Raymond Ibrahim | |
---|---|
Born | 1973 (age 51–52) United States |
Alma mater | California State University, Fresno (MA) |
Occupation(s) | Writer, author, translator, columnist |
Website | raymondibrahim |
Raymond Ibrahim (born 1973) is an American author, translator, columnist, critic of Islam, and a former librarian. His focus is Arabic history and language, and current events. [1] [2] [3]
Ibrahim was born in the United States to Coptic immigrants from Egypt. [4] He is fluent in Arabic and English. Ibrahim studied at California State University, Fresno, where he wrote a master's thesis under Victor Davis Hanson on an early military encounter between Islam and Byzantium based on medieval Arabic and Greek texts. Ibrahim also took graduate courses at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and studied toward a PhD in medieval Islamic history at Catholic University. [5]
Ibrahim was previously an Arabic language specialist for the Near East section of the Library of Congress, [6] and the associate director of the Middle East Forum. As of 2023 [update] , he is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, an American conservative think tank. [7] He has been described as a part of the counter-jihad movement. [8]
Ibrahim is the editor and translator of The Al Qaeda Reader, which he published after discovering a hitherto unknown Arabic al-Qaeda document; Ibrahim believes the document "proves once and for all that, despite the propaganda of al-Qaeda and its sympathizers, radical Islam's war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances — real or imagined — but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith". [4]
Ibrahim has appeared on and been interviewed by Al Jazeera, MSNBC, C-SPAN, NPR, and Reuters, and "regularly lectures, briefs governmental agencies, provides expert testimony for Islam-related lawsuits, and testifies before Congress." [7]
An article Ibrahim wrote on taqiyya, which was commissioned and published by Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst on September 26, 2008, [9] [10] was later characterized by another author in Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst as being "well-researched, factual in places but ... ultimately misleading". [11] Ibrahim responded to this charge in his rebuttal, "Taqiyya Revisited: A Response to the Critics. [12]
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 U.S. and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, and the September 11 attacks.
Osama bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian–born Islamist dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan Jihad against the Soviet Union, and supported the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. Opposed to the United States' foreign policy in the Middle East, Bin Laden declared war on the U.S. in 1996 and advocated attacks targeting US assets in various cuntries, and supervised the execution of September 11 attacks inside the U.S. in 2001.
There were many video and audio recordings released by Osama bin Laden between 2000 and his death in 2011.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri was an Egyptian-born pan-Islamist militant and physician who served as the second general emir of al-Qaeda from June 2011 until his death in July 2022. He is best known for being one of the main orchestrators of the September 11 attacks.
In Islam, Taqiyya is the practice of dissimulation and secrecy of religious belief and practice, primarily in Shia Islam.
Islamic terrorism refers to terrorist acts carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Michael F. Scheuer, is an American former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, blogger, author, commentator and former adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. One assignment during his 22-year career was serving as Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999. He also served as Special Advisor to the Chief of Alec Station from September 2001 to November 2004.
Abu Musab al-Suri, born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, is a suspected Al-Qaeda member and writer best known for his 1,600-page book The Global Islamic Resistance Call. He is considered by many as 'the most articulate exponent of the modern jihad and its most sophisticated strategist'.
Osama bin Laden authored two fatāwā in the late 1990s. The first was published in August 1996 and the second in February 1998. At the time, bin Laden was not a wanted man in any country except his native Saudi Arabia, and was not yet known as the leader of the international jihadist organization al-Qaeda. These fatāwā received relatively little attention until after the August 1998 United States embassy bombings, for which bin Laden was indicted. The indictment mentions the first fatwā, and claims that Khalid al-Fawwaz, of bin Laden's Advice and Reformation Committee in London, participated in its communication to the press.
This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al-Bahlul is a Yemeni citizen who has been held as an enemy combatant since 2002 in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He boycotted the Guantanamo Military Commissions, arguing that there was no legal basis for the military tribunals to judge him.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is an author and the founder and chief executive officer of Valens Global. In addition to his role at Valens Global, Gartenstein-Ross is a Senior Advisor on Asymmetric Warfare at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. An internationally-recognized expert on political violence, his work primarily focuses on the development of strategic plans, execution of analytic projects, and instruction at the professional and academic levels. In 2011, Gartenstein-Ross wrote Bin Laden's Legacy: Why We're Still Losing the War on Terror.
Bruce O. Riedel is an American expert on U.S. security, the Middle East, South Asia, and counter-terrorism. He is currently a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and an instructor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.
Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, kunya Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar and poet previously associated with al-Qaeda. A veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, he served on al-Qaeda's Shura Council and ran a religious school called the Institute of Islamic Studies in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from the late 1990s until the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Jaljalat is an armed Sunni Islamist group operating in the Gaza Strip taking inspiration from al-Qaeda. In September 2009, the organization revealed it had attempted to assassinate former US president Jimmy Carter and Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair.
The September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers of the Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden declared a militant jihad against the United States, and issued two fatawa in 1996 and 1998. In the 1996 fatwa, he quoted the Sword Verse. In both of these fatawa, bin Laden sharply criticized the financial contributions of the American government to the Saudi royal family as well as American military intervention in the Arab world.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is an American writer and political analyst focused on the Middle East. He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing primarily on the Middle East, Islamic militancy, counterterrorism, and intelligence. He is a former director of the Project for the New American Century's Middle East Initiative and a former resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Earlier in his career Gerecht was a case officer at the CIA, primarily working on Middle Eastern targets.
An End to al-Qaeda: Destroying Bin Laden's Jihad and Restoring America's Honor is a non-fiction book about counterterrorism strategies towards al-Qaeda, written by U.S. Navy retired cryptology analyst Malcolm Nance. The book describes how the September 11 attacks changed the traditional Muslim community around the globe. Nance criticizes the approach of the George W. Bush administration, including the verbiage and public presentations used in the War on Terror. The author argues al-Qaeda is not part of Islam but is instead a dangerous religious cult. Nance writes the United States should commit to better education with a public relations campaign to encourage traditional believers in Islam around the world to denounce al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Two Niles, abbreviated as AQTN, was a lesser-known regional offshoot of the broader al-Qaeda network, operating primarily in Sudan and neighbouring areas. Its origins can be traced back to the early 1990s when Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, resided in Sudan. During his stay, bin Laden formed alliances with local Islamist factions and established training camps, laying the groundwork for a lasting militant presence in the region. Although bin Laden left Sudan in 1996, these early ties helped foster the development of AQTN.