It is, of course, unlikely that al-Qaeda will voluntarily follow the example of the Islamist Group and Zawahiri's own organisation, al-Jihad, and revise its violent strategy. But it is clear radical Islam is confronting a rebellion within its ranks, one to which Zawahiri and the leaders of al-Qaeda are poorly equipped to respond. Radical Islam began as a spiritual call to the Muslim world to unify and strengthen itself through holy warfare....

S. Mubashir Noor, New Age Islam

Though IS’s media wing al-Furqan has made public three audio recordings attributed to al-Baghdadi since May last year, they all sound like Mullah Mohammad Omar speaking from beyond the grave. I refer; of course, to last July when, amid landmark talks in Islamabad between the Taliban and Kabul, the Afghan spy agency NDS leaked news that Mullah Omar, despite his very recent pronouncements through the group’s media cell, had been dead for years. It turned out his (now deceased) deputy Mullah Akhtar Mansour was impersonating him to prevent the movement from splintering. Is al-Baghdadi now too a sock puppet for some new IS lynchpin?...

Scott Shane

..that Saudi Arabia’s export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fuelled global extremism and contributed to terrorism. As the Islamic State projects its menacing calls for violence into the West, directing or inspiring terrorist attacks in country after country, an old debate over Saudi influence on Islam has taken on new relevance....

Lawrence Wright

'People hate America, and the Islamist movements feel their hatred and their impotence. Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy's buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills 1,000 of yours? That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11.'...

Lawrence Wright

The roots of this ideological war within al-Qaeda go back 40 years, to 1968, when two precocious teenagers met at Cairo University's medical school. Zawahiri, a student there, was then 17, but he was already involved in clandestine Islamist activity. ... Now his (Zawahiri's) former emir (Dr. Fadl) refused to see him. 'I do not know anyone in the history of Islam prior to Ayman al-Zawahiri who engaged in such lying, cheating, forgery and betrayal of trust by transgressing against someone else's book,' the inflamed author told al-Hayat . Zawahiri and Fadl have not spoken since, but their war of words was only beginning.

Omar Daqneesh

With a nation of children scarred by death and destruction, what hope can there be for a productive and prosperous Syrian nation? The children who could leave, have left, and the children who can’t leave are uneducated and resentful. However the future plays out, Omran Daqneesh was not the first and he certainly will not be the last....

Viju Cherian

“What is very disturbing is that many well-off people are part of these silent modules and many times they themselves are not aware of it....Also, it is no longer limited to north Kerala, reports of such activities come in from all places in the state,”...

The rise of Islamic State poses a great threat to South Asia, but also provides the region with a rare opportunity. A collective threat by a non-State actor to the entire region may mean the countries will rise to meet the threat collectively....

Subir Bhaumik

“Bangladesh’s moderate Islam and its secular polity is a threat to these global Jihadis because it is a model that strikes at the heart of their Wahhabi-Salafist vision of radical Islam,”...

But the murder of Muslims has always been a point of debate. Under the maniacal Abubakar Shekau, who last year declared allegiance to Islamic State (IS) and once professed to “enjoy killing anyone that God commands me to kill”, the group blew up mosques as well as churches—often using children to detonate suicide bombs. But with new leadership, tactics can change...

I.A. Rehman

But it is time the state realised the impossibility of fighting terrorism without having the upper hand in the discourse on Islam, the legitimate ways of enforcing its injunctions in the private life of the faithful, and accepting the vital need to stop mixing politics with belief....

Dr. Mohammad Ghitreef, New Age Islam

Another pertinent question that stirs the mind: did the prophet of Islam (PBUH), who is the sole eternal role model for the Ummah, implement the Shariah with any coercive method? Or his true successors the Rashidun Khulafa (right guided vicegerents of the prophet) had done it? Or the great four Imams of historical Islam advocated it? I want a clear-cut answer to these relevant and grim questions to be given from the religious leaders who sympathise with the criminals, who are giving only lip service to Islam and thus tarnishing its image.....

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

Indeed, irrespective of their sectarian background, it appears that lawyers are being singled out across Pakistan. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 114 lawyers have been killed, and another 210 have been injured, in 28 incidents of attack on lawyers since 2007. Significantly, the current year has so far recorded the highest number of attacks on lawyers over the last decade, with eight such resulting in 114 fatalities and more than 50 injured....

Some of these were anti-India and Kashmir-centric, while others were virulently sectarian, taking aim at Pakistan’s sizeable Shia Muslim minority. The vast majority of the groups adhered to the Salafi/Wahhabi or Deobandi creeds.....

Remi Piet

Local imams refused to prepare the body of the terrorist for burial, stating this would "taint Islam", while the French Islamic authorities encouraged devout Muslims to go and pray in churches the following Sunday. The Pope himself refused to address the topic of religious violence, stressing that neither Islam nor any other religion advocates such acts. The permanence of those mature reactions is essential because the war against ISIL will not be won with bombs in Syria or by the intelligence services....

James M Dorsey

Hundreds of guests, including Pakistani ministers and religious leaders designated as terrorists by the United States attended the event at the expense of the Saudi embassy in the Pakistani capital.... The result is a country whose social fabric and tradition of tolerance is being fundamentally altered in ways that could take a generation to reverse....

Fawaz A. Gerges

To understand how to defeat Daesh once and for all, we first need to comprehend its strategy. And make no mistake: even if the Daesh-associated international attacks seem random, the group's global crusade does have a strategic logic. Daesh is fighting for its survival....

It took years of imaginative planning, hard work, huge investment and resources in bringing about such a sea change in the psyche of Bangladeshi youth. Islamic outfits like the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamic bank, and Saudi-funded NGOs like Rabeta Al-Alam Al-Islam and Manarat, have successfully re-moulded the psyche of Bangladeshi youth on Jihadi line....

Ahrar Ahmad

Both the West, and we (including Bangladeshis, and the larger Muslim world), must realise that the awkward and perilous situation we face today came about because we have all contributed to creating the enabling conditions that made it possible and, perhaps in some ways, inevitable. Before we blame others we must subject ourselves to some self-interrogation that is open-minded, honest, and unflinching....

When Islamic terrorists killed a priest in France last month, it was front-page news. Yet when terrorists in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, killed more than a dozen civilians that same day, the story received much less prominent coverage. This was despite the amazing revelation that one of the Mogadishu suicide bombers was reportedly a former member of the country’s parliament — quite a news hook, as they say in journalism....

Zakir Naik

That pulling down other faiths, directly or indirectly, is against the grain of true Islam. That discourtesy to other faiths is not a test of a Muslim’s fearlessness, nor accommodation to other faiths a sign of any weakness. That the success of an Islamic preacher lies not in how many non-Muslims he converts to Islam but on how many bigoted Muslims he converts to liberal (true) Muslims.

The most dangerous Salafi beliefs are those that prohibit the peaceful cohabitation of the believer with those who profess other faiths. Wishing others on non-Islamic festivals, sharing meals with non-believers, etc, are seen as blasphemous acts....

Taj Hashmi

Since terrorism is a political not an Islamic problem, promoting any “de-contaminated” Islam would change nothing. We need to understand what the terrorists want to reform, before trying to reform them. But first of all we need transparent and accountable governance with equal opportunity for all. Historically, poverty-stricken classes never staged any revolutionary or terrorist movement anywhere in the world.....

Chetan Bhagat

Make no mistake; every religion can be interpreted to justify violence. Lines from the Bible prescribe violence too. Several Hindu texts are against women’s rights in a modern sense. It’s just that there is no armed dictator with billions of petrodollars interpreting the book that way, to justify his repression of democracy....

Paul Wood

The emir was a Syrian in his late twenties. When the revolution started he had volunteered for the Free Syrian Army. Next, he joined the al-Qaeda group in Syria, the Nusra Front. Finally, he defected to Isis, because they were closer to God, and because they gave him a car and a house. He spent his time in the cells abusing the other prisoners as infidels but mostly ‘all he wanted to talk about was girls’...