Dr. Ahab Bdaiwi
Ahab Bdaiwi is a Research Fellow at ICCT and Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Leiden University. He studied Middle East History and Islamic Thought at the University of Exeter (UK). He received his PhD (Exon) in Arabic and Islamic Thought in 2014. He taught Middle Eastern and Iranian History at the University of St Andrews (UK) between 2013 and 2016. His research interests at Leiden University focus on medieval Arabic and Islamic thought, and at the ICCT on militancy, Shiʿism, religious establishments and clerical networks in Iraq and Iran, and Islamic political theology.
Despite nearly two decades of a global counter-terrorism campaign waged by the United States and its allies, there may now be four times as many Salafi jihadist fighters as there were on September 11, 2001. The total number is currently estimated at 230,000 militants spread across approximately 70 countries, with the lion’s share currently located […]
With the collapse of the so-called caliphate and the morphing of the proto-state back into an insurgency, the virtual presence of Islamic State is now one the ways for the group to maintain a link with its international audience and supporters. Nevertheless, after a peak in the years 2014-2015, IS’ media production has also sharply […]
Most Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) strategies assign a prominent role to counter or alternative narratives. The thinking behind these strategies goes something like this: groups like the so called Islamic State and Al Qaeda have been dominating the messaging war by reaching out over multiple platforms while culturally and individually tailoring their messages. The argument […]