A year ago, the headline of the report on hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center read “Hate Groups on the Rise.” This year’s report concludes that hate groups have risen for the second year in a row. The rise in the number of hate groups in the U.S. corresponds with the radical right getting emboldened by the candidacy of Donald Trump, according to the SPLC’s annual census of hate groups and other extremist organizations​.

Put simply, Donald Trump, once the Clown Prince of American politics has become the Most Important Person of American politics today. Outrageous as he might be, he is not just setting the cat among the pigeons. He is the cat among the pigeons. He is setting the agenda and everyone else gets to react to it. As testimony to that, the Republican Party’s leaders, while trying to distance the party from Trump’s outrageousness, are nervous about going the full distance. 

The success of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in capturing large territories in Syria and Northern Iraq, and now threatening Baghdad, has raised once again the specter of a Sunni-Shi’a war in the Middle East. Such a scenario is possible, but unlikely. That’s because Sunni and Shi’a believers throughout the world are divided into many factions living under different social conditions and with different religious, social and political agendas. 

Those individuals who are identified with Boko Haram do not refer to themselves as Boko Haram. Boko Haram, in the local Hausa language, means something along the line of, “Western education is forbidden.” It’s a term applied to them by residents in the communities in which the movement arose in the early 2000s, in the northeast of Nigeria. They refer to themselves differently, as Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad). 

Recalling the day her Islamic divorce was finalized, Olivia said, "I was more than ecstatic, because it was almost like having a noose around your neck, and just relieved that somebody doesn’t have that power over you, and you’re out of such a hostile situation." Olivia, who chose not to use her real name, separated from her husband after six years of marriage and divorced him in civil court, but when he refused to grant her a religious divorce, she traveled across the country for four years meeting with imams in different cities asking for a divorce. 

In a long black garment and gray headscarf, Morales sits in front of a computer entering notes and taking phone calls from the program’s hotline, 1-877-WhyIslam, a resource for individuals hoping to learn more about the religion. A Mexican immigrant and recent convert, Morales is the national Spanish-language outreach coordinator for the program, part of ICNA’s mission to disseminate information about Islam nationwide. But Morales’ efforts go beyond U.S. borders: the 37-year-old recently led a trip to bring Islamic literature, food and clothing to her native Mexico. 

"Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali, by al-Qaida-type individuals. We have in — in Egypt a Muslim Brotherhood president…." With those words, spoken Monday night by Barack Obama's Republican challenger Mitt Romney just 40 seconds in the last of three debates, Africa was placed at the center of U.S. foreign policy and international security. The radical and pro-al Qaeda sect, Ansar Eddine, and the umbrella group of Tuareg tribal militias known as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) have since December 2011 worked together to gain control of Timbuktu and most of northern Mali.

The killing of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of September 11 should provoke a similar examination of the Obama presidency. Here was a quintessential ambassador – an Arabic speaker, popular among ordinary Libyans, who had worked with the revolutionaries to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi – killed in the line of duty.  It was a colossal failure, marking a nadir in a presidency that boasted a break with Bush-era unilateralism and a promise to “commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground” with the Muslim world. 

For a country steeped in Buddhism, Myanmar is accruing terrible karmic debts. Alarming news and images of attacks and killings by the Buddhist majority in Rakhine Province against a Muslim minority there have been slowly trickling out onto the Internet and the wider world. Pictures of charred bodies and crying parents have stirred largely unheeded calls for intervention, mostly from Muslim nations.

San Francisco civil rights advocates who are concerned about what they call domestic spying on the city’s Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities are celebrating new legislation signed into law on May 9 by Mayor Ed Lee. The S.F. Civil Rights Ordinance requires S.F. Police Department officers working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to be bound by local and state laws strictly governing intelligence gathering of First Amendment-protected activities like religious worship.