Hassan Hassan
Founder and Editor in Chief
Hassan Hassan is Founder and Editor in Chief of New Lines magazine. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian and Foreign Affairs, among other publications, and he has testified multiple times as an expert before Congress.
His 2015 book, “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” was a New York Times bestseller and was selected as one of the Times of London’s best books of 2015 and one of The Wall Street Journal’s top 10 books on terrorism. The book has been translated into more than a dozen foreign languages.
An American of Syrian origin, he received a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Nottingham and a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Damascus. In 2008, he joined The National, then a newly launched English-language daily in the United Arab Emirates, as a news reporter. After popular uprisings broke out in his native country and the region, known as Arab Spring, he joined its opinion section and later became the department’s deputy editor, before he moved to Washington D.C. to work in both policy and journalism, including for the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, the George Washington University and the Atlantic magazine. In 2020, he founded New Lines Magazine, in October of that year.
He lives in Virginia, U.S.
Latest from Hassan Hassan
Assad’s Hidden Hand in the Uprising Against the Kurds in Eastern Syria
In the months leading up to the current unrest, the focus of the U.S.-led forces shifted from combating jihadist cells to monitoring a plan to expel the Kurds from the area, with the help of individuals linked to the Assad regime.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi Leaves Behind a Complex Legacy
Qaradawi’s edict on suicide bombings will be the focus of Western media. But the influential cleric will be remembered differently in the Muslim world, as someone who challenged conservative social mores.
New Lines Broadens Its Horizons to Include the Whole World
The magazine at two expands its remit to include world coverage, with a local focus.
Zawahiri’s Death Is Anticlimactic to Al Qaeda’s Demise
The killing of the former leader of al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, by a CIA drone attack in a house in Kabul, Afghanistan, is a symbolic victory for President Joe Biden. Zawahiri is said to have played a central role in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. In the real world, though, Zawahiri stopped being relevant years ago.
The ‘Conscious Uncoupling’ of Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia
Years before the Saudi leadership turned its back on the native Islamists who co-founded the kingdom, the movement had already been in decline. It is these longstanding problems, not just the current political environment, that make the Wahhabi decay irreversible.
The Next Islamic State Caliph
Although the next leader of the Islamic State group has yet to be announced, New Lines has obtained detailed information about the likeliest candidate to replace Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, who blew himself up on Feb. 3 in an effort to evade U.S. Special Forces as they raided his house in northern Syria. The details we obtained about Sumaidai’s life, never published before, have been gathered from people who knew him personally and from Iraqi authorities.
Keeping up With the Qaradashians
The next leader of the Islamic State will most likely come from this cabal of Afaris, a network we might call the Qaradashians.
New Lines, Year One
A year ago, we had an idea. It was an unusually optimistic one considering the dire state of the world,…
What the Global War on Terror Really Accomplished
Contrary to how some understand the U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan, the lesson extremists are taking from the Taliban’s success is not simply that jihad works, but that diplomacy and engagement are a necessary part of the process, which includes reassuring the West about external threats emerging from their areas.
How Iraq’s Top ISIS Scholar Became a Target for Shiite Militias
Although Husham al-Hashimi helped the Iraqi government understand and hunt down ISIS terrorists, his last secret research project was on the criminality and extremism of Shiite militias. They assassinated him for it.