October 6, 2025: This Wednesday evening (Oct. 8, 6pm) at Elaine’s Literary Salon, learn about “The State of Jihad: Iran, The Muslim Brotherhood and the Aftermath of Oct. 7”

Monday Morning Magic from Inkandescent® PR + Publishing Co. — It’s the two-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people and resulted in over 250 hostages being taken. The region’s geopolitical landscape has undergone a dramatic shift. The “Axis of Jihad” (Iran-backed groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and their Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar allies) continues to enforce jihadist networks both in the Middle East and the West.

“While Iran, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood have been significantly weakened militarily, they have advanced on the propaganda front,” explains event speaker Cynthia Farahat, Egyptian-American, bestselling author of The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Industry of Death.

She asks: “What was their role and objectives from the October 7th attack, and how can we evaluate the Israeli response objectively, while Hamas continuously rejects any attempts to stop the war, including the latest proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration for a ceasefire? What should be the U.S. response to the Axis of Jihad in the Middle East and inside the United States?”

For answers, join Cynthia, Dr. Michael Rubin, and Susan Ouellette in a thought-provoking panel to discuss the conflict. Learn more about them below.

Until next Monday: Sending prayers for peace. — Hope Katz Gibbs, founder and president, Inkandescent® Inc. Inkandescent.us

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Oct. 8 Panel Discussion — The State of Jihad: Iran, The Muslim Brotherhood and the Aftermath of Oct. 7

Speaker Cynthia Farahat, Egyptian-American bestselling author of The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Industry of Death. A columnist, counterterrorism expert, and former editor of The Journal of Central and Eastern European African Studies (JCEEAS), Cynthia co-founded the Liberal Egyptian Party in Egypt, which advocated for peace with Israel, a free market economy, and the separation of mosque and state. She studied Islamic jurisprudence for more than twenty years and co-authored Desecration of A Heavenly Religion, which was officially banned by Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 2008. Cynthia landed on an al-Qaeda affiliated group’s hit list and was officially banned from entering Lebanon for her work fostering regional peace. For almost a decade, she received daily death threats from Islamists. After her belated brother was kidnapped and tortured, her friend was murdered, and Islamists tried to assassinate her in 2011, Farahat immigrated to the United States.

 Speaker Dr. Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. He was previously a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, during which time he spent more than a year at sea teaching courses related U.S. national security in the Middle East and Africa. He earlier worked as a lecturer in Iranian history at Yale University; Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC; and at three different universities in northern Iraq. A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rubin received a B.S. degree in biology from Yale University in 1994, and a Ph.D. in history from the same institution in 1999. He contributed affidavits to or served as an expert witness in multiple court cases involving terror sponsors and is the author of six books, several dozen book chapters, and is the author of more than three thousand published opinion essays and articles.

Moderated by Susan Ouellette, CIA Intelligence Analyst and the author of the award-winning Wayward Spy trilogy (Camcat Books) – The Wayward Spy (2021), Sudan’s books won Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Suspense/Thriller and a 2021 “Top 12 Book of the Year” (The Strand Magazine), The Wayward Assassin (2022), and The Wayward Target (2023). Her books draw heavily on her academic studies of international relations and Russian language and culture at both Harvard University and Boston University. As the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse, Susan worked as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, where she earned a commendation for her work during a time of international upheaval. Subsequently, she worked on Capitol Hill as a professional staff member for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). There, she participated in several overseas staff and congressional delegations focused on intelligence cooperation with allies and classified operations against adversaries. She later worked as a government contractor and freelance researcher, analyzing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Since her stint on Capitol Hill, she has worked for several federal consulting firms. Susan lives with her family on a farm outside ofWashington, D.C. where she helps tend to chickens, turkeys and too many honey bees to count.
Susan is currently working on her next spy thriller series.