The president announced that we were “turning the page” on Operation Freedom; but what he failed to do was close the book.

by Jeffry R. Halverson In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, Indian novelist and activist Arundhati Roy wrote an opinion piece in the British daily The Guardian, stating: [Bin Laden] has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by American foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its [...]

By Mark Woodward and Inayah Rohmaniyah* Efforts in European countries including France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands to restrict or prohibit women from wearing burkah and nikab (face veil) are well known in Indonesia. Reports about these efforts in the Indonesian media are overwhelming negative. There is no visible support for these efforts even among [...]

by Steven R. Corman For some time people who think about the problem of terrorism have faced a puzzling question: Why is it that some Muslims who hold fundamentalist or radical beliefs about Islam become violent, while others don’t? New research shows that the answer is probably not what you might think. A popular view is that [...]

by Jeffry R. Halverson The following is a summary of some arguments  from my new book, Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood, Ash’arism, and Political Sunnism, published by Palgrave Macmillan.  It offers an explanation of why fundamentalist literal interpretations of the Qu’ran have so much influence in contemporary Islamist extremism, and why [...]

by Steven R. Corman The Consortium for Strategic Communication has released a new white paper by Mark Woodward, Ali Amin, and Inayah Rohmaniyah entitled Lessons from Aceh Terrorist De-Radicalization.  The full white paper can be downloaded here. The executive summary is as follows: Although the International Crisis Group’s reports on radicalism in Indonesia are extremely [...]

by Mark Woodward, Ali Amin and  Inayah Rohmaniyah* In recent months, Indonesian security forces, including the US-trained Detachment 88, have proven to be increasingly effective in locating, capturing or killing suspected terrorists. But police power alone will never defeat a deeply entrenched extremist sub-culture.  Soft power is a crucial component as well, perhaps even more [...]

by Jeff Halverson In the war of ideas for the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world, cultural diplomacy can go a long way. The US government may not be very popular abroad, but our cultural products certainly are. Many Muslims hate our policies, but they still love our movies, listen to our pop music, [...]

by Steven R. Corman In today’s Washington Post, Bruce Hoffman published an op-ed piece entitled “Al-Qaeda has a new strategy. Obama needs one, too.” I have a lot of respect for Hoffman and whatever he says about terrorism bears consideration. But in this case I’m not too sure what he’s driving at. As evidence for [...]

by Chris Lundry In an AP wire story picked up by numerous print and online media, Russell Contreras writes about discovering the “new movement” of Muslim-Hindu punk bands (including Boston’s the Kominas). The implication is that we are witnessing a new youth music movement that might serve as a challenge to religious fundamentalism and its [...]