By Elaine Donnelly
Extending sexual misconduct to combat units
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
The influence of radical Islam is on the rise around the world — and in the United States.
U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether al Qaeda's leadership council has convened to choose the group's next leader following the death of Osama bin Laden.
The covert operation that killed Osama bin Laden produced new evidence that the "emir" of al Qaeda actively commanded the terror group's affiliates in Yemen, Somalia and other parts of North Africa and was not just an inspirational leader.
Mary Habeck, a researcher in radical Islam at Johns Hopkins University, said that Russian sheik Abdel al-Hamid al-Juhani is an "important ideologue for al Qaeda in Chechnya and the Caucasus … [and] preaches the form of Salafism that Tsarnaev was [allegedly] interested in — one that is usually associated with al Qaeda," according to a recent report by The Daily Beast.
PRICE: U.S. terrorist threat growing with new breed of jihadists →
"Zawahri has neither the strategic vision nor the organizational and people skills that bin Laden had. He has alienated many people in the jihadist movement, including a large number of Egyptian radicals," said Ms. Habeck, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
