This is the aim of Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia
Donald Trump sets off on Friday to create the fantasy of an Arab Nato. There will be dictators aplenty to greet him in Riyadh, corrupt autocrats and thugs and torturers and head choppers. There will be at least one zombie president – the comatose, undead Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria who neither speaks nor, apparently, hears any more – and, of course, one totally insane president, Donald Trump.
Sectarian Materialities
Research Seminar organised by the research group SWAR (Sectarianism in the Wake of the Arab Revolts)
The Shi’a Revival
Four years after Lebanon’s Hezbollah first appeared in Syria, and following the military victory in Aleppo last December, there is great change in Syria’s Shi’a Twelver community. The community makes up no more than 1-2 percent of the total Syrian population, a few hundred thousand people at most, but has been largely militarized since 2012.
Explosion hits Syrian evacuation convoy in Aleppo
An explosion near a bus convoy waiting to enter the Syrian city of Aleppo killed or wounded several people on Saturday, pro-government media outlets, pro-opposition activists and a monitor reported. A military media unit run by Damascus ally Hezbollah said a suicide attacker had detonated a car bomb near the convoy.
See also BBC News
ISIS Threatens Iran in New Video | The Iran Primer
On March 27, the Islamic State group released a rare Farsi-language video threatening Iran. The nearly 40-minute clip, issued on social media by the group’s Diyala Province in neighboring Iraq, is titled “The Farsi Land: From Yesterday ’till Today.”
The Legacy of Muhammad Sorour, Key Figure in Rise of Sunni Extremism – Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
See his website.
His wikipedia entry is here.
Who Is a Sunni?: Chechnya Islamic Conference Opens Window on Intra-Faith Rivalry – Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
See also James Dorsey’s Fighting for the Soul of Islam:A Battle of the Paymasters
See also Robert Fisk’s ‘For the first time, Saudi Arabia is being attacked by both Sunni and Shia leaders’
and Brian Whitaker’s ‘Robert Fisk and the Russian war on salafism’