The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock – among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to jttmsubs@memri.org with "Membership" in the subject line.) Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an ...
On the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, two prominent Arab journalists published articles lambasting the U.S. and the West over the invasion, calling the move part of a large-scale conspiracy against the Arab world. Jihad Al-Khazen, columnist for the London daily Al-Hayat , wrote in his March 19, 2013 column that U.S. officials – including former U.S. President George W. Bush, his vice president Dick Cheney, and others – should be prosecuted and executed for fabricating evidence ...
As part of their policy to present the Jews and Zionists as aspiring to take over the world, Iranian officials consistently claim that they are involved, overtly or covertly, in every international event and crisis. For example, Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said in June 2012 that the Zionists were to blame for the Bolshevik revolution and for spreading drugs in the world, and added: "Every war and conflict worldwide necessarily have Zionist roots." 1 In August 2012, Iranian ...
Introduction Over the past few months, online jihadis have been posting daily on Twitter pictures of "martyrs" killed on jihadi fronts in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. These "martyrs" include prominent sheikhs, well-known writers on online jihadi forums, and ordinary fighters, from many different terrorist/jihadi organizations; they came from Middle East countries as well as from other countries, including some in the West. These martyrdom tweets serve multiple purposes: ...
Introduction The decline in Hizbullah's public and political status in Lebanon has recently become apparent among the country's Shi'ite population as well. Since the confirmation of reports that Hizbullah is involved in fighting alongside Assad's regime in Syria, 1 more and more independent Shi'ites in Lebanon – including clerics, politicians, journalists, and civil and social activists – are speaking out against this policy, which they claim contravenes the values of the resistance and harms ...
Introduction On February 18, 2013, the Iraqi media reported that the liberal Iraqi Shi'ite scholar Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji had been arrested the previous day in Qom, 1 Iran, while visiting family. 2 Sayyed Al-Qabbanji's revolutionary ideas, especially his focus in the last few years on the need to rationalize Islamic religious discourse and jurisprudence, have made him the bane of the powerful Shi'ite clergy in Iraq, and have sparked accusations of heresy against him there – particularly in ...
Introduction This paper, the first in a series on the image of the Jew in the eyes of the Islamic regime in Iran, will focus on the reinterpretation by spokesmen for Iran's Islamic regime of Koranic verses and traditions (Hadith) regarding encounters between the Jews of the Arabian Peninsula and the Prophet Muhammad, and how this reinterpretation lays the theological and psychological groundwork for the regime in condemning the Jews and Judaism. Officially, the Iranian regime distinguishes ...
Introduction Less than two years after the ouster of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, calls of "the people want to topple the regime" are again heard in Cairo's Tahrir Square. This time around, tens of thousands of protestors are demanding the removal of the regime of President Muhammad Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) figure who took power only five months ago. Criticism of Mursi in Egyptian society, which has been evident for months, focuses on the claim that he has not kept his promises ...
