My brilliant friend and countryman Jacob Høigilt has just written an absolutely fascinating report on Islamism and Education in the Palestinian Territories. It’s fieldwork-based, rich and nuanced, and it undermines widespread assumptions about the link between Islamic education and militancy.
While I am at it, I might as well mention my own completely unrelated CTC paper on the Failure of Jihad in Saudi Arabia.
As regular readers of jihadi literature know, the RAND Corporation is no friend of al-Qa‘ida. Supporters of the latter have a tendency to blame RAND for trying to destroy them and the rest of the world’s Muslims into the bargain. Although RAND is not alone in being perceived by jihadis as an almost conspiratorial observer of every move the jihadis make (West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center, as long-time readers of Jihadica know all too well, is another), it is probably the one that gets criticised most. (If you were not aware of this, see Jarret Brachman’s excellent post on this subject.) Recently, however, one Nur al-Islam posed a question relating to RAND that I had not seen before: Is there a connection between the RAND Corporation and extremists of takfir?
Takfir and takfiris
Takfir, as many readers will know, is the practice of excommunication, i.e. of declaring another Muslim to be an infidel (kafir). Traditionally, Muslim scholars have generally been careful to apply this concept in their dealings with other believers because of the drastic consequences it could have; according to the shari‘a (Islamic law), a Muslim who consciously and willingly abandons Islam or converts to a different religion may be killed. In recent times, many jihadis have argued in favour of a greater application of takfir, applying it to rulers of Muslim countries for not (fully) legislating on the basis of Islamic law. Since many (but certainly not all) jihadis claim applying the shari‘a is part and parcel of being a Muslim, they contend that rulers who refrain from doing so cease to be believers and are, in fact, infidels. Because of this, they subsequently claim that waging jihad against these rulers is legitimate.
According to most Muslim scholars (as well as probably the overwhelming majority of Muslims), this is a rather extreme application of takfir that will only bring about chaos and civil strife. Jihadis who apply takfir this way are therefore often referred to as takfiris or even extremists of takfir (ghulat al-takfir). These labels are fiercely rejected by many jihadis, however, who associate the term ghulat or ghulat al-takfir with Muslims who not only excommunicate political rulers for their failure to apply the shari‘a but also ordinary Muslims who have nothing to do with legislation whatsoever. In some cases, these ghulat even excommunicate entire societies. This latter group of Muslims (i.e. the ones who are willing to apply takfir to large groups of people) is referred to as “the extremists of takfir” even among jihadis and this is also how Nur al-Islam uses the term.
Annihilating global Jihadi-Salafism
One can justifiably wonder what on earth such extremists have to do with RAND. When I first read the title of this piece, I was rather hoping to find a highly intricate and complex reasoning that starts from a ridiculous premise but is nevertheless so logically argued that one is tempted to believe it all as the only possible outcome. This is often the case with jihadi writings, which are sometimes mistakenly dismissed as the rantings of crazy radicals but are actually often cleverly reasoned, despite their horrific message. Although this piece disappointed me in this respect, it is interesting nevertheless.
The author first gives the reader some general information about RAND and continues by stating that the enemy (i.e. RAND) wants to understand its enemy (i.e. jihadis) in order to fight them better. He then goes on, however, to claim that RAND has actively sought the help of other Muslims, including the scholars of al-Azhar in Cairo and the popular Egyptian preacher ‘Amr Khalid, to “annihilate global Jihadi-Salafism”. These were only second choices, however, since the author states that RAND had first asked other, non-violent Salafis to help them with this task but this had failed. He then asks whether RAND’s next step may be to asks extremists in takfir for their help in destroying (the less extreme and supposedly pure) Jihadi-Salafism. The author continues by pointing out that these extremists in takfir not only adhere to extremist teachings but have also done tremendous damage to Jihadi-Salafism by criticising scholars and activists who do stick to the true and correct teachings, like Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and others, including a surprising number of Jordanian Jihadi-Salafis.
Smear campaign
At this point, it becomes clear what the author’s real intention is. He is not at all trying to criticise RAND, as so many jihadis have done before. His real aim is to attack the people he calls extreme takfiris for their criticism of the Jordanian Jihadi-Salafi community supportive of al-Maqdisi. This has been done before, as I have pointed out elsewhere, but Nur al-Islam takes the charge of extreme takfiris to a new level. He claims that, just like RAND tries to destroy Jihadi-Salafism worldwide, so do the extreme takfiris. The author states that these ghulat al-takfir may or may not be aware of RAND’s plans “but unfortunately the result is, in any case, the same”, namely that both of them try to “bring down” Jihadi-Salafism and its leaders.
The author’s seemingly critical piece about RAND thus turns out to be little more than what may be the start of a larger smear campaign against al-Maqdisi’s jihadi enemies. By even suggesting that these supposedly extreme takfiris may possibly be working with the widely-hated RAND, the author tries to undermine their credibility. To me personally, this charge seems a bit too far-fetched to be taken entirely seriously and I therefore doubt whether the accusation will be picked up by like-minded jihadis to frame their opponents as being in bed with RAND. Still, it would be interesting to see if the already impressive array of labels Islamists use to discredit each other is soon going to be joined by another one: Randis.
Many Jihadica readers probably follow the academic journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, but I still want to highlight a couple of new articles that I found especially interesting:
The Internet in Indonesia: Development and Impact of Radical Websites – Jennifer Yang Hui
Jihadi Operational Art: The Coming Wave of Jihadi Strategic Studies – Dima Adamsky
There is a new blog in town: On War and Words. It is produced by military historian Mark Stout, who is probably best known to our readers as the lead author of the Terrorism Perspectives Project (the most comprehensive treatment available of the genre “jihadi strategic studies”). I am very excited that he has decided to blog. Do not be fooled by his understated autobiography – this man really knows a lot about jihadism and an insane number of other subjects.
I’d like to draw our readers’ attention to several interesting new academic publications have come out in the past few weeks:
Nelly Lahoud – In Search of Philosopher-Jihadis: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Jihadi Philosophy
A Aaron Weisburd – Comparison of Visual Motifs in Jihadi and Cholo Videos on YouTube
Stig Jarle Hansen and Atle Mesøy – The Muslim Brotherhood in the Wider Horn of Africa
Although not central to the Jihadica portfolio, I also strongly recommend the following indispensable contributions to the AfPak debate.
Marc Sageman – Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan
Nir Rosen – Something from Nothing
Yours truly also has a new article out, entitled Jihad, Yes, But Not Revolution: Explaining the Extraversion of Islamist Violence in Saudi Arabia
I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that I will have to stop blogging for a while, due to a combination of personal and professional reasons. From the end of this month till some time next spring, I will be posting very infrequently, although I will be working behind the scenes as editor.
The good news is that I have recruited a very exciting team of guest bloggers who will be writing for Jihadica a month or two at the time throughout this coming academic year. I won’t reveal the whole list, but I can say that they are all established and brilliant academics who have been working on jihadism and Islamism for many years. I chose them because I admire their work.
The first one out is Jean-Pierre Filiu (see also here) a professor at Sciences-Po Paris and a leading French expert on jihadism. The scholar-diplomat Filiu has written many books, notably Les Frontieres du Jihad (2006), L’Apocalypse dans l’Islam (2008) and Les neuf vies d’al-Qaida (forthcoming). Fun fact: Filiu is also the French biographer of Jimi Hendrix. Filiu’s many articles include a piece on Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in the latest issue of the Middle East Journal. He will start blogging for us this week.
Just a quick note to say that there is a new article on the idelogy of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi in the latest issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. The author is of course Joas Wagemakers, the world’s leading Maqdisi expert and an occasional Jihadica commentator. While I am at it, I should mention that Wagemakers published two other excellent articles on related topics last year, one on al-Maqdisi’s Qur’an interpretation and another on al-wala wa’l-bara in Salafi discourse.
For more relevant academic articles, see the indispensible overview of current contents of periodicals on the Middle East by the GLORIA Center in Herzlia, Israel.
On the current affairs side of things, there are two new articles on the Bin Nayif operation. Greg Johnsen of Waq al-Waq has an excellent piece in the National which gives you the big picture of the operation. Then there is a great analysis by Saud al-Sarhan in the Saudi newspaper al-Watan. Al-Sarhan traces in detail the long history of Saudi al-Qaida’s targeting of government figures, and argues that the main novelty in the Bin Nayif attack was the tactics. The attack does not herald a new wave of violence, he concludes (and I agree). Al-Sarhan, for those of you who don’t know him, is a Saudi intellectual and PhD candidate at Exeter University in the UK. He writes frequently in Arab media and occasionally in the Western press (see e.g. this New York Times piece).
Conference season has begun, and there is an unusually high number of jihad-related academic meetings taking place this autumn. To give you an idea of what people in our field are working on at the moment, I figured I should give you an overview of the main ones that have come to my attention.
3-6 September: The American Political Science Association Annual Meeting began yesterday in Toronto and will go on all weekend. There are a number of panels and papers on jihadism and Islamism; just search for jihad or Islam in the online program.
4-6 September: This weekend there is also a three-day conference on “Islamic Resurgence in the Age of Globalization:Myth, Memory, Emotion” in Trondheim, Norway. The conference is co-sponsored by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Haifa University (Israel), and Aarhus University (Denmark). I was supposed to be there, but I had to cancel in the last minute for personal reasons. It is a shame, for I was looking forward to meeting the many great scholars in the program, especially Dale Eickelman, Itzchak Weismann and Reuven Paz, whose work I deeply respect.
7-9 September: Early next week the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World at the University of Edinburgh is hosting a conference on “Rethinking Jihad”. The program looks terrific, not least because it includes both prominent scholars and leading Islamist activists.
9 September: The Counterterrorism Center at West Point is organizing a conference in Washington DC next Wednesday on “Al-Qaida: Context and competition”. It should be fantastic – the list of presenters speaks for itself.
30 September-2 October: While not directly jihad-related, the upcoming conference in Brussels on Sunni-Shia contemporary relations is worth noting because of its very impressive line-up of speakers, including Laurence Louer, Reidar Visser, Thomas Pierret, Stephane Lacroix, Stephane Dudoignon and many others – basically the cream of the crop of young European scholars of the Middle East.
12-14 November: Princeton University and Sciences-Po Paris will be organizing a workshop in Princeton on “The State of Saudi Arabia”. It will feature many of the world’s leading experts on Saudi politics and there will be panels on Saudi jihadism and Islamism.
21-24 November: Finally there is of course the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, to be held this year in Boston. By searching the program for “jihad” and related keywords you should find some interesting papers.
Keep in mind that this overview does not give you the full picture of the academic activity in our field. There are bound to be conferences that I don’t know about or that I forgot about. Moreover, I know of at least three extremely interesting workshops taking place this autumn that are not publicised, in most cases because there is a government sponsor.
Unfortunately I won’t be attending any of the above conferences except the Saudi one in Princeton in November. But I will be waiting impatiently to read the many publications that will no doubt come out of them.
By the way, if anybody knows of any other relevant conferences or workshops, please mention them in the comments.
The Jihadi Websites Monitoring Group at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzlia, Israel, has produced a very interesting report about WMD discussions on jihadi internet forums (hat tip: Nawaf).
I am not surprised that this original work is coming out of Herzlia, for it was Reuven Paz – the pioneer of online jihadism studies – who wrote some of the earliest serious analyses of jihadi intentions regarding WMD.
Since then many have made valuable contributions this literature, including Jonathan Spyer , Jerry Long, Andrea Plebani, Sammy Salama and Lydia Hansell, Anne Speckhard, and others.
At my own FFI, Anne Stenersen and others have also conducted in-depth studies on this. (In the most fascinating of these, Anne collaborated with FFI scientists to objectively assess the quality and effectiveness of the many WMD recipes and instruction manuals circulating on the forums, but this report is unfortunately exempt from public disclosure, for obvious reasons.)
I have yet to read Gary Ackerman and Jeremy Tamsett’s recent book, but it looks promising. Finally I should mention that Rolf Mowatt Larsen (ex-CIA, now Harvard Kennedy school) is currently preparing at least one academic study on AQ and WMD, and I am sure it will set a new standard in the field.
PS If I left our any other major studies in this brief review, please let me know in the comments.
The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence led by the indefatigable Peter Neumann at King’s College London has launched a new blog called FREErad!cals. It has a very impressive team of contributors consisting of leading scholars and experienced bloggers, including Neumann himself, Ubiwar blogger Tim Stevens, deradicalisation specialist Omar Ashour, Lashar-e-Tayyiba expert Stephen Tankel, Central Asia and ideology specialist Jeni Mitchell, famous Israel scholar Ahron Bregman, Sciences-Po alumna Alex Matine and the mysterious Amm Sam.
If you are reading Jihadica you are probably already familiar with ICSR, but if not, you should definitely check out their website and publications. ICSR is a multinational, multilateral initiative at the forefront of the field of terrorism and radicalisation studies. Although the name takes forever to type, FREErad!cals is a great addition the blogosphere and I look forward to learning from it the months and years to come.