How Global Jihad Changed Its Strategy

The fundamental tactic of global jihad has shifted from terror through mass violence to institutional capture and subversion from within.

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

For many in the West, and the East, the image of Islamist threat remains seared by the horrific spectacles of 9/11, the 7/7 London bombings, the 26/11 mass killings in Mumbai, the Bataclan massacre, or the chillingly frequent car rammings and lone-wolf knife attacks that punctuated the last two decades. These acts, largely perpetrated by individuals inspired or directed by Salafi-jihadist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, aimed to terrorise, provoke overreaction, and cleave societies along religious lines.

Yet, as Western counter-terrorism efforts have become more sophisticated and the caliphal ambitions of ISIS have crumbled in the Levant, a more subtle, arguably more patient, and potentially more transformative set of strategies appears to be gaining prominence among various Islamist actors, including those aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. This evolution marks a shift from a primary reliance on kinetic attacks to a multi-pronged approach emphasising demographic growth and the systematic engagement, and some would argue infiltration, of Western democratic institutions.

This is not to declare an end to violent jihadism; the threat of sporadic attacks by radicalised individuals remains, and global jihadi hotspots continue to inspire. However, the grand, centrally-planned spectaculars have become rarer in the West. Instead, we are observing a strategic pivot, a realisation among certain Islamist ideologues that the "long war" might be more effectively waged through demographic presence and the methodical leveraging of the West's own open systems.