How Passages Are Chosen

What Qualifies

A passage qualifies when the Arabic text itself, in the writer's own voice, criticises an Islamist movement or Islamist thought: the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, jihadist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, Iran-backed militias, or political Islam in general. A passage is tagged Iran-backed militias only when it names a militia or armed faction; criticism of wilayat al-faqih as a doctrine is tagged political Islam. The headline counts a writer only when one of their passages names a movement the headline names. Criticism of a state (Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Israel) does not by itself qualify, and neither does reporting what someone else said.

Classifier A (gpt-5-mini) reads the column and must copy the words that carry the criticism. Those words must appear verbatim in the stored text of the column; the site shows them highlighted. Classifier B (gpt-4.1-mini) reads the same column without seeing A's answer and must also find criticism. Classifier A must rate its confidence at 0.70 or higher and call the criticism direct, not reported, quoted or ironic.

Stricter Evidence for Two Papers

Al-Akhbar (Beirut) follows Hezbollah's line and Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London) is close to Qatar. Irony and attack pieces in these papers are easy to misread, so a passage from either needs both classifiers to agree at confidence 0.85 or higher, and two separate verbatim phrases of criticism. A writer with any passage that defends an Islamist movement, quoted verbatim and found by classifier A, gets no page.

Writers, Excerpts and Links

A writer gets a page after 2 qualifying passages. Each excerpt is cut by software from whole sentences around the highlighted words, grows toward 75 words and never passes 120. Every passage links to the full column on the paper's site. Where a stored column stops mid-sentence, the unfinished sentence is left out, or, if it holds the highlighted words, the cut is marked with an ellipsis in both languages. A column printed by more than one paper, or twice, is one passage: the earliest copy that passes every check is shown, and the others are named on it ("Also ran in"); only that one copy counts toward the figures. The daily run requests every link; a passage is shown only if its link answered within 7 days of the edition date.

Translation

gpt-5-mini translates the headline and the excerpt. gpt-4.1-mini translates that English back into Arabic. A third call compares the original Arabic with the back-translation and scores the meaning of headline and excerpt, each from 1 to 5. A passage where either scores below 4 stays off the public pages and waits on a staff page with the reason. Translations are labelled as machine translations and sit beside the Arabic.

Names and Biographies

Names appear in Arabic as the paper prints them. The Latin spelling is the one the paper's English edition prints where it has one; otherwise it is an MEF romanization, and the writer's page says which. Biographies are quoted only from the writer's page on the paper's own site, with its link; where no such page exists, there is no biography. Nothing is added about any writer beyond what they and their paper published.

The Weekly Selection

Up to seven passages a week, one per writer. Order: the lower of the two classifiers' confidence scores, then the number of separate Arabic phrases that carry the criticism, then the number of movements named, then the newest date.

Coverage

Signed opinion columns gathered by MEF's daily Arabic press monitor from Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, Al-Bayan, Al-Quds (Jerusalem), Asharq Al-Awsat: 815 columns. 222 named an Islamist movement and went to the classifiers; 108 qualified; 72 by 20 writers are on the public pages; 18 wait on the staff page with a reason. Earliest passage September 16, 2026, latest October 20, 2026. Photographs: Shutterstock, licensed by the Middle East Forum; Dubai from the International Space Station, NASA.