Security and Counterterrorism
Artists withdraw from Bradford Literature Festival after Counter Extremism funding revealed
Six writers and activists pulled out of the Bradford literature festival[BLF], which took place 28th June – 7th July 2019, after it was revealed that it was funded in part by the UK Home Office Programme, “Building a Stronger Britain Together [BSBT]”, part of the 2015 counter-extremism strategy that funds and supports groups “involved in…
German intelligence agency publishes new report on ‘Islamist anti-Semitism’
The German domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz – which roughly translates as Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – has published a new report titled “Anti-Semitism in Islamism”. In it, the Office professes to shed light on Muslim and Islamist anti-Semitism – a phenomenon it deems to “gain in importance particularly…
German-Saudi relations on the rocks over weapons sales, missionary activities
Germany has prolonged a temporary ban on weapons exports to Saudi Arabia until the end of March. While the question of whether to sell arms to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East has sprung up repeatedly in German public debates over the years, the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has put it back in the…
Christchurch mosque shootings designed to stoke political tensions; reveal extreme ideological fault line
Last Friday much of the world woke to the news of two shootings at two separate mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. Those shootings left 50 worshippers dead and 40 injured. Of the three men and woman arrested in relation to the shootings, 28 year old Australian man, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, has been…
The refusal to allow return of Islamic State runaways Shamima Begum and Hoda Muthana enters into contrasting legal debates in the U.S. and the UK.
Comparisons are inevitably being made between Shamima Begum, the British 19 year old who fled Britain when she was 15 to join the Islamic State (IS), and Hoda Muthana, a 24-year-old who travelled to IS three months before Begum, from her home in Alabama, United States. Like Begum, Muthana is also requesting to return to…