Al-Qaeda is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate. Its membership is mostly composed of Arabs, but also includes people from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian, economic and military targets of the US and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing and the September 11 attacks. The organization is designated as a terrorist group by NATO, the UN Security Council, the European Union, and various countries around the world.
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Mohammed Jamal Khalifa (1 February 1957 – 31 January 2007) was a Saudi businessman from Jeddah who married one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. He has been accused of funding terror plots and groups in the Philippines in the 1990s while head of the International Islamic Relief Organization branch there. He was murdered in Madagascar in 2007.
Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation (AHIF) was a charity foundation, based in Saudi Arabia. Under various names it had branches in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Comoros, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Tanzania, and the United States, and "at its height" raised between $40 and $50 million a year in contributions worldwide. While most of the foundation's funds went to feed poor Muslims around the world, a small percentage went to Al-Qaeda, and that money was "a major source of funds" for the terrorist group. In 2003, Saudi authorities ordered Al-Haramain to shut down all overseas branches, and by 2004 Saudi authorities had dissolved Al-Haramain. However, US intelligence officials believed it had reopened branches under new names.
Islamic terrorism refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
The Maktab al-Khidamat, also Maktab Khadamāt al-Mujāhidīn al-'Arab, also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, was founded in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam, Wa'el Hamza Julaidan, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to raise funds and recruit foreign mujahideen for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. MAK became the forerunner to al-Qaeda and was instrumental in creating the fundraising and recruitment network that benefited Al-Qaeda during the 1990s.
Rachel Ehrenfeld is an American political commentator on terrorism and corruption-related topics, and serves as director of a conservative think tank, the American Center for Democracy, and its Economic Warfare Institute.
International Organization for Relief, Welfare and Development, formerly known as the International Islamic Relief Organization or International Islamic Relief Organization of Saudi Arabia (IIROSA), is a charity based in Saudi Arabia founded by the Muslim World League in 1978. It is a full member of The Conference of NGOs, where it serves on the board. The IIRO is included in a list of some of the UNHCR's major NGO partners and has been involved in many joint programmes with UN Agencies and intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. It has enjoyed consultative status on the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 1995. It was the first Islamic NGO to gain observer status with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). It used also to be a member of the International Humanitarian City based in Dubai, UAE.
The Global Relief Foundation (GRF), also known as Foundation Secours Mondial (FSML), was an Islamic charity based in Bridgeview, Illinois, until it was raided and shut down on December 14, 2001, and listed among the "Designated Charities and Potential Fundraising Front Organizations for Foreign Terrorist Organizations" ("DCPFFOFTO") by the United States Treasury Department in 2002. According to the US Treasury, "The Global Relief Foundation (GRF) … and its officers and directors have connections to, and have provided support for and assistance to, Osama bin Laden (OBL), al Qaeda (aQ), and other known terrorist groups (OKTG)." It was one of the few organizations registered with the Taliban.
Jihadism is a neologism for militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West. It is a form of religious violence and has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of lesser jihad from the classical interpretation of Islam. It has also been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates of the early Muslim conquests, and the Ottoman Empire, who extensively campaigned against non-Muslim nations in the name of jihad.
Libel tourism is a term, first coined by Geoffrey Robertson, to describe forum shopping for libel suits. It particularly refers to the practice of pursuing a case in England and Wales, in preference to other jurisdictions, such as the United States, which provide more extensive defenses for those accused of making derogatory statements.
Islamic extremism, Islamist extremism or radical Islam refers a set of extremist beliefs, behaviors and ideology within Islam. These terms remain contentious, encompassing a spectrum of definitions, ranging from academic interpretations to the notion that all ideologies other than Islam have failed and are inferior. Furthermore, these terms may extend to encompass other sects of Islam that do not share such extremist views.
Khalid bin Mahfouz was a Saudi Arabian billionaire, banker, businessman, investor and former chairman of the National Commercial Bank (NCB). Khalid is the son of Salem Bin Mahfouz, a Saudi entrepreneur who rose from being a small-time moneychanger to becoming the founder of the NCB, the first private Saudi bank.
Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It is a book written by counterterrorism researcher Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy and the Economic Warfare Institute. It was published by Bonus Books of Los Angeles, California in August 2003.
Yassin Abdullah Kadi is a Saudi Arabian businessman. A multi-millionaire from Jeddah, Kadi trained as an architect in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son-in-law of Sheikh Ahmed Salah Jamjoom, a former Saudi Arabian government minister with close ties to the Saudi royal family.
The Libel Tourist is a short-form documentary film about how the advantageous litigative environments that exist in certain jurisdictions are used by powerful individuals to suppress unfavorable information about them by bringing forth unjustified libel suits against writers and publishers. The seeking out of such favorable environments, most notably the courts of England and Wales, has been dubbed libel tourism.
Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, Salafism and Wahhabism — along with other Sunni interpretations of Islam favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies — achieved a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam."
The Muwaqaf Foundation was a Saudi charity that operated internationally during the 1990s. Its leadership and activities have been tied to terrorist activity.
Robert Oakley Collins was an American historian of East Africa and Sudan. He published numerous articles and thirty-five books, including Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, which was awarded the John Ben Snow Foundation prize for the best book in British History and the Social Sciences written by a North American. He worked as an adviser for Southern Sudan's High Executive Council (HEC) Regional Government in the early 1970s, Chevron Overseas Petroleum in 1981 to 1991, and the US Government. Collins authored many background papers on Sudan and the Middle East aimed at policymakers and, in 1981, he testified before the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In 1980 he was awarded the Order of Sciences, Arts and Art, Gold Class, by Gaafar Nimeiry, the President of Sudan, for his long service to scholarship on the Upper Nile.
The Aid Organization of the Ulema (AOU), formerly known as the Al Rashid Trust is an NGO based in Pakistan. Beginning in 1996, it supported "charity and welfare projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan" while also providing "financial and legal support to Muslim militants around the world." According to the United States Department of the Treasury, it began raising funds for the Taliban in 1999. It was established by Islamic scholar and jurist Rashid Ahmed Ludhianvi.
