I’d like to draw our readers’ attention to several interesting new academic publications have come out in the past few weeks: Nelly Lahoud – In Search of Philosopher-Jihadis: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Jihadi Philosophy A Aaron Weisburd – Comparison of Visual Motifs in Jihadi and Cholo Videos on YouTube Stig Jarle Hansen and Atle Mesøy – [...]
Archive for the ‘Western Analysts’ Category
I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that I will have to stop blogging for a while, due to a combination of personal and professional reasons. From the end of this month till some time next spring, I will be posting very infrequently, although I will be [...]
New Articles on al-Maqdisi and Bin Nayif
Posted: 6th September 2009 by Thomas Hegghammer in Western AnalystsJust a quick note to say that there is a new article on the idelogy of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi in the latest issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. The author is of course Joas Wagemakers, the world’s leading Maqdisi expert and an occasional Jihadica commentator. While I am at it, I should [...]
Conference season has begun, and there is an unusually high number of jihad-related academic meetings taking place this autumn. To give you an idea of what people in our field are working on at the moment, I figured I should give you an overview of the main ones that have come to my attention. 3-6 [...]
New Study of Jihadi WMD Chatter
Posted: 30th June 2009 by Thomas Hegghammer in Western Analysts, WMDThe Jihadi Websites Monitoring Group at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzlia, Israel, has produced a very interesting report about WMD discussions on jihadi internet forums (hat tip: Nawaf). I am not surprised that this original work is coming out of Herzlia, for it was Reuven Paz – the pioneer of online jihadism studies [...]
The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence led by the indefatigable Peter Neumann at King’s College London has launched a new blog called FREErad!cals. It has a very impressive team of contributors consisting of leading scholars and experienced bloggers, including Neumann himself, Ubiwar blogger Tim Stevens, deradicalisation specialist Omar Ashour, Lashar-e-Tayyiba [...]
New FFI Report and Conference Papers
Posted: 11th June 2009 by Thomas Hegghammer in Western AnalystsI would like to draw your attention to some new FFI publications. Most important is the new report by Einar Wigen on the Waziristan-based Uzbek group Islamic Jihad Union. Einar has trawled Turkish-language jihadi websites to produce this very impressive piece of work which is arguably the best available analysis of the history of the [...]
Weekend Reading: “The Second Foreign Fighter Glut”
Posted: 29th May 2009 by Scott Sanford in propaganda, Recruitment, Strategy, terrorism, Western AnalystsLongtime Jihadica friend Clint Watts recently published an article at the Small Wars Journal titled, “Countering Terrorism from the Second Foreign Fighter Glut.” This article is the third in a series he has authored using data from the Sinjar records (Part 1 and Part 2 of the series). He concluded, “The key to success for [...]
Jihadists Study Jihadi Studies
Posted: 29th April 2009 by Thomas Hegghammer in propaganda, Strategy, Western Analysts, Western booksAt the risk of seeming omphaloskeptic, I will add a few more observations about jihadists citing western scholars, because this phenomenon taking larger proportions than I expected. Since my last post on the subject, both the Militant Ideology Atlas and the RAND study mentioned by al-Maqdisi have been posted on al-Maqdisi’s own website, Minbar al-Tawhid [...]
Last week David Solway at Frontpage Magazine published an entertaining article ridiculing people who try to “understand” jihadism and its “roots” (his quotation marks). These people are like the cartoon characters shmoos (see also here), because, like the shmoos, they “recognize no threats, treat everyone as a friend and, even as they are about to [...]