Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II attempted on Monday to reassure Egyptians after the recent attacks on Copts in North Sinai, stressing that the Coptic families that have fled the governorate out of fear of terrorist violence will return to the city "when the time is right." At the start of this month, the Coptic Orthodox Church announced that 143 Christian families had fled North Sinai to Ismailiya after a spate of killings of Christians by Islamist militants in the governorate.

Islamic State's branch in the Sinai Peninsula posted a video on Tuesday depicting the beheading of two men the militant Islamist group said it had found guilty of practicing witchcraft and sorcery. The video, posted on a Telegram channel often used by IS, showed the group forming a religious police unit known as the Hasbah in northern Sinai, where it has waged an insurgency for years. The rugged, thinly populated peninsula borders Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal.

Islamic State-affiliate Province of Sinai released a promotional video on Tuesday showing members of the organization carrying out what it alleges to be Hisba, or religious policing. The group claimed the footage is from locations in North Sinai, which it did not identify. Hisba is defined by religious scholars as the practice of commanding virtue and forbidding vice, professor of Islamic law professor at Al-Azhar University Ahmed Kareema told the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper. He added that Hisba should be conducted by a select few who must be efficient, fair, knowledgeable and capable, describing it as a type of guardianship falling to those who have been entrusted with religious matters.

The media center of Al-Azhar has denied news circulated websites reporting that the Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb received invitation from several imams of mosques in Tel Aviv to visit Israel.

US-backed Syrian fighters broke into the western part of the Islamic State (IS) militant group s stronghold Raqa on Saturday, they and a monitor said, opening up a second front inside the northern Syrian city. The Syrian Democratic Forces alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters has spent months tightening the noose on IS-held Raqa and entered the city for the first time earlier this week from the east, backed by US-led coalition air strikes. On Saturday, they pierced into Raqa from the west, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Qatar, one of the few foreign backers of Hamas, faces massive pressure from its Gulf neighbors to cut ties with the Islamic militant group. If it does, the result could be disastrous for Hamas-ruled Gaza. Qatar has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in roads, housing and a major hospital in the tiny territory. Its infrastructure projects are one of the few job-creators in a devastated economy. Gaza already suffers from an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, widespread destruction from a string of Israel-Hamas wars, economic misery and chronic electricity shortages. For Hamas, Qatar’s money pumping into the economy is a vital lifeline bolstering its rule.

At least 13 people are dead, including four attackers, after Boko Haram launched the deadliest attack in months on the northeast Nigeria city that is the birthplace of the extremist group, police said Thursday. The attack came just hours before a visit by the country s acting president. Nigeria late last year declared that Boko Haram had been crushed but attacks continue, often with young women strapped into explosives for suicide attacks.

Islamic State s news agency Amaq published a video on Wednesday showing a gunman at the Iranian parliament where an attack has been taking place.

At least 12 people have died in twin attacks in Tehran on Wednesday, the head of Iran s emergency department, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB. Iran s state-run IRNA news agency had earlier said two security guards were killed and more than 30 people wounded in attacks on the parliament building and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Egypt s Al-Azhar Institute – considered the highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning – said on Tuesday that it endorses and supports all decisions taken by Arab leaders to guarantee the unity of the Arab nation, one day after a number of Arab states announced severing diplomatic ties with Qatar. The Cairo-based Al-Azhar said that it is looking forward to seeing Arab states increase their efforts to fight against any plots to destabilise them or threaten their national security.

Political leaders on Tuesday continued to question why authorities failed to apprehend Khuram B., one of the suspects in Saturday’s attack, after police announced he was known to security services and MI5, Britain’s domestic spy agency. Authorities did not say how Khuram Butt, a British citizen born in Pakistan, had come to the attention of law enforcement agents, but local media reported that in 2016, Butt appeared in a Channel 4 documentary about British extremists entitled “The Jihadis Next Door.”

Kabul will host a multinational peace conference on Afghanistan Tuesday, as the capital reels from a wave of bombings and clashes last week that left more than 100 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Pakistan has frozen the accounts of 5,000 suspected militants, taking about $3 million out of their pockets, but Islamabad could still come under scrutiny at a crucial June meeting of an international watchdog that tracks terror financing.

Hamas is denying a report that host Qatar has asked several leaders of the Islamic militant group to leave, but says some senior officials may be shifted to new locations based on “work requirements.”

Abanoub Guirguis Naeem, a Christian dental student was recently granted admission to complete his final year of experiential training at Al-Azhar’s Faculty of Dentistry in Assiut, an unprecedented rarity in the prestigious Islamic University. Naeem is the first recognized case of a Christian student enrolling at Al-Azhar University, which is considered a beacon of centrist, moderate Islam in Egypt. The 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Islamic learning has been training clerics and scholars from around the world, and is known to only accept Muslim students into its colleges for educational purposes.

Pope Francis prayed Saturday for the Coptic Christians killed a day earlier in Egypt by Islamic extremists, saying that there are more Christian martyrs today than in ancient times.

Pope Tawadros II has announced that he will donate the prize money from the “Award of the Unity of Orthodox People”, which he received on Tuesday in Russia, to contribute to the building of a mosque and church in the New Administrative Capital.

Bahrain is investigating the death of five people during a raid on the home village of the spiritual leader of its Shia Muslim community, the interior ministry said on Thursday. A ministry statement said the five were among a group that attacked security forces raiding what it said were "terrorist organizations" on Tuesday in Diraz, the village of Ayatollah Isa Qassim, and that nearly 300 people were arrested.

The appeals court of the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters rejected on Wednesday an appeal against a previous ruling, in which the court said it had no jurisdiction to withdraw national merits from Egypt's ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.