Iran is the only country to have Twelver Shiism as its official religion. In this tradition, religious leaders known as the maraji' al-taqlid ' the highest-ranking cleric within Twelver Shiism ' and other high-ranking clerics, including ayatollahs, are regarded as moral and spiritual authorities whose guidance extends to both religious and political matters. The second-largest population of Twelvers after Iran is in Iraq. Other major communities live in Pakistan, India, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and other countries of the Persian Gulf, such as Bahrain and Kuwait. There are also Twelver communities in some Western countries. I am a practicing Twelver and have worked for an anthropological research project that highlights the rich cultural traditions of ethnic groups across Iran, based on written historical documents that cover various topics. This experience deepened my appreciation for Iran's diversity, including the many ways in which Twelver Shiism is practiced and understood. Twelver Shiism is deeply rooted in a spiritual, theological and ethical tradition with over a millennium of history....
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a constant source of anguish for its own people, its neighbors, and the broader world. The government likely executes more people than any state except China. It imposes bizarre restrictions on its citizens, especially women (who are barred from singing solo, cycling, or smoking hookah in public). Its transnational revolutionary Islamist identity is extremely rare for a modern state. Similarly ideological states of the communist variation were mostly either abolished long ago or preserved only in name. Yet the Tehran regime is still here. How was it that, of all countries, Iran became this Islamic Republic' It boggles the mind, especially if you get to hang out with Iranians. On average, we are less religious than many peoples of the Muslim world, and patriotic to the point of narcissism. How did we become the building block of globally messianic Islamism' In other words, how did the Islamic Revolution of 1979 come to be, and why did its leaders endure' The revolution was preceded by years of organized opposition to the shah, waged not just by Islamists but by Marxists, nationalists, and liberals. Each group had entered the movement with its own aspirations. Very few advocated for the kind of theocracy that eventually emerged and went on to repress all non-Islamists. The losers of the revolution have spent the years since trying to figure out what went wrong....
Coming up with nondefamatory ways to attack Zohran Mamdani is not exactly an insurmountable task. The 33-year-old Democratic nominee for New York City mayor is an avowed socialist from a privileged background, has defended inflammatory rhetoric such as 'Globalize the intifada,' and has a back catalog of hyper-woke social-media posts that would be electoral poison in any remotely competitive district. After Mamdani's victory over Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary earlier this week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene shared an image on X of a burka-clad Statue of Liberty. Influential activists including Charlie Kirk and Laura Loomer invoked 9/11, unsubtly implying that all Muslims, even secular ones like Mamdani, are jihadists. The New York Young Republican Club urged the Trump administration to deport him'Mamdani, who was born in Uganda, is a U.S. citizen'as did Representative Andy Ogles, who called Mamdani 'little muhammad.' None of this comes as a shock when the party is led by a president who has, among many other offenses, called immigrants 'animals,' claimed that 'they're poisoning the blood of our country,' and told a radio host that they commit murder because 'it's in their genes.' In one sense, the outburst of nakedly xenophobic and anti-Muslim rhetoric from today's Republican Party is simply a dog-bites-man story (or maybe, in Donald Trump's case, a man-claims-people-eat-dogs story)....
On Feb. 24, 2025, members of the Puntland Defense Forces posed next to a sign in Arabic that proclaimed the mountain town of Sheebaab as a 'province' of the Islamic State group. The town, located in Somalia's autonomous northeastern region of Puntland, was one of numerous areas that soldiers from the regional government have taken back during Operation Hilaac, an ongoing campaign against fighters from the Islamic State in Somalia ' the local branch of the terrorist network ' which began in late November 2024. Puntland's success in combating a growing Islamic State group presence in the northeastern region is particularly notable given the relative lack of success of the central Somali government's confrontation with the al-Qaida-affiliated group Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahidin ' more commonly known as al-Shabab ' which for about two decades has waged war against federal forces. Islamic State in Somalia emerged in 2015 when a small group of al-Shabab members led by Abdulqadir Mumin ' an extremist Somali preacher who previously lived in Sweden and the United Kingdom, where he acquired citizenship ' pledged allegiance to then-Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Having formed as a local branch ' or 'province' in the group's self conception as a global entity intent on expanding territory ' Islamic State in Somalia launched its first major operation in October 2016, briefly seizing the port town of Qandala in Puntland....
