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Al-Qaeda is conventionally portrayed as a monolithic, hierarchical organization whose activities – coordinated by the network's leader Osama bin Laden – are the source of international terrorism today. Al-Qaeda is considered a radical tendency within the broader Islamist Salafi movement, legitimizing its terrorist operations as a global Islamist jihad against Western civilization. Al-Qaeda's terrorist activity today is considered, “blowback” from long finished CIA and western covert operations in Afghanistan.

The conventional wisdom is demonstrably false. After the Cold War, Western connections with al-Qaeda proliferated around the world, challenging mainstream conceptions of al-Qaeda's identity. Western covert operations and military – intelligence connections in strategic regions show that “al-Qaeda” is a network whose raison d’etre and modus operandi are inextricably embedded in a disturbing conglomerate of international Western diplomatic, financial, military and intelligence policies today. US, British, and Western power routinely manipulates al-Qaeda through a complex network of state-regional and human nodes. Such manipulation extended directly to the 9-11 hijackers, and thus to the events of 9-11 itself.11This paper advances an original argument based partially on research in Ahmed (2005), supplemented here with significant new data and analysis. Also see Ahmed (2002).

Like several of its neighbouring countries, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has seen a move away from an oil-based economy towards a knowledge-based economy in recent decades. Research productivity in the Kingdom is increasing quickly along with international collaborations. Nonetheless, postgraduate research at universities in KSA is a relatively young domain, which certainly is a core factor in the evolving research management structures in the country.

Going forward, increased openness in research, along with continuing significant investment into higher education and research both by the government and the strong private sector points to a need for refined research governance and policy frameworks with designated expert research management staff developing and facilitating the underlying processes to enable Saudi institutions to engage at the forefront of academic research.

‘Stans’ is an ancient Persian word meaning land, country or nation. This chapter begins with a review of the historical basis of zakat management in Islamic practice and provides a brief historical account and status of zakat practices in select countries in Central Asia. The section thereafter focuses on benchmark international zakat management models before providing recommendations for the development of an effective zakat management model within Central Asia. The economic shocks resulting from the pandemic have forced many in the region into situational poverty. If left unchecked, this may easily regress into chronic poverty, undoing the significant growth that these countries have experienced over the last decade. Existing social programmes have limited the impact of economic loss. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have an opportunity to revive this history and once again empower their nations with Islamic social finance instruments. Effective zakat management models in Indonesia and Kuwait, for example, provide different dimensions to social impact. The Indonesian model of BAZNAS provides the most comprehensive methodology for governance, risk management and replication. BAZNAS′ strategy for digitalization and collaboration suggests a strong model for development within Central Asia. Through an effective zakat model, it is expected that Central Asian nations will be better protected against economic disruptions and provide a safety net for vulnerable communities in the region. These conclusions and recommendations in this chapter are limited to the information available in the literature. Further study is required through primary research to understand better what the challenges are in zakat modelling. Locals may also be surveyed to determine their levels of zakat knowledge and their concerns for institutional zakat collection and disbursement.

Here, we examine the challenges to democratization in Bahrain, with a particular focus on how the recent 2011 Uprising has resulted in a deepening of authoritarianism. It is argued that the recent unrest has brought into sharp relief the absence of “quality” democracy in Bahrain, and that any form of democratic transition is dependent on the will of a conservative Al Khalifa-Saudi nexus. While the pro-democracy movement may have prompted minor concessions on the part of the government, the extent of the popular mobilization triggered the Al Khalifa regime’s authoritarian reflex, and they have reacted to throttle the Uprising by putting in place legislative, ideological, and political barriers to reform, which points not only to a current de-democratization, but also a lack of future democratization. In addition to arguing for the post-2011 undoing of democracy in Bahrain, this paper also points to two major barriers to future democratization; (1) a conservative, post-Independence Al Khalifa-Saudi coalition assisted by large military resources (2) protracted communal tension brought about by the government’s instrumentalization of sectarianism.

This chapter discusses how assistive technology (AT) has been used in Saudi inclusive schools. It also synthesises issues and challenges that play significant roles in using AT with students with disabilities in inclusive education. These topics include Kingdom of Saudi Arabia regulation and legislation for AT, teachers' attitudes and knowledge of AT, professional development, AT specialists to support AT use in inclusive education and integrating AT in students' Individual Education Plans. Moreover, the chapter explains how the education section in the Saudi Vision 2030 focusses and discusses the enhancement of AT use among students with disabilities in the inclusive education.

This chapter explores the impact of the pandemic on Islamic commercial finance and Islamic social finance in a comprehensive manner. The chapter reveals that COVID-19 has provided more opportunities to Islamic social finance than Islamic commercial finance. The beauty of Islamic finance in this regard is reflected as the perception that Islamic finance does not achieve its objective as being a social finance is proved to be false as Islamic finance not only promotes profit maximization, but it has also the potential to achieve social objectives. Islamic commercial finance developments could be slower, but it is anticipated that Islamic social modes of financing will be used widely even by multilateral agencies to assist the communities who need help in this pandemic. The most important lesson one could learn from this pandemic in relation to Islamic finance is that Islamic finance is truly different from conventional finance and as such, it needs a unique legal, regulatory and governance framework to display the true potential of it.

The case study demonstrates that China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) energy transformation strategies share many similarities and enjoy a great degree of complementarity. This complementarity is not limited to the territory of the two nations, but has become a successful vehicle for joint Sino-KSA investments in the Arab peninsula as well as in the Middle East and North Africa. Leading to a new paradigm that runs along the lines of China’s staggering Belt and Road Initiative, the convergence of policies represents a new reality due to its potentiality to influence not only the energy sectors of the largest Arab’s economy and world’s most powerful one, but also over their partners.

This chapter first examines evidence concerning departures of the four flights out of Boston, D.C., and Newark, including identifications of the aircrafts involved, some evidence regarding the flight paths, and then the hijackings. Alleged video evidence at airports for the hijackers themselves is examined, but found to be unacceptable.

The fact of a conspiracy is uncontested by all. Three alternative conspiracy possibilities regarding the planes are examined: the ‘official’ one of suicide hijackers skillfully guiding planes with steeled determination into targets (independent of the hijackers’ identities); use of beaconing or electronic control, similar to ordinary commercial landings, into the targets; and use of ‘drone’ airplanes. The third alternative is not supportable at this time, but the other two are possible explanations, not necessarily equally likely.

The issue of insider trading before 9-11 is addressed. Publicly available data from OptionMetrics are provided and analyzed, indicating that many early reports were not using accurate data. Turning to an academic study in the Journal of Business which relies upon confidential, superior data, the findings are summarized that, indeed, there is evidence of insider trading before 9-11 on American Airlines and United Airlines. Larger concerns of insider trading are also summarized. Lastly, we give brief consideration to the profits certain capitalists make out of 9-11.