Islamist murderers still want to slaughter us in large numbers. What are they doing while we focus on great power competition?
It's too quiet. I smell a grenade:
The claim that jihadism is in retreat relies on a dangerous misreading of silence. It treats reduced visibility as reduced belief. That misreading has consequences.
What has disappeared is not the ideology, but its showmanship: The black flags over cities, the choreographed brutality, and the violence designed to dominate screens and seize attention. Those signals have faded, and with them a sense of alarm. Yet movements built on conviction do not need savage theatre to survive. They need grievance, identity, and a story that explains failure and promises meaning. Jihadism still offers all three.
The author worries about neglecting jihadis overseas and the conditions that breed them, even as the threat of China grows and of Russia is active.I remain torn between seeing this era as mowing the grass and seeing it as the false peace of retreat.
But that's an overseas problem. That is still real, but the article raises the additional threat of Islamists burrowing into the West and no longer needing support from remote caves to kill us because the threat is "taking shape online, in prisons, in fragile states, and across European cities."
Still, saying the "West still hasn't defeated jihadism" misses that we are only a supporting factor in what is an Islamic Civil War.
Have a super sparkly day.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: The photo is from the Wall Street Journal.
