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Yesterday there was an assassination attempt on the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Muhammad Bin Nayif. An unidentified wanted militant, pretending to surrender to authorities, blew himself up as he was being searched. The blast occurred in Bin Nayif’s private office in Jidda, close enough to the Prince himself for the latter to be lightly wounded (although no wounds were visible his subsequent TV appearance).

The attack is obviously noteworthy, not least because it is the first confirmed jihadi assassination attempt on a senior prince in Saudi history. There have been rumours of such attempts in the past, but none have ever been confirmed. This shows that al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP) is definitely after the royal family, and the incident underlines the QAP’s ideological turn to a more revolutionary direction. Their campaign started off in 2003 focusing exclusively on Western targets, but has gradually shifted to include more and more regime targets.

It is also worrying that there are still militants with access to explosives and bomb-making expertise. It remains to be seen whether the attacker had many local helpers and whether he had links to the QAP headquarters in Yemen. If he did, it would be more serious.

Having said all this, I don’t think the incident itself tells us very much at all about QAP’s operational capability or Saudi regime stability. This was essentially a stupid security slip-up, whereby the bomber was allowed to get deep into the building without any security inspection. I would be very surprised if this happened again.

To understand how this could occur, one needs to understand Muhammad Bin Nayif’s role in the Saudi counterterrorism apparatus. In addition to being the top CT official, he is also the main contact point between the state and the radical Islamist community. He is the one that militants go to see when they want to surrender. He has been doing personal behind-the-scenes liaison work with the jihadi community since at least the late 1990s. He has made a point of always being personally accessible to militants wanting to talk. And he has a reputation in the Islamist community (outside of al-Qaida) for discretion, kindness and financial generosity.

Bin Nayif has received hundreds of jihadis in his office in this way, and by all accounts there have never been any security problems.  I suspect that over time, this made the Prince and his staff overconfident about their security. In this particular case, the fact that it was 11.30 at night during a popular Ramadan reception probably made security even more lax. The bottom line is that it didn’t take operational genius or a high-ranking mole get close to the Prince.

By the way, media are referring to an al-Qaida claim of responsibility reported by SITE, but neither I nor Greg over at Waq al-Waq have been able to find it on the forums this morning.

PS Apologies for my long absence from jihadica. Family vacations, house moves and paper deadlines have made blogging difficult. I am now back at work, but I will be contributing infrequently this fall for reasons I will explain later.

The Shamukh al-Islam forums have initiated an “Open Interview” with Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. For those unfamiliar with online jihadi interviews, the usual format is for readers to post questions on the forum and then the person being interviewed posts his responses, normally all at once after many questions have been posted. To process the questions, the Shamukh administration has started a separate forum called, “You Ask and the Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi Answers,” where members can post questions that will only be visible to al-Maqdisi, the member who posted it, and the administration. However, the administration has indicated that al-Maqdisi’s answers will be public.

Even though the period to ask questions will only be a week, it may take several weeks for al-Maqdisi to answer the questions. We will continue to monitor for when he releases his answers.

We have heard Bin Ladin and Zawahiri’s comments, and Marc Lynch and others will tell us how the Arab mainstream reacted. But what are the grassroot jihadis saying about Obama’s Mideast tour in general and his Cairo speech in particular?

Let me begin by lowering your expectations. For a start, we should not expect to see any positive reactions to Obama’s initiative, for anybody thus inclined would not be on the forums in the first place. Second, there is no tradition among jihadi strategists or pundits for parsing presidential speeches. They might pick up on a phrase (like Bush’s reference to a “crusade”) and use it for their own purposes. But generally these guys don’t listen to what America says - they watch what she does.

I should also add that Faloja, the main jihadi forum, has been down since this morning (as has Shuraa), so our ability to gage the reactions to the Obama’s speech is limited. Fortunately I surveyed Faloja for Obama-related material yesterday, and Shumukh, the no.2 forum, is up today, so we have something to work with.

Overall, there is quite a bit of chatter about the Obama tour, and four types of postings recur. First are the political messages which denounce the visit and present it as further evidence that Egyptian and Saudi governments and ulama have submitted to American dominance. “In honour of Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia”, one member reposted the classic bookThe evident proofs of the infidelity of the Saudi state (1990) by Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Other posts circulate the pictures of Saudi and American flags side by side. Yet others claimed Egyptians are suffering as a result of Obama visit, because the security barriers in Cairo “confined 18 million Egyptians to their homes” and because the Sultan Hasan mosque had to be closed for security reasons.

In a widely diffused and entertaining post, a contributor named “Abu al-Bashar” describes a daydream about Egyptian Salafi Ulama confronting Obama. The text is written like a short skit which goes something like this (loosely translated):
“Here are our ulama from Egypt: Sheikhs Yasir al-Barhami, Muhammad Hussain Ya’qub, Ahmad al-Sisi, Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni, Tal’at Zahran, Muhammad Hasan, Muhammad Ismail al-Muqaddam and Mahmud al-Misri. They hear about Obama’s visit to Egypt and decide to convene a meeting in which the following conversation takes place.
Ismail gets angry and says we have been silent for long enough.
Hasan asks: what about Obama? He is coming here to salvage relations with the Muslim world.
Al-Huwayni intervenes: But he’s coming here while is armies are killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and supports the Jews in their killing of Palestinians.
Burhami says: The bottom line is that Obama the pig is coming here to slaughter us and he smiles at us in the process.
Al-Sisi sayd: Sure, but Obama the pig is coming here, so what should we do?
After long discussions, the scholars announce their decision, which consists of two steps.
First, a statement, denouncing Obama’s visit. It would be distributed on the satellite tv stations and on the internet forums and on facebook, and in all newspapers and journals, in Arabic and English and French. Second, a demonstration on the day of the speech. All preachers and scholars and their students would go to the location where Obama will deliver his speech and show their opposition.

- The end -
Here Sheikh Muhammad Husain Ya’qub intervenes, saying ‘I retract my positions’.”

The final part is quite funny – even in a dream official ulama lack moral courage.

The second type of posts are strategic assessments in which writers try to second-guess the real purpose and implications of the visit. These posts are neither numerous nor sophisticated, and so far none of the serious jihadi strategists have weighed in. “Al-Munasir1” warns that part of the purpose of Obama’s visit to Egypt is to make final preparations for an international campaign against Sudan.

The third and most widespread type of post focuses on tactical issues such as the detailed program of Obama’s visit, the size and nature of his security attachment and the prospects of carrying out an assassination. One writer quoted the Saudi opposition abroad as saying observers and Saudi security officials fear for Obama’s life in Saudi Arabia. He argued that the recent shooting in Jubayl is indicative of a surge in pro-al-Qaida sentiment in the Kingdom. The fact that the perpetrators of the Jubayl shooting have not been caught further worried the authorities. Most responses to the post expressed hope that Obama be assassinated, but one commentator drily noted that Obama comes and goes as he wishes so long as the royal family is in power.

Another post by “Baghdad al-Khilafa” presented a more detailed “Plan for killing Barak Obama” in Egypt. It included a picture of Cairo university followed by the note: “the best way of killing Obama: Suicide belt, suicide belt, suicide belt.” Then followed detailed instructions on how to manufacture a suicide belt, including links to downloadable instruction videos.

The fourth type of posting consists of reproductions of articles from other, more mainstream Arab and Islamic media. These posts are interesting not so much for the debates they generate (usually very little), but because they tell us something about which voices the forum participants would at least consider listening to. So we find
- Abd al-Bari Atwan ‘s article “Our advice to Obama”
- An article by Mahmud Abduh Ali at Islamonline entitled “An examination of Obama’s position on the big issues that concern the Muslim world”
- An article from al-Jazeera.net on the Muslim Brotherhood’s reaction to the Obama visit.
- An article from Middle East Online entitled “Egyptians: No Ahlan wa Sahlan for Obama”, which cites a poll showing three quarters of Egyptians were skeptical of Obama’s visit.

Of particular interest is the posting of an article from Sabq News reporting that the Saudi Islamist Ayidh al-Qarni loved Obama’s speech. The article is posted by the same Baghad al-Khilafa who wanted Obama blown up, and he is naturally expressing dismay at al-Qarni’s reaction, to the point of declaring him an infidel. This triggers a debate, with several contributors objecting to the excommunication (takfir) of al-Qarni. “Brothers, don’t declare him an infidel, he is just a regime cleric”, writes “Asad al-Jazira”.

In my two days of surfing the forums I was able to find one single statement mildly favourable to the Obama administration. A contributor named “Khaldun Halwani” wrote in a comment to a post: “Let us hope that this is the beginning of a new direction that will serve Muslim interests. I would add that Foreign Secretary has started changing US policy toward the enemy of Islam, Israel.” But this is of course an isolated statement by an anonymous contributor and thus not indicative of anything.

There are in other words no big surprises in the forum reactions to Obama’s Middle East tour, although it is still too early to tell how the jihadi movement will adapt to these initiatives. Hopefully we will see more serious jihadi strategic studies of Obama’s PR offensive in the weeks to come. I will keep my eye out for them and keep you posted. If anybody sees anything interesting, please let me know.

Update: Parts of this post was reproduced on the Foreign Policy Blog on 5 June and on NPR.com on 8 June.

The al-Maqdisi controversy has taken a very interesting new turn. In a statement posted his website earlier this week, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi cited several Western scholars, including Dutch al-Maqdisi specialist Joas Wagemakers and Jihadica founder Will McCants, to make the point that his enemies understand him better than his detractors in the jihadi community do.

The statement, entitled “Among the Methods Used by the Infidels to Plot Against the Call and the Preachers, and shared by many Ignorants and Fools,” represents another attempt by al-Maqdisi to rid himself of accusations that he has moderated his position on jihad. For previous attempts see here and here.

What’s distinctive about this statement is its frequent references to Western academics and liberal Arab commentators, which al-Maqdisi uses variously to discredit his critics and to boost his own credentials. Al-Maqdisi first accuses his critics of running the errand of the infidels by implementing a strategy of discrediting ideologues originally proposed by the “Crusader RAND corporation“. (I am not sure exactly which RAND study al-Maqdisi has in mind here - could it be this one?)

As evidence that this strategy is bound to fail, al-Maqdisi then references Joas Wagemakers’s Sentinel article about al-Maqdisi as a counterterrorism asset:

“The understanding of our enemies and their readings of my publications, have yielded results that differ completely from the calls of those inexperienced people and their understanding. For example, the theorists of the Combating Terrorism Center in the US Military, in the 6th issue of their magazine, studied the possibility of exploiting Al-Maqdisi to strike at jihad and the mujahidin (as they have exploited the leaderships of the Egyptian Islamic Group). The conclusion was that such an attempt will lead to failure because of [Maqdisi’s] steadfastness and the firmness of his positions. This is what the enemies said about me and distributed on the Internet.”

To underscore his jihadi credentials, al-Maqdisi then cites the Militant Ideology Atlas edited by Will McCants:

“[Then there is the] Militant Ideology Atlas by the Combating Terrorism Center at the West Point Military Academy, which trains officers in the American Army, and which is led by the retired general, Wayne Downing, who was the commander of American Special Operations. It concluded that: ‘Al-Maqdisi is the most influential living Islamic thinker in Islamic ideology amongst jihadi groups.’ [Note that it says] the jihadist groups, and not those that delay and reject. Credit is to the testimony of enemies.”

Finally al-Maqdisi cites two articles by liberal Arab commentators: The first is a 2004 article by the Saudi ex-jihadi Mishari al-Dhaydi entitled “The Sheikhs of Violence are numerous … and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi remains the most important”; The second was written by Tariq al-Humayyid (now editor of al-Sharq al-Awsat) following al-Maqdisi’s July 2005 appearance on al-Jazeera.

This is not the first time that McCants and CTC West Point are quoted by prominent jihadi ideologues. Ayman al-Zawahiri has mentioned the article “Stealing al-Qaida’s Playbook” by Will McCants and Jarret Brachman not once but twice (once in a video and once in the Exoneration). One of the article’s suggestions is that the pietist salafi current known as madkhalism represents a potential ideological counterweight to jihadi salafism. Al-Zawahiri seized upon this point to discredit his critics.

More recently, Abu Humam al-Athari cited the Militant Ideology Atlas extensively in a book entitled “The Exalted Declaration of the Justness of Our Shaykh  al-Maqdisi” which seeks to defend al-Maqdisi from the recent criticism (hat tip: Vahid). The book includes the graphic of the CTC coin, and the ideological influence map (see pp. 94-95) from the original report.

These references are above all a great compliment to the CTC in general and Will McCants in particular. It is perhaps the best possible testimony of the quality and incisiveness of their research. I would be lying if I said I am not envious of their being cited by jihadi legends.

On a deeper level there is something slightly disturbing about academic publications entering the discourse of the actors themselves and influencing inter-jihadi debates. The Internet makes such dynamics inevitable, and we have seen several entertaining examples of the “hall of mirror effect” in recent years. However, when this happens at a high level, as on that of al-Zawahiri and al-Maqdisi, it becomes more serious. The irony here is that the CTC’s publications are essentially having the unintended consequence of prolonging the political life of a leading jihadi ideologue.

I am travelling this week so coverage of the forums will be limited. In the meantime you can read this Q&A with yours truly in Bellum, a very interesting blog affiliated with the Stanford Review. The jihadis have been doing Q&As for ages, so it was about time we here at Jihadica did one.

Continued from here.

The fourth panel on “networks, strategy and ideology” started off with a paper by CTC’s Scott Helfstein on the dynamics of terrorist networks. Helfstein has examined six key al-Qaida plots using network analysis tools to find out why certain individuals come to play central roles in attack networks, and how attack networks change over time. He showed that people’s centrality was a function of personal attributes (skills, education) and their function in the network (weapons acquisition etc). Helfstein is one of a small but growing number of American political scientists who are applying formal methods to the theoretically starved field of terrorism studies with very interesting results (other scholars include CTC-affiliated Princeton professor Jake Shapiro).

Bill Braniff, also from CTC, presented a very interesting model for thinking about al-Qaida’s future strategic evolution. He identified five scenarios: 1) persistence (no-change), 2) horizontal escalation (concerted geographic spread), 3) vertical escalation (dedicated prioritization of mega-terrorism), 4) pursuit of loose affiliations (extending resources to Islamist groups without extending their brand-name or demanding strict adherence to their ideology), and 5) the diversification of core activities (conducting activities such as governance, da’wa, and social service provision under the al-Qa’ida banner in a addition to waging jihad).

FFI’s Petter Nesser then talked about the ideological evolution of jihadi community in Europe. He showed how the ideological and strategic dilemmas facing jihadis in the diaspora differ from those faced by militants in the Muslim world. He also argued that jihadism in Europe has undergone three distinct phases of ideological evolution. A first phase (mid- or late 1990s), different local and internationalist jihadi trends co-existed in relative harmony. In the second phase (late 1990s-2003), Europe’s jihadis were torn between “classical” and “global jihadism”. The third phase, triggered by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, saw the emergence of a new generation that increasingly adopted al-Qaida’s global jihadi identity.

The fifth panel included two Maghreb-focused papers and one on suicide bombings. Jean-Pierre Filiu analysed the formation and evolution of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and asked: how Maghribi is AQIM? Not very, he argued, because AQIM has essentially become an Algerian outfit with a a Saharan branch. This was despite a considerable potential for cooperation between the Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian and Libyan jihadi communities, and despite the fact that the non-Algerian groups have historically been more integrated into al-Qaida.

Hanna Rogan presented very interesting quantitative study of AQIM’s attack patterns (see her Sentinel piece for details). She notably showed that the frequency and geographical reach of AQIM’s attacks had decreased markedly in 2008 after a spike in 2007. This suggests to me that the initial momentum gained from GSPC’s late 2006 alliance with al-Qaida is wearing off.

The third paper was presented by yours truly and looked at patterns of suicide bombings and jihadi ideologies. I argued that jihadi groups whose primary enemy is non-Muslim (irredentist or pan-Islamist groups) use suicide bombings much more frequently than groups whose primary enemy is Muslim (revolutionary or moral vigilante groups). There are in fact extremely few cases of suicide attacks by revolutionary groups (GIA, GSPC, EIJ, GI etc), despite their being jihadi salafi and very violent. To me, this shows that Robert Pape is less wrong than most terrorism/Islamism scholars think. I don’t believe literal occupation causes suicide bombings, but I think there exists a mechanism whereby people fight harder when they are confronting outsiders. The paper predictably generated a very heated debate.

The sixth panel focused on the Gulf and began with a presentation by Stephane Lacroix on apolitical Salafism (sometimes referred to as pietist salafism or Madkhalism) and its potential role as a counterweight to jihadism. Saudi Arabia and other countries (especially Jordan, Libya and Algeria) are promoting it as such, so this is a question with deep policy implications. Lacroix highlighted a crucial dilemma: On the one hand, apolitical salafis fiercely oppose global jihadism and preach absolute loyalty to governments. (Lacroix notably argued that the absence of terrorist attacks in France in recent years is partly due to the strength of apolitical salafism in France). On the other hand, apolitical salafis are socially extremely conservative and sectarian, and tend to isolate themselves from society around them. Politics is indeed not the only way to militancy; extreme puritanism or apocalypticism may also produce violence, as illustrated by the 1979 Mecca siege.

The second paper, by Sciences Po PhD candidate Asiem El Difraoui, offered an excellent analysis of al-Qaida’s propaganda dilemmas in Saudi Arabia. El Difraoui, a leading expert on jihadi visual media, argued that al-Qaida in the Kingdom had failed to mobilise Saudis for global jihad, in large part because the Saudi state itself had considerable “jihadi legitimacy” as a former supporter of jihad in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In the last paper Norwegian Sciences Po PhD candidate Audun Wiig spoke about Jundullah, the Sunni militant group active in the south of Iran. This was in my view the best presentation of the entire conference. Jundullah is very poorly known, but Wiig has dug up a wealth of new information from Baluch blogs and regional media (though not from fieldwork, which remains impossible in Iranian Baluchistan). The discussion was even more fascinating, with Mariam Abou Zahab contributing insights on Baluch nationalism on the Pakistani side of the border.

In the final discussion the “bosses” reconvened to discuss approaches to the study of jihadi movements. There was some disagreement on the need to contextualise terrorist groups and on what “contextualization” means. This no doubt reflected differences in the purpose and focus of the three institutions; Kepel, representing a general Middle East Studies community, argued for breadth, while Sawyer, representing a more specialised institution, emphasised depth. Lia, also coming from a specialised community, leant toward the latter position, on the basis that jihadi groups are often small and not always representative of broad societal trends. However there was agreement on the value of area knowledge and primary sources, elements that have long been somewhat lacking in the terrorism literature.

I should mention that all the papers will be published in an FFI report later this spring. I will keep you posted.

The weekend before last I had the pleasure of attending a fascinating workshop in Oslo that brought together scholars from Sciences-Po Paris, West Point and FFI, three of the world’s largest centres for academic research on jihadism. Since all participants are involved in cutting-edge research, it was a great opportunity to assess the state of both the jihadi movement and the field of jihadism studies. I guess the conclusion was that we are both doing pretty well, although the future looks somewhat bleaker for the jihadis.

The opening panel featured the three “bosses” Gilles Kepel, Reid Sawyer and Brynjar Lia. Kepel, drawing on his latest book, spoke about the exhaustion of the two competing grand narratives in the conflict between the US and al-Qaida, namely the “War on terror” narrative and the “Jihad and martyrdom narrative”. Kepel argued al-Qaida’s narrative had lost much of its capacity of attraction and that the more pragmatic resistance movements such as Hamas now offered a strong alternative model to al-Qaida. He aso contended that decentralization had weakened al-Qaida and that Abu Musab al-Suri’s doctrines had been a recipe for disaster. CTC director Reid Sawyer presented an analytical framework developed by the CTC for assessing the state of al-Qaida (see the related Sentinel article). It identifies five dimensions of al-Qaida’s power, namely the power to destroy, humiliate, inspire, command, and unify. Sawyer argued that al-Qaida’s power was reduced in several of these dimensions, especially in the power to humiliate, but not in the power to inspire. Interestingly, Sawyer and Kepel offered different assessments of the impact of jihadi recantations; Kepel argued Dr. Fadl’s critique had been devastating, while Sawyer saw the latter’s impact as questionable. Brynjar Lia, drawing on an earlier paper, reflected on the reasons for al-Qaida’s continued appeal. Key to al-Qaida’s success, he argued, was the simplicity of its pan-Islamist message – he thus differed somewhat from Sawyer, who emphasized the sophisticated and complicated nature of al-Qaida’s information strategy.

The second panel focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan and opened with a fascinating paper by Mariam Abou Zahab on sectarianism in the NWFP and the tribal areas. I had always associated sectarianism primarily with the Punjab, but Abou Zahab showed it is increasingly destabilising the Northwest. By the way Mariam is speaking on the same topic at a Jamestown conference in DC on 15 April in case you want to hear more. CTC’s Vahid Brown spoke about his new research project on the history of the Arab camp infrastructure in Afghanistan, a topic close to my heart. He explained how camps filled a triple function in AQ’s pre 9/11 strategy: globalization (of operational reach), aggregation (of jihadi groups) and mobilization (of new activists). After 9/11, AQ abandoned the camp-based strategy in favour of a media strategy (as previously argued here). Brown made the counterintuitive argument that AQ had become more centralised after 9/11, because it had never actually exercised strict control of the camps and its post 9/11 media strategy was much more coordinated than before. FFI’s Anne Stenersen presented a very interesting study of the foreign fighters in post 9/11 “AfPak” based on martyrdom biographies. Of the people in her sample, none were from the West, 70% were already in Afghanistan on 9/11, and most were involved in conventional guerrilla warfare (only 11% had participated in suicide attacks). She argued there had been relatively little new recruitment and that there were not many fighters left today.

In the third panel there were several great papers on the Levant and Iraq, including one by Truls Tønnessen on the early history of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Focusing on the now defunct group “al-Jama`a al-Salafiyya al-Mujahida fi al-Iraq” (see also here), he explained how Sunni religious clerics and pre-invasion salafi networks were crucial to the early mobilisation. He also showed how nearly all the smaller groups from 2003 gradually coalesced into larger organisations, usually along ideological lines.

To be continued.

Jihadica is quiet these days, mainly because all our contributors are busy preparing for an interesting workshop that takes place in Oslo later this week. Academics from FFI, Sciences-Po Paris and West Point will gather to discuss their latest research on militant Islamism. There will undoubtedly be fascinating discussions and I hope to bring you some of the highlights here on Jihadica next week.

The jihadi forum debates over Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s alleged turn to moderation have not ended since our last report. On the contrary, the forum Midad al-Suyuf (MS) has escalated its campaign against al-Maqdisi and his supporters. The latest of these defenders is the London-based Saudi Islamist Muhammad al-Mas’ari. At the current time of writing, as many as eight of the twelve headline stories on MS are devoted to al-Maqdisi. Interestingly, other forums carry very little of this material, presumably because administrators want to play down the debate. In fact, a message on the Faloja forum this week urged readers to not even mention Midad al-Suyuf at all. (By the way, Faloja has been down since yesterday afternoon).

The controversy is now playing out on prime time television. Al-Arabiya is devoting this evening’s program Sana’at al-Mawt, its weekly documentary series on jihadism, to al-Maqdisi and his critics.

News about the upcoming program has al-Maqdisi himself furious. He came out live on Paltalk last night and gave a six-minute speech denouncing the forthcoming program and rejecting the existence of a split between him and followers of Zarqawi. Speaking from Zarqa, where he is in house arrest, al-Maqdisi insisted he has not changed his views. He also criticised those who agreed to be interviewed for the program, saying it is forbidden to speak to journalists working to undermine the mujahidin. This is not the first time al-Maqdisi speaks on Paltalk – last time was on 4 December as far as I know - but he does not usually issue audio statements, so this is a fairly desperate preemptive act of damage control on his part.

A side note for the islamologically inclined: Maqdisi provided a partial answer to Greg’s query over at Waq al-Waq yesterday about the origin of the term al-ruwaybidha.  Al-Maqdisi used it to denounce the producers of Sana’at al-Mawt, and he cited the hadith which is likely the origin of the term:

“[there will be a time when] People will believe a liar, and disbelieve one who tells the truth. People will distrust one who is trustworthy, and trust one who is treacherous; and the ruwaybidha will have a say.” Someone asked: “Who are they?” He said: “Those who rebel against Allah and will have a say in general affairs.”

A quick internet search produced the following alternative translations for the final phrase: “The Insignificant/silly/ignorant person speaking in general affairs” or “The moron speaking on matters of the general public.”

I didn’t know they had bloggers at the time of the Prophet.

Document (Arabic): 02-25-09-midad-masari-on-maqdisi
Document (Arabic): 02-24-09-faloja-do-not-talk-about-madad-al-suyuf
Document (Arabic): 02-26-09-shouraa-maqdisi-paltalk-statement

Will has left the building and he has handed me the keys to what is an absolutely extraordinary edifice. Since Jihadica was launched last May, I have never ceased to be awestruck by the depth and scope of Will’s analysis. I am grateful for and truly humbled by the opportunity to temporarily run Jihadica in his absence.

I had promised myself I would never blog (for lack of time), but I just couldn’t sit back and watch Jihadica die. I thus had the audacity to ask Will if he wanted me to take over until he gets back, and he generously agreed. The only reason I think can pull it off is that I will be joined by my very able colleagues Brynjar Lia, Anne Stenersen, and Hanna Rogan, all of whom are intimately familiar with the jihadi Internet.

We are all blogging virgins, so please bear with us in the first few weeks while we figure out the technical stuff and find our natural pace and style. The posting frequency will decrease a little, and the focus of our coverage will differ somewhat from Will’s, but the overall editorial line will stay true to the spirit of Jihadica.