Jihadism (also jihadist movement or jihadi movement) is a controversial term to describe the renewed focus on armed jihad in radical Islamic fundamentalism. Jihadism emerges in the 1960s, with roots in the late 19th and early 20th century ideological developments of Islamic revivalism, developed into Qutbism and related ideologies during the mid 20th century. The rise of jihadism was re-enforced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and has been propagated in various armed conflicts throughout the 1990s and 2000s. A specifically Salafist jihadism has been diagnosed within the modern Salafi movement by Gilles Kepel in the mid 1990s.

"Jihadism" in this sense covers both Mujahideen guerilla warfare and Islamic terrorism with an international scope as it arose from the 1980s, since the 1990s substantially represented by the al-Qaeda network. Jihadism with an international, Pan-Islamist scope in this sense is also known as Global Jihadism.

Although the adjective jihadist can be traced to the 1960s, and the abstract jihadism to ca. 1980, these terms did not see frequent use in popular media until after the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The equivalent terms of "jihadist movement" and "jihadi movement" date to the same period, entering use during the 1970s. The term "jihadism" translates or parallels Arabic jihādiyya جهادية‎. The alternative form jihadi for jihadist in English usage is a transliteration of the corresponding Arabic adjective jihādī جهادي‎.

David Joel Horowitz (born January 10, 1939) is an American conservative writer and policy advocate. He is a founder and current president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and edits FrontPage Magazine. Horowitz also founded the organization Students for Academic Freedom, whose self-stated goal is combating "leftist indoctrination" in academia.

Horowitz was raised by parents who were members of the Communist Party USA. Between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left before rejecting Leftism completely. Horowitz has recounted his ideological journey in a series of retrospectives, culminating with his 1996 memoir Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.

Horowitz was born to a Secular Jewish family in Forest Hills, New York City. His parents, Phil and Blanche Horowitz, were high school teachers. Phil taught English and Blanche taught stenography. Horowitz majored in English and received a BA from Columbia University in 1959 and a master's degree in English literature at University of California, Berkeley.

Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts (2003–07).

The son of Lenore and George W. Romney (Governor of Michigan, 1963–69), he was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 1966, after one year at Stanford University, he left the United States to spend thirty months in France as a Mormon missionary. In 1969, he married Ann Davies, and the couple had five children together. In 1971, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brigham Young University and, in 1975, a joint Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration from Harvard University as a Baker Scholar. He entered the management consulting industry, which in 1977, led to a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as Chief Executive Officer, he helped bring the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded the spin-off Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. His net worth is estimated at $190–250 million, wealth that has helped fund his political campaigns. Active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served as Ward Bishop and later Stake President in his area near Boston. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, losing to long-time incumbent Ted Kennedy. In 1999, he was hired as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics; and he helped turn the fiscally troubled games into a success.

Usama Hasan is Quilliam’s Senior Researcher. He was a Founding Advisor for the organisation in 2008 and was a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at Middlesex University, 2003-2012. Usama has a PhD, MSc & MA in Physics and Artificial Intelligence from the Universities of Cambridge & London and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is a certified transmitter of the Qur’an and Hadith and has translated a number of Islamic texts into English, including The Islamic Foundation’s “Way of the Prophet” (2009). He has argued that Islam is compatible with the theory of evolution, dismissing the story of Adam and Eve as "children's madrasa-level understanding" of human origins while pointing to the Islamic world's scientific achievements of the Middle Ages as evidence that Muslims should "move on as adults and intellectuals". He later retracted some of his statements about evolution Several Muslim leaders backed his right to free speech.

Usama was a member of the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Projecting British Muslims delegations to Egypt in 2008 and to Afghanistan (Helmand) in 2010, was a Keynote Speaker at the Anglo-Syrian government-sponsored conference “The Message of Peace in Islam” in Damascus in 2009, and is a Patron of both the Forum for the Discussion of Israel & Palestine (FODIP) and Friends of the Palestinian-Israeli Bereaved Families Forum. Usama was also a Speaker and Steering Committee Member for the Google Ideas/Council on Foreign Relations Summit Against Violent Extremism (Dublin, 2011).

Walid Phares (Arabic: وليد فارس‎ IPA: [waˈliːd ˈfaːres]) is an American scholar of Lebanese origins. He is a professor and commentator on global terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs.

Phares has testified before committees of the U.S. State, Justice, Defense and Homeland Security Departments, the United States Congress, the European Parliament, the United Nations Security Council. He has been a Terrorism expert at NBC from 2003 to 2006 and is a contributor at Fox News since 2007. He is currently an Expert at Wikistrat.

Walid Phares was born on December 24, 1957 and raised in Beirut, where he studied at the Lebanese and Saint Joseph Universities. After earning degrees in law, political science and sociology, he practiced law in Beirut. He then earned a Masters degree in International Law from the Université de Lyon in France and a Ph.D. in international relations and strategic studies from the University of Miami. He emigrated to the United States in 1990, after Syrian troops invaded the last enclaves of what was known then as the "Free Lebanon".