Egypt’s prosecutors have been flooded with blasphemy complaints since 2011 as Islamists exercising their new societal clout have pushed for prosecutions and courts have handed down steep fines and prison terms for insulting religion.

Two and a half years after kindling a revolution that flamed across the Arab world, Tunisians have moved on to the next chapter, a political struggle between Islamic fundamentalism and the tolerant, Mediterranean-style Islam that has characterized their nation’s 57 years as an independent state.

For most of its 34-year-old history, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been run by clerics serving not just as supreme leaders but also as elected presidents, their turban-clad figures becoming familiar worldwide as Iran’s public face.

Among the tents, snoozing youth and pleasant shady trees of Istanbul's Gezi Park there are portraits of one man in a European suit. Wherever you look Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – founder of the Turkish Republic – gazes sternly at you.

A small rock lies on the desk of Dov Lipman. It was hurled at the member of parliament by a fellow ultra-Orthodox Jew and is a constant reminder of the deep divisions within Israel that Lipman says must be overcome.

Qum, home to some of Iran’s most influential clerics, is not just Iran’s holiest city, but one of its most powerful, a Shiite Vatican in the desert that can make or break any Iranian political career.

Across this vast city, a capital for three former empires, cranes dangle over construction sites, tin walls barricade old slums, and skyscrapers outclimb the mosque minarets that have dominated the skyline for centuries — all a vanguard for more audacious projects already in the works.

Renewed sectarian killing has brought the highest death toll in Iraq in five years. Young Iraqi scholars at a Shiite Muslim seminary volunteer to fight Sunnis in Syria. Far to the west, in Lebanon, clashes have worsened between opposing sects in the northern city of Tripoli.

Turkey is about to enact the strictest alcohol laws in the republic's 89-year history in a move that some Turks complain is part of a creeping Islamist agenda.

Fighting a pre-emptive war against foreign jihadists is not the usual mission for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group best known for confronting Israel. So when its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, explained why he was sending fighters into Syria, he took care to remind his followers that they were not “living in Djibouti” but on the border of a country whose two-year uprising Hezbollah sees as a threat to its existence.

For the first time since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, relations between mainstream Islamists in government and radical Salafist Muslim activists have reached breaking point, sparking deadly clashes in two Tunisian cities.

You may have heard about the case last month of three young men from the United Arab Emirates deported from Saudi Arabia for being “too handsome.”

A blasphemy trial against a Christian teacher in this Egyptian city renowned for its Pharaonic monuments is among a wave of cases that have Egyptian Christians worried they can be jailed for insulting Islam on the flimsiest of evidence.

The decision on Tuesday to bar the presidential candidacy of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution and a former president, shocked Iranians, particularly among the 70 percent of the population that is under 35 and grew up when he served in many leading positions.

In a recent sermon Fethullah Gulen, Turkey’s most powerful Muslim cleric, preached against hubris. Delivered in rural Pennsylvania, where Mr Gulen lives in self-imposed exile, it was broadcast from his website with an electrifying effect. Was the holy man alluding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian prime minister?

Less than a year and a half after the last U.S. troops left, Iraq's political leaders are openly debating the prospect of two dangerous paths for their country: de facto division or civil war. Perhaps both.

Secular youth used Facebook and Twitter two years ago to help topple President Hosni Mubarak from power, but now Salafi Islamists are gaining sway in Egypt because of TV sheiks like Khaled Abdullah.

Iran’s Shiite leaders warned of regional sectarian conflict after reports that Syrian rebels raided a Shiite shrine in a suburb of Damascus last week, destroying the site and making off with the remains of the revered Shiite figure buried there.

Iraq’s government on Sunday revoked the operating licenses of Al Jazeera and nine other television channels, saying that they were inciting sectarian conflict.

A cultural war has erupted between Israel’s rising political star and his ultra-Orthodox rivals.