Violence and Security

French Court Convictions of 2015 IS Terrorists Highlights Europe’s Islamist Radicalization Problem

July 01, 2022

The conviction by a French special court this week of 20 individuals associated with executing the Islamic State’s (IS) multi-site, high-casualty terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 brought the trial to a close, but reminded Europe of the complexities of understanding the origins and security risks of Islamist radicalization and transnationalism, given that almost all of the IS perpetrators were born in either Belgium or France and not in IS caliphate territories of Iraq and Syria.
Hamas & Hezbollah Meet to Reaffirm Abri-Israel Islamist Axis

June 30, 2022

Leadership from the Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas Islamist extremist organizations issued a joint communique follow their recent meeting in Lebanon, affirming their shared commitment to an “axis of resistance” against Israel, including military cooperation through use of Lebanon for attacks against Israeli territory.
Afghanistan Platform for Jihadist Groups With Presence of Uighur Islamist Militant Organization

June 29, 2022

Afghanistan’s consolidation as a transregional platform for jihadist groups operating from South to West Asia was again on display with the recent presence of the head of the al-Qaeda-linked Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, pointing to the Afghan Taliban as a permissive security regime for the TIP’s operational planning to establish an independent Uighur Muslim Islamic state in what is currently western China.
FBI Reports Iran’s Plan for Cyber Attack Against Boston’s Children’s Hospital

June 24, 2022

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned recently that the Bureau’s discovery last year of a plan by Iran’s Islamist regime to perpetrate a cyber attack against Boston’s Children Hospital is indicative of the sharp increase in Tehran’s efforts to utilize cyber activities to cripple US critical infrastructure and for WEBINT (web intelligence) aimed at gaining access to data useful for recruiting assets and for compromising the personal and corporate security of Western interests.
UN Flags Transnational Expansion of Radical Islamism into Resource-Rich DRC

June 22, 2022

UN security experts are flagging the growing transnational operational networks of IS into the Central African Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), warning that the IS cooperation with the Islamist militant Allied Defence Forces (ADF) is destabilizing the DRC-Uganda border, generating radicalization and recruitment into the broader Central African region, and is threatening the takeover of rich natural resource riches and trade and commercial networks of the DRC, the Continent’s second largest country.
Rohingya Muslim Refugee Plight Worsened by Islamist Extremists’ Violence in Refugee Camps

June 20, 2022

The nearly 1 million Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape ethno-religious cleansing by Myanmar’s military regime are facing new threats inside refugee camps, in the form of targeted murders of Muslim human rights leaders and narcotics peddling by the Islamist militant group Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), whose fundamentalist “Movement of the Faith” demands conformity to extremist Islamism.
Iran’s Proxy Militias Use Persecution & Discrimination for Religious Cleansing of Mideast Christians

June 16, 2022

Iran’s Islamist theocratic regime has invested in a Mideast regional network of Shiite Islamist proxy militias that cooperate with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in using a combination of violent persecution and institutionalized discrimination policies that are aimed to cleanse the region if its Christian populations, evidenced in an recent four-country report released by independent advocacy group Philos Project.
Turkey’s Islamist Regime Is Spoiler for NATO, Enabling IS & Russia

June 15, 2022

Fox News reports Turkey‘s Islamist regime is seeking a raft of material and territorial concessions in exchange for unblocking admission to the Transatlantic Alliance for Sweden and Finland, but Ankara’s spoiler is emboldening both Russia and IS in ways that intensify both state and non-state threats to the West’s security and strategic interests.
Kansas Woman’s Guilty Plea Signals Sustained Focus of IS for Attacks on American Homeland

June 13, 2022

The conclusion of a high-profile trial of a Kansas woman who pled guilty of providing material support to IS revealed that the Islamist extremist group continues to plan terrorist operations inside the United States, since the women provided granular details of her training of girls and women in the use of weapons and suicide belts, as well as of various plans by IS to carry out high-casualty attacks on civilian targets.
Islamic Blasphemy Laws Increase Mob Violence and Vigilante Justice

June 08, 2022

Recent episodes of mob violence and vigilante Justice in Nigeria and Pakistan highlight a global trend whereby Islamic blasphemy laws are used to target religious minority communities and mentally disabled persons, with states from West Africa to South Asia using Islamism as a domestic legitimation tool and, consequently, demonstrating their unwillingness to support rule of law and human rights regimes that can halt the pernicious spread of extremist political Islam.