Islamist

In nearly all the Arab revolutions in North Africa and the jihadist offensives that followed them, incursions against Sufi shrines have preceded the onset of wide-scale radical aggression. As they initiate their invasive strategies, terrorists linked to al Qaeda and inspired by Saudi-financed Wahhabism (alias “Salafism”) start by targeting the spiritual Sufis and their ancient tombs and monuments for murder and destruction. This devastation has several motives.

Determined not to lose Mali to Islamist forces, France’s president Francois Hollande ordered a rapid deployment of air and ground forces in Mali to block well-armed and motivated fighters of the Ansar Dine movement led by the veteran Tuareg leader Iyad Ag Ghali from crossing the Niger river and marching on Bamako.

President Barack Obama spoke on the phone with the Islamist leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, about the Israel's retaliatory strikes on the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, according to the White House.

The two leaders, according to a White House read-out of the call, seemed to agree on much. "Today, the President called Prime Minister Erdogan to discuss the escalating violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip," the White House read-out of the call states.

With Barack Obama’s reelection, withdrawal of U.S. and other NATO combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014—except for trainers of an Afghan national army—remains high on his agenda. The leading rival Islamic powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are meanwhile competing for future influence over the mountainous Central Asian country.

In Nigeria, thousands of people have been killed in recent months, and tens of thousands in the last decade. It is a fissiparous country whose conflicts have been exacerbated by the increased influence of radical Islam​—​beginning with attempts to apply Islamic law, then the growth of militias, and now the depredations of the vicious al Qaeda-linked Boko Haram movement.

Now that runoff results are in from the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, it’s clear that the Islamists are running the board.

Earlier in the week Israel Hayom reported that the new Tunisian constitution may include “a section condemning Zionism and ruling out any friendly ties with Israel.” Yesterday Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of al-Nahda (Revival), the main Islamist party that won more than 40 percent of the seats in Tunisia’s parliamentary elections two weeks ago, disputed the report. “I don’t think this clause will be included in the constitution,” said Ghannouchi.

The soft-Islamist Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development party (known by its Turkish initials as the AKP) has expansive foreign-policy ambitions.

Arid Uka, 21, a German-Albanian Muslim who killed two U.S. servicemen and wounded two more at Frankfurt Airport on March 2 of this year, will go on trial in a German court beginning August 31, on two counts of murder and three of attempted murder.

In Egypt, it’s “Friday in Defense of Identity and Popular Will,” which has brought hundreds of thousands Islamist supporters to the streets, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Alexandria.

Berlin—On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York brought charges against Arid Uka, a radical Islamist who killed two U.S. servicemen and wounded two more in Germany’s Frankfurt International Airport in March.

Earlier this week, Nigeria witnessed its first suicide bombing. Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group based in northern Nigeria, claimed responsibility for the attack.