- “Analysts say Mauritania’s use of trained and certified Islamic female spiritual guides are a critical component of the country’s peacekeeping approach. Known as mourchidates, these women are certified by the state and deployed into prisons, schools, youth centers, hospitals and mosques, where they speak with young men and women about faith. Trained in Islamic law, Quranic understanding and the history of theological thinking, their mission is to deradicalize young people.”
- Across Central Asia, “arguments that might once have remained within mosques or religious communities are now spreading through social media, forcing governments and official Islamic authorities alike to decide where religious expression ends and attacks on national culture begin.”