Incidents of Anti-Shiism in August, 2016 – Shia Rights Watch

Breaking news from Afghanistan, Taliban Attacks Sangcharak – Shia Rights Watch

Saudis and Extremism: ‘Both the Arsonists and the Firefighters’

Shia Rights Watch Updates

See SRW updates to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor International Religious Freedom 2015 Report, which the Bureau released on 10.8.16

Hazara Reflect on Deadly Kabul Attack, Weekend – BBC World Service

Available for 24 more days only (first 7 minutes of programme).
See also al-Jazeera’s ‘Who are the Hazaras?’

Creating Frankenstein: The Impact of Islamic Ultra-Conservatism in South Asia by James M. Dorsey :: SSRN

من ميونخ إلى كابل المذبحة الأخرى!

‘Why did those who filled social media with talk about Munich abstain from mentioning Kabul?’
See translation

Casualties feared after Kabul blast – BBC News

See also al Jazeera
See also New York Times, Washington Post

Protecting the World’s Shia: Where’s the International Community?

‘Sunni-Shi’i Rapprochement:
Internal Contradictions’

Hamid Mavani

Abstract
Ecumenical initiatives to promote Sunni-Shi’i reconciliation and
mutual respect have failed to take root because they do not tackle
the incendiary issues that prompt each branch to view the other with
disdain, if not as outright apostates or unbelievers. I argue that this
will not change until the main fault lines in their worldviews, communal
self-understanding, sacred narratives, history, theology, and
philosophy are confronted head-on.

If this cannot be done, then all proclamations of Muslim unity and
brotherhood/sisterhood under one ummah will remain hollow and
lack substance, because each side’s internal discourse would remain
unchanged. Any type of mutual tolerance and coexistence prompted
by expediency and power dynamics cannot be expected to be deeprooted
and long-lasting. The United States, along with such other
local and foreign players as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, and
Syria, have instrumentalized Sunni-Shi’i sectarianism to promote
their own myopic vested interests. The result is clear for all to see:
an exponential increase in Sunni-Shi’i antagonism.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 (2016), 133-47