Pope Francis is picking up where Pope Benedict left off, drawing the Holy See into the global search for solutions to religiously inspired terrorism

Tunisia said on Tuesday it broke up the media arm of Islamist militant group "Ansar al-Shariah," which is also active in the neighboring Libya and is suspected behind the 2012 killing of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi.

The most prominent strategy for how to counter an insurgency is “to win hearts and minds.  Once the battle for popular opinion is won, they will provide the government with the information it needs to effectively prosecute these wars and the insurgency, starved of support, will wither away.

Islamic State’s 52-second trailer“Flames of War” opens with a black-clad extremist blasting a U.S.-made tank into smoke and shrapnel, a Hollywood-style message to the U.S. and its allies about what they can expect for intervening in the Middle East again. The nation that has produced Microsoft, Apple and Google now finds itself playing catch-up on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter with an extremist group rooted in 7th Century Arabia.

Without question, the Obama administration has been slow in coming up with a strategy to counter the threat from ISIS terrorism. This week, Rick Stengel, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, made the case for soft power. He told a packed audience at the American Security Project his office faces challenges as momentous, but far more complex, than any the United States has seen since the fall of Soviet communism.

We see indicators Islamic State trying to establish presence in South Asia.  Jihadist social media sites have begun promoting Islamic State messages over those of al-Qaida and its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to a report by the IHS global market information and analytics company.

The ostensible purpose of the recent videos that show the beheadings of two American journalists by Islamic militants is to deter attacks — your missiles on our positions will beget our knives on Western hostages — but the true aim is to spread dread and terror.

 Standing at the front of a conference hall in Doha, the visiting sheikh told his audience of wealthy Qataris that to help the battered residents of Syria, they should not bother with donations to humanitarian programs or the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. “Give your money to the ones who will spend it on jihad, not aid,” implored the sheikh, Hajaj al-Ajmi, recently identified by the United States government as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.