In an official statement issued yesterday, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) officially claimed Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) as its own product and subsidiary. The audio message from ISI’s emir, Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi, confirmed once and for all JN’s status as an al-Qaeda offshoot established by ISI—a link JN leaders have long [...]
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Introducing the “Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria”
Posted: 9th April 2013 by Cole Bunzel in Uncategorized12
Jihadism’s Widening Internal Divide: Intellectual Infighting Heats Up
Posted: 29th January 2013 by Cole Bunzel in al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula, AQ in Iraq, SyriaLast year witnessed the outbreak of a major feud between two of the most prominent and active ideologues in the jihadi movement: the Syrian Abu Basir al-Tartusi and the Mauritanian Abu al-Mundhir al-Shinqiti. As Joas Wagemakers wrote in June and July of last year, the quarrel emerged in May 2012 following two perceived provocations by [...]
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 [...]
Fatwa calling for the death of the director, producer, and actors involved in making the film “Innocence of Muslims”
Posted: 18th September 2012 by Nico Prucha in Egypt, Europe, Germany, Indoctrination, Jihad culture, USAYesterday, Ahmad ‘Ashush published a fatwa on the jihadist forums where he “decrees and calls on all Muslim youth in America and in Europa to fulfill this inescapable obligation. Namely, to kill the director, producer and the actors and anyone who helped to promote this film.” The fatwa was published by the relatively new al-Bayan [...]
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 [...]
Al-Qaida Advises the Arab Spring: Yemen
Posted: 5th June 2012 by Joas Wagemakers in al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula, Suicide bombings, YemenUh-oh. Several jihadi scholars are engaged in some ideological infighting again and it’s not pretty. As long-time readers of Jihadica know only too well, several jihadi ideologues have participated in quite heated debates about jihad, violence and suicide bombings with the people who are supposedly their brothers in arms. The best-known among these are the [...]
Those of us who parse Islamist and Jihadi-Salafi texts “like Talmudic scholars poring over a manuscript” are familiar with Joas’ meticulous work on Maqdisi and others of his ilk. But since I’ve never seen Joas invited to give a single talk in this part of the world, I have the feeling that his work has [...]
Defending Failure in Gaza (Part 2)
Posted: 9th September 2011 by Joas Wagemakers in Hamas, Israel, Palestinian TerritoriesAs we saw in the previous installment of this short series on jihadis in the Gaza Strip, the leader of the Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, Abu al-Walid al-Maqdisi, was pretty defensive about his organization’s actions in his answers to questions from visitors of the Shumukh al-Islam forum. The rest of his answers indicate that the group [...]
Defending Failure in Gaza (Part 1)
Posted: 18th August 2011 by Joas Wagemakers in Hamas, Israel, Palestinian TerritoriesWill’s latest post suggested that at least one jihadi is quite critical of what al-Qa’ida is doing regarding the Palestinian question. Well, he’s not the only one. Late last year, the Shumukh al-Islam forum published a book of its Q&A sessions with a jihadi leader from Gaza, namely Abu l-Walid al-Maqdisi, the amir of the Jama’at [...]
A few days ago, it was reported that Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the radical Jordanian ideologue, had issued a fatwa supporting the revolts in Syria (see here, here and here, for instance). This struck me as odd, since al-Maqdisi has been in prison since September 2010 and has been quiet ever since, presumably because the prison [...]