Author: Olivier Roy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849046980
Category : Islamic fundamentalism
Languages : en
Pages : 138
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Book Description
Islamic State has replaced Al Qaeda as the great global threat of the twenty-first century, the bogeyman we have all come to fear. But Daesh started as a local movement, rooted in the resentment of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and Syria. It is they who have lost most in the geo-strategic shift in the balance of power in the region over the last thirty years, as Iranian-backed Shias have mobilised politically and advanced on the social and economic fronts. How has Islamic State been able to muster support far beyond its initial constituency in the Arab world and to attract tens of thousands of foreign volunteers, including converts to Islam, and seemingly countless supporters online? In this compelling intervention into the debate about Islamic State's origins and future prospects, the renowned French sociologist of religion, Olivier Roy, argues that the group mobilised a highly sophisticated narrative, reviving the myth of the Caliphate and recasting it into a modern story of heroism, death and nihilism, using a very contemporary aesthetic of violence, well entrenched amid a youth culture that has turned global and violent.
Author: Esther Ahmad
Publisher: NavPress
ISBN: 149642591X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
If you truly love Allah, you will die for him. Your death will mean much reward for you and your family in heaven. Only death will prove your love. It was the final test. A chance to win not only the love of Allah, but the love of her father—something she had never been able to earn. Esther took a deep breath and raised her hand in the air. At the age of eighteen, she had just volunteered to become a suicide bomber. Defying Jihad is the true story of a girl growing up under radical Islamic rule, trained to believe her ultimate purpose was to serve Allah by dying as a jihadist. But two nights before she was to leave forever, she had a dream . . . one that would change the course of her destiny. Against all odds, Esther became a follower of Jesus—even though leaving Islam meant her death sentence. But rather than kill her immediately, Esther’s furious father challenged her to a series of public debates with Muslim scholars: the Bible versus the Quran. If Esther won, she might yet survive. But if the Muslim clerics won, Esther must renounce her Christian faith. For an entire month—if she lived that long—Esther would be brought before the mob daily to defend her newfound faith. Would God give her the words to argue against Muslim leaders, former friends, and even her own family? Defying Jihad is an amazing story of a woman prepared to surrender all for Jesus—and whose life transformed from terror to overwhelming love.
Author: Laurent Murawiec
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139474626
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
This book examines contemporary jihad as a cult of violence and power. All jihadi groups, whether Shiite or Sunni, Arab or not, are characterized by a similar bloodlust. Murawiec characterizes this belief structure as identical to that of Europe's medieval millenarians and apocalyptics, arguing that both jihadis and their European cousins shared in a Gnostic ideology: a God-given mission endowed the Elect with supernatural powers and placed them above the common law of mankind. Although the ideology of jihad is essentially Islamic, Murawiec traces the political technologies used by modern jihad to the Bolsheviks. Their doctrines of terror as a system of rule were appropriated by radical Islam through multiple lines of communication. This book brings history, anthropology, and theology to bear to understand the mind of jihad that has declared war on the West and the world.
Author: David Cook
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520244486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
Jihad is one of the most loaded and misunderstood terms in the news today. Contrary to popular understanding, the term does not mean "holy war." Nor does it simply refer to the inner spiritual struggle. This book, judiciously balanced, accessibly written, and highly relevant to today's events, unravels the tangled historical, intellectual, and political meanings of jihad. Looking closely at a range of sources from sacred Islamic texts to modern interpretations, [This book] opens a critically important perspective on the role of Islam in the contemporary world. [The author] also describes some of the conflicts that occur in radical groups and shows how the more mainstream supporters of these groups have come to understand and justify violence.-Back cover.
Author: Daniel Byman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190646527
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, fighters from abroad have journeyed in ever-greater numbers to conflict zones in the Muslim world to defend Islam from-in their view-infidels and apostates. The phenomenon recently reached its apogee in Syria, where the foreign fighter population quickly became larger and more diverse than in any previous conflict. In Road Warriors, Daniel Byman provides a sweeping history of the jihadist foreign fighter movement. He begins by chronicling the movement's birth in Afghanistan, its growing pains in Bosnia and Chechnya, and its emergence as a major source of terrorism in the West in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Since that bloody day, the foreign fighter movement has seen major ups and downs. It rode high after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the ultra-violent Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attracted thousands of foreign fighters. AQI overreached, however, and suffered a crushing defeat. Demonstrating the resilience of the movement, however, AQI reemerged anew during the Syrian civil war as the Islamic State, attracting tens of thousands of fighters from around the world and spawning the bloody 2015 attacks in Paris among hundreds of other strikes. Although casualty rates are usually high, the survivors of Afghanistan, Syria, and other fields of jihad often became skilled professional warriors, going from one war to the next. Still others returned to their home countries, some to peaceful retirement but a deadly few to conduct terrorist attacks. Over time, both the United States and Europe have learned to adapt. Before 9/11, volunteers went to and fro to Afghanistan and other hotspots with little interference. Today, the United States and its allies have developed a global program to identify, arrest, and kill foreign fighters. Much remains to be done, however-jihadist ideas and networks are by now deeply embedded, even as groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rise and fall. And as Byman makes abundantly clear, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.
Author: Raffaello Pantucci
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849041652
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
As Mohammed Siddique Khan led his group of fellow-believers into London on the morning of July 7, 2005 it is unlikely that they were thinking much beyond the immediate impact of their actions. Driven by anger at the West's treatment of Muslims worldwide, ideas fed to them by foreign extremists, and a sense of extreme rejection of the society in which they were born, they sought to reshape the world in an image they thought would be pleasing to God. But while they felt they were on a holy mission -- as enunciated in Khan's chilling video message, We Love Death As You Love Life-- a far more earthly arc of history underlay their actions. This book offers an insight into the motivations behind Khan and his group, as well as the hundreds of young British Muslims who have been drawn by jihadist ideas to fight on battlefields at home and abroad. Starting with the arrival of immigrant communities to the UK and the establishment of diasporas with strong ethnic connections to the Middle East and South Asia, to the arrival of jihadist warriors fresh from the anti-Soviet war Afghanistan, this book looks at the history that came before Mohammed Siddique Khan and places his action within its larger context. This book provides the first comprehensive history of jihadist ideas and violence in the United Kingdom.
Author: Faisal Devji
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801459788
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
What are the motives behind Osama bin Laden's and Al-Qaeda's jihad against America and the West? Innumerable attempts have been made in recent years to explain that mysterious worldview. In Landscapes of the Jihad, Faisal Devji focuses on the ethical content of this jihad as opposed to its purported political intent. Al-Qaeda differs radically from such groups as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah, which aim to establish fundamentalist Islamic states. In fact, Devji contends, Al-Qaeda, with its decentralized structure and emphasis on moral rather than political action, actually has more in common with multinational corporations, antiglobalization activists, and environmentalist and social justice organizations. Bin Laden and his lieutenants view their cause as a response to the oppressive conditions faced by the Muslim world rather than an Islamist attempt to build states. Al-Qaeda culls diverse symbols and fragments from Islam's past in order to legitimize its global war against the "metaphysical evil" emanating from the West. The most salient example of this assemblage, Devji argues, is the concept of jihad itself, which Al-Qaeda defines as an "individual duty" incumbent on all Muslims, like prayer. Although medieval Islamic thought provides precedent for this interpretation, Al-Qaeda has deftly separated the stipulation from its institutional moorings and turned jihad into a weapon of spiritual conflict. Al-Qaeda and its jihad, Devji suggests, are only the most visible manifestations of wider changes in the Muslim world. Such changes include the fragmentation of traditional as well as fundamentalist forms of authority. In the author's view, Al-Qaeda represents a new way of organizing Muslim belief and practice within a global landscape and does not require ideological or institutional unity. Offering a compelling explanation for the central purpose of Al-Qaeda's jihad against the West, the meaning of its strategies and tactics, and its moral and aesthetic dimensions, Landscapes of the Jihad is at once a sophisticated work of historical and cultural analysis and an invaluable guide to the world's most prominent terrorist movement.
Author: Maher Hathout
Publisher: Dawn Books Llc
ISBN: 9781881504542
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 77
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Book Description
Author: Virginie Collombier
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190864540
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Across the Muslim world, from Iraq and Yemen, to Egypt and the Sahel, new alliances have been forged between the latest wave of violent Islamist groups ---- -including Islamic State and Boko Haram ---- -and local tribes. But can one now speak of a direct link between tribalism and jihadism, and how analytically useful might it be? Tribes are traditionally thought to resist all encroachments upon their sovereignty, whether by the state or other local actors, from below; yet by joining global organizations such as Islamic State, are they not rejecting the idea of the state from above? This triangular relationship is key to understanding instances of mass 'radicalization', when entire communities forge alliances with jihadi groups, for reasons of self-interest, self-preservation or religious fervor. If Algeria's FIS or Turkey's AKP once represented the 'Islamization of nationalism', have we now entered a new era, the 'tribalization of globalization'?
Author: Ahmed Rashid
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142002607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
An essential examination of the roots of fundamentalist rage in Central Asia, from the acclaimed author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos. Ahmed Rashid, whose masterful account of Afghanistan's Taliban regime became required reading after September 11, turns his legendary skills as an investigative journalist to five adjacent Central Asian Republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—where religious repression, political corruption, and extreme poverty have created a fertile climate for militant Islam. Based on groundbreaking research and numerous interviews, Rashid explains the roots of fundamentalist rage in Central Asia, describes the goals and activities of its militant organizations, including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and suggests ways of neutralizing the threat and bringing stability to the troubled region. A timely and pertinent work, Jihad is essential reading for anyone who seeks to gain a better understanding of a region we overlook at our peril.
