The trio of radical Islamists appeared to have been in contact with Al-Qaeda in Algeria, Pakistan and on the Syrian-Turkish border. “One of the suspects also travelled to combat training camps in Iran and Pakistan,”...

Tsarnaev's quote seems to be based on the idea of a global Muslim community, called the Ummah that has always been aspirational. The Tsarnaev brothers clearly felt that they were being marginalised, and the fact that they did not belong to an American Muslim community further reinforced that belief. So the brothers turned to the idea of the Ummah, a historical fiction that has not existed in practice in all of Muslim history. Muslims are too varied to connect to one way of being a community....

Maulana Masoud Azhar writes in the December 2010 edition of Al-Qalam: “It is awful to see people who cling to the glory and blessings of Allah suffer. Today infidels and all the enemies of Islam, from Afghanistan, Iraq to Palestine and in other Muslim countries, are killing Muslims and want to end Muslim power. But the glory of those Mujahideen should be observed who have vowed to take revenge from the enemies of Islam and are not hesitating to pledge their lives to please Allah and his Apostle.

This interview exposes the sorry state of affairs inside the Pakistani army which has been dangerously infested by the terrorists. Moreover, the fact is known to the top army brass as they know who belongs to Jaish-e-Mohammad and who belongs to Taliban but they do not or can’t do anything against them for the fear of life. These elements have formed secret groups in the army and are waiting to take over the army and its defence installations. They have sneaked into all the three wings of the Pakistani army and can inflict irreparable damage not only to Pakistan but to the whole region or perhaps to the whole world. Time and again, the question is raised if the nuclear installations of Pakistani army are in safe hands and Pakistan gives assurance to the world that they are safe. But the statement given below by Adnan Rasheed [a terrorist who is associated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and who has also joined Taliban and was involved in the attacks on then President Pervez Musharraf] proves all the claims of the Pakistan army false. The Pakistan army and the government is answerable not only to the Pakistani people but to the whole world.....

Although the Brotherhood exited its secret underground operations, the organization's secret mentality remains. It still lives within it. The morals of the "prohibited" still govern it. Therefore, it is no surprise that it still plants "sleeper cells" in state institutions in order achieve the aim of controlling the latter and eventually achieve "empowerment"....

Between 1970 and 2011, 32 percent of the perpetrator groups were motivated by ethno-nationalist/separatist agenda, 28 percent were motivated by single issues, such as animal rights or opposition to war, and seven percent were motivated by religious beliefs. In addition, 11 percent of the perpetrator groups were classified as extreme right-wing, and 22 percent were categorized as extreme left-wing....

...Hefazat, a banner for a set of Islamist splinter groups little known until now. Drawing support mostly from madrasas near Chittagong,... In April hundreds of thousands of Hefazat supporters marched on Dhaka, issuing 13 demands that they said the government should meet by the end of the month. These included the introduction of an anti-blasphemy law carrying the death penalty for anyone who “insults” Islam. Other Taliban-style demands were for an end to Bangladesh’s pro-women development policy; a ban on men and women mixing in public; an end to “shameless behaviour and dresses”; and a call for the gentle Ahmadiyya sect to be declared non-Muslim....

Boko Haram’s target audience for its propaganda has often been northern Nigerians, especially those who live in the border towns between Nigeria and neighbouring Niger, Cameroon, and Chad. In Boko Haram videos and statements, Shekau and his spokesmen have tried to explain away–and even justify–the deaths of innocent Muslims in Boko Haram attacks....

On May 5, 2013, Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI, 'Protectorate of Islam') enforced their 'Dhaka Siege' programme to mount pressure on the Awami League (AL)-led Government to implement their 13-point demands, including the demand to "pass a law providing for capital punishment for maligning Allah, Islam and Prophet Muhammad and smear campaigns against Muslims". Four civilians were killed and several others injured as cadres of HeI fought running battles with Police across Dhaka, turning the capital into a city of panic....

His life epitomised violence, but his death proved more fatal for others. The number of civilian casualties caused by terrorist violence in Pakistan was higher in the months following Osama Bin Laden’s (OBL) death than the months preceding it....

Step aside Islamophobes, this is between me and my Muslim community. Now that the Boston Marathon bomber has been captured and the backstory has come to the forefront, Muslims are again reminded of the problem of radicalism conflated with Islam. We are again caught between radical Muslims and the Islamophobes who are relishing this new act of terror. And though moderate Muslims condemn terrorism at every opportunity and collaborate with law enforcements, what they are not doing is getting to the root of the problem.

Part of the problem is this. Most powerful institutions and people say that Islam is a religion of peace. There’s no problem, except for a few mysterious extremists who just seem to pop up either at random or due to American and Western sins. The next largest segment says that Islam is an inherently violent and extremist religion. Thus, since the problem is Islam, there’s nothing to do but to combat it directly in some form....

Last year, a heavy weight leader of Pakistan, Mullah Tahir Ashrafi who is known to have close links with Taliban and other extremist organisations as well as some foreign embassies and is also the head of Pakistan Ulema Council was arrested after he misbehaved with police in a drunken state in a party in the German embassy. Mullah’s friend got him released with the help of their rapport in the army and bureaucracy. After his release, he tried to give the impression on a TV channel that he had been kidnapped. It was believed that a splinter group of Taliban was behind the kidnap. But shortly after that, Mullah Ashrafi appeared and denied having been kidnapped. ....

These case studies tell us that young people like Tsarnaev and Siddiqi who suffer from internal confusion and state of depression find pleasure and contentment in religion. But like any anti-depressant, small doses do not remain effective and the patients continually keep increasing the intake. If we look at the lives of educated Muslim terrorists we can notice one common feature....

But what we’re learning of the suspects, the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suggests a different story, and one that has itself become familiar: radicalization does not happen to young people with a strong grounding in the American Muslim mainstream; increasingly, it happens online, and sometimes abroad, among the isolated and disaffected....