Is 2023 the Year of Jihad’s Resurgence?
30th January 2023
A machete attack in New York’s Times Square. A stabbing at the Gare du Nord in Paris. A foiled plot in Germany. A shooting in Spain. It’s still only January, but 2023 has already made it clear: the jihadist threat is far from over.
Nit-pick: It’s not a ‘machete’, it’s a kukri knife.
Indeed, jihadism scholar Gilles Kepel points to an emerging “post-IS generation” in Europe that “combines two dimensions: terrorist attacks by individuals influenced by online ‘entrepreneurs of hatred’ who vilify specific targets, and the flourishing of a separatism culture on social networks that aims at a clear break with ‘kuffar’ (infidels) in the name of Salafism, and prepares the ground to seed further violence.”
Others, including Shiraz Maher, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, warn that ISIS may well see a resurgence in the next year, with the possibility that thousands of foreign fighters now in Syrian detention camps could escape – creating what he called the “single greatest security threat to the West.”
Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.