Shiraz Maher

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Shiraz Maher

There was a depressing sense of inevitability to the deadly violence which gripped Syria’s coastal region earlier this month as hundreds of Alawite Syrians were murdered in revenge killings. Ever since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December, a series of complex tensions – sectarian, ethnic, tribal, and ideological – have threatened to plunge the country into a renewed cycle of death and chaos.

Sep 29, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Shiraz Maher

“The master of the resistance, the righteous servant, has passed away,” read the official announcement from Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based, Iran-backed militant group, confirming the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed by an Israeli airstrike on 27 September.

Aug 16, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Shiraz Maher

It feels like everyone already knows Anjem Choudary. After being dubbed Britain’s “best-known Islamic extremist”, he was a kind of anti-celebrity. For the best part of two decades he was a regular feature on our airways, appearing after almost every terrorist outrage to push an insensitive, indignant or otherwise irritable message. But on 30 July he was convicted for a second time of directing a terrorist organisation, earning him a minimum sentence of 28 years. He may well die in prison.

Aug 8, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Shiraz Maher

It has been almost 20 years since the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London, which killed 52 people. A suicide video filmed by the British-Pakistani ringleader of the attacks, Mohammad Sidique Khan, sought to justify his terrorism as retaliation for “the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people”. It was an instructive moment about where we found ourselves in modern Britain then – and where we still find ourselves today. After all, who were Khan’s people? He was born and educated in Leeds.

May 28, 2024 | engelsbergideas.com | Shiraz Maher |Joana Cook

It has been a decade since the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) released one of its most brazen pieces of propaganda. For a group known to produce filmic scenes of sadistic, macabre theatre this was something entirely different. It was the first Friday of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, prayer, and penance. As is common in Ramadan, the mosque was busier than usual, with people pouring in to hear the sermon before congregational prayers.