![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
One question that has been unresolved since the current phase of extremism began in the early- to mid-1990s has been whether or not there is a global structure to the jihadi phenomenon. This paper argues that no such definable structure exists, although regional, national, and local networks may well share common objectives and ideological ambitions. There has, in short, been a process of global branding that has developed that, in structural terms, corresponds to a ‘network of networks’. These objectives and the related praxis, moreover, have evolved over the years, going through three distinct stages of development, encapsulated in the strategic distinctions between al-Qa’ida, Ansar al-Shar’ia, and the Islamic State (Da’ish). Allied to this is a second consideration; namely that the formal ideological inspiration and justification for extremist activities is a set of integrated common insights that form a coherent ideology derived from a literalist interpretation of Islam, Salafism. A further aspect of the Salafi–jihadi phenomenon is to what degree this formal ideology is the real explanation of the appeal of these movements to their adherents, particularly to the so-called ‘foreign fighters’ – those who volunteer from countries not directly implicated in the specific conflicts in which they participate. This paper will argue that the phenomenon is far more complex than the superficial appeal of jihadist ideology would suggest. Finally, the paper will attempt to sketch out what the underlying causes of the intense wave of extremism sweeping the Middle East and North Africa might be and to what extent ‘blow-back’ from returning jihadis should be of concern to home governments.
Notes
1. Rapoport, ‘Four Waves’.
2. Kaplan, ‘Terrorism’s Fifth Wave’.
3. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’.
4. David Rapoport points out that a long-standing tradition in Sunni Islam anticipates the intervention of a ‘mahdi’, a religiously inspired charismatic and chiliastic personality, who will lead the Muslim community to an era of social justice and prosperity, is often associated with the dawn of a new century. He cites the violent occupation of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979 in this connection, alongside the Islamic Revolution in Iran which, although Shi’i in nature, nonetheless persuaded Sunni Muslims that religiously inspired populist political change was possible. A few years later, this was to be followed by Hizbullah’s attacks on French forces and US marines in Lebanon, which also introduced the weapon of suicide bombing. Rapoport, ‘Four Waves’.
5. The classic view was that jihad was a collective duty (fardh al-kifaya) upon the Muslim community – not an obligation incumbent upon all – unless that community were directly threatened; only then did it become fardh al-ayn. The reinterpretation proposed by Abdullah Azzam, therefore, was innovative and a challenge to the community at large.
6. The term ‘Salafism’, as conventionally used, is ambiguous. It initially referred to the Salafiyya Movement, founded in the 1870s and 1880s by Jamal al-Afghani and codified at the start of the twentieth century by Muhammad ‘Abduh in Egypt. They argued that Islam and modernity were not only compatible but that the dynamism of European civilisation could be more than mirrored by the Islamic world by returning to the essential Islamic message of activism and unicity, contained in the Qur’an, the Sunna and the Hadith, as articulated in the Rashidun caliphates. Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East, 125–8. The neo-Salafiyya or Salafi Movement espouses a modernised variant of Wahhabism, Salafism, which emerged in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and provides a literalist interpretation of Islam as practised in the Rashidun era as a paradigm for contemporary practice. It is this latter vision that forms the core of salafiyya-ilmiyya and which, in more extreme variants developed largely in the non-Arabic Islamic world, have emerged as the essence of salafiyya-jihadiyya. See Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad.
7. Gerges, The Far Enemy, 119–50.
8. Lia, Architect of Global Jihad, 102, 313–16, 347–484.
9. Naji’s major vision, as expressed in The Administration of Savagery, is discussed in Brachman, Global Jihadism, 94–5 and in Ryan, Decoding Al Qaeda’s Strategy, 148, 168–78. It should be noted that the original book is also sometimes entitled The Management of Savagery.
10. Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad, 21.
11. Ibid., 87–111.
12. Ibid, 118–24.
13. Pape, Citation2005, 210.
14. Lewis B, ‘License to Kill’.
15. Lia, Architect of Global Jihad, 103–5.
16. Joffé, ‘The Fateful Phoenix’.
17. Sageman. ‘Confronting al-Qaeda’.
18. Zelin, ‘Jihad 2020’.
19. Council on Foreign Relations, ‘Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’.
20. Zelin, Rise and Decline.
21. Joffé, ‘The Arab Spring’.
22. Interestingly enough, moderate Islamist movements also took no formal part in the events of the Arab Spring, although some, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, did provide covert support to the social movements that actually organised the demonstration in 2011. They did, however, benefit from the radical changes that occurred afterwards, in terms of electoral success, except in Libya and Algeria.
23. Knights, ‘The JRTN Movement’.
24. Joffé, ‘Barcelona’.
25. Joffé 2016, ‘The fateful phoenix’, 1–21.
26. A canonical head tax charged on non-Muslims but now used a punitive measure to coerce conversions to Islam. The normal canonical taxes are jiziya as head tax on non-Muslims, zakat (on personal wealth), kharaj (on land), and ‘ushur (on agricultural produce).
27. CISAC, Jabhat al-Nusra.
28. See note 4.
29. Joffé 2007, ‘Europe and Islam’, 100.
30. ICSR, ‘Foreign fighter total’.
31. BBC, ‘United Nations says 25,000 foreign fighters joined Islamic militants’.
32. Archick et al., European Fighters in Syria and Iraq, 10.
33. Homeland Security Committee, Final Report.
34. Ibid., 11.
35. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index, 30,000 persons have gone to Syria and Iraq alone since 2011, 7000 of them in the first six months of 2015. Norton-Taylor, ‘Up to 30,000 foreign fighters’.
36. According to a report in the Al-Khabar newspaper on 20 November 2015, the number of jihadists in Algeria halved from 220 to 100 over the year up to the end of 2015.
37. Indeed, the Algerian struggle had a much wider mobilising effect, offering a model for national liberation movements throughout the French colonial empire and inspiring Franz Fanon’s vision of the purifying effects of violence. See Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.
38. Derrida, Politics of Friendship.
39. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, 107–34.
40. Schmidt et al., ‘The Psychology of Political Extremism’.
41. Tozy, ‘Desir de guerre’; Chafiq, ‘Pourquoi l’offre’.
42. Rose, Immunising the Mind, 13–16.
43. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 72–4.
44. Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma, 3–7.
45. An examination of Islamic State accounting for revenues and expenditure in the Wilayat Deir ez-Zor for the Islamic month Rabi al-Awal 1436AH (23 December 2014–22 January 2015) reveal that 44.7% of the revenue base relied on confiscations and 27.7% came from oil and gas sales. Taxation provided only 23.7% of the revenue base. Expenditures were dominated by fighters’ salaries (43.6%), expenditure on military infrastructure (19.8%), and the police (10.4%). Services caused 17.7% of total expenditure. Al-Tamimi, ‘The Archivist’.