Category Archives: Terrorism

This is a cross-post from ConservativeHome by Haras Rafiq and Rashad Ali who are Directors of CENTRI, an organisation that specialises in countering extremism

Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, the Stockholm suicide bomber, spent a short though eventful period at the Luton Islamic Centre, a Salafist mosque, about which the Observer revealed more details on Sunday.  By their own admission, they found that he was a takfiri – a branch of Salafism identified almost exclusively with Al Qaeda and jihadist terrorism.

But although they identified it, they were unable to persuade him that he was wrong.  Furthermore, they say that they did not recognise his potential for violence, and therefore did not report him to the police. The reason they gave was that, if they took such action, their strategy in tackling extremism would fail.

Yousef al-Khattab, leader of the radical US Islamist group Revolution Islam, has seemingly changed his tune.

al-Khattab, formerly Joseph Cohen, converted to Islam on a trip to Israel. His group ran the Revolution Muslim website which supported Anwar al-Awlaki, heaped unconditional praise on Major Nidal for killing 13 members of the US armed forces at Fort Hood, and issued fatwa-like orders for the murder of people, both in and outside America. It went on to become the soapbox of choice for dozens of violent American Islamist extremists, many of whom are now either behind bars or have avoided arrest by fleeing abroad.

Obviously al Khattab wants to avoid that fate, and he now wants to distance himself from the Revolution Muslim group. It was all a bad mistake, he says – let bygones be bygones.

Fascinating article by Arif Jamal in Jamestown Foundation on the implications of the attack, by a 14 year old suicide recruit of the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM aka Pakistani Taliban), on the far-right Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islam, who the leader of the TNSM regard as “munafiqs” and traitors to their jihadist ideology. The article contains a history of factionalism within JI and a clear analysis of the ideological differences between Islamism and extremist Salafism in the Pakistani context which, if not contained, has dire international consequences.

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Leader of Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM), Maulana Sufi Mohammad

The local chapter of Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) Islamist political party held a rally on April 19 in the historic Kissa Khwani Bazaar of Peshawar to protest the extremely low gas pressure and rolling blackouts that affect Peshawar residents up to 10 hours per day (for the shortages, see Daily Times [Lahore], January 18; Frontier Post [Peshawar], July 10). As leaders announced the end of the rally and protesters started to leave, a 14-year old suicide bomber ignited his suicide vest, killing 23 persons and injuring 50 others. The suicide bomber successfully targeted local JI leaders and police officers – among the dead were JI Peshawar vice-amir Haji Dost Mohammad and deputy superintendent of police Gulfat Hussain (The News [Islamabad], April 20).

This is a cross post by Shiraz Maher from Standpoint

Over at his new blog Inayat Bunglawala is already tying himself in knots over the guilty plea by failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. During his plea hearing Shahzad told the court:

Unless the US pulls out of Afghanistan and Iraq, until they stop drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen, and stop attacking Muslim lands, we will attack the US and be out to get them…Listen, you are attacking children with your drones in Afghanistan. I would not consider what I did was a crime. I’m aware it’s a violation of the United States laws, but I don’t care for the laws of the United States.

Indignant but not insightful, Bunglawala tells readers that Shahzad’s guilty plea:

should in a more sensible world urgently prompt a rethink in the US administration about its callous strategy in Afghanistan.