TRENDS Research & Advisory will host the Fifth Annual Forum on Political Islam — Shared Patterns of Violence: Contemporary Approaches to Ideologically Driven Extremism — on 16th September 2025, at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

The forum will examine the shared patterns of violence across extremist movements of different religious, nationalist, and racist orientations, with a focus on developing scientific and practical approaches to confront this phenomenon.

Hamad Al-Hosani, Researcher and Director of the Political Islam Department at TRENDS, stated that the opening ceremony will feature a welcoming address by Dr. Mohammed Abdullah Al-Ali, CEO of TRENDS, followed by keynote speeches by several distinguished figures, including Rt. Hon. Sir Liam Fox, Chairman of the UK Abraham Accords Group, and Dr. Khalifa Mubarak Al Dhaheri, Chancellor of Mohamed Bin Zayed University for Humanities.

The ceremony will also announce the winner of the TRENDS Global Award for Combating Terrorism and Extremism.

He added that the high-level opening session will address the theme From Islamism to Far-Right Extremism: How Violence Unites Different Currents. The programme also includes four main sessions covering Tracing the Origins of Extremisms, Deconstructing the Foundational Ideas of Extremisms, New Approaches to Combating Extremisms: Global Experiences, and Community Discussions on Shared Patterns of Violence.

These discussions will bring together a distinguished group of researchers, experts, and media professionals from the UAE, the UK, the United States, Canada, France, Italy, India, Indonesia, Portugal, Poland, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. This will give the discussions an international, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary character.

“The Fifth Annual Forum on Political Islam comes at a critical juncture in which the world is witnessing the rise of ideological extremism, now posing a shared threat to international security and stability regardless of its religious, national, or ideological roots. Through this forum, TRENDS seeks to shed light on the commonalities among these movements and reveal the mechanisms that make violence a unifying language despite their differing references," Al-Ali stated.

The conference is held with media and strategic partnerships involving media organisations and public and private companies.