For 100 years, Buddhists and Muslims lived side by side in southern Thailand. In 2004, a small fraction of the Muslims started killing the Buddhists indiscriminately. This conflict is now the most violent in Asia, with murders of Thai civilians, including children, monks, and Muslims who refuse to cooperate, occurring on a daily basis. [more inside]
posted by shii on Jul 27, 2011 - 54 comments

Foucault in Iran: Revolution, Entropy and Equality By way of introduction to the Wu Ming Foundation's (previously) re-vamped blog, one of their more substantive essays re-assessing Foucault's notorious enthusiasm for the Iranian revolution.
posted by Abiezer on Nov 30, 2010 - 11 comments

Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again — A generation of British Islamists have been trained in Afghanistan to fight a global jihad. But now some of those would-be extremists have had a change of heart. Johann Hari finds out what made them give up the fight.
posted by netbros on Nov 16, 2009 - 16 comments

The International Crisis Group is a private agency which attempts to improve the response to international disasters by working out a strategy and providing detailed recommendations to policymakers. Their website is full of reports on crises around the world; here's what they have to say about Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Islamism. For the rationale behind the ICG, see William Shawcross's tribute to humanitarian aid worker Fred Cuny, who disappeared in Chechnya.
posted by russilwvong on Mar 24, 2006 - 3 comments

"I don't feel your pain." Mohammed Bouyeri, the man who confessed to killing Dutch filmmaker and writer Theo van Gogh, surprised judges and television viewers alike yesterday by breaking his silence for only the second time since the start of his trial. On monday, when asked about his hate for the same Western society that gave his parents work and asylum, he gave only this short answer in Arabic: "I pray that God protect me that I should ever think differently than I do now." (WaPo link, reg. req'd) [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jul 13, 2005 - 65 comments

The "merger" of the Egyptian Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad and the Saudi Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda in 2001, based on the foundation of Qutb's book "Milestones", provide outlet for those who have no other way of expressing their objections to the authoritarian regimes of the countries they live in, and the reach of American power in the Middle East.
posted by semmi on Sep 17, 2002 - 19 comments