its twin bases in Raqqa and Mosul, intelligence officials say, the Islamic State has been telling Indian volunteers keen for military training to make their way to Afghanistan instead. It has also been pushing them to stage attacks at home, providing detailed do-it-yourself instructions on manufacturing explosive devices....

Yogita Limaye

India is governed by a right wing party with Hindu nationalist associations. In the past two years, fringe elements have been drumming up religious tensions, although there has not been a major incident of communal violence. It is a situation however, that could lead to insecurity among Muslims who feel victimised or marginalised. Islamic State does seem to be aiming at them. In May it released a rare video promising to avenge Indian Muslims who were killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots and in Kashmir...

Once they are used for extreme extremist views, these symbols are effectively ‘ruined’. The popular negative associations become powerful through media and all rational efforts to explain these are unfortunately, often destined to fail, intensifying the rifts and tensions....

Frederic Lemieux

The religious wave, from 1980 to the present, emerged from the Iranian Revolution and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and grew as a movement of resistance against Western influences. This modern wave of terrorism is not limited to jihadists. It also includes violence perpetrated by Christian extremists like the Lord’s Resistance Army....

Ajmal Shams

When Pakistan talks about its fight against the Taliban, it fails to clarify which category of the Taliban it is referring to; ‘the good’ ones or ‘the bad’ ones.  It is no longer a hidden truth that Pakistan does fight the insurgents that targets it, which it terms as the ‘bad Taliban’. On the other hand, it provides sanctuaries to those conducting militant operations in Afghanistan calling them as the ‘good Taliban’....

Wided Bouchamaoui

Muslims who practice their faith calmly and respectfully are “victims of a semantic problem” when “terrorists” are described as “Islamic terrorists.” “I think we should call a spade a spade,” Bouchamaoui told the UN General Assembly’s high-level forum on The Culture of Peace. “A terrorist is a killer, a murderer, a criminal and I would even say an imposter who is manipulating Islam.”...

Praveen Swami

It matters little, thus, whether the Jama’at-ul-Ahrar flies the flag of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State or indeed, what its own name might be: the problem lies not in a few men of evil, but a polity fragmented by a century of war, and a failed project of statehood...

Diana Moukalled

Accuracy and attention when broadcasting sensitive news does not mean the media should present the audience with what it wants to hear - by doing so; we would end up with an incomplete, inaccurate and misleading story.....

Rukmini Callimachi

Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German friend that they no longer wanted Europeans to come to Syria. Where they were really needed was back home, to help carry out the group’s plan of waging terrorism across the globe....

Afghans to exercise political rights; many now shun older politicians, whom they associate with tanks and guns. And for all its violence Afghanistan has managed to avoid the kind of sectarian bloodletting that afflicts neighbours such as Iraq. Afghans of all ethnicities are loudly decrying the attacks. That is some small solace, at least...

Nawar Fakhry Ezzi

Perceiving Heaven the way God truly described it can only bring to our hearts peace and love and cannot possibly motivate terrorists to kill others assuming that they will go there when all that they have done was to instil fear in the hearts of people and bring grievance into this world....