Quintan Wiktorowicz

Co-founder of Affinis Labs, former Senior White House Official

[quintanwiktorowicz]

2015 Report Highlights Affinis Labs as Key Force behind the Digital Islamic Economy

In collaboration with DinarStandard, the Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA) and Thomson Reuters (with support from the Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre) last month released the ‘Digital Islamic Economy Report’ for 2015. The report estimates that Muslim consumers contribute $107 billion to the global digital economy and highlights the role of Affinis Labs--a start-up incubator founded by Quintan Wiktorowicz and Shahed Amanullah in Washington DC--as “a key force behind developing the Digital Islamic Economy.”

The emergence of support and investment structures, such as Affinis Labs, are helping the digital Islamic economy grow. As Nadim Najjar, Managing Director of Thomson Reuters for the Middle East and North Africa, noted, “The report further reaffirms that the “Islamic digital economy has indeed become an integral part of everyday life, and indicates significant opportunity for growth in terms of business and innovation.” 

[quintanwiktorowicz]

The White House and the War on Terror

During an Aspen Security Forum discussion on the White House’s role in counterterrorism, former Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush Kenneth Wainstein; Senior Director for Community Partnerships on the National Security Staff at the White House Quintan Wiktorowicz; and former Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor for Combating Terror Juan Zarate debated some of the most contentious issues in conversation with TIME senior correspondent Michael Crowley, including delegating authority to make decisions, predator drone strikes, and the semantics of the war on terror.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

A new White House Homeland Security Partnership Council will provide advice on how the Federal Government can more effectively work with partners to address disasters and other homeland security priorities.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Editor’s Note: Countering violent extremism (CVE) is as necessary for fighting terrorism as it is challenging. Both in concept and in practice, CVE programs are difficult to execute: radicalization remains varied and hard to anticipate, and countering it depends on many factors, some of which are outside the control of governments. Making all this harder is inconsistent funding. Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former senior White House official who is now a managing partner of Affinis Global, calls on the Obama administration to increase overall funding for CVE and improve the budget process.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

A new inter-agency working group will be responsible for developing plans to implement an Internet safety approach to address online violent extremism, coordinating the federal government’s activities and assessing our progress against these plans, and identifying additional activities to pursue for countering online radicalization to violence.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Shedding Light on the Threat of Terrorism at Qatar's 2022 World Cup

Citing a confidential assessment by former South African police chief Andre Pruis, British media is trying to make the case that Qatar is too vulnerable to terrorism to serve as host. As someone who has worked on counter-terrorism issues for nearly 20 years, I find this argument wrong for three key reasons.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

W.H.: Locals key to anti-terror fight - POLITICO

Community-based strategies can prevent recruitment by Islamic terrorists, a new report says.

“We’re trying to shift the emphasis away from the traditional national security agencies” to agencies such as the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, said Quintan Wiktorowicz, the White House’s senior director for global engagement. “Lots of their lessons and experience doing prevention may be lessons learned” from anti-gang and anti-drug programs for the anti-radicalization fight, he said.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Obama’s outreach toward Muslims is limited at home

President Obama’s tepid efforts to reverse the public’s negative impressions of its Muslim citizens in post-9/11 America have largely failed, disappointing Muslim American leaders.

McDonough, a practicing Catholic, was joined in the effort by Quintan Wiktorowicz, who had previously worked out of the U.S. Embassy in London, studying the United Kingdom’s effort to confront radicalization within its Muslim enclaves.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Rolling out a new strategy, White House officials said that casting suspicion on Muslim Americans could backfire.

A National Security Council expert on extremism who helped devise the new strategy, Quintan Wiktorowicz, said the administration was aware of “inaccurate training” on Islam for law enforcement officers. He said the administration would compile “gold standard” materials to be posted on the Web for officials to draw upon.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

The Obama administration's new approach treats the threat as a public safety issue, like drugs or gangs. It aims to enlist local officials for help in spotting potentially violent extremists.

"We see what we're doing as a public safety issue," Wiktorowicz said. "If a community was being targeted by gangs, the government would have some responsibility to help them. The same applies to a community that might be targeted with violent extremism; we have the same responsibility to help them. All parents are concerned about these kinds of issues, not just Muslim parents."

[quintanwiktorowicz]

US terror threat: Britain turning 'blind eye' to extremists, warn American analysts

Britain has been too relaxed about the threat to transatlantic flights from Islamist terrorists, a series of America-based security experts, political analysts and academics warn

But Dr Quintan Wiktorowicz, who served as President Barack Obama's senior adviser on countering terrorism and wrote Radical Islam Rising, took a more nuanced approach.“One of the challenges is managing social cohesion and terrorism,” he said. "There has always been this mistake of conflating integration, social cohesion and counter terrorism. Each of these often requires different policies and tools, some of which may be in conflict with one another. In these cases, policy makers need to decide which area is their top priority. If your main priority is social cohesion you may do one thing and if it is counter terrorism, you may do another."

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Who, really, are these young men? We still know dismayingly little about them. But we do know something about the jihadi groups they are joining. Despite the divisions and fractures within their ranks, their goal is to seize political power. They want to establish an Islamic state or, more ambitiously, a caliphate incorporating many Muslim-majority states. And for all their ideological differences, these groups are united in what they're against: America, Jews, apostates, gays, women's rights, religious freedom, materialism, free speech, secular democracy, alcohol, pork and on and on. We also know something about what these groups demand of their members: discipline, physical courage, piety, murderous violence and self-immolation.

[A]s Quintan Wiktorowicz, former member of President Obama's National Security Council, has convincingly argued, jihadi groups offer the promise of spiritual redemption. Join us and purge yourself of your sins. Join us and become a hero to your people. Join us and guarantee your place in paradise. This has a special resonance for gang members with a guilt complex, which perhaps explains why so many Western jihadis are former gang members and why Islamic State is directly targeting this group in its recruitment videos.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

U.S. Is Trying to Counter ISIS’ Efforts to Lure Alienated Young Muslims

The Obama administration is trying to stanch the flow of radicalized young Muslim Americans traveling to Syria to join Islamic State fighters.

Government supporters question whether funds will be available to sustain these programs. “The administration has the right framework for doing this, but long-term success will depend on sustainable resourcing to help local government, communities and law enforcement build initiatives that can have impact,” said Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former senior White House aide who was one of the principal architects of the current strategy.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Twitter, the social media giant, is facing mounting questions from members of Congress and outside groups over the abuse of its network by Islamic State terrorists to spread propaganda and recruit foreign fighters.

“My view is that we can kick them off, but it’s not going to solve the issue,” said Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former White House national security adviser under Obama who specialized in countering-violent-extremism issues. “It really is playing whack-a-mole.”

[quintanwiktorowicz]

It's dangerously naive to think that Muslims will stop hating America if we can just improve our "public diplomacy." The real battle of ideas requires theological ammunition.

An important new book by Quintan Wiktorowicz, titled "Radical Islam Rising," makes clear that the Salafists operate like a cult. They draw in vulnerable young people, fill them with ideas that give their lives a fiery new meaning, and send them into battle against the unbelievers. Combating this seductive Salafist preaching requires the same kind of intense "deprogramming" used to wean away converts from other modern cults.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Minnesota tries softer approach in battling Islamic State

A new strategy that will be tested out in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota this fall uses a “community intervention team” of religious and business leaders — not law enforcement — to respond to concerns of radicalization.

This kind of local experimentation is what the government’s “Countering Violent Extremism” plan is meant to encourage. Instead of developing a national, top-down strategy to prevent Americans from turning to jihad, the government named three pilot cities to launch different programs. “We recognized that the federal government was really not well-positioned to address radicalization because it tends to take place at a very, very local level,” said Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former National Security Council member who helped write the plan.

[quintanwiktorowicz]

Technology can help beat extremists (Opinion) - CNN.com

Unless the U.S. and others get better at utilizing technology, we could lose the information war to terrorists.

The reality is that ISIS operates like a mission-driven, agile start-up to spread its evil ideology, and we will not defeat it through government and large corporations alone. America is the vanguard of entrepreneurship and innovation, and there are start-ups ready to heed President Obama's call, including start-ups led by passionate Muslim Americans who are building businesses and social enterprises that challenge violent extremist narratives.