Two topical news headlines from BBC News and FOX News and some follow-up questions...

BBC News (Tuesday 15 December 2015): “Saudis announce anti-terrorism coalition”

FOX News (Tuesday 15 December 2015): “Saudi Arabia announces anti-terror alliance of Islamic nations”

According to each of these two news channels, 34 countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have agreed to join this “Islamic military alliance” to “fight terrorism with a joint operations” centre based in Riyadh, Saudi capital. 

The 34 countries listed “are also part of the larger Organization of Islamic Corporation, which is headquartered in Saudi Arabia” (FOX). 

Twenty African countries cited as members of this alliance are: Benin, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast [Côte d’Ivoire], Libya, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sénégal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia

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Question (1): Who/Which is islamic state in Africa?

Question (2): Do the publics/constituent nations’ populations in each of these listed African countries know that their regimes have signed them up to this “Islamic military alliance”?

Question (3): What due democratic processes occurred in these countries (within elected bodies, constituent nations’ organisations/representatives, women, youth, etc., etc) before any of these “listed states” joined this “Islamic military alliance”?

Question (4): Who made the final decision in the “listed [African] states” to join this “Islamic military alliance”? Why? When?

Question (5): Are states Benin, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo “islamic states”? Since when? How? Why?

Question (6): Are states Benin, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo members of “Organization of Islamic Corporation”? Since when? Why?

Question (7): According to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s “Global Terror Index 2015”, Nigeria, one of the members of this “Islamic military alliance”, currently harbours the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/global-terrorism-index-increase/6947200, accessed 17 November 2015). Would this “Islamic military alliance” be confronting the organisation in its Nigeria, fellow member-state? How? 

(Max Roach Quintet, featuring Abbey Lincoln, “All Africa” [personnel: Roach, drums; Lincoln, vocals; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Coleridge Perkinson, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; recorded: Belgian television, January{?}1964])

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