Inside Jihadism

Understanding Jihadi Movements Worldwide

Farhad Khosrokhavar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317257516
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Jihad is the most organized force against Western capitalism since the Soviet era. Yet jihadism is multifaceted and complex, much broader than Al Qaeda alone. In the first wide-ranging introduction to today's rapidly growing jihadism, Khosrokhavar explains how two key movements variously influence jihadi activists. One, based in the Middle East, is more heavily influenced by Islamic religion and political thought. The other, composed of individuals growing up or living mostly in Europe and Western democracies including the United States, is motivated by secular as well as religious influences. Khosrokhavar interprets religious and lesser-known Arabic texts and the real-world economic and political dynamics that make jihadism a growing threat to Western democracies. Interviews with imprisoned jihadists on what motivated their plots and actions help the readers understand reality as seen by jihadists. The author concludes with recommendations to safeguard democracies from future jihadism.

1

Explanatory Approaches to Jihadism

There are many explanatory approaches to Jihadism, a large body of literature having appeared after September 11 (more than fifteen hundred books and articles up to 2007). Some stress psychosocial factors, cultural determinants, international crisis, the media’s role, and the Internet as well as the breakdown of social bonds as causes of Jihadist terrorism. There are, as well, those who explain Jihadism through the crisis of the state (weak or failed states) combined with some of the above factors. Some sociologists explain Jihadism as a social movement or a campaign. From this perspective, Jihadists frame social demands as opportunities for violent action, networking among themselves, forging collective identities, building up cells and informal organizations, making specific claims against the state and other institutions, and encouraging their members to accept sacrifices and other costs even though in most cases the success is not guaranteed by the action.¹ For some researchers, accounting for terrorism in terms of global conditions (political, economic, cultural, or demographic) is inadequate. Terrorist activity may rise or decline with otherwise constant global conditions; the important factor is the intent and purpose of small groups and their representation of reality.² These scholars insist on organizational dynamics,³ and many focus on the statistical data available on Jihadists and their terrorist cells to learn their general characteristics. Leiken and Brooke have made a quantitative analysis of terrorism and immigration.⁴ Using the biographical data of 373 terrorists, they outlined the following features:

• Global Jihad is not restricted to the Middle East: 41 percent of the sample is nationals of the West and a quarter, Europeans.

• Converts play an important role within Jihadist movement in regard to their proportion in Western societies.

• There is a link between immigration and terrorism: although the overwhelming majority of Muslim immigrants are not terrorists, most terrorists are immigrants.

• Jihadist cells are based on anthropological characteristics rather than skills: the role of the family, nationality, and immigration status are by far more important than other factors.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS AND GROUP DYNAMICS

Bakker studied individuals and networks involved in Jihadist terrorist activities in Europe, specifically in the thirty-one foiled and successful plots and attacks between September 2001 and September 2006. He identified about 250 terrorists and their networks, and investigated circumstances under which they joined the violent Jihad. He drew the following conclusion:

Most of the networks are active in Western Europe and differ in size, target selection, geographical background, and other variables. However, within networks there is homogeneity. Members of the network often are about the same age and come from the same places. This may be explained by the way these networks are formed, which often is through social affiliation. Many consist of people that are related to each other through kinship or friendship.

Our analysis of the characteristics of the 242 individual jihadi terrorists leads to the following general picture. They are mostly single males that are born and raised in Europe; they are not particularly young; they are often from the lower strata of society; and many of them have a criminal record…. Given the fact that more than 40 percent of them were born in Europe and an additional 55 percent have been raised in European countries or are long-term residents, the label “home-grown” is very appropriate to this group.

If we look at the circumstances in which these individuals became involved in jihadi terrorist activities, a picture emerges of networks including friends or relatives that do not seem to have formal ties with global Salafi networks; that radicalise with little outside interference; and that do so in the country in which they live, often together with family members or friends.⁵

Many of his conclusions are in agreement with Leiken and Brooke’s study, namely that Jihadist cells are formed in relation to ties of family, friendship, local residence, and kinship relations. Sageman has also noted this phenomenon.⁶

In their study of the 2004 Madrid bombings, Atran and Sageman using the social network analysis conclude that Jihadist groups are moving from a hierarchical organizational model toward a “leaderless resistance model.”⁷

Insistence on group dynamics in the West seems to be pertinent even in some parts of the Muslim world, such as Afghanistan, according to Hegghammer: “Many of those who went to Afghanistan had a relative or a friend who had gone previously. Most people made travel preparations as well as the journey itself together with friends or relatives. In some cases, political and religious motivations seem to have been completely subordinated to group dynamics and peer pressure.”⁸ The strength of this type of reasoning resides in the fact that it accounts for Jihadist cells, particularly in the West, and proposes a legitimate model to predict some of their future shapes. Its weakness lies in the fact that it systematically underestimates ideology and the larger social setting, which is difficult to quantify and therefore even more difficult to assess in statistical terms or in formal modeling.

Those who work on statistical data study the social origin of Jihadists, and more generally terrorists, including the role of religion. Pape gathered data about a total of 315 terrorist attacks and sociological data on 462 suicide attackers.⁹ According to his research, religion is rarely the root cause of suicide terrorism, and the main goal of suicide terrorist attacks is “to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that terrorists consider to be their homeland.” Another conclusion he draws is that suicide attacks have a high success rate (54 percent). Among terrorists analyzed by Pape, only 17 percent were unemployed or members of the lower classes, considerably less than the lower classes’ proportion in their respective societies, where they made up about one-third overall. These conclusions have been partially called into question. Moghadam points to an alternative analysis that puts the success rate at 24 percent. He notes that Pape exaggerates the link between occupation and suicide terrorism, especially with regard to the case of Al Qaeda, which has a global pattern of action rather than a localized (national or ethnic) one.¹⁰

Studies like Pape’s point to some basic features that might stimulate Jihadism (like the occupying Western army in the Muslim world), but it totally ignores the possibility that culture, social setting, and historical background play any major role in Jihadist mobilization. Some studies combine many levels of social structure but focus on organizations and their recruitment capacities. Pedahzur proposes an analytical three-stage model in which suicide terrorism is explained through the interaction between the decision making among the elites of terrorist organizations, the militants’ individual motivations, and the organizational process of recruitment and socialization of the terrorists.¹¹

Jihadist groups have a life cycle of their own. Repression and prevention operate in the long term, but once a group is built up, it becomes independent of the external world. Once the group has been declared illegal by the authorities, the members’ clandestine lives separate them from the outside world. For the most determined ones, preserving the existence of the group as such becomes the major, perhaps sole purpose. Therefore, “dormant” cells in Europe or elsewhere become dangerous because their active members intend to maintain the group in its underground life.

ECONOMIC ISSUES AND JIHADIST MOVEMENTS

The role of micro- and macro-economic variables is a subject of debate among researchers. For the so-called deprivation school, there is no strong correlation between poverty and radicalization, both at the level of the country of origin and the individual terrorists. Still, the same researchers find that the setting of historical terrorist attack is, on average, marked by low economic openness, high demographic stress, and a high level of international disputes (in the case of transnational terrorist activity).¹² Analyses of the period 1997–2004 confirm for some scholars the fact that the number of terrorist incidents is negatively associated with levels of development, literacy, and ethnic divisions and positively related to mineral reserves (mainly oil), nondemocratic political regimes, and participation in international organizations.¹³ Still, some studies underline the relation between poverty and terrorism. According to Ahmed Rashid, the rise of Islamist radicalism in Central Asia is related to youth unemployment there.¹⁴ Khashan found similar results in Palestine.¹⁵

The economic variable cannot be neglected in Jihadism, although its role, as we shall see, has to be contextualized in the West as in the Muslim world. Still, economy is embedded in culture and society, and explanations giving primacy to economics do not explain why in so many other societies the same economic variables do not give birth to the same type of radical action. By ignoring the role of Islam as a culture and a religion, these studies give at best a one-sided account of Jihadism.

Sociological studies throw light on the role of economic marginalization combined with cultural factors to explain terrorism, for example, in the case of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa. The culture that can promote terrorism alongside economic exclusion is the so-called “broken windows”: the excluded believe that everything is allowed, in the absence of institutional control and fragile intercultural links with Spanish Christians. In this situation, a culture of urban violence develops among adolescents.¹⁶

CULTURE AND RELIGION

Beside quantitative and micro-level studies, others stress the role of culture,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Explanatory Approaches to Jihadism
• 2 Jihadist Ideology
• 3 Jihadism: A Culture of Violence Turned into a Culture of Death
• 4 The Jihadist View of Democracy
• 5 Fundamentalism in Islam
• 6 The Transmission of Jihad to the West
• 7 Jihadist Intelligentsia around the World
• Conclusion: Toward an Islam of Hope
• Index