From the second half of the twentieth century to the present, there has been an increase in Islamist movements not only in North Africa and the Middle East, but also in other parts of the world. Islamism, or Political Islam, enshrines faith as the utmost sign of a person’s identity and prioritizes the establishment of shari’a (Islamic law) in contemporary societies. The political activism of this school of thought is a reality, as is its violent form of expression through Jihadism, for which no valid dissent is permitted.
Waleed Saleh Alkhalifa graduated from the University of Baghdad’s School of Education, in the Arabic Language and Literature section, in 1972. He worked as a teacher at several schools in Iraq from 1973 to 1978. He resided in Morocco from 1978 to 1984, where he taught at several schools. He has lived in Spain since 1984 and earned his PhD in Arabic Philology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 1990. In 1994, he earned his bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Studies, in the Spanish Literature section at the University of Valencia. He is currently a professor
in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Oriental Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.