Lost Tribe Of Shabbaz
Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008 has been seen as the pinnacle of the civil rights movement in the US. It is easy to remember of iconic figures like… Continue reading "Lost Tribe Of Shabbaz"
A Blog about Middle Eastern & North African Politics, Society and Culture
Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008 has been seen as the pinnacle of the civil rights movement in the US. It is easy to remember of iconic figures like… Continue reading "Lost Tribe Of Shabbaz"
Writing about and covering Muslim jihadi militancy for more than half a decade now, I realise that Westerners, analysts, journalists or otherwise find Arab names extremely difficult to grasp. One… Continue reading "The Problem with Abu Bakr, Osama Bin Laden and Zarqawi: An explanation of Arabic names"
I entered Najiyeh, a small town of no consequence, without their permission. The town claimed to be an ISIS principality. The claim seemed ridiculous but as we drove in to… Continue reading "Paradise Lost: The Rise and Fall of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi"
What follows is Part II of an interview about the Sharia with Al-Maqalaat by Tam Hussein @tamhussein. Part I can be found here The Dawn of Islamic Theocracy: Monumental Sacrifice… Continue reading "Fading contrasts in the future of global Jihadism: Military strength driven by perceptive tolerance"
After the death of the Prophet Muhammed the early Muslim community became acutely aware of the need to preserve their Prophet’s legacy. This idea of preserving revelation became even more… Continue reading "When Arabic and Hebrew Irregulars Worked Together"
It takes a brave person to comment on the Middle East, one never knows when a crisis will erupt that threaten to render one’s judgment obsolete. Since first reading Shadi… Continue reading "Taking Exception to Shadi Hamid’s Islamic Exceptionalism"
The nature of the Syrian conflict, now in its fifth year, has become overtly sectarian and ideological. Undoubtedly the foreign fighters who continue to trickle in are coloured by this.… Continue reading "The Virtues of Sham: The Place of Syria in Muslim Sacral Imagination"