Hiranmay Karlekar

While a number of top leaders of the Jamaat have been executed, sentenced to death or imprisoned on charges of war crimes, the educational and financial infrastructure created by the Jamaat remains largely intact. Fundamentalist Islamist terrorism will continue to dog Bangladesh as long as they continue to flourish...

Khaled Ahmed

Just as Naik is “protected” as an Indian citizen — according to his definition he is not Indian but a “Muslim first” — Anjem Choudary and his “untaxed” welfare payments in the UK — equivalent to a £32,500 ($50,000) salary — are protected. The average annual earnings of a full-time worker in the UK was £26,936 ($41,000) in 2014. There is no doubt that there is big money trailing Naik too without being accounted for....

Stanly Johny

Salafism urges its followers to go back to the text. It has different manifestations, one of them being a puritanical form of Islam inspired by the teachings of the 18th century Arabian scholar Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab....

In a recently released IS propaganda video in May this year, Zainuri, 49, was seen to say that he and his men were part of a “righteous army,” and that the Malay archipelago would someday be swarming with an army of IS fighters who would bring the fight home, particularly to Malaysia and Indonesia...

The Gulshan tragedy no-doubt has offered the vested interests abroad   their long coveted opportunity for fishing in the troubled water and increased the danger for external intervention. So from Geo-political point of view   Bangladesh Government’s “Strategy of Denial” is quite logical and justified as an effort to avoid external intervention. ...

Wajahat Habibullah

The concept of Allah in Islam is then ultimate compassion. Although Buddhism, as explained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, believes in no God, the fountainhead of the faith is comprised in the Four Noble Truths, which begin with Dukkha or suffering, its cessation and the Ashtangika (eightfold) Marg or path to liberation, Dukkha being a concept springing from the Sanskrit concept of Karuna. ...

M.K. Narayanan

The real threat posed by the ISIS is not so much its capacity to engage in violence, but in its pervasive appeal to Muslim youth. As ‘true fighters’ committed to the ‘supremacy of the faith’, they are succeeding in their effort to penetrate the minds of Muslim youth. The ISIS is able to attract an ever-increasing number of recruits, and several come from highly educated and even elite backgrounds. Social dynamics and manipulation of social media have also brought about certain sociological consequences. This, together with online propaganda and media projection, is producing an entirely different type of radicalised youth. The Holy Grail remains the Caliphate, which has ignited the imagination of Muslim youth. Many more nuances can, however, be seen in the big picture that the IS projects today.....

Bill Roggio

The defectors, like Dost, accused the Islamic State of a rash of crimes, including: … the ambiguous blind policies of Daesh, their wanton killing, beating, persecution, looting, burning, and usurping land and property of the oppressed Afghans, their displacement, treachery with their elders, depriving them of schools, clinics, public welfare projects and development, heedless towards general Muslim interests, adoption of extremism over leniency, prohibiting vice in fashion which produces corruption, Takfiri...

Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor

However, nowadays we are all potential targets of perverted death cults - some covertly supported by states - that think nothing of bombing or mowing down children. You would be forgiven for thinking a new, vicious species has evolved, one that resembles human beings but without human emotion....

Megan Jula

Terrorists are streaming live video and pledging their allegiance to the Islamic State group as their attacks are unfolding, “a new phenomenon that we call ‘dying live,’”...

Believe me you are being led to a fool's paradise, you are being used to fulfill the objects of a bloodthirsty group drunk for usurping power. They do not care who they send on such missions of death and destruction. And who lives and who dies. Wake up; don't be trapped into throwing away your lives at the commands of these half baked so called Islamists. Go to real Ulema e Haqqani and find out the true meaning of jihad and when and where it becomes incumbent and upon whom...

Dr. Halla Diyab

Al-Qaeda was personified by its late leader Osama bin Laden, the mysterious villain who we feared but did not expect to be our neighbour. However, ISIS jihadists are independent and visible individuals who orchestrate their own acts of terror and come up with unconventional methods, such as Bouhlel’s use of a truck. ISIS has invaded every aspect of our lives...

Abdulrahman al-Rashed

Islam preaches good ethics, such as showing compassion toward the weak, being kind to people, helping the needy, and forbidding injustice and treachery. However, amid the rise of extremist religious ideology over the past 30 years, preachers of religious parties are promoting clashing with non-Muslims and accusing moderate Muslims of infidelity.

Zeenat Shaukat Ali

Nor have they attempted to illuminate Muslims and non-Muslims on Islam’s vision on the crucial subjects of democracy, (Q 3:159), secularism (Misaq-e-Madina – the Covenant or the Constitution of Medina), religious freedom (Q 2:256), gender equality both in the material and spiritual world (Q 33:35), human rights – dignity and equality irrespective of religion, ethnicity, race, colour or gender (Q 17:70), peace, reconciliation and non-violence (Q5:30-34)....

Dear Uncle, this is to inform you of a very important matter. Me, Ashfaq, Shehaz and Hijaz have moved from Darul-Kufr to Darul-Islam. Our families are also here. We are safe here with ISIS. ...

His brand of Quranic literalism, anti-pluralism, and puristic Wahhabism has made him one of the most notorious radical preachers today. He refused to condemn Osama bin Laden because he 'never met him', but he calls the Islamic scholars opposed to Wahhabism terrorists although he lacks personal knowledge of them....

Abdullah Hamidaddin

Muslims condemning the attack have reiterated the need for a unanimous fatwa (religious edict) excommunicating terrorists. Such calls have been frequently made, and are being considered as an important prerequisite to ending terror in the name of Islam. Such calls assume that Muslim clerics have influence on would-be terrorists, and that a threat of excommunication would be a deterrent. There are also stronger calls to punish clerics who issue Fatwas encouraging terrorism....

John R. Bradley

At this stage, the only thing that seems certain is that ISIS has a clear plan to instigate an Islamic insurgency in the heart of Europe, and the steely determination to bring it to fruition. Their hope must be to sow intense discord between the Muslim and Christian populations until we move towards a kind of civil war that would sweep up ever-more people into its deadly embrace....

Arun Janardhanan

The commune is home to 16 Muslim families, all of the Salafi faith, who say they are attempting to recreate the life the Prophet led about 1,400 years ago. While there’s no goat farm yet and there are a few concessions to modernity — a car parked in a shed, televisions in some homes — commune members, who live in two-storey homes typical of any middle-class locality, talk of a life “going back to the book of the Prophet”....

Aasha Mehreen Amin

It has rudely awakened people from the slumber of complacency. Thirty-two eminent personalities including professors, economists, artists and writers have called upon society to stand against militancy. They represent the voices of sanity and peace. The government has also announced various anti-militancy initiatives, including urging Imams to preach against terrorism and emphasizing its contradiction to the principles of Islam.....

Praveen Swami

For a full understanding of the battle, though, one has to go back to the battles inaugurated by the Turkish state’s birth in 1923. No Muslim-majority society, arguably, has experienced reforms as radical: madrasas were banned, along with religious orders; the Persian script replaced by the Latin alphabet; the display of religious symbols in public spaces prohibited; Western-style dress promoted by law; Islamic law replaced by European civil codes; women granted suffrage....

Sheikh Aadel_Al_Kalbani

He stated that the call to blindly re-enact the path of the Prophet Muhammad and of the forefathers of Islam stems from a faulty grasp of the essence of this path, and that Muhammad himself had rejected blind adoption of the perceptions of the past and blind following of the path of his predecessors, choosing instead a rationalistic approach appropriate for a changing reality. Al-Kalbani stated that clerics must take their heads out of the sand and move with the spirit of the times instead of rejecting and condemning any new idea....

Maidul Islam

Though we do not have firm evidence of the hand of Islamists in the July 14 attack in Nice in France, Islam might still be blamed for the carnage. There is an increasing trend to blame Islam for producing “Jihadi” terrorists. However, the Muslim Ulema’s critique of terrorism as antithetical to Islam is rarely highlighted by the media. Is this a new trend of Islamophobia in the media?...

Zigzagging so as to hit as many people as possible as the vehicle careered down the Promenade des Anglais, alongside the Mediterranean, Mr. Bouhlel transformed the celebrated French Riviera boulevard, crammed with people who had just watched a fireworks show celebrating Bastille Day, into a vast tableau of carnage and panic....

Max Fisher

Such attacks predate the Islamic State, though the group emphasizes them, disseminating propaganda that provides tactical guidance and ideological justification available to anyone with an internet connection....