Insight & Analysis

The October 7 War of 2023 marked a pivotal moment in modern history. Its impact, although premature to fully predict — is certainly an inflection point in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The importance of stricter controls on tech giants has never been more imperative following this conflict.

The October 2023 War — a turbulent period in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — has significantly escalated hate speech across the globe, encompassing stark instances of both antisemitic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric. This disturbing trend poses severe implications for Arab, Muslim, and Jewish communities and catalyzes the rise of far-right movements across the world.

Far-right politicians and conservative Christian leaders often join forces, endorsing each other’s campaigns and advocating for policies that align with their shared agenda. This collaboration helps consolidate their collective political power and amplify their influence, as seen at the recent CPAC conference in Hungary.

Since the 9/11 attacks, Islamophobia has become a global phenomenon, fueled in part by the rise of Islamist extremist organisations, particularly al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Daesh and their violent attacks around the world. In today’s world, the emergence of Islamophobia in Europe is closely intertwined with the increasing prevalence of nationalist ideologies across many European countries, particularly France, Denmark, and Austria.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin commenced the “Special Military Operation” in February 2022, he called for the complete “demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine.” The latter reference regarded hardline right-wing elements in the Ukrainian government and armed forces such as Azov Regiment, Right Sector, and Freikorps. However, many were quick to point out that Russia’s own military and aligned irregular forces likewise contain radical.

The time has come for the far-right to be confronted, challenged and countered on the global stage, where it continues to rise in popularity – ushering in far-right governments, challenging democratic governance, and attempting coups against the governments of established Western democracies. Like Islamist extremism, far-right extremism poses one of the most serious threats to society today.

The Daesh movement is truly a global one with branches on multiple continents waging insurgencies from Mali to Syria, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. These militant forces are part of and supported by a worldwide constellation of official and pro-Daesh media outlets as well as individual grassroots sympathisers who help shape, amplify, and disseminate narratives to support the greater cause.

International media has levelled criticism at Qatar for hosting the 2022 World Cup for various reasons, none of which, however, include the attendance of Islamist hate preachers – a topic that has recently come to light following confirmed reports that Zakir Naik, an Indian Islamist hate preacher will be attending the international sporting tournament to give religious sermons and lectures.

When the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Iraq and Syria was at its peak in 2014, the then leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared it a caliphate ruled under shariah law. This was accompanied by a call for all Muslims to join in the endeavour of nation-state building based on their version of classical Islam. As a result of this call, approximately 5,000 European citizens travelled to Syria to join the group.

Sweden is witnessing major political changes, with the centre-left bloc losing its majority and a new right-liberal bloc, with the support of the populist Sweden Democrats party now in government. For the first time, the Sweden Democrats became the second-biggest party in Sweden. Meanwhile, the Nyans party (Nuance party), a party with Islamist ties, has gained a few seats in Swedish municipalities. Both these trends are rather new to Sweden.

On June 18, the Daesh Khurasan Province (Daesh-KP) conducted an attack on a Sikh gurdwara in Kabul that killed two people. In the wake of the operation, the Daesh official Amaq News Agency claimed the attack against the “temples for Hindu and Sikh polytheists”, declaring it was launched in direct retaliation for blasphemous comments made about the Prophet Muhammad by a spokesman of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The self-styled caliphate attracted would-be female jihadists by outlining various strategic positions that women jihadists may hold, whether in Daesh-controlled territories or in their home countries. The roles included serving as internet recruiters, propagandists, wives of jihadists, and attackers. Through these roles, Daesh was able to develop a network of female jihadists who are driven by emancipation and ready to assist the group’s long-term objectives.

Abu Muhammad al-Adnani sits high on Daesh’s pantheon of legendary jihadi leadership figures credited with playing a prominent role in the establishment of the caliphate, the movement’s historical development, and its broader global expansion. Al-Adnani built an extraordinary and diverse militant pedigree in Syria and Iraq — emerging as a fiery and highly bellicose propagandist excelling at inciting violence, directing operations, and recruiting supporters.

The U.S. strike that targeted Al-Qaeda (AQ) leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in the Shirpur area in Kabul on July 31 put an end to a twenty-year-old hunt. According to the White House, some Taliban leaders were aware of his presence in the city, specifically Sirajuddin Haqqani, as Zawahiri who had a $25 million bounty on his head, was allegedly living in one of his guest houses. Immediately after the strike, on August 2, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA).

The role of religion has been analysed in numerous academic studies, reports, and news articles concerning how religion and extremist misinterpretations of Holy scriptures have played a significant role in radicalising vulnerable Muslims and mobilising them to carry out terrorist attacks. However, what has rarely been discussed is how a small number of Christians misconstrue the Gospel to radical nationalists and right-wing extremists, particularly in the United States.

The European jihadist landscape has undergone significant changes since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011, and the subsequent rise of Daesh in Iraq and Syria. The so-called Arab Spring, particularly in Syria, has paved the way for jihadist organisations to mobilise and establish roots in some Western countries that remain on the periphery of the broader European jihadist landscape such as Finland.

Since the beginnings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the interwar years, the modern political phenomenon that is political Islam has shown a remarkable ability of evolution and adaptation. This ability made the ideological movement and its offshoots one of the few political movements to survive and maintain a consistent ideological appeal throughout a century unprecedented in its pace of social, economic, and political changes.

Kanhaiya Lal Teli, a Hindu from the lakeside city of Udaipur, was hacked to death two days ago by two Islamist extremists. The 40-year-old tailor was alleged to have shown support for the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, Nupur Sharmar, after she had criticised the Prophet Muhammad on a TV talk show.

In the era of technology and social media, extremist individuals and organisations have consistently relied on anonymous cloud-based instant messaging services such as Telegram, Discord and 4Chan to spread their ideologies, recruit and even tactically plan violent operations. These relatively obscure applications have increased in popularity amongst extremist networks as tech giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube crack down on hate preachers.

Over the past decades, various forms of extremism have been manifested in Germany, ranging from extreme Islamism to far-right and neo-nazism. According to the Federation of American Scientists, “since September 11, 2001, more German citizens have died as victims of Islamist terrorist attacks.

QAnon is a conspiracy theory that first surfaced in 2017 on the fringes of the online world. Subsequently, it has attracted millions of followers worldwide and became a political movement, with some of its followers having been involved in violent attacks, prompting the FBI to declare it a domestic terrorist threat in 2019.

In recent years, Western governments, academics, and pundits have debated the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence in the West in frequently contentious disputes. The earliest active Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the West can be traced back to the late 1950s and early 1960s.

India has recently seen a spike in sectarian tensions and civil disturbances brought about by a rise in Hindu nationalism, including mass killings, coordinated attacks, and vigilante attacks directed toward the country’s largest minority, the Muslim population.

Over the past decade, a lot of discussions have been brought to the table regarding the capabilities and risks of artificial intelligence (AI), but much of it has been focusing on AI’s ramifications in the global economy, its impact on careers and its vast potential as an emerging technology across multiple sectors.

For the past several decades, Islamist extremists, especially in the UK, have exploited charitable organisations for the purpose of supporting their radical preaching activities. The 9/11 attacks on the United States prompted an increase in efforts to address this issue.

In the past several months, international headlines have centred around the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, particularly how the war has upended the European geopolitical landscape, the global security architecture, energy security, refugees and great power competition amongst others.

Sweden is an exception in worldwide comparisons of far-right violence and militancy, having a significantly stronger and more resilient extreme-right movement than its Nordic neighbours. Explicitly, Sweden might be defined as the Nordic epicentre for the region's radical far-right movements.

The most crucial duty to maintain national security, according to the Norwegian Police Security Service (Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste - PST), would be “to prevent those with close ties to Norway from being involved in terrorist activities.”

It is unquestionable that the Internet has undergone dramatic changes over the last two decades, but the current cyber threat landscape has provoked considerable concerns amongst officials and policymakers.

As a result of 9/11, governments were forced to transform their security practices to meet the evolving threat posed by non-state actors. In the counterterrorism context, big data has caught the attention of numerous governments.

It can be said objectively that the U.S. needlessly surrendered Afghanistan to the jihadists, but the narrative of a Taliban victory over NATO is a powerful one and it has been hailed far and wide by Al-Qaeda-oriented militants.

A French journalist and a Muslim lawyer were recently placed under police protection for shooting a documentary shedding light on radical Islamist social practises in a small town in northern France on the border with Belgium.

With the rapid growth of Web 3.0 – a decentralised form of the Internet where people have complete control over their own data, more transparency, and far more content accessible to users – human communication will become far easier.

Over the past decade, illicit actors, including violent extremists and terrorists, have become increasingly adept at integrating virtual assets, such as cryptocurrencies, into their funding sources.

A broad scan of Al Qaeda’s (AQ) global footprint tells us that the group’s core activities today have become centred on holding and consolidating territory in various conflict zones around the world – a marked contrast to its international “jihadist” strategy that the organisation focused on in the early 2000s.

With approximately 2.7 billion gamers worldwide, video gaming platforms have proven to be an ideal and ever-expanding arena to recruit, finance, radicalise and spread extremist ideologies, particularly among younger people.

On Tuesday, December 28, French authorities ordered the closing of a mosque in Northern France for six months due to the radical preaching of the mosque’s Imam. This is not the first time French authorities have taken such measures against mosques in France.

There is plenty of literature available today behind the causes of online radicalism, and the descent of an individual down the path of becoming radicalised online through social media. As mobile phone and internet access becomes more widespread, so too does disinformation and hate speech.

As parts of Europe descend into another lockdown following a deadly fourth wave of COVID-19 infections, the far-right looks for further opportunities to exploit frustration at lockdowns to target governments and gain new recruits. The lockdowns across certain European countries allow for people to leave their homes.

The far-right Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) political party is set to stage a comeback following the lifting of a short-lived ban that saw the group outlawed and its leadership imprisoned for only seven months. In April 2021, TLP led major protests around Pakistan over the French government’s decision to republish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad following the beheading of a French schoolteacher Samuel Paty in October 2020.

In the past two decades, Danish authorities have identified Islamist extremism as a substantial and urgent threat to national security. Since the publication of the controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in 2005 and 2008, authorities have been particularly concerned about the threat posed by extremist militant Islamist organisations such as al-Qaeda and lone-wolf attacks.

EMAN’s stated mission and vision is to combat hate speech and radicalisation by exposing extremists of all creeds, religions and ideologies. On our website, people can find fascists from all the three major monotheistic faiths, in addition to a handful of Hindu nationalists and non-religious extremists and fascists -- primarily far-right, neo-fascist and White supremacist organisations.

إنَّ من أبرز أهداف شبكة إيمان هو تعزيز مبدأ الحوار المفتوح، القائم على الشفافية، بين الجمهور وصُنَّاع القرار كمَا الأكاديميين ووسائل الإعلام، لنشر الوعي حول مخاطر انتشار ظاهرة التطرف العنيف في مُعظم دول العالم. ليس بالأمر الخفي أن خطاب الكراهية من قِبل بعض الدعاة المتطرفين والنشطاء الأصوليين يُعد من الأسباب الرئيسية خلف انحدار الأفراد والمجتمعات الى مُستنقع التطرف القائم على الأيديولوجيات المتشددة والمفاهيم الخاطئة للدين

The EMAN Network aims to cultivate an open dialogue between the public, policymakers, academia, and the media on the dangers of violent extremism. If a root cause analysis was to be conducted on the reasons behind violent extremism and violent militancy - be it religious-based violence and fundamentalism, or ideologically-driven violence.

The Constitutional Council, the highest constitutional court in France, approved a controversial “anti-separatism” law aimed to protect the country from “Islamist separatism”. The law has been criticised by a number of political actors from the Left and the Right.

The messy withdrawal of U.S. forces followed by Kabul’s sudden fall to the Taliban has come as a massive morale boost to Islamist groups around the world. Jihadists find the Taliban’s triumph and return to power a propaganda victory that can be leveraged and used to revive dying Islamist and Jihadist insurgencies across the world.

On 25 July, Tunisian President Kais Saied ousted Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and froze the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, the Tunisian Parliament, triggering political turmoil in a country already suffering from a severe COVID-19 crisis. The president of parliament and leader of the Islamist Ennahda party, Rached Ghannouchi, accused Said of launching a coup and called his supporters to protect the will of the people and constitutional legitimacy.

During the coronavirus pandemic that began towards the end of 2019, hate-speech began to be directed against certain communities as the either the origin of the pandemic, or as the reason behind its continued spread. Most people are fully aware of anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States, which is a result of racial profiling of Asian people being linked to COVID’s beginnings.