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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The Syrian regime unleashed unprecedented violence to suppress large-scale non-violent protests amid the Arab uprisings. Hundreds of armed groups formed throughout the country to defend the protesters and fight back. However, in contrast to other conflicts previously dominated by al-Qaeda and Islamic State, the two largest Syrian Jihadi groups, Ahrar al-Sham and then Jabhat al-Nusra, rejected global jihad and began to cultivate new ties with the population, other ar...
"This chapter presents the analytical framework of this book in the contentious politics research agenda. The book situates jihadi groups in a multilevel environment constituted by their political environment, social movement, the security services, the public, and a potential countermovement. This chapter argues that jihadi groups can successively radicalise in interaction with any of these actors. The first argument is that radicalisation forces them to institutionalise along one dimension. The second argument is that the succession of several phases of radicalisation and institutionalisation shapes their long-term trajectories and strategic choices"--
The Syria-based group now functions more like a government than a nonstate actor, portending a reorientation for the larger jihadist movement. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group previously linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and to al-Qaeda, has evolved in ways that challenge accepted views of “jihadism.” Now ruling over territory in Syria’s northern Idlib and western Aleppo governorates, it functions more like a government than a nonstate actor, and HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani is seeking the group’s removal from the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. But HTS is hardly anodyne. The group still espouses extremist beliefs that glamorize terrorism abroa...
This book uses the cases of Syrian factions in rebel-held areas, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Houthi in Yemen, rebels in Libya, Taliban in Afghanistan, In Iraq, and Somalia to explain the importance of examining genealogies tribalism, common local knowledge and social networks in understanding the institutionalisation of armed group governance systems. The book provides a series of studies employing heterogenous methodological approaches to address the issue using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. The proposed project also attempts to move away from the central debate on the national political crisis trend by examining the sub-national level patterns and assessing various factors and questions that bring about clear answers regarding how de-facto rulers use tribes and tribal informal institutions to sustain their presence and create a safe social incubator.
This book examines ten reasons for global jihad today. Specifically, the reasons are (1) radicalization, (2) group dynamics and socialization, (3) social alienation, (4) religious motivations, (5) legal motivations, (6) political motivations, (7) a Clash of Civilizations, (8) economic conditions, (9) transformative learning, and (10) outbidding and internal rifts. To investigate these points, all chapters include the historical background, specific case studies (both past and current), statistics, and theoretical approaches to the subject of global jihad. The main purpose of jihad is to achieve global domination—through any means, including violence—and establish the Caliphate. The Caliphate is a Muslim system of world government that seeks to establish a new world order by overthrowing the current order, effectively creating an all-encompassing Islamic state.
Jihadist rebel groups that take control over a territory, claim authority over its population, and implement radical religious laws have become a rising security issue over the last decade. Generally brutal and authoritarian, the best-known manifestation of this phenomenon is the Islamic State (IS). While the IS has been decimated in the last few years, most analysts agree that the problem of jihadist violence is far from over, and that the IS may very well re-configure itself in a not so distant future. Moreover, beyond Iraq and Syria, the security threat posed by violent jihadism remains an acute issue. Yet no one has hitherto systematically explored the potential for civil resistance agai...
Ayman al-Zawahiri--co-founder of al Qaeda and successor to bin Laden--was one of the most influential terrorists of the modern era. In the first in-depth biography of the Egyptian doctor and ideologue, Sajjan M. Gohel meticulously unpacks al-Zawahiri's long career, which spanned over 50 years, in the growth and evolution of transnational terrorism. From an illustrious Egyptian family, al-Zawahiri chose to rebel against his own society and the international order. Through his travels across multiple continents, the Egyptian found himself in many of the places where history was made. A pioneer of terrorist strategies and tactics, al-Zawahiri left an indelible legacy for al-Qaeda and other terrorists to build upon.
In this third edition of his widely acclaimed survey, historian Randall D. Law makes sense of the history of terrorism by examining it within its broad political, religious and social contexts from the ancient world to the present day. In Terrorism: A History, Law reveals how the very definition of the word has changed, how the tactics and strategies of terrorism have evolved, and how those who have used it have adapted to revolutions in technology, communications, and political ideologies. Terrorism: A History extensively covers topics as wide-ranging as jihadist violence, state terror, the Israeli/Palestianian conflict, Northern Ireland, anarcho-terrorism, and racist violence, plus lesser-...
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This collection is the first on ex-extremists and combatants (Formers) in violence prevention work. While the engagement of Formers in violence prevention programs--especially in the context of countering and preventing violent extremism (P/CVE), and peacebuilding--has expanded across the world, their involvement has been controversial and contested. This volume captures a variety of work Formers are engaged in across a range of contexts, broadly divided into three ...