It has been widely assumed in Western capitals that the latest incarnation of Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (née Jabhat al-Nusra), remains fundamentally unchanged. It may have publicly renounced ties to al-Qaida back in July 2016 and softened its rhetoric somewhat, so the thinking goes, but it has not transformed itself in any meaningful […]
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Diluting Jihad: Tahrir al-Sham and the Concerns of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi
Posted: 29th March 2017 by Cole Bunzel in AQ Central, Ideological trends, Syria, Zawahiri8
Insights into Boko Haram’s Early Thought: Muhammad Yusuf and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi
Posted: 2nd November 2016 by Alex in Ideological trendsTags: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, Nigeria
The Nigerian jihadist movement Boko Haram has gone through a number of iterations since it emerged in the early 2000s. One major question about the group, from its early days until the present, has concerned the nature and the extent of its ties to other jihadist groups. Support from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb may […]
Has al-Maqdisi Softened on the Islamic State?
Posted: 11th May 2016 by Cole Bunzel in AQ Central, Ideological trends, Islamic State, SyriaTwo months ago, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the leading Jihadi-Salafi scholar known for his fierce opposition to the Islamic State and support for al-Qaida, released an essay that was widely interpreted as a softening of his position toward the Islamic State. As Hassan Hassan recently pointed out, al-Maqdisi has made other pronouncements of late that would […]
Maqdisi in the middle: An inside account of the secret negotiations to free a Jordanian pilot
Posted: 11th February 2015 by Joas Wagemakers in Islamic State, JordanIt’s that time of the year again: the well-known Jordanian radical Islamic ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi is released from prison and speculation about why this happened and whether he cooperated with the Jordanian regime to get freed starts all over. I’ve commented on this before on Jihadica when he was released on a previous occasion […]
A purity contest: Abu Basir and al-Maqdisi slug it out
Posted: 12th September 2014 by Joas Wagemakers in Ideological trends, Islamic StateThe policies of the Islamic State (IS) have already led to some fierce debates and scholarly disputes among radical Islamic ideologues. This post looks at one of these disputes that is interesting for various reasons, one of them being that it takes place not between proponents and opponents of IS, but between two men who […]
Did al-Maqdisi make a deal with the Jordanian regime?
Posted: 29th July 2014 by Joas Wagemakers in Conspiracy Theories, Jordan, Motivations, Nusra Front, Syria, Western AnalystsOn 16 June, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the well-known Jordanian radical Islamic ideologue, was released from prison. In the six weeks since his release, many people have argued that there must have been some sort of deal between al-Maqdisi and the Jordanian regime that caused the latter to release him. This blog post looks into these […]
Al-Qaida Advises the Arab Spring: Al-Maqdisi
Posted: 23rd August 2013 by Joas Wagemakers in democracy, Ideological trends, JordanAs Cole Bunzel pointed out some time ago, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the famous Jordanian radical Salafi scholar, has published several fatwas and other documents in the last few months. Cole mainly dealt with only two of al-Maqdisi’s recent publications, however, while there are several others he wrote afterwards that are quite interesting as well. Joining […]
Toward an Islamic Spring: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Prison Production
Posted: 11th June 2013 by Cole Bunzel in Ideological trendsEven from behind bars, the influential jihadi scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi continues to command a following. Last week the Ansar al-Mujahidin forum launched a media campaign demanding freedom for the Palestinian-born shaykh, who was imprisoned in Jordan in September 2010 and is serving a five-year sentence. Tellingly, the campaign to free al-Maqdisi (observable on Twitter […]
Al-Maqdisi and the Jordanian Jihadi-Salafi Movement
Posted: 1st December 2012 by Joas Wagemakers in Arab media, foreign fighters, Jordan, SyriaAs most readers of Jihadica will know, the famous Jordanian radical scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi was arrested in September 2010 on suspicion of aiding terrorists and was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in July 2011. Since then, however, we have rarely heard anything from the man often described as the most important radical Islamic scholar […]
Everything you always wanted to know about al-Maqdisi (but were afraid to ask)
Posted: 25th June 2012 by Joas Wagemakers in UncategorizedWell, perhaps not quite. Nevertheless, readers of Jihadica will be interested to know that my book on Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, one of the most prominent jihadi ideologues alive, was recently published by Cambridge University Press. Maybe the book doesn’t tell you everything you want to know about the man, his ideas and his influence, but […]