by Joas Wagemakers | Jul 29, 2014 | Monitor
On 16 June, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the well-known Jordanian radical Islamic ideologue, was released from prison. In the six weeks since his release, many people have argued that there must have been some sort of deal between al-Maqdisi and the Jordanian regime that...
by Joas Wagemakers | Sep 21, 2013 | Monitor
The once fledgling Islamic State of Iraq has appeared to be going strong again since its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, merged it with the jihadi efforts in Syria to become the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Although this merger was apparently rejected by...
by Nico Prucha | May 13, 2013 | Monitor
For the second installment of our Jihadi Twitter Activism series Ali Fisher and Nico Prucha explore data collected from Twitter related to the Syrian AQ branch Jabhat al-Nusra. This post identifies key ‘influence multipliers’ for Jabhat al-Nusra’s strategic...
by Spencer Ackerman | Apr 9, 2013 | Monitor
One downside of joining your Syrian extremist entity to al-Qaida’s Iraq affiliate: it gives the U.S. a lot of legal leeway to target you.