Al Qaeda Proves Its Staying Power With Al Shabaab Attack in Somalia

August 24, 2022

Al Qaeda (AQ) remains a clear and present threat as a global Islamist extremist group as evidenced in the recent multi-casualty, extended attack by AQ Somalia franchise al Shabaab on a hotel in the country’s capital city of Mogadishu, with the assault a reminder of al Shabaab’s durability and capacity to withstand years of US-European-African security offensives that have failed to staunch the spread of Islamism in the Horn of Africa. 

Latest Al-Shabab Attack in Mogadishu Continues Destabilization of Horn of Africa

August 23, 2022

Militants from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Somali Islamist group al-Shabab attacked a major hotel in the country’s capital city of Mogadishu, in a terrorist attack that signals the continuing resilience of the Islamist extremist group as a threat to broader stability in the geopolitically crucial Horn of Africa region. 

Pakistan Set to Assume Presidency of OIC

August 23, 2022

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is set to assume the presidency of the 57-member-state Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), with the presidential leadership shift of the Saudi Arabia-based OIC from Niger in Africa to Pakistan in South Asia underscoring the global scope of the OIC. 

Attack on Author Rushdie Signals Broader Transnational Threats to Religious Freedom

August 23, 2022

The perpetrator of the recent knife-attack against novelist Salman Rushdie by a young Lebanese American sympathetic to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps justified his actions by reference to Islamic blasphemy laws and, specifically, the Islamic legal ruling (fatwa) by Iran’s islamic clerical leadership that called for killing Rushdie, with the assault providing a stark reminder of the transnational threats to religious freedom and human security posed by Islamist extremism.



Drone Killings of IS & AQ Leadership Reveal Resilience of Competing Islamist Groups

August 23, 2022

The spate of killings of top al-Qaeda (AQ) and Islamic State (IS) leaders by US drone strikes opens up a window into the capacity for adaptation and resilience of the two main Islamist groups competing for global dominance, indicating that both groups have developed the capacity to move beyond their founding models of charismatic leadership and to build the kind of institutional durability and cross-generational staying power that makes AQ and IS Islamism an ongoing threat to global peace and order.