Reputed Jema’ah Islamiya leader Abu Bakr Ba’asyir told the Jamestown Foundation in 2005 that “the highest deed in Islam is jihad” (see Spotlight on Terror, December 16, 2005). After being arrested in August 2010, the Indonesian cleric is now on trial, facing charges under Indonesia’s... MORE

As the surge of revolutionary fervor that has taken the greater Middle East by storm continues to spread, many observers are grappling with the political uncertainties that the tumult has produced from Morocco to the Persian Gulf and beyond.  The popular uprisings that prompted the... MORE

The demonstrations occurring in several countries in the Middle East are now also taking place in Iraq. The violence and public protests that erupted in Kirkuk province and elsewhere in Iraq on February 25 have the dangerous potential to escalate into a civil war between... MORE

Although Pakistani Taliban militants have killed hundreds of people accused of spying for the United States or Pakistan’s intelligence agencies over the past few years in the lawless tribal areas of North and South Waziristan, the incidents of such execution are on rise since the... MORE

Forces loyal to embattled Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi have battled for days to take the coastal city of Misrata. Qaddafi’s efforts to take Misrata shed light on the little known role of Circassians in Libya, descendants of the Muslim tribes of the northwest Caucasus region... MORE

Following the departure of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on February 11 and the collapse of his regime, new faces and conflicts have appeared within the ranks of Egypt’s Islamist movement, including the Muslim Brotherhood.As with the larger Egyptian revolution, internal dissent first appeared on Facebook... MORE

Executive Summary:The future of Yemen is inextricably linked to the stability and security of Saudi Arabia.  With key figures in Yemen defecting to the opposition – including the ambassador to Saudi Arabia – and violence between the Saleh regime and anti-government forces escalating, Saudi Arabia... MORE

Since its creation in 2008, the Uyghur-based Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has vowed to carry out jihad against the Chinese occupiers of Xinjiang, the massive western province of China that is known to its Muslim inhabitants as East Turkistan. While evidence of actual operations in... MORE

There are currently two arguments about what the recent uprisings across the Middle East mean for al-Qaeda.  The optimists argue that non-violent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have stripped al-Qaeda’s narrative of its power. The pessimists counter that al-Qaeda is far from finished and will... MORE

Since the 1998 al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and the 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned hotel and Israeli airliner in Mombasa, Kenya has considered Somalia a key security threat. To combat this threat, Kenya has tightened its border with Somalia and engaged... MORE