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We use an experiment across the Arab Twittersphere and a nationally representative survey experiment in Lebanon to evaluate what types of counter-speech interventions are most effective in reducing sectarian hate speech online. We explore whether and to what extent messages priming common national identity or common religious identity, with and without elite endorsements, decrease the use of hostile anti-outgroup language. We find that elite-endorsed messages that prime common religious identity are the most consistently effective in reducing the spread of sectarian hate speech. Our results provide suggestive evidence that religious elites may play an important role as social referents—alerting individuals to social norms of acceptable behavior. By randomly assigning counter-speech treatments to actual producers of online hate speech and experimentally evaluating the effectiveness of these messages on a representative sample of citizens that might be incidentally exposed to such language, this work offers insights for researchers and policymakers on avenues for combating harmful rhetoric on and offline.

Can civilians caught in civil wars reward and punish armed actors for their behavior? If so, do armed actors reap strategic benefits from treating civilians well and pay for treating them poorly? Using precise geo-coded data on violence in Iraq from 2004 through 2009, we show that both sides are punished for the collateral damage they inflict. Coalition killings of civilians predict higher levels of insurgent violence and insurgent killings predict less violence in subsequent periods. This symmetric reaction is tempered by preexisting political preferences; the anti-insurgent reaction is not present in Sunni areas, where the insurgency was most popular, and the anti-Coalition reaction is not present in mixed areas. Our findings have strong policy implications, provide support for the argument that information civilians share with government forces and their allies is a key constraint on insurgent violence, and suggest theories of intrastate violence must account for civilian agency.

Jihād has been a significant issue in Indonesia over the past two decades, often linked to terrorism, radicalism, and sectarian violence, purportedly in the name of Islam. The Qur?ān, as the primary source of guidance for Muslims, presents jihād both as a concept of communal warfare and an expression of personal piety. However, selective interpretations of jihād by certain groups have contributed to theological justifications for terrorist and extremist actions. This study examined and compared the Qur?ānic interpretations of jihād by two prominent Indonesian Islamic scholars, Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah (1908-1981) and M. Quraish Shihab (1944-). Using Abdullah Saeed's contextual approach, this research analyzed the methodological, typological, and paradigmatic frameworks underpinning their interpretations. The findings suggested that both scholars emphasized the necessity to understand jihād verses within their historical and sociocultural context. In a contemporary context, jihād should be interpreted as an earnest \"struggle in the cause of Allah\" rather than a call for armed conflict against non-believers. This approach aligns with Saeed's view that the jihād verses have ethical and legal dimensions, addressing social, economic, and political challenges faced by the early Muslim community at the time of revelation rather than solely advocating for violence.

Background Clinical research suggests that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients exposed to multiple traumatic events (TEs) rather than a single TE have increased morbidity and dysfunction. Although epidemiological surveys in the United States and Europe also document high rates of multiple TE exposure, no population‐based cross‐national data have examined this issue. Methods Data were analyzed from 20 population surveys in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative (n = 51,295 aged 18+). The Composite International Diagnostic Interview (3.0) assessed 12‐month PTSD and other common DSM‐IV disorders. Respondents with 12‐month PTSD were assessed for single versus multiple TEs implicated in their symptoms. Associations were examined with age of onset (AOO), functional impairment, comorbidity, and PTSD symptom counts. Results 19.8% of respondents with 12‐month PTSD reported that their symptoms were associated with multiple TEs. Cases who associated their PTSD with four or more TEs had greater functional impairment, an earlier AOO, longer duration, higher comorbidity with mood and anxiety disorders, elevated hyperarousal symptoms, higher proportional exposures to partner physical abuse and other types of physical assault, and lower proportional exposure to unexpected death of a loved one than cases with fewer associated TEs. Conclusions A risk threshold was observed in this large‐scale cross‐national database wherein cases who associated their PTSD with four or more TEs presented a more “complex” clinical picture with substantially greater functional impairment and greater morbidity than other cases of PTSD. PTSD cases associated with four or more TEs may merit specific and targeted intervention strategies.

The Abbasid era (334-656 AH / 945-1258 AD) witnessed a marked increase in religious and sectarian conflicts, resulting from the diversity of intellectual currents and the proliferation of various sects and groups. In response, the state employed exile as a punitive measure aimed at controlling unrest and managing sectarian tensions, particularly those arising from religious disputes. This punishment was imposed on individuals accused of opposing the official creed of the state or provoking sectarian discord. Such measures reflect the authority's efforts to maintain political and social stability, often at the expense of intellectual and religious freedoms for certain factions and beliefs.

Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many policymakers and scholars credit the \"surge,\" or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent standdowns of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course with the end of a wave of sectarian cleansing; still others credit an interaction between the surge and the Awakening. The difference matters for policy and scholarship, yet this debate has not moved from hypothesis to test. An assessment of the competing claims based on recently declassified data on violence at local levels and information gathered from seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. Instead, a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did: both were necessary; neither was sufficient. U.S. policy thus played an important role in reducing the violence in Iraq in 2007, but Iraq provides no evidence that similar methods will produce similar results elsewhere without local equivalents of the Sunni Awakening.

Anna Burns’ No Bones has extensively documented its depiction of trauma during the Troubles; less attention has been paid to the systematic mechanisms through which pervasive psychosocial harm is quietly administered and normalised. This article moves beyond readings of individual suffering to diagnose a collective condition, arguing that Burns constructs a veritable architecture of harm: a meticulously designed system operating not through overt aggression alone, but through the mundane, yet powerfully insidious, interplay of social forces governing everyday life. This synthesis reveals how these forces converge to produce what Achille Mbembe terms a death-world: a state of being where populations are subjected to conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead. Within this necropolitical landscape, the protagonist Amelia’s routines are dictated by shrinking spatial affordances, while incessant rumour functions as a policing mechanism that enforces social death long before physical death is a threat. This analysis demonstrates that harm is not an atmospheric byproduct of conflict, but the very logic of this architecture, which compels the community to participate in its own subjugation. Ultimately, by mapping this architecture, this article reframes Burns’ novel from a historical text of the Troubles into a trenchant meditation on the governance of populations under duress. It offers a vital framework for understanding how quiet harm is spatially engineered, a dynamic with profound relevance for contemporary studies of carceral geographies, algorithm-driven social control, and the politics of atmospheric violence. It posits Burns’ work as a crucial resource for theorising the invisible structures that shape and constrain modern life.

Recent studies of civil resistance indicate that security force defections can heavily influence the outcome of nonviolent uprisings against authoritarian regimes. Yet we know little about why, when, and how mutiny occurs. In this article, I ask: what factors influence the likelihood of military defections during a nonviolent conflict? In reviewing various literatures, I identify ten factors that facilitate or obstruct mutiny. I propose that two of these are particularly influential: (1) whether troops receive economic or political benefits from the regime; and (2) whether troops perceive the regime as fragile, based on the international community's response to the conflict. Specifically, I argue that troops who receive benefits from a regime are more likely to remain loyal while those who receive no such benefits are more likely to defect. However, even the most underprivileged troops are unlikely to defect if they believe that the state is strong enough to withstand a major civilian uprising. Soldiers' perception of regime strength is partly shaped by whether outside nations support the opposition, thereby weakening the state, or send troops to reinforce the regime's control. Using a qualitative comparative method, I illustrate these dynamics through an examination of several Arab Spring uprisings: Egypt, where the military sided with civil resisters; Bahrain, where troops remained loyal to the state; and Syria, where the military split. Then, to encourage more research on this topic, I use these three cases to generate additional hypotheses about defections that others can test against a wider set of cases. I conclude with a discussion of the questions that future researchers should explore and the types of methodological approaches that are needed in this field of study.