On 14 May 2010, Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, was suddenly stabbed whilst holding a constituency surgery by Roshonara Choudhry, a 21-year-old British student and an Islamic extremist, in an attempt to kill him. She was found guilty of attempted murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 15 years. Choudhry was the first Al-Qaeda sympathiser to attempt an assassination in Britain.

Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki was an American-Yemeni Islamic scholar, lecturer, and jihadist who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a drone strike from the U.S. government. U.S. government officials have stated that al-Awlaki was a key organizer for the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda.