Iraq
Syria: Nusra Front merge with Iraq Qaeda wing
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “emir” of al-Qaeda in Iraq, announced a merger with Syria’s Nusra Front to form a new organization, the “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.”
Tag: struggle within Islam
North Africa
Whither the ‘Topless Jihad’?
Rival online campaigns are waged by the "Topless Jihad" and Muslim Women Against Femen. Is the Topless Jihad a defense of women's freedom, or imperialist propaganda?
Greater Middle East
Syria: Alawite dissidents break with regime
Opposition activists from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect publicly broke ranks with the regime at a meeting in Cairo, and urged their fellow Alawites in the army to rebel.
Afghanistan
Terror strikes Pakistan refugee camp
A car bomb exploded at the Jalozai displaced persons camp outside Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 15 and leaving some 50 injured.
UAE begins trial of 94 charged in coup plot
The United Arab Emirates began the trial of 94 charged with plotting to overthrow the government. The defendants are members of al-Islah, a nonviolent political association.
South Asia
Bangladesh sentences Islamist leader to death
Violent street protests broke out after the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh sentenced to death Jamaat-e-Islami party leader Delwar Hossain Sayeedee.
Africa
Puntland sentences Shabab militants to death
Twelve Shabab militants charged with the murder of a prominent Islamic scholar were sentenced to death by a court in Somalia’s autonomous enclave of Puntland.
Greater Middle East
Islamists, labor protest in Jordan
Hundreds of Islamists demonstrated in Jordan to demand faster political reform after an election weeks earlier that produced a mostly pro-government parliament.
North Africa
Al-Qaeda ‘moderates’ seek breakaway state in Mali
A supposed AQIM document found in Timbuktu criticizes jihadists for destroying Sufi shrines and alienating the local populace, calling for a more pragmatic Islamist state.
North Africa
Tunisia: new protest amid political crisis
More than 3,000 Tunisians, led by the father of assassinated opposition figure Chokri Belaid, marched through the capital in a protest against the government’s “slow” investigation.
North Africa
General strike rocks Tunisia
Thousands massed in Tunis for the funeral of slain opposition leader Chokri Belaid, with the city shut down in a general strike called by the main union federation, the UGTT.
North Africa
Tunisians protest Islamist counter-revolution
Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali announced that he will dissolve the Islamist-led administration and form a new “technocrat government” as protests rock the country.