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At least three people are dead and more than 20 injured after a bomb exploded outside a restaurant in central Moscow. Russian authorities say a woman carrying an explosive device was stopped by a security guard before it exploded. It’s not clear who the target was.

The creator of “New Girl” has a dark, twisty new show about a … female serial killer?

Since the end of her breakout sitcom, Liz Meriwether has imbued her sharp and charming brand of funny in network comedies like “Single Parents” and “Bless This Mess.” But she’s steadily embraced darker tones in her work — first, with the Emmy-winning Elizabeth Holmes biodrama “The Dropout,” then with last year’s FX miniseries “Dying for Sex,” a delicate dance between laughter and sorrow in its exploration of a woman’s commitment to live her best sexual life following a terminal cancer diagnosis. “Furious,” though, may be her darkest project yet.

Loosely inspired by the 1987 neo-noir “Black Widow,” which starred Theresa Russell as a serial killer who marries and poisons wealthy men for their inheritances, and Debra Winger as the investigator obsessed with tracking her down, the Hulu crime drama deepens the cat-and-mouse dynamic. It follows an FBI rookie and her search for a female serial killer seeking vengeance against the men who abused her as a teenager. And still, it manages to find moments of levity. The first three episodes are currently streaming, with new episodes released every Monday until the finale Aug. 31.

“I’ve just been loving trying different things with my writing,” Meriwether told me during a recent video call. “When this came up, I was like, ‘Oh, wow, a crime thriller, a serial killer show.’ It was so different than what I’d done before. It’s like the shows that I love, so I was excited to try to write one, somewhat naively. It’s funny because I would always roll my eyes a little bit when drama writers thought they could write comedy and then I found myself in the flip side of that being like, ‘Oh, this is so hard.’”

Check out more of my conversation with Meriwether in Guest Spot. And yes, as a devoted “New Girl” re-watcher forever trying to retain my Youths! status, I asked about about the reboot discourse that’s become its own comedy.

Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our writers recommend the return of a detective comedy that has its schoolteacher-turned-self-taught P.I. on another wild adventure and a Spanish-language limited series that takes place during the 1986 World Cup. — Yvonne Villarreal

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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Diarra Kilpatrick as Diarra Brickland and Shannon Wallace as Chris in Season2 of “Diarra From Detroit.”

(BET / Paramount+)

“Diarra from Detroit” (Paramount+)

Diarra Kilpatrick (“Perry Mason”) created and stars in this smart, sparky mystery as a middle school teacher, also named Diarra, who turns self-described Black Nancy Drew when a man she was dating (Shannon Wallace as Chris) disappears. The new season, which sees the series folded into Paramount+ along with other BET+ series, finds them together again (retrospective spoiler alert: she rescues him at the end of Season 1), with issues — he’s got trauma to navigate, she’s sorting out her identity and desires — and mysteries still to solve, including the identity of the Chief, the city’s Mr. Big. The new season, which feels even more self-assured, picks up old themes of friends and family, as the search for a missing antique desk leads Diarra and friends and accomplices Aja (DomiNque Perry) and Tea (Bryan Terrell Clark) into fanciful new territory, including encounters with Black Freemasons and bikers, the history of Prohibition and a treasure hunt. Local food culture (Superman ice cream, coney dogs, Faygo) gets its due. The mix of suspense, romance and comedy is deft; small details keep the characters surprising and lifelike.— Robert Lloyd

Rafaella Lopez as Barbara, Ian Andrade as Salvador, Aldo Emiliano Navarro as Miguel, Damian Vergara as Tono and Regina Arroyo as Maria in “I’m Not Afraid.”

(Julieta Horak / Netflix)

“I’m Not Afraid” (No Tengo Miedo) (Netflix)

The dilapidated La Esmeralda coffee estate in Mexico’s Veracruz mountains is a lush, beautiful and spooky place — the perfect setting for a kidnap mystery. But in “I’m Not Afraid,” it’s also the wonderfully imperfect backdrop for a compelling tale about friendship and family bonds as seen through the eyes of a child. Set in 1986 during FIFA World Cup fever and a blight that’s ruined the region’s coffee crops, 10-year-old Miguel (played with depth and authenticity by Aldo Emiliano Navarro) first discovers boy captive Felipe (Yago Andreu) hidden and chained in and overgrown area that’s said to be haunted. He’s sure it’s the work of a witch spoken about in local folklore until it’s revealed his beloved parents may have something to do with the abduction. Poverty has driven them and the other families on the estate to make desperate choices. Adapted from Niccolò Ammaniti’s acclaimed novel by Ernesto Contreras (“The Secret of the River”), this six-episode series explores what happens when adults do desperate things in the hope of securing a better future for their children, but it’s the kids who end up saving the day. — Lorraine Ali

Guest spot

A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching

Emmy Rossum as FBI agent Alice Black in “Furious.”

(Sarah Shatz / Disney)

“Furious” feels like a crime story for the Epstein age. The eight-episode psychological thriller stars Emmy Rossum as Alice Black, a troubled rookie FBI agent who left her job as an NYPD detective to escape a violent and traumatic relationship with a fellow cop. She gets enlisted to help track down a female serial killer, played by Lola Petticrew, whose targets are the wealthy men who exploited and trafficked her for sex. But the series isn’t as concerned with its ripped-from-the-headlines relevance. Over video call, creator Liz Meriwether discussed what she was interested in unpacking in TV’s latest addition to the crime drama genre and contributing to the red flag roles played by Jake Lacy. —Y.V.

The series is loosely based on the “Black Widow” film. But how much did current events, specifically stories surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful men in his orbit, inform what or how you wanted to explore here?

It really did start as a “Black Widow” adaptation. This female serial killer and this female FBI agent in this cat-and-mouse game that has this very weird third act, where they just end up hanging out together on a beach, being friends. I loved that part of it. In the midst of this very exciting female killer-female FBI agent crime movie, there was this story about two women connecting who don’t have anybody else really in their lives to connect with. I dug into that and quickly saw that if the serial killer was just a black widow like she is in the movie, that it wasn’t going to give me enough story for eight episodes. I did a lot of research about real-life female serial killers, which are pretty rare. Female serial killers are almost all victims of horrible violence at different times in their lives. That really got me going, OK, what does it mean if you’re a victim of violence and you start being perpetrator of violence? What are the things that we can forgive and understand, and what are the things that we can’t?

And yes, when I looked out into the wider world and current events and what I was thinking and feeling, I definitely scooped up a lot of a lot of stories that are out there. But it’s not the story of a specific predator. There’s a lot to choose from right now. It should feel relevant. It should have echoes of what’s going on out there. But I wanted the focus to be on these characters, not the men that did these acts.

The parallels between Alice and Catherine — what they each have survived and the different ways they deal with it — come into focus. What were you interested in exploring about the traumatic and lingering effects of abuse through these two women?

Initially, when we were casting Catherine, the question of age came up because all of my writer instincts were like, “Oh well, we need to have Catherine be very young and closer to when she was actually a victim of this predator.” But as I started thinking about it, I was like, I don’t think we’ve seen as many stories about the long-term effects of this violence. There’s no flashbacks in the show. I’m not interested in showing what was done to either one of them [Catherine and Alice]. I really was interested in the aftereffects.

I spoke to a social worker, a psychologist and a trafficking victim, which was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had, and also a beautiful conversation. Her name is Jay Benke, and she has an organization that helps people that have been trafficked. She made a really interesting point that stuck with me, which is that when these FBI agents and law enforcement officials build cases, they’re looking at putting the traffickers in jail; they’re not looking at what the people who have been trafficked need for their lives to heal. There’s also an amazing website that a lawyer pointed me to called thelifestory.org, which is videos from different people who’ve been trafficked telling their story — from their childhood, all the way through having been trafficked and then coming out — and it’s in the shape of a circle. Those two resources for me were incredible. On the Alice side of things, we tend to think of the experience of being a [domestic violence] victim as being much more cut and dry than it is for a lot of people. The victim’s relationship with violence and love is very complicated and violence and intimacy can become linked in their brain. It was something that I started to learn about in my research for “Dying for Sex” and continued on with “Furious.”

Lola Petticrew as Catherine in “Furious.”

(Sarah Shatz / Disney)

We see these very girly things, stickers and gemstones, that Catherine holds onto. It reminds us of her emotional or mental stasis.

I don’t know what Lola would say about this, but my thought about the character of Catherine was she was a bit trapped. The choice to go on the path of vengeance feels like a very active choice, but in some ways it’s really limited. It makes your whole life about what happened to you. I feel like Catherine’s story is about breaking out of that trap a little bit, almost trying to give her character a chance to to grow up in some ways. That was definitely a struggle for me going into this because I was like, how am I going to give a serial killer an emotional arc? Catherine is trapped and needs to put the pieces of her memory and her life together in order to move forward.

The thing I love in Episode 3 is the bag that Catherine puts on the bed. That was a big breakthrough for me for Catherine’s character in that her history is something that she’s had to piece together and hold on to, and there’s big gaps in her memory, so she holds on to these material objects in order to just feel like she’s a person. Then in looking at Alice’s character, we felt like she was the opposite in a lot of ways. She had run out of her life with Marshall and [did] not really bring that much. Her whole life is her job; her apartment is really bare.

I don’t mean to sound glib in regard to the subject matter, but you mentioned Marshall, played by Jake Lacy. Why has Jake cornered the market on playing toxic dudes who seem like nice guys?

I haven’t seen “All Her Fault” yet — it’s something that I really need to see. He’s extraordinary in the show [“Furious”], and I had a long conversation with him before he signed on. It’s a very tricky part to play. It was very important to me throughout the process that none of the characters were easily put into bad or good categories — hopefully, we’re constantly making the audience question their feelings and their judgments about people. There’s an incredible documentary called “A Better Man” that is impossible to find. I had to pay like $50 to rent it. It’s this couple that dated when they were in high school, and he was abusive toward her. She got out of the situation, and they’re coming back in their 30s, meeting again and talking about what happened. It’s an unbelievable documentary. I had Jake watch it because I really wanted him to think about Marshall as a human. He really contributed to that, and you can see it in his performance. He’s [Jake’s] a very nice guy.

You know I can’t let you go without mentioning this “New Girl” reboot — or at least the talk of it. It’s become a bit at this point — Lamorne Morris and Jake Johnson pointing fingers at each other. You posted a video on Instagram confessing to sending explicit messages that have caused some tension.

In some ways, I feel like the videos and the interviews and stuff is maybe better than a reboot. If we can see that as the reboot, maybe that would be good for everybody. [The video] came from me getting this question from journalists during the [“Furious”] junket, It was like Hour Eight of the junket, and my brain just disappeared, and I started talking like a stream of consciousness — like I don’t have any more stories to tell or something. And then I went home that night and texted the cast and I was like, “I really messed up the question.” It had been this running joke on our text threads about how they just constantly blame each other, but a lot of the times they blame me like I’m the one that’s like holding up the reboot. I find it so annoying, but then I like answered this question in a horrible way, and then I was like, “Oh, I am going to be the one who has to answer to this.”

If it does happen, it’s going to be a really dark “New Girl” reboot, given the tone of recent projects.

[Laughs] I don’t even know if fans would want what would come out of me at this point.

Last question: What have you’ve watched recently that you’re recommending to everyone?

I love “Taskmaster” [YouTube, Pluto TV]. It’s the thing that brings me joy when I need it and so I always recommend that to everybody — but with the caveat that you have to love British humor. If you love joy and British humor, I highly recommend “Taskmaster.” And Kumail [Nanjiani] was on this last season, which was like really fun.

I’m very behind. “Widow’s Bay” [Apple TV] is No. 1 on my list. I need to watch it. I love Katie [Dippold, the show’s creator] so much.

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“Furious,” which premieres Monday on Hulu, is technically a serial killer story, since there are multiple murders committed by a single character, but happily that is the least of it.

Broadly speaking, these kinds of stories — powered by a stop-them-before-they-kill-again clock, making their antagonists out to be finicky geniuses or horror movie monsters instead of opportunistic mediocrities — strike me as a low form of fiction. But “Furious” is as much relationship drama as procedural, animated by a quartet of excellent performances, with some things to say about abuse, exploitation and love along the way.

Although “Furious,” created by Elizabeth Meriwether (“New Girl,” “Dying for Sex”), acknowledges an inspirational debt to the 1987 Theresa Russell-Debra Winger film “Black Widow,” all it really preserves are a couple of names, the idea of a female serial killer and an emotional relationship with the woman hunting her. The killer is Catherine (Lola Petticrew), a petite young woman who goes about in a variety of wigs, under a variety of names, careful to mask in public. Her murdering is not a compulsion but a mission, like Jeanne Moreau in “The Bride Wore Black.”

Her nemesis is Alice Black (Emmy Rossum), a former police detective now answering phones for the FBI. She became persona non grata in the NYPD after identifying her detective boyfriend (Jake Lacy as Marshall) as the person who put her in the hospital, because, you know, cops. One day a request comes from former colleague Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy) to assist him in investigating the homicide we see Catherine commit at the top of the series.

Various elements of the crime bring to mind an earlier killing; Alice believes they’re connected and might have something to do with sex trafficking or, eventually, a Jane Doe cold case. This brings her to the desk of Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who also happens to be running the very FBI department Alice has been hoping to join. “You requested my squad,” says Nora. “Why do you want to work in the basement on sex crimes and crimes against children — do you hate yourself?” Maybe she does — she orchestrates internet dates where foreplay is a fistfight, and has some relevant trauma in her past.

Catherine (Lola Petticrew), a petite young woman whose murdering is not a compulsion but a mission.

(Sarah Shatz / Disney)

Sharing scenes with the other principal characters, intense or sensitive as the moment requires, Alice is the hub around whom the series revolves and hurtles forward. Danny, who found himself isolated in the department when he said he believed her, is her only friend. (“But here’s the crazy s—. You don’t … talk to me anymore, either.”) Nora, who has a hard edge and a drinking problem, has a few things to teach her, sometimes with a quote from Balzac (“Laws are spiderwebs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught”) and Beckett (the dead “make a noise like feathers”) or a tale from Greek mythology. (“I’m not a former cop. I went to a fancy school, and I’m very smart,” she says, very drunk.)

As to Catherine, she is a mix of a sly fox and a wounded bird. She may be manipulative and murderous, but as we’re given reasons to dislike her victims, a collection of rich white people — with one sad exception — and because Alice feels connected to her in some way, and because she’s had a terrible life, there is not a little of the protagonist in her antagonist. There are some sad ironies stitched into the plot, and an upsetting late twist, though the show doesn’t wallow in it. We understand that Catherine has her reasons, and in a strange way we want to see her carry out her mission. She may be a killer, but she isn’t the villain.

It’s not perfect. We are not surprised at least as much as we are. Some of the plot points strain credulity. There are some old-school jurisdictional clashes between the police and the FBI (as in every fourth episode of “The Closer”), and a heaping helping of professional jealousy within departments.

But the show stays fascinating less for the plot than for the performers. Rossum attacks her role as if playing a Greek tragedy. (The hair redoubles the impression.) McNairy, one of TV’s most likable actors, brings warmth. Petticrew evokes broken innocence. Bernstine finds new notes in a role that typically runs to cliche.

I also want to mention the great Hope Davis as the sister of a victim, the son of a well-connected mogul with something to hide, and especially Steve Way, as Alden (“Ramy”), a force for good in Catherine’s life, and for humor in the series; born with muscular dystrophy, he manages some excellent physical comedy in his motorized wheelchair. The direction (Brian Kirk helmed the first two episodes) is crisp and matter of fact, staying out of the way, which is all you can ask when the writing is good and the actors are too.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that states can ban transgender women from competing in female school and college sports.

The court considered cases from students in two different states who had challenged bans on participation. The two states, Idaho and West Virginia, enacted laws that required public school and college sports teams to compete in accordance with their sex recorded at birth.

One of the two challenges said the ban violates equal rights protections in the US Constitution. The other said it contradicts civil rights laws.

More than two dozen states have enacted bans since Idaho did so in 2020.

Under those state bans, a transgender woman – a biological male who identifies as a woman – is not permitted to compete in female sports at schools and colleges.

All nine justices on the court decided the state bans do not violate a civil rights law called Title IX which prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools.

But the judges were split along ideological lines on whether the bans contravene the constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The six conservative justices said it did not violate the constitution but the three liberal justices disagreed.

“The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh who authored the ruling.

In her partial dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority opinion had applied “a diminished view of equal protection” to sports.

The challenge launched in Idaho came from a transgender woman, Lindsay Hecox, a long distance runner, who lodged it shortly after the law was enacted. She was later granted an injunction by both a district court and an appeals court.

State lawmaker Barbara Ehardt, who introduced the law, said at the time of its passing that it would ensure “boys and men will not be able to take the place of girls and women in sports because it’s not fair”.

But in the appeals ruling, a panel of three judges found that the Idaho law violated constitutional rights. They said the state had failed to provide evidence that its ban protects “sex equality and opportunity for women athletes”.

President Donald Trump made the issue of transgender athletes in women’s sports a regular focus of his 2024 election campaign. Last year, he signed an executive order that aimed to ban transgender women from competing on female sports teams in schools and colleges.

Following that decision, the NCAA, the governing body for US college sports, banned transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Supporters of the bans argued that transgender women had a biological advantage over athletes who were recorded female at birth.

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in March it was going to limit the women’s category of Olympic sports to biological females, it said its working group reviewed the latest scientific evidence over the previous 18 months and had concluded there was a “clear consensus”, external that “male sex provides a performance advantage in all sports and events that rely on strength, power and resistance” .

Those who opposed the bans argue that they unfairly discriminated against transgender students and dispute whether there is a scientific consensus that transgender women and girls have an inherent advantage.

WASHINGTON — After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut nine Navy officers, including all the women, from a promotion list, several female officers say they see the unusual intervention as a sign that their careers now have a ceiling and worry for the future generation of female military leaders.

The Navy had selected 31 sailors to promote from the rank of captain to one-star admiral, but Hegseth recently intervened to strike nine people from the list, including three women and two Black men, according to a Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information not permitted to be released publicly.

As a result, the Navy is not promoting a single woman to the one-star admiral rank this year even though women make up about one-quarter of all Navy officers and nearly one-third of the sea service’s midgrade ranks, according to military data from 2024.

The Associated Press spoke with eight female Navy officers of varying ranks and time in service after Hegseth’s cuts, which were reported earlier by the New York Times, became public. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from their superiors.

The more junior officers said they saw the development as a sign that their careers would become politicized if they rose too far in the ranks, and some said they felt they now had a limit on how far they could be promoted. Some said it made them feel less valued within the military and wondered whether that wasn’t part of the intent.

The Pentagon has not offered any rationale on why the women, or any of the other six people, were removed from the promotion list.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, said on social media last week that “military promotions are given to those who have earned them” and that the Pentagon “will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request seeking further comment.

The Navy’s process for choosing which officers to promote to the one-star rank has been relatively constant and transparent over the years. The service convenes a group of officers, called a promotion board, that examines the records of eligible officers and chooses those deemed to be the most qualified.

The board that selected the initial slate of 31 officers for promotion was directed by then-Navy Secretary John Phelan, an appointee of President Trump, to “recommend for promotion the best qualified officers within their respective competitive category.”

The order from Phelan, who abruptly departed his post in April, said the board should consider an officer’s performance, competence and character, among other traits, as part of those qualifications.

It also said that given China’s prominence in the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy, “special consideration shall be given to officers who have excelled in their knowledge of the political military affairs and U.S. strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region, and operational contingency planning for Indo-Pacific war plans.”

Hegseth has long argued, without offering evidence, that women in the military benefit from preferential treatment and are not suited for combat roles.

“For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” Hegseth told hundreds of military leaders in September.

The approach, he asserted, made the Pentagon “less capable and less lethal.”

‘A break from tradition’

Phelan’s order said the Navy cannot discriminate based on criteria such as race and sex, and it specifically noted that “this guidance shall not be interpreted as requiring or permitting preferential treatment of any officer or group of officers on the grounds of race, religion, color, sex.”

The full list of 31 people to be promoted was approved by Phelan, other Navy leaders and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, before it reached Hegseth, who chose to make the changes, the Defense official said.

While Hegseth is within his rights to intervene in the list, “it’s just not the norm” and is “a break from tradition,” said Katherine Kuzminski, a researcher specializing in military recruiting and retention at the Center for New American Security think tank. She said that promotions historically have been seen as “the services’ business.”

Kuzminski noted that “this is a decision that’s not being made by the Navy — it’s being made by the secretary of Defense,” and she said Hegseth’s growing interference in operational aspects of the military services such as promotions is creating “tension” about what “normal” will look like going forward.

Some of the more senior Navy officers who spoke with the AP expressed concerns about the message it sends to the next generation of young sailors.

In addition to pulling the recent promotions of three women to admiral, Hegseth shortly after he took office fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the service’s top officer and the first woman to hold the job. He never explained his rationale.

Since then, he also has fired two other female three-star admirals without explanation.

Some of the officers who spoke to the AP said that while they were encouraging female sailors to stick with the Navy, they acknowledged that message is coming at a difficult time.

Kuzminski said the rhetoric and actions surrounding women in the military “affects individual service member decision-making and it also affects family unit decision-making,” including whether people make a career of the military.

Kuzminski said that following the months-long hold on military promotions by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) during the Biden administration, surveys showed that partisan politics spilling into the day-to-day lives of troops affected their decision-making.

One officer said this impact was not confined to women.

In conversations with other sailors in her unit, she said that male sailors were hesitant to deal with what appears to be a growing politicization of simply following the orders of previous administrations.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

Nouakchott, Mauritania – Across a vast stretch of the Sahel and West Africa, armed groups are expanding their reach, military governments are replacing fragile democracies, and “counterterrorism” efforts continue to contend with armed violence, often rooted in poverty and challenging living conditions.

While the Sahel has become synonymous with instability, tucked between the region and the Atlantic coast sits Mauritania, a country that has somehow managed to douse the flame. The explanation for this resilience often begins with a woman in a headscarf sitting across from a young man or a woman in a prison cell, talking about God.

Mauritania’s mourchidates are female Islamic spiritual guides, trained, certified, and deployed by the state under the Ministry of Islamic Affairs since 2021. They are not a new phenomenon, as the programme has its roots in Morocco.

Morocco’s mourchidates were introduced after the 2003 Casablanca bombings, a series of coordinated attacks in the Moroccan city that killed dozens and injured hundreds, as part of a broader religious reform.

Youssra Biare, a Moroccan researcher, states: “Morocco’s mourchidates offer one of the most established examples of women’s religious leadership as a tool for peace-building and preventing violent ‘extremism’.”

Since the programme’s launch in 2006, Morocco’s mourchidates have received formal theological and social training, which enables them to provide religious guidance and family counselling.

“Beyond their role in countering extremist narratives, they address the social and emotional factors that can make young people vulnerable to radicalisation,” Biare told Al Jazeera.

“For countries such as Mauritania, the Moroccan model demonstrates how investing in well-trained female religious leaders can strengthen community trust, promote moderate religious discourse, and create culturally grounded approaches to youth de-radicalisation and social cohesion.”

The mourchidates operate across schools, youth centres, mosques, hospitals, and, critically, prisons. They provide religious counsel grounded in mainstream Islamic scholarship, challenge the theological justifications that armed groups use, and offer a credible alternative to their narratives.

What makes the programme distinctive is the involvement of women with dedicated religious scholarship. More than social workers with a passing familiarity with Islamic texts, the mourchidates are trained in Quranic interpretation, Islamic jurisprudence, and the history of theological thought.

When they sit with detainees convinced that violence is a religious obligation, they can engage on their own terms and dismantle those arguments point by point.

Prison as a battleground for ideas

Prisons have long been recognised globally as sites of radicalisation, where recruitment networks operate. Mauritania, however, has pursued a different approach. Inside its prisons, mourchidates engage detainees linked to armed groups operating in the Sahel region, including those convicted of planning or participating in attacks across Mauritania, as well as those joining radicalised groups in neighbouring countries.

Their work goes beyond pastoral care to critically engage prison populations on an ideological level. They sit with these people over extended periods, building trust and addressing the theological arguments that justified violence, such as the belief that attacks on civilians could be sanctioned in the name of religion.

By patiently challenging these interpretations and offering alternative readings of Islamic texts, the mourchidates gradually open space for detainees to reconsider their choices.

De-radicalisation, when it works, tends to be built on relationships. The mourchidates, through their close ties to communities, are often well-placed to build these relationships in ways that male guards, military officials, or even male religious scholars are not always able to.

A significant portion of what mourchidates do is preventive, operating in community spaces to reach young people before they become vulnerable to recruitment. Armed groups exploit unemployment, marginalisation, and legitimate grievances to draw young men and women to their cause, often using the language of faith.

Countering this radicalisation requires a coherent narrative more than a militaristic approach, and that is precisely what the mourchidates provide.

“One of the strengths of the Mauritanian model is that it understood early on that violent extremism cannot be addressed through security responses alone,” Aminata Dia, a Mauritanian founding member of Elles Du Sahel Network and the executive director of the nonprofit Malaama, told Al Jazeera.

“The country invested in prevention, religious dialogue and community trust-building, particularly through the mourchidates programme,” she said.

Yahia Elhoussein, a scholar who runs a maourchidate school in Nouakchott, told Al Jazeera that this approach works due to its credibility.

“The mourchidates were deployed by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs to different parts of the country, where they educated young people on the true teachings of Islam, such as tolerance, charity, and accountability, playing an important role in de-radicalisation without any use of force,” Elhoussein said.

Why Mauritania stands apart

The results, while difficult to quantify, are reflected in Mauritania’s regional trajectory. The country has not been immune to threats from armed groups, enduring attacks in the mid-to-late 2000s that pushed it to reassess its approach.

What followed was a comprehensive strategy combining intelligence, community engagement, religious reform, and programmes like the mourchidates. Since then, Mauritania has largely avoided the scale of attacks that have devastated its neighbours, such as Mali and Burkina Faso.

Security analysts point to Mauritania as a case study for a preventive model, investing in conditions that make radicalisation less likely rather than responding solely to violence. The mourchidates are central to that model.

None of this suggests that Mauritania has solved the problem, or that its approach is without limitations. The country faces governance challenges, while the broader Sahel region continues to experience expanding armed violence, poverty, displacement, and weak state presence, pressures that no single programme can fully address.

Critics note that the reach of the mourchidates, while meaningful, remains constrained by resources and scale.

There are also questions about how replicable this model is elsewhere. Morocco’s version has been partially adapted in other Muslim-majority countries, but conditions in Mauritania, a deeply religious society, such as respected female scholarship, credible state authority, and political will, make it unique.

In Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, replicating this model would require rebuilding trust between the state and the community, which appears to have eroded.

At a time when international counterterrorism policy in the Sahel is dominated by military presence, drone strikes, and external interventions, Mauritania’s experience offers a different lesson. Some of the most effective tools for preventing violent activism are not found in special forces and military operations but in trained women, armed with knowledge and patience.

“Mauritania’s mourchidates prove that community-based approaches can be more effective than any other approach,” said Elhoussein.

The CEDB has asked the sport’s global governing body Fifa to make the ban, which prohibits Vlachovsky from taking part in any football-related activity, worldwide.

It has also ordered the Football Association of the Czech Republic to revoke Vlachovsky’s coaching licence.

Leading players’ union Fifpro reported that players of 1. FC Slovacko only learned they had been secretly filmed after the arrest.

Fifpro – the global representative organisation for professional footballers – said the players were filmed on Vlachovsky’s camera hidden in a backpack, and the youngest was aged 17.

Earlier this year, a group of the victims came forward to demand further action, with players telling Czech media publication Seznam Zpravy, external Vlachovsky’s crimes had left them afraid to sleep at night and anxious about being in public in case they were being filmed.

Vlachovsky had previously led the Czech Republic Under-19s women’s team and was once voted the best women’s coach in the country.

Hampton’s career has been far from smooth sailing, with the ex-Birmingham City goalkeeper hitting headlines when she was dropped from the England squad in 2022 shortly after their first Euros triumph.

Reports said it was a result of her behaviour and she had to wait until March 2023 for a recall, when manager Sarina Wiegman said Hampton had “sorted out personal issues”.

Speaking about that time, Hampton said the stories were “hurtful” and she later revealed on the Fozcast podcast she had considered quitting football.

In November, Mary Earps – her former England team-mate and predecessor as number one – released an autobiography which heavily criticised Hampton.

Earps claimed she told Wiegman she was rewarding “bad behaviour” by recalling Hampton, who had previously been dropped for being “disruptive and unreliable”.

Hampton, who kept eight clean sheets in 19 WSL appearances this season, says goalkeepers need to support each other.

“I think goalkeepers hold a unique pressure that really only goalkeepers truly understand,” added Hampton.

“When I see other goalkeepers making worldie saves, it pushes me and drives me. The women’s game, and goalkeepers especially, are getting to those standards that we hold ourselves to so highly.

“We’re a group, a union. If we can’t rely on each other, then we can’t rely on anyone.”

Charlton Athletic goalkeeper Sophie Whitehouse, a former team-mate of Hampton’s at Birmingham, won the WSL 2 Golden Glove award on Monday.

Hampton says Whitehouse “deserves more credit” and believes she will play a star role in Saturday’s play-off match against Leicester City (12:30 BST).

“Seeing the growth of where she’s got to right now isn’t spoken about enough,” said Hampton.

“She was always pushing herself to reach high standards at the Blues. I’m sure she will make a lot more worldie saves to make sure Charlton get to the WSL and we’ll be competing with each other next season.”