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📰 Jihadism’s Last Stand: The Retreat of Political Islam Despite the occasional terrorist attack, political Islam is shifting away from global jihad and toward a more pragmatic, local approach. Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa—a former jihadist who once led a franchise of Islamic State—now wears a suit, speaks at diplomatic conferences, and promises stability, not revolution. The broader trend is clear: the dream of a pan-Islamic caliphate is fading. Movements like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Sharaa’s faction in Syria have realized that lasting power comes from building nations, not erasing borders. They now seek friendly relations with the West and focus on national affairs, not holy war. This shift is driven by two forces: the cost of transnational ambitions and the disillusionment with radical rule. After years of brutal governance by groups like ISIS, many Muslims now reject extremism. The Muslim Brotherhood, once a powerful force, has lost support after failed experiments in Egypt and Tunisia. Even Saudi Arabia, once a global exporter of ultra-conservative Islam, has curbed its religious outreach under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The war in Gaza, launched by Hamas in 2023, failed to reinvigorate political Islam. Hamas’s leadership is decimated, Gaza is devastated, and many Palestinians now see the movement as a liability, not a savior. Still, remnants of jihadism remain. Islamic State still inspires isolated attacks, but these are no longer the expression of powerful movements with geopolitical aspirations. Like the splinters of communism after its decline, they are fading comet tails, not engines of change. So, while the threat hasn’t vanished, the era of global jihad is over. Political Islam’s romantic narrative has failed the test of reality. #Jihadism#PoliticalIslam#MiddleEast#terrorism#pragmatism 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Mali’s Jihadists Are Selling a Jerusalem Fantasy The Mali branch of al-Qaeda is fighting on African soil, but its propaganda points far beyond Mali. JNIM is not hiding the fact that it sees the struggle in West Africa as part of a longer Islamist arc that ends in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa. That is the part Washington and Brussels keep pretending is background noise. They treat Mali, Syria, the Sahel, and the Levant as separate crises, while the same ideological networks keep talking to each other, celebrating each other, and exporting fighters, money, and mythologies across the map. The Syria link matters because it gives the story a pipeline. If Idlib veterans, permissive fundraising, and transregional jihad circles can move from the Levant into the Sahel, then the supposed “local” wars are really just different legs of the same trade route for extremism. And the Western role is the ugly part. When the U.S. and Europe help legitimize one set of Islamist strongmen in Syria while trying to contain another jihadist front in Africa, they end up subsidizing the ecosystem and then acting surprised when it reproduces itself elsewhere. So the Jerusalem talk is not a GPS error. It is a declaration of intent, wrapped in apocalyptic rhetoric, made possible by a regional order that keeps breaking one place at a time and pretending the damage will stay local. #Mali#JNIM#alQaeda#Jerusalem#Syria#Sahel#jihadism 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸