Islam
Turkic Chinese soup: A barometer of anti-Chinese sentiment
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr. A heavy soup made of pulled noodles, meat, and vegetables symbolizes Central Asia’s close cultural and/or ethnic ties with China’s repressed Turkic and Hui Muslims. It also explains growing Central Asian unease with…
Indian Muslims: A rich hunting ground for Middle Eastern rivals
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently declared that Turkey was “the only country that can lead the Muslim world,” he probably wasn’t only thinking of Middle Eastern and other Islamic states such as…
Saudi Arabia and the West’s right wing: A dubious alliance
By James M. Dorsey A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr. Traditionally focussed on ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim Islam, Saudi funding in the era of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has been streamlined and finetuned to ensure that it serves his geopolitical ambitions, primarily stymying the expansion of Iranian…
The Khashoggi crisis: Putting Humpty Dumpty back together
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr. The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and potential Western sanctions against Saudi Arabia has sparked renewed debate about the value of the longstanding alliance between the United States and the kingdom. The debate is…
Playing politics with religion: Imran Khan puts himself between a rock and a hard place
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. Less than a week in office, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has made blasphemy one of his first issues, empowering militants and initiating international moves, long heralded by Saudi Arabia, that would restrict press freedom by pushing for a global ban. Mr. Khan, in his first address as…
Crunch time in Pakistan
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. It’s crunch time in Pakistan. Resolving Pakistan’s financial crisis is likely to require newly appointed prime minister Imran Khan to not only accept an International Monetary Fund (IMF) straightjacket but tackle his and Pakistan’s convoluted relationship to militancy. With the breeding ground for militancy built into the country’s…
Russian Hackers: The shadowy world of US and Gulf hacks just got murkier
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. The covert Qatar-United Arab Emirates cyberwar that helped spark the 13-month-old Gulf crisis that pits a Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led alliance against Qatar may have just gotten murkier with the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mr. Mueller’s indictment provided detail on website…
Xinjiang: Pan-Turkism fuels China’s hearts-and-minds campaign
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. Chinese efforts to woo Saudi Arabia’s ethnic Chinese community highlight the People’s Republic’s effort to avert criticism from the Muslim world of its crackdown in the north-western province of Xinjiang and strengthen relations with the kingdom and Middle Eastern nations. The efforts to woo a community, a significant…
Whither Wahhabism?
By James M. Dorsey / Mid-East Soccer. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Salman could well dash expectations that he is gunning for a break with Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism rather than a shaving off of the rough edges of Wahhabi ideology that has been woven into the kingdom’s fabric since its founding more than eighty years ago.…
Saudi religious diplomacy targets Jerusalem
By James M. Dorsey A United Arab Emirates-backed Saudi effort to wrest control from Jordan of Islam’s holy places in Jerusalem signals a sharper, more overt edge to Saudi religious diplomacy and the kingdom’s quest for regional hegemony that risks deepening divides in the Muslim world. The effort also serves to…