Shireen Qudosi speaks with former Al-Qaeda propagandist Jesse Morton. Over the next hour, we cover:
The jihadi response to America's panic over coronavirus.
Divergent narratives between the East and the West.
How extremists will use a global pandemic to demonize the enemy, and how this ties in with conspiracy theories and end-times rhetoric.
Why secularism is broken and whether it can be salvaged.
Every crisis is an opportunity. In the West that means breaking away from broken models of polarized leadership, and why safe centrism doesn't work either.
"America is a story and this is a time to reconnect with that story."
— Qudosi
"If you walk 19 years into a forest, it'll take 19 years to talk back out. This is the long hard haul of redefining who we are as a people."
— Morton
About Jesse
Jesse Morton is founder and head of Parallel Networks, an organization combating hate and extremism, and research coordinator for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s Against Violent Extremism Network in North America. Once a prominent radicalizer in the West, Morton co-founded and was chief propagandist of Revolution Muslim, a New York City-based group active in the 2000s, where he helped insert the narrative of Al-Qaeda and Salafi-jihadist ideology into the American ambit. He has lectured at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University (Saudi Arabia) and Sunderland University (Morocco), and worked at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, focused on issues such as jihadist propaganda. Morton was named one of Foreign Policy’s 2017 Global Thinkers.
About Shireen Qudosi
Shireen Qudosi is a writer and speaker on faith, identity, and belonging. She’s one of the leading North American Muslim Reformers. Her work has been published in The Federalist, Women in the World, Clarion Project, The Middle East Forum, and more. Her keynote writings also include an in-depth assessment on the War on Terror through the lens of WWII and a two-hour exclusive interview with radical Imam Abu Taubah, who was linked to Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen. In 2016, Shireen testified before the House Homeland Security Committee Hearing on radical Islam, offering a powerful testimony that tied the current crisis to Islam’s origin story. “Original Islam” is a theme that runs through the veins of her work, and is central to the book project she is pursuing. In 2017, Shireen launched a petition against Davis hate imam Ammar Shahin, which broadened into a small movement in 2018. She carried her message on hate imams in Never Again is Now, a documentary by filmmaker Evelyn Markus, on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States. In 2019, she bridged her experience in reform to ally with former extremists and develop a training series on preventing violent extremism.
Shireen’s experience has given her insight in forecasting where the conversation among the world’s leading secular and religious Islamic leaders is heading. She is also deeply interested in personal narratives as instruments for change. As a former refugee raised across three continents, she has a unique perspective of the issues facing the U.S. and global Muslim community. In 2011, Shireen was named one of the top ten North American Muslim Reformers by journalist Christine Williams.
