Radical Islamism and Jihad
These tough words are not difficult to understand. Ever since President Trump’s August 2017 announcement of a new Afghan strategy, which ascribed India a key role in the stabilization efforts, the administration has put greater military pressure on the Taliban in order to bring it to the negotiating table with the Kabul government,...
In the end, tribes will have the final say, more so than the law and the rehabilitation procedures, since the liberated areas are of a tribal nature, governed by strict laws that are more effective there than the law of the state....
Among those now holed up in Kurram is the Haqqani network, an ally of the Afghan Taliban that America accuses the Pakistani army of shielding. In his first tweet of 2018, Donald Trump accused Pakistan of “lies and deceit”, and suspended $2bn in military aid...
Most militant Islamist organizations in South Asia—and particularly in Pakistan—adhere to either the Deobandi-Sunni or Ahl-e-Hadith (Salafist) schools of Islam. Prominent among these are Deobandi organizations like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Harkat ul Jihad-e-Islami, Harkat ul Mujahedeen, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Omar and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Waliyat-e-Khurasan, Hizb-ut Tahrir and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) adhere to the Salafist tradition....
The photograph, showing a woman protester sitting on a platform meant for prayer leaders in a mosque, had become a symbol of defiance of ordinary Iranians against the clerical regime in Iran. Soon after, fundamentalists started opposing the post calling it derogatory. Two FIRs (First Information Report) were filed on January 8, 2018, accusing Ali of “blasphemy” and also so making “fun of principal tenets of Islam”....
In Orwell's 1984, we also read how "the heresy of heresies [for the Party] was common sense”. The question remains: Is it still possible to appeal to "common sense" amidst the madness we are witnessing that has made us numb to human tragedies? Or are we all victims of mass psychosis where "two and two make five"?....
The entire extremist jihadist rhetoric in Kashmir which is underfoot to agitate Muslims on social media and YouTube videos is run of the mill and has no substantial support from any of the four established Islamic thought resources—Qur’an, Hadith, Ijm’a (consensus) or Qiyas (analogy)……
The problem is that al-Qaeda still has a chance to create its own safe havens in some opposition-controlled areas because of Ankara’s obsession with weakening the Kurds above all else; distrust among Iran, Turkey and Russia — the trio that negotiated the de-escalation zones; and the regime's desire to weaken the moderate opposition under the pretext of “fighting terrorists.”...
In order to understand how displaced Syrians are adversely impacted by war, it is worth recognising the gendered vulnerabilities they face. These vulnerabilities have been compounded by war and stand to negatively impact their mental and physical wellbeing as a result of the trauma experienced. There is increasing evidence that the effects of war can impact the mental and physical health outcomes of displaced persons as they process the experiences of war and migration....
It will not be so easy, though, to pivot away from the jihadists. ISIS and al Qaeda have tied up security services throughout the West for years. Thousands of terror suspects across Europe require monitoring. The FBI has been swamped by hundreds of U.S. cases involving potential terrorists. The CIA and allied intelligence agencies continue to hunt down professional terrorists who plot mass destruction in the West....
Basil Hijazi, New Age Islam
Basil Hijazi, New Age Islam
In order to reform Islamic extremism on the ideological basis, we need to perform a complete process of action on strategic basis, focusing on the five basic elements. The primary and fundamental element in this context is built on seeking alternate religious connotation concentrating mainly on peace, love and brotherhood, because the current ideology shouting the pretext of Islam is causing birth to violence, hatred and religious extremism. If it had not been so, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi would not have asked the scholars of Jamia Azhar (the Ulema-e-Azhar) to establish a new religious statement consisting of “revolutionary” attributes….
Hamas’ choice to broadcast the confessions could indicate that the movement is entering a new phase in its relationship with IS — the phase of ultimate confrontation. It seems Hamas is concerned about the successive security developments in the region after Egypt launched on Feb. 9 a large-scale military operation in Sinai to pursue armed groups, especially since Hamas wants to avoid giving IS the opportunity to involve it in the current Egyptian events....
S. Binodkumar Singh
S. Binodkumar Singh
To pave the ground for official talks between the two sides on January 14, 2018, Afghan Government representatives held the third round of unofficial talks with five Taliban members in Turkey. Humayun Jarir, a representative of the Afghan Government in the talks, disclosed that the Taliban members represented the Quetta Shura, Haqqani network and other factions of the Taliban. Meanwhile, Mawlawi Abdul Rauf, the Taliban leader who headed the peace talks delegation in Turkey, told Tolo News on January 15, 2018, “We represent the overall Taliban of the Islamic Emirate ...
The relationship between displacement, emigration and return is a complex one, whose contours remain largely unexplored in the literature. Since June 2014 and the Islamic State’s expansion, Iraq has experienced all of the above: the number of internally-displaced people (IDPs) reached more than 3 million, a large portion of which found refuge in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI); in 2015 Iraqis were among the top three nationalities reaching Europe through the Mediterranean routes....
Fatma Muhammed, 34, limped outside her lighted doorway on what is now called Serzan Bufa Street — after a martyr of the fight — five of her nine children, ages 2 to 15, at her skirts. Her husband had been killed in front of her, and she was shot so many times that she nearly died, losing a finger and the full use of one leg.“Life is hard for us here,” she said…..
Global jihadists and their sympathisers in religious parties all over the world believe that beheading innocent people will make Zionists quiver with fear. They are confident that their vociferous anti-Israel slogans will jolt the Jewish state. These holy warriors seem to have a dogged determination to conquer the world through a retrogressive ideology that advocates the return of Muslims to medieval times and accept the intellectual supremacy of semi-literate clerics who wreaked havoc in the Muslim world by polluting it with the doctrine of hate, fanaticism and sectarianism....
However, little has changed on the ground in terms of dealing with the reasons responsible for the growth of terrorism, including mischievous state policies, radicalization and growing fundamentalism, among others. In the most recent example of growing radicalisation, life in KP’s Mardan District came to a halt on February 9, 2018, as thousands of workers and supporters of the Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nabuwwat joined by locals, participated in protests to pressure the Government into releasing 31 men convicted in the lynching of Mashal Khan,...
In a reversal of Obama-era policy, the Trump administration has pushed for accused militants to be remanded in military prison. During his State of the Union address last month Donald Trump announced he had signed an executive order to keep open the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay and opened the door to sending new prisoners to the controversial centre....
Unlike the Tibetans, however, the Uighurs are Muslims, and they do not have an internationally iconic leader like the Dalai Lama who can campaign and raise awareness on their behalf. So although the methods of repression employed in Xianjiang are the same methods used in Tibet, except updated with newer technology, and they are implemented by many of the same Communist Party officials, the profile of these humanitarian abuses will inevitably be much lower....
Basil Hijazi, New Age Islam
Basil Hijazi, New Age Islam
The international community has been perpetually cooperating in a bid to consolidate the democratic regimes in the world, curb the extremist policies, strengthen the role of regional and international agreements and alliances in combating extremism and terrorism, and work at revising the educational curricula in the countries of the region and remove the discourse of hatred and ‘jihad’ as mentioned in the extremist Wahhabi thought. So the children should not be taught “the virtues of killing the infidel mother and the infidel father”. As for the fundamental problem, it is the Wahhabi and Ikhwani [Muslim Brotherhood] ideology which dominated the curricula of Arab countries and some Asian countries in order to bring out a religiously insane group exporting terrorism to all parts of the globe….
The Taliban has publicly flaunted at least 17 of its training camps since the end of 2014. In late 2015, the Taliban announced that its Khalid bin Walid Camp operated 12 satellite facilities throughout Afghanistan, and had the capacity to “train up to 2,000 recruits at a single time.” Additionally, it said the Khalid bin Walid Camp “trains recruits in eight provinces (Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni, Ghor, Saripul, Faryab, Farah and Maidan Wardak) and “has around 300 military trainers and scholars.”...
“Now there is a different kind of civil war in the city – between those who stayed and went through all the suffering of three years, and those who left. They say we were collaborators, and we say you didn’t suffer. Everyone wants to go back to 2014 and restart their lives from there. They can’t accept that the past three years have been for nothing.”...
Muhammad Nawaz Khan
Muhammad Nawaz Khan
The counter-terrorism phenomenon as observed in the contemporary world today is getting complicated. Hard measures alone are not enough to deal with the threat of terror. Counter-terrorism policies must also include psychological measures designed to lure people away from terror groups. ‘Soft power’ inventiveness is needed to develop more humane methods....
Modelled after the Afghan Mujahideen and thereafter the Taliban, a terrorist, in most Western portrayals, is still a madrasa-educated ignoramus and religious hothead from an underdeveloped country who takes up arms to protect his ultra-conservative and theocratic lifestyle. This is at best an ill-informed yardstick with which to gauge potential terrorists and at worst a result of deeply ingrained xenophobia about the “Muslim look.” Facts paint a different picture....
A week in, Isis issued its first manifesto: the Madina [City] Document. In archaic language laden with millenarian references, Isis congratulated the people of Mosul for “these divine victories” and staked out its central promise: Oh people, you have tried all the secular regimes, from the monarchy to the republic to Safavid [Shia] government. You have tried it and been burned by its fires. And here we are now in the reign of the Islamic State and the region of our imam Abu Bakr. And you shall see by the will of Allah the vast difference between a secular government, that oppresses and confiscates the will and energies of its people and erases their dignity, and our rule, which takes the divine word as a path....