With the rise of Islamic militancy in the shape of the Islamic State, it is important to remember that the causes of this extremism are both internal and external, writes TP O’Mahony

A REPORT given to a high-level advisory group in Saudi Arabia claims that allowing women in the kingdom to drive could encourage premarital sex, a rights activist said.

A Saudi-sponsored conference that will bring together Israeli and American rabbis with clerics from the strict Wahhabi sect of Islam – as well as global religious leaders of nearly every persuasion – opens in Madrid today.

The US Embassy and consulates in Saudi Arabia will close today and tomorrow because of a threat against US government buildings, the embassy has said.

MUSLIM leaders and Saudi princes bade farewell to King Fahd yesterday, saying prayers in a jammed mosque and then burying him in an unmarked desert grave in keeping with the kingdom’s austere version of Islam.

Heads of state from around the world jetted into the Saudi capital of Riyadh amid tight security today to attend the funeral of King Fahd, the oil-rich country’s ruler for almost a quarter of a century who died yesterday from a long illness.

NEARLY 250 Muslim worshipers died in a hajj stampede yesterday during the annual stoning of Satan ritual in one of the deadliest tragedies at the notoriously perilous ceremony.

A stampede during a stoning ritual at the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca killed 244 worshippers, a Saudi Hajj Ministry official said today.

More than 300,000 Muslims began a two-day, 110-mile march to the holy city of Najaf today to mourn the Shiite leader assassinated in a car bombing that killed at least 85 people.