Site managers of the Al-Nuri mosque in Mosul, Iraq, announced this week that they uncovered a historic find underneath the structure – a prayer room that dates back to the 12th century CE.

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The mosque is nicknamed "the hunchback" by locals due to its iconic tilted minaret, according to the World Monuments Fund, and the building is famously depicted on Iraq's 10,000-dinar banknote.

Al-Nuri is situated in the former Islamic State's "caliphate," and the mosque suffered a large amount of damage during past battles, which prompted an initiative to restore the structure. During the renovation work, excavators exposed the prayer room, along with four other spaces designated for ritual ablutions.

The director of the Iraqi government's Department of Antiquities and Heritage, Khaireddine Nasser, said the find not only granted experts "better knowledge of the surface of Al-Nuri mosque and this ancient prayer room, but also the ablution basins," AFP reported.

Nasser added that this discovery "amplifies the importance of this historical and archeological site."

The four ablution rooms, standing nearly 10 feet tall and just over 11 feet wide, were discovered almost 20 feet below the ground.

The mosque's restoration, set to conclude by the end of 2023, is being funded through a UNESCO initiative which aims to "revive the spirit of Mosul."

UNESCO received $100 million in funding during 2019 for the project, with about half of this sum contributed by the United Arab Emirates.

i24NEWS contributed to this report

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With the Taliban in power in Afghanistan, there's a new enemy ascending.

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The Islamic State group threatens to usher in another violent phase. Except this time the former insurgents, the Taliban, play the role of the state, now that the US troops and their allied Afghan government are gone.

The Taliban promised the United States to keep the extremist group in check during successive rounds of peace talks. Under the 2020 US-Taliban accord, the Taliban guaranteed that Afghanistan would not become a haven for terrorist groups threatening the US or its allies.

But it is unclear if they can keep their pledge, with a sudden uptick in ISIS attacks since the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15.

A deadly bombing Friday in the northern province of Kunduz killed 46 worshippers inside a mosque frequented by Shiites. Other deadly IS attacks have struck in the capital, Kabul, and provinces to the east and north, while smaller-scale attacks target Taliban fighters almost daily.

"Historically, the majority of IS attacks have targeted the state ... Now that the US and the international presence is mostly gone, they need to go after the state – and the state is the Taliban," said Andrew Mines, research fellow at Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

Long rivalry

Both the Taliban and ISIS advocate rule by their radical interpretations of Islamic law. But there are key ideological differences that fuel their hatred of each other.

The Taliban say they are creating an Islamic state in Afghanistan, within the borders of that country.

ISIS says it is THE Islamic State, a global caliphate that it insists all Muslims must support. It is contemptuous of the Taliban's nationalist goals and doesn't recognize them as a pure Islamic movement. For similar reasons, ISIS has long been a staunch enemy of al-Qaida.

Both the Taliban and ISIS advocate particularly harsh versions of Islamic Shariah law and have used tactics like suicide bombers. But when it ruled territory in Syria and Iraq, ISIS was even more brutal and carried out more horrific punishments than the Taliban did.

ISIS emerged in Afghanistan in 2015 with the name Islamic State in Khorasan Province, at a time when the group was at its peak, controlling much of Iraq and Syria. It drew members from Afghan and Pakistani militants, including a wave of Taliban defectors.

The group initially found support among Afghanistan's small Salafist movement in eastern Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. The Salafis had largely been marginalized by the Taliban, and by connecting with the rising ISIS, the Salafist movement found a means to establish military strength.

But ISIS's brutal ways have since led some Salafi clerics to voice opposition. In the years after its emergence, ISIS was badly hurt by military setbacks at the hands of the Taliban and by US airstrikes, before surging again the past year.

The Taliban downplay ISIS' capabilities and dismiss them as a fringe group with no mainstream appeal.

"They have no roots here," influential Taliban figure Sheikh Abdul-Hameed Hamasi told The Associated Press.

End game

Still, the potency of the ISIS threat is undeniable.

Two deadly bombings have hit Kabul, including one outside the airport at the height of evacuations before the US exit that killed 169 Afghans and 13 US service members. Smaller scale attacks are also on the rise.

"The intensity and breadth of attacks … show the capacity and level of national reach which has caught the Taliban by surprise," said Ibraheem Bahiss, a consultant with the International Crisis Group. ISIS "is no short-term threat."

It could be a while until IS has the capability to hold territory again. Its immediate aim is to destabilize the Taliban and shatter the group's image as a guardian of security.

For now, its strategy is slow and methodical. It is reaching out to tribes and other groups to recruit from their ranks while stamping out dissent among moderate Salafis and carrying out jailbreaks, assassinations, and attacks on Taliban personnel.

"Package all of that together, that is an entire method of insurgency the Taliban is not equipped to handle," said Mines.

Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank, offered a different view, saying he believes the Taliban can uproot IS on their own, even without the backup of US airstrikes that nearly eliminated ISIS.

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Roggio said the Taliban have shown themselves capable of rooting out some ISIS cells, using their vast local intelligence-gathering networks. He noted that ISIS – unlike the Taliban during their insurgency – doesn't have access to safe havens in Pakistan and Iran.

The Taliban have rejected cooperating with the US against ISIS, ahead of the two sides' direct talks last weekend.

ISIS' future trajectory in Afghanistan will depend largely on its ability to recruit more members and win over large segments of the population.

Since their inception, they have been poaching Taliban members. In 2015, a former Taliban commander, Abdul Rauf Khadim, was appointed deputy of ISIS in Afghanistan and reportedly offered financial incentives to other Taliban fighters to join the group.

In 2020, when ISIS re-emerged in Afghanistan, it was under a new leader drawn from the Haqqani Network, currently a faction of the Taliban.

Hard-line members of the Taliban could join ISIS as the Taliban leadership, now in power, has to make compromises whether at home or abroad. The Taliban have promised a more inclusive government, though the temporary administration they set up is entirely made up of Taliban members.

The more the Taliban cooperate with international states, the more they run against the image of the mujahedeen resistance fighter. "That is a key identity the Taliban will lose," Mines said.

Treatment of minorities

As the Taliban shift from insurgency to governance, one key test will be whether they act to protect minority groups that their fighters once tyrannized, such as the Shiite Hazaras.

The Hazaras have endured multiple campaigns of persecution and displacement throughout Afghanistan's history. When the Taliban were first in power in the 1990s, they carried out massacres against the community, in some cases in retaliation for massacres of ethnic Pashtuns.

ISIS has targeted Hazaras because most are Shiite Muslims, killing hundreds in brutal attacks targeting their places of worship in what it calls a war on heretics.

Friday's mosque attack in Kunduz was an opportunity for the Taliban to project a new image as a state power. The Taliban acted swiftly: Special forces swept the scene, investigations were launched, the provincial police chief made lofty promises to protect minority "brothers."

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The 15,000 Muslims who crowded into the courtyards of the Temple Mount mosques two Fridays ago became another news story about a mass COVID infection. But the real story was much bigger: the enormous anti-France protest near Al-Aqsa Mosque was organized by the Hizb ut-Tahrir movement (the Islamic Liberation party), about which the Israeli public has heard little if anything.

A single line connects the ideology of the movement – which has already been outlawed by a number of European and Arab states – and the ideology of the throat-slashing Islamic terrorists who recently resumed activity in France. At least in terms of its goals, if not in tactics, Hizb ut-Tahrir is the twin of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, whose people were behind the terrorist shooting in Vienna on Nov. 2.

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In east Jerusalem, Hizb ut-Tahrir has tens of thousands of supporters. The movement holds weekly lessons on the Temple Mount, generally on Thursdays, and it has branches in Abu Dis, al-Azariya, Ramallah, al-Bira, the Old City of Jerusalem, in Beit Hanina, in Beit Safafa, and in Sur Baher, as well as one in Hebron. According to security officials, the movement has been gaining popularity in recent years. Now it turns out that its global threats are, too.

The Islamic Liberation Party is not new. Since it was founded in Jerusalem in 1952 – by Sheikh Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani – it has been preaching for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate as it existed under Muhammad, which it calls "the pure period," and the establishment of an Islamist state. The group says that the term "tahrir" (liberation) refers to a total liberation from any western cultural influence. The territorial liberation is only the second step.

Members of the movement, which also operates in Britain, Australia, Indonesia, the US, and several Arab countries, aspire to replace every national government with a global Muslim rule. Under this view, the governments in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, as well as Fatah and even Hamas, are all national in nature, and therefore obstacles in the way of the dream of a worldwide caliphate.

Dr. David Koren, a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and a former advisor to the mayor on east Jerusalem issues, explains that "The influence of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Jerusalem and Jude and Samaria is much wider than it appears."

"The real question that the organization's activity has raised for years is whether and when it will trade its dawa-based activity – strengthening religious through persuasion and preaching – with violent jihad like the recent events in France," Koren says.

Koren explains that "in the Palestinian context, Hizb ut-Tahrir promotes two main issues: laying the groundwork to make Al-Aqsa Mosque a future platform on which the world caliphate will eventually be declared, and challenging Jordan's position as guardian of Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem."

In 2016, then-Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan presented the cabinet with a proposal to outlaw Hizb ut-Tahrir. The material given to the ministers included examples from all over the world of how Hizb ut-Tahrir was transitioning to terrorism. It included many quotes from extremist, inciting sermons preaching by the movement's people in Jerusalem. But the Shin Bet security agency opposed outlawing the group, arguing that in Israel, the group was not making the move toward violence and terrorism, and it should be allowed to operate openly to avoid it going underground, which would make it harder for the security establishment to keep tabs on its activities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who originally supported Erdan's position, eventually sided with the Shin Bet.

A briefing at Mike's Place

That decision from 2016 has come at a price. Even if Hizb ut-Tahrir itself does not carry out terrorist attacks, its influence outside its own circle could and has led members of other organizations to plan or attempt violent, terrorist acts. One example is the Islamic State cell that was exposed in the Shuefat refugee camp in October 2016. Another is a shooting attack against a bus in the Ramot neighborhood in March 2016. One of the two terrorists behind the shooting had a black Hizb ut-Tahrir flag in his car.

An earlier example was the 2013 targeted killing of three Salafi operatives from the village Yatta village who were planning terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. Even the terrorist bombing at Mike's Place bar on the Tel Aviv beach front in April 2003, which was executed by two terrorists who held British citizenship and in which three people were murdered, was linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir. Hamas might have claimed the act itself, but it turned out that the bombing was perpetrated by two Muslim Brits of Pakistani descent who had met in London with a sheikh identified with Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The cost of not outlawing Hizb ut-Tahrir includes accepting the difficult content preached by the movement's spokespeople in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount itself. In many aspects it resembles the content preached by Islamic extremists elsewhere in the world, including France.

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The most prominent spokesman for the group in east Jerusalem in recent years has been Sheikh Issam Amira. Amira thinks that "The Islamic caliphate should be recreated so it can lead the armies in the war on heretics," and that "To achieve that, the activists must work together with all Muslims and establish an Islamic state." According to Amira, "This demands the destruction of institutions in the Islamic world, without mercy or pity toward any of those entities."

In the past, Amira has also spoken about "enemies who believe in more than one god," and offered them three options: to convert to Islam, pay a jizya poll tax, or "for us to seek Allah's help in fighting them."

Another sheikh, Nidal Siyam, who at the protest Friday before last spoke against France, called on "people of the nation who are loyal and work in its armies to move ahead to turn the tables on the oppressor leaders." Incidentally, back in 2017, Siyam prayed at Al-Aqsa for "the slaughter of Europeans and Americans and our [Arab] criminal and traitorous rulers."

"O Allah, do not leave any of them on earth … O Allah, replace with an emir of the believers," he prayed.

The current emir of Hizb ut-Tahrir is Ata Abu Rashta, 77, a native of the Hebron area and a civil engineer by profession. Until 2003, he lived in Jordan and then moved to an unknown location after he was arrested a few times and Jordan limited his activity.

Against Crusader values

Another Hizb ut-Tahrir preacher, Ali Abu Ahmad, said recently that the response to French President Emmanuel Macron, who "supported the publication of offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad," would be to reestablish the Islamic caliphate and "the destruction of Paris to rubble by Muslim armies, led by the caliphate." These remarks and similar ones, most of which were made on Muhammad's birthday, align with an official statement by Hizb ut-Tahrir in Israel after the Muhammad cartoons were republished in France that called French and western civilization "false, atheist, and perverted… hated by the true religion [Islam]" and called for jihad as a "true response to heretics."

Dr. Shaul Bartal of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, an expert on jihadist groups, has spent much time researching Hizb ut-Tahrir and its activity in Israel. France, he explains, "is now defined by Hizb ut-Tahrir and similar groups as an enemy of Islam. The way the organization sees it, France represents Crusader values which at their core oppose the Prophet Muhammad. Islam has an obligation to oppose Crusader values and defend Islamic holy sites, including Al-Aqsa."

Bartal says that every time Islam clashes with secular France, "it illustrates the Crusader spirit of the west for Islamic radicals. The Crusaders, who conquered the Holy Land and now the French, are the ultimate enemy. An ordinary person sees the Crusaders as history. Hizb ut-Tahrir sees them as a reality, who must be killed. The event on the Temple Mount was just part of the picture."

Q: Do Israel and Zionism, and Jews have a place in Hizb ut-Tahrir's world?

"Unlike other Palestinian movements, which present the Palestinian issue as a problem with Zionism or western colonialism, Zionism isn't mentioned in the writings of the Islamic Liberation Party. The conflict is between Islam and the Jews. Israel is mentioned as a state of the Jews or as a Jewish entity. They view Palestine is … an inseparable part of Dar al-Islam and no Jew has the right to live there."

Bartal adds that Hizb ut-Tahrir "praises terrorists and terrorist attacks and any aggressive activity against Jews. This is an organization that preaches hatred of Jews, with extensive literature against Jews and against the state of Israel and the west in general."

Modesty patrols in alleys

A few years ago, Lt. Col. (res.) Baruch Yedid, former advisor on Arab affairs to the IDF's Central Command, wrote a position paper about Hizb ut-Tahrir activity in Israel. Yedid fears that the veteran "liberation" party is morphing into a jihadist group.

"No more spreading ideas in closed parlor meetings, but developing violent groups, forming ties with global jihad organizations, and setting up cells and bases," he warns. Right now, Yedid says, the group's main base of operations is London.

Yedid says the group "is a political Islamist movement that does not recognize the laws of any nation, Arab or western, and wants to establish a religious state."

Yedid has found that membership in the group is kept secret, and members have been hiding their activity for decades.

"The only allow in Muslim men and women who adopt the most stringent religious lifestyle. Recently, inspired by al-Qaida and Hamas, the group's confidence has been growing and it isn't taking as much care as it did to keep activities closed and secret, and members go door to door to recruit," he says.

Yedid also talks about members of the group in east Jerusalem who beat young people caught consuming alcohol, or who break the Ramadan fast. In the alleyways of east Jerusalem and villages in the eastern half of the city, they also beat young women who are not dressed modestly enough. Yedid says that members of the group are the ones who beat the Egyptian foreign minister with their shoes when he visited Al-Aqsa Mosque, and notes that Hizb ut-Tahrir sees the Palestinian Authority, as well as Arab governments like Egypt or Jordan, as legitimate targets, because of their "un-Islamic" conduct which, it feels, "delays" the establishment of an Islamic caliphate and the spread of the religion and the arrival of Judgment Day.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is active in 50 nations and has about 1 million registered members. Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, Azerbaijan, and many other countries have arrested its members, and put some of them in prison. In Egypt, Turkey, China, and most Arab states, the movement is banned. Germany did the same after it turned out that the mind behind the Sept. 11 attack, Mohammad Atta, had been influenced by Hizb ut-Tahrir's ideology. Western observers view the group as having paved the way for al-Qaida.

But for now, Israel has avoided outlawing Hizb ut-Tahrir in order to make it easier for the security and defense establishment to track it. Why is Israel allowing members of the extremist group to make the Temple Mount a center for their activity? As yet, there is no answer to that question.

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Mohamad Khweis was the only American citizen to be convicted in a US jury trial of successfully joining the Islamic State overseas.

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On Tuesday, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of upholding the core convictions in his case, which Khweis' attorneys challenged.

It is not entirely clear whether the new sentencing will result in any significant changes to the 20 years Khweis is now serving.

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The deadly Easter attacks in Sri Lanka a week before his video appearance underscored this message in blood. It also highlighted the ease with which ISIS, like al-Qaida before it, can inflict chaos through a loosely defined brand of global jihad in the most chilling way. That's even after losing the relative safety of its so-called caliphate across stretches of Iraq and Syria.

"Al-Baghdadi was letting his followers know that he was prepared to lead a guerrilla insurgency in Iraq and Syria, while not forgetting that ISIS is a global organization," said Colin P. Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, using another acronym for the group.

Though disheveled and never standing up in the video released Monday, al-Baghdadi's appearance alone contradicted past Russian and Iraqi claims the militant leader had been killed during the long war targeting the militants. It was the first time he has appeared in public since June 29, 2014, when he delivered a sermon from the pulpit of Mosul's Great Mosque of al-Nuri.

The contrasts in the appearances are glaring.

In 2014, he wore an expensive-looking watch and a neatly trimmed beard and urged Muslims around the world to swear allegiance to the group's self-proclaimed caliphate and obey him as its leader.

In Monday's video, he sat on the floor, with an AK-74 assault rifle at his side like the one Osama bin Laden took in Afghanistan during the mujahedeen's fight against the Soviets and always carried with him. He had a big bushy beard and wore a black tunic and a military-style beige vest over it.

No longer an administrator, al-Baghdadi wants to be seen as an insurgent leader. Analysts say that both glosses over the loss of territory the militants claimed would spark an apocalyptic confrontation with the "crusader" West and ensures he maintains his status in the extremist world.

"We believe it is really an attempt to divert attention from the core group's heavy losses and to ensure that the franchise groups and grassroots supporters remain loyal to the Islamic State pole of the jihadist universe," the Austin, Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor said in an analysis. "Many are saying that the video is a show of strength, but we believe it is more likely an act of desperation."

The loss of its territory cuts both ways, however. Foreign militants once part of the "caliphate" now have scattered, like they did at the end of the 1980s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban government sheltering al-Qaida.

Al-Baghdadi barely mentioned Iraq and Syria in the 18-minute video, except to praise the steadfastness of his fighters there. Instead, he congratulated militants in Libya, "brothers" in Burkina Faso, Mali, Pakistan and Western Sahara for pledging allegiance.

The group also recently claimed numerous attacks around the world, including in Saudi Arabia, Congo and Libya. Jihadi propaganda by IS supporters online recently threatened India and Bangladesh, where IS claimed an attack for the first time in some two years this week.

Sri Lankan police late Wednesday made public the names and photographs of nine suicide bombers who carried out the series of Easter Day explosions, including the locations where their bombs were detonated.

The list of eight men and one woman included the man officials say led the attack, extremist preacher Mohamed Zahran, also known as Zahran Hashim, who was one of two attackers at Colombo's Shangri-La Hotel. The woman who was identified was the wife of another bomber who triggered an explosion in front of her children at her spice trader father-in-law's Colombo villa, killing herself and three police officers investigating the earlier near-simultaneous blasts at three churches and three hotels.

While some ISIS claims of late have been exaggerated or outright bogus, its focus on expanding outward follows the same pattern of al-Qaida, which grew to have dangerous franchises in areas like Yemen.

"This is part of the vengeance that awaits the crusaders and their henchmen," al-Baghdadi said in the video.

He extolled militants in Sri Lanka for "striking the homes of the crusaders in their Easter, in vengeance for their brothers in Baghouz," a reference to the Islamic State group's last bastion in eastern Syria, which was captured by U.S.-backed fighters in March. The militants involved in the attacks that killed more than 250 people followed a local extremist leader, but more than 30 Sri Lankans are believed to have once been Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq.

"It is still unclear if any of the Sri Lanka terrorists had fought for ISIS in Syria and Iraq and were returnees, or if they were locally trained and linked up with ISIS online," an analysis from the Asia-Pacific Foundation said. "What we are witnessing has been an evolving terrorist dynamic where an attack is developed and conceived abroad but that local radicals are recruited to implement the final stage."

Simply put: The new threat from the Islamic State is a lot like the old threat, except the group doesn't have a home address anymore. For years, the group's leaders huddled in ISIS-held cities in Iraq and Syria to plot attacks abroad, even as they terrorized residents at home.

Now mass casualty assaults like the 2015 attacks on the Bataclan theater in Paris may be planned much closer to local militants' homes, like the Easter attack in Sri Lanka. One of the churches hit was just a town from where the alleged leader of that assault preached his extremist message.

That has been the case in the southern Philippines, where al-Baghdadi's group has set its eyes on latching on to local insurgencies or remotely executing plots it has financed, such as a massive siege of the Muslim-majority city of Marawi. Hundreds of ISIS-aligned local militants occupied buildings, homes and school campuses there in May 2017.

It took Filipino troops five months to quell the urban insurrection, which was reportedly patterned after the ISIS takeover of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Islamic State-aligned militants are also accused of carrying out two suicide attacks in the southern Philippines, including the Jan. 27 suicide bombing of a Roman Catholic cathedral during a Mass that killed 23.

That's led to a months-long counterinsurgency operation that Philippine Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano said has contained the militants.

For how long remains the question.

"Intensive military operations may weaken these groups temporarily, but airstrikes and killings only reinforce the narrative of state oppression in a way that serves the ideological cause," said Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.

As the holy fasting month of Ramadan begins in just days, experts warn there could be even more attacks looming.

"Our battle today is one of attrition and stretching the enemy. They should know that jihad is ongoing until the day of judgment," al-Baghdadi said.

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