Author : Aisha Ahmad
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 24,85 MB
Release : 2017
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0190656778
The rise of militant jihadist groups is one of the greatest international security crises in the world today. In civil wars across the modern Muslim world, Islamist groups have emerged out of the ashes, surged dramatically to power, and routed their rivals on the battlefield.
Author : Aisha Ahmad
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 19,51 MB
Release : 2017-08-04
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0190656794
For two decades, militant jihadism has been one of the world's most pressing security crises. In civil wars and insurgencies across the Muslim world, certain Islamist groups have taken advantage of the anarchy to establish political control over a broad range of territories and communities. In effect, they have built radical new jihadist proto-states. Why have some ideologically-inspired Islamists been able to build state-like polities out of civil war stalemate, while many other armed groups have failed to gain similar traction? What makes jihadists win? In Jihad & Co., Aisha Ahmad argues that there are concrete economic reasons behind Islamist success. By tracking the economic activities of jihadist groups in Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Mali, and Iraq, she uncovers an unlikely actor in bringing Islamist groups to power: the local business community. To illuminate the nexus between business and Islamist interests in civil war, Ahmad journeys into war-torn bazaars to meet with both jihadists and the smugglers who financed their rise to power. From the arms markets in the Pakistani border region to the street markets of Mogadishu, their stories reveal a powerful economic logic behind the rise of Islamist power in civil wars. Behind the fiery rhetoric and impassioned, ideological claims is the cold, hard cash of the local war economy. Moving readers back and forth between mosques, marketplaces, and battlefields, Ahmad makes a powerful argument that economic savvy, as much as ideological fervor, explains the rise of militant jihadism across the modern Muslim world.
Author : Glenn E Robinson
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 18,68 MB
Release : 2020-11-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1503614107
“A tour de force on the evolution of jihadism. . . . essential reading.” ―Mehran Kamrava, author of Inside the Arab State Most violent jihadi movements in the twentieth century focused on removing corrupt, repressive secular regimes throughout the Muslim world. But following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a new form of jihadism emerged—global jihad—turning to the international arena as the primary locus of ideology and action. With this book, Glenn E. Robinson develops a compelling and provocative argument about this violent political movement's evolution. Global Jihad tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end: whether a Jihadi International to liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation; al-Qa’ida’s call to drive the United States out of the Muslim world; ISIS using “jihadi cool” to recruit followers; or leaderless efforts of stochastic terror to “keep the dream alive.” Robinson connects the rise of global jihad to other “movements of rage” such as the Nazi Brownshirts, White supremacists, Khmer Rouge, and Boko Haram. Ultimately, he shows that while global jihad has posed a low strategic threat, it has instigated an outsized reaction from the United States and other Western nations. “[A] remarkably comprehensive account.” —Foreign Affairs
Author : Diego Gambetta
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 23,35 MB
Release : 2017-11-28
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1400888123
A groundbreaking investigation into why so many Islamic radicals are engineers The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that gap: they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent. Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about extremism: Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism? Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism. Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.
Author : Olivier Roy
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 138 pages
File Size : 49,85 MB
Release : 2017
Category : History
ISBN : 1849046980
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 : Niall Christie
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 427 pages
File Size : 42,9 MB
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 1317040112
In 1105, six years after the first crusaders from Europe conquered Jerusalem, a Damascene Muslim jurisprudent named ’Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106) publicly dictated an extended call to the military jihad (holy war) against the European invaders. Entitled Kitab al-Jihad (The Book of the Jihad), al-Sulami’s work both summoned his Muslim brethren to the jihad and instructed them in the manner in which it ought to be conducted, covering topics as diverse as who should fight and be fought, treatment of prisoners and plunder, and the need for participants to fight their own inner sinfulness before turning their efforts against the enemy. Al-Sulami’s text is vital for a complete understanding of the Muslim reaction to the crusades, providing the reader with the first contemporary record of Muslim preaching against the crusaders. However, until recently only a small part of the text has been studied by modern scholars, as it has remained for the most part an unedited manuscript. In this book Niall Christie provides a complete edition and the first full English translation of the extant sections (parts 2, 8, 9 and 12) of the manuscript of al-Sulami’s work, making it fully available to modern readers for the first time. These are accompanied by an introductory study exploring the techniques that the author uses to motivate his audience, the precedents that influenced his work, and possible directions for future study of the text. In addition, an appendix provides translations of jihad sermons by Ibn Nubata al-Fariqi (d. 985), a preacher from Asia Minor whose rhetorical style was highly influential in the development of al-Sulami’s work.
Author : Laurent Murawiec
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 23,13 MB
Release : 2008-08-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780521730631
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 : Salman Ahmad
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 47,38 MB
Release : 2010-01-12
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1416597697
"The story you are about to read is the story of a light-bringer....Salman Ahmad inspires me to reach always for the greatest heights and never to fear....Know that his story is a part of our history." -- Melissa Etheridge, from the Introduction With 30 million record sales under his belt, and with fans including Bono and Al Gore, Pakistanborn Salman Ahmad is renowned for being the first rock & roll star to destroy the wall that divides the West and the Muslim world. Rock & Roll Jihad is the story of his incredible journey. Facing down angry mullahs and oppressive dictators who wanted all music to be banned from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Salman Ahmad rocketed to the top of the music charts, bringing Westernstyle rock and pop to Pakistani teenagers for the first time. His band Junoon became the U2 of Asia, a sufi - rock group that broke boundaries and sold a record number of albums. But Salman's story began in New York, where he spent his teen years learning to play guitar, listening to Led Zeppelin, hanging out at rock clubs and Beatles Fests, making American friends, and dreaming of rock-star fame. That dream seemed destined to die when his family returned to Pakistan and Salman was forced to follow the strictures of a newly religious -- and stratified -- society. He finished medical school, met his soul mate, and watched his beloved funkytown of Lahore transform with the rest of Pakistan under the rule of Zia into a fundamentalist dictatorship: morality police arrested couples holding hands in public, Little House on the Prairie and Live Aid were banned from television broadcasts, and Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers proliferated on college campuses via the Afghani resistance to Soviet occupation in the north. Undeterred, the teenage Salman created his own underground jihad: his mission was to bring his beloved rock music to an enthusiastic new audience in South Asia and beyond. He started a traveling guitar club that met in private Lahore spaces, mixing Urdu love poems with Casio synthesizers, tablas with Fender Stratocasters, and ragas with power chords, eventually joining his first pop band, Vital Signs. Later, he founded Junoon, South Asia's biggest rock band, which was followed to every corner of the world by a loyal legion of fans called Junoonis. As his music climbed the charts, Salman found himself the target of religious fanatics and power-mad politicians desperate to take him and his band down. But in the center of a new generation of young Pakistanis who go to mosques as well as McDonald's, whose religion gives them compassion for and not fear of the West, and who see modern music as a "rainbow bridge" that links their lives to the rest of the world, nothing could stop Salman's star from rising. Today, Salman continues to play music and is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world as a spokesperson and using the lessons he learned as a musical pioneer to help heal the wounds between East and West -- lessons he shares in this illuminating memoir.
Author : Samina Yasmin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 46,45 MB
Release : 2017
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1849047103
This book provides a detailed account of the emergence and metamorphoses of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its political arm, Jamat ud Dawah, since the early 1990s. Linking the group's narratives to the process of Islamization in Pakistan and divergent views on the country's Islamic identity, it is the first systematic analysis of how the organization, globally reviled as the perpetrator of the 2008 Mumbai Bombings, has developed its conception of da'wah (proselytizing) and jihad in response to regional and global developments. Samina Yasmeen makes extensive use of Urdu materials (pamphlets, books, ephemera) by Markaz Da'wah wal Irshad, the parent organization of LeT, to examine the 'insider's vision' of the dominant threats to Pakistan and the Muslim ummah, as well as strategies for countering these threats. She argues that while adopting an oppositional narrative vis-à-vis India and the West, LeT has increasingly turned its attention to da'wah narratives within Pakistan engaging with broader spectrums of society. Women have increasingly been assigned significant agency in this narrative, and JuD's activism in education and social welfare has helped it acquire social capital. This, in turn, prompts a re-imagining of the movement's relationship with the Pakistani military.
Author : Nabeel Qureshi
Publisher : Zondervan
Page : 177 pages
File Size : 35,55 MB
Release : 2016-03-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 031053139X
From New York Times bestselling author of Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus Nabeel Qureshi—a former Muslim—comes his deeply personal, challenging, and respectful answer book to the many questions surrounding jihad, the rise of ISIS, and Islamic terrorism. San Bernardino was the most lethal terror attack on American soil since 9/11, and it came on the heels of a coordinated assault on Paris. There is no question that innocents were slaughtered in the name of Allah and in the way of jihad (meaning warfare against the enemies of Islam, in this case). But do the terrorists' actions actually reflect the broader religion of Islam? The answer to this question is more pressing than ever, as many Muslim refugees are still migrating to the West, seeking shelter from the violent ideologies of ISIS, Al-Qaida, and other radical Islamic groups. Setting aside speculations and competing voices, Qureshi explores the answers to difficult questions like: What is Islam, and is it a religion of peace or violence? Is there a clear definition and doctrine of jihad? How are we to understand jihad and radical expressions of Islam in relation to our Muslim neighbors and friends? Why is there such a surge of Islamist terrorism in the world today, and how should we respond? How does jihad compare with Old Testament calls to warfare? In Answering Jihad, bestselling author Nabeel Qureshi answers these urgent questions from the perspective of a former Muslim who is deeply concerned for both his Muslim family and his American homeland.
