Islamic terrorism refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, which may be abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Islamic extremist Salafi jihadist terrorist group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999 and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters and a considerable Iraqi membership.
The Adnan Hajj photographs controversy involves digitally manipulated photographs taken by Adnan Hajj, a Lebanese freelance photographer based in the Middle East, who had worked for Reuters over a period of more than ten years. Hajj's photographs were presented as part of Reuters' news coverage of the 2006 Lebanon War, but Reuters has admitted that at least two were significantly altered before being published.
Jihadism is a neologism which is used in reference to "militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West" and "rooted in political Islam." Appearing earlier in the Pakistani and Indian media, Western journalists adopted the term in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks of 2001. Since then, it has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of jihad. It has also been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Arab Umayyad Caliphate and the Ottoman empire, who extensively campaigned against non-Muslim nations in the name of jihad.
The insurgency in the Maghreb refers to the Islamist insurgency in the Maghreb region of North Africa that followed on from the end of the Algerian Civil War in 2002 to the present day. The Algerian militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) allied itself with al-Qaeda to eventually become al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Algerian and other Maghreb governments fighting the militants have worked with the United States and the United Kingdom since 2007, when Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara began. While the 2011 Arab Spring affected support for the insurgency, it also presented military opportunities for the jihadists. In 2012, AQIM and Islamist allies captured the northern half of Mali, until being fought back less than a year later following a French-led foreign intervention, which was succeeded by the Sahel-wide Operation Barkhane. In Libya, the ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh was able to control some limited territory during the Second Libyan Civil War, amid allegations of local collaboration between the rival AQIM and ISIL.
Salafi jihadism or jihadist-Salafism is a transnational, hybrid religious-political ideology based on the Sunni sect of Islamism, seeking to establish a global caliphate, characterized by the advocacy for "physical" (military) jihadist and Salafist concepts of returning to what adherents believe to be the "true Islam". The ideological foundation of the movement was laid out by a series of prison-writings of the Egyptian Sunni Islamist theoretician Sayyid Qutb during the 1960s.
Colleen Renée LaRose, also known as Jihad Jane and Fatima LaRose, is an American citizen who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years for terrorism-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and providing material support to terrorists.
A "jihobbyist" is a term coined by Jarret Brachman that denotes a person who is not an active member of a violent jihadist organization such as Al-Qaeda or the Somali Al-Shabaab yet is receptive to jihad and radical Islam.
On June 5, 2010, in a covert American anti-terrorism operation named "Operation Arabian Knight", two American citizens Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos "Omar" Eduardo Almonte, New Jersey residents, were arrested at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The men were in the process of boarding booked, separate flights to Egypt. According to the affidavit filed in support of the federal criminal complaint, they planned to travel to Somalia to join Al-Shabab, an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group recruiting foreigners for its civil war. They intended to join them in killing American troops in Somalia, although few Americans are stationed there. The two men were charged with conspiring to kill, maim, and kidnap people outside the U.S.
Jahafil Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad fi Filastin is a Sunni Islamist Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai peninsula, and is the branch of al-Qaeda in Gaza. The establishment of the group was publicly announced on 6 November 2008, with communiqués vowing loyalty to al-Qaeda, after having "received the messages of Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri." Various forms of the "Tawhid al-Jihad" label have appeared in relation to developments in the Gaza Strip. The size of the group is not publicly known.
Al-Nusra Front or Jabhat al-Nusra, known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham after July 2016, and also described as al-Qaeda in Syria or al-Qaeda in the Levant, was a Salafist jihadist terrorist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War. Its aim was to establish an Islamic state in the country. The group has changed its name several times and merged with and separated from other groups.
The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa or the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, was a militant Islamist organisation that broke off from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb with the intended goal of spreading jihad across a larger section of West Africa, as well as demanding the expulsion of all French interests that operates in West Africa, which they regard as "colonialist occupiers".
Ansar Dine (Arabic: أنصار الدين ʾAnṣār ad-Dīn, also transliterated Ançar Deen; meaning "helpers of the religion" also known as Ansar al-Din was a Salafi jihadist group led by Iyad Ag Ghaly. Ansar Dine sought to impose absolute sharia as across Mali. The group took over the city of Timbuktu in 2012, which prompted the French-led intervention, Operation Serval.
The Mali War is an ongoing armed conflict that started in January 2012 between the northern and southern parts of Mali in Africa. On 16 January 2012, several insurgent groups began fighting a campaign against the Malian government for independence or greater autonomy for northern Mali, which they called Azawad. The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), an organization fighting to make this area of Mali an independent homeland for the Tuareg people, had taken control of the region by April 2012.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, also known as The One-Eyed, Nelson, and The Uncatchable, is an Algerian leader of the group Al-Murabitoun, former military commander of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, smuggler and weapons dealer. He was twice convicted and sentenced to death in absentia under separate charges in Algerian courts: in 2007 for terrorism and in 2008 for murder. In 2004, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Algeria for terrorist activities.
The Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa, better known as Ansaru and less commonly called al-Qaeda in the Lands Beyond the Sahel, is an Islamic fundamentalist Jihadist militant organisation based in the northeast of Nigeria. It originated as a faction of Boko Haram, but became officially independent in 2012. Despite this, Ansaru and other Boko Haram factions continued to work closely together until the former increasingly declined, and stopped its insurgent activities in 2015. Since then, Ansaru is mostly dormant though its members continue to spread propaganda for their cause.
The following is a timeline of major events during the Northern Mali conflict.
Jihad Cool is a term used by American security experts concerning the re-branding of militant jihadism into something fashionable, or "cool", to younger people through social media, magazines, rap videos, clothing, propaganda videos, and other means.
Islamic terrorism in Europe has been carried out by the Islamic State (ISIL) or Al-Qaeda as well as Islamist lone wolves since the late 20th century. Europol, which releases the annual EU Terrorism Situation and Trend report (TE-SAT), used the term "Islamist terrorism" in the years 2006–2010, "religiously inspired terrorism" 2011–2014, and has used "jihadist terrorism" since 2015. Europol defines jihadism as "a violent ideology exploiting traditional Islamic concepts".
Islamist insurgency in the Sahel or Jihadist Insurgencies in the Sahel refers to the Islamist insurgency in the Sahel region of West Africa following the 2011 Arab Spring to the present day. In particular, the intensive conflict in the three countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso has been referred to as the Sahel War.
