scholarly journals Hegemonic Distortions: The Securitisation of the Insurgency in Thailand's Deep South

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-232
Author(s):  
Nicole Jenne ◽  
Jun Yan Chang
Keyword(s):  
External Environment ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Current Period ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Islamist Terrorism ◽  
Political Decisions

AbstractThe conflict between the Thai state and the Malay-Muslim insurgency in the country's Deep South is one of Southeast Asia's most persistent internal security challenges. The start of the current period of violence dates back to the early 2000s, and since then, a significant number of studies exploring the renewed escalation have been published. In this study, we argue that existing scholarship has not adequately accounted for the external environment in which political decisions were taken on how to deal with the southern insurgency. We seek to show how the internationally dominant, hegemonic security agenda of so-called non-traditional security (NTS) influenced the Thai government's approach to the conflict. Building upon the Copenhagen School's securitisation theory, we show how the insurgency became securitised under the dominant NTS narrative, leading to the adoption of harsh measures and alienating discourses that triggered the escalation of violence that continues today. The specific NTS frameworks that ‘distorted’ the Thai state's approach of one that had been informed solely by local facts and conditions were those of anti-narcotics and Islamist terrorism, albeit in different ways. Based on the findings from the case study, the article concludes with a reflection on the role of the hegemonic NTS agenda and its implications for Southeast Asian politics and scholarship.

The Role of Safe Havens in Islamist Terrorism

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiana C. Brafman Kittner
Keyword(s):  
Islamist Terrorism

scholarly journals Islamist Terrorism in the Context of Contemporary Hybrid Wars

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 734-746
Author(s):  
Yuriy M. Pochta
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Just War ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Western World ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Fixed Set ◽  
Islamist Terrorism ◽  
Armed Violence

The article deals with the present-day causes of the reproduction of Islamist terrorism. The concepts of desecularization, hybrid wars, and a system-functional approach form the methodological basis of the research. Recognizing the failure of liberal explanations of the causes of Islamist terrorism, the author criticizes the liberal methodology, which is based on an essentialist explanation of Islam and Muslim civilization and attributes a fixed set of qualities to Islam as an ontological evil, a barbarism hostile to Western civilization. The paper presents a viewpoint based on the approaches proposed by representatives of left-wing radical thought, postmodernism and neo-Marxism. It is concluded that the politicization of Islam, including its radical interpretations, is due not to the militant unchanging nature of Islam, but to the crisis of a number of Muslim societies. The Muslim worlds reaction to Western globalism is also an attempt to implement its own global political projects as a response of Islamic fundamentalism to the challenge of Western democratic fundamentalism. The author analyzes the phenomenon of hybrid wars as a form of armed violence that the Western world uses to restore order in its global empire. The connection between hybrid wars and the concept of a just war is shown, as well as the relevance of Islamist terrorism as an element of the system of hybrid wars. Islamist terrorism and counterterrorism are present in all hybrid wars waged in the Muslim world. This is manifested both in military actions on the ground, and in information warfare, as well as in virtual space. The market for terrorist and counterterrorist services inherent in hybrid wars and the place of Islamist terrorism in it are examined. Financial relations bind the participants in terrorist activities, including the customer, sponsor, mediator, organizer, informant, and performer. It is concluded that Islamist terrorism is not the activity of individual fanatics or a manifestation of the militant nature of Islam, but is produced by the conflict system of contemporary international relations.

scholarly journals The Jihadi Current and the Lay Thinking: A “Re-Anchorage” Process Hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-374
Author(s):  
Dorra Ben Alaya
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamist Terrorism ◽  
Familiar Objects ◽  
Theory Of Social Representations

The Jihadi-salafist doctrine which is at the Islamist terrorism origin that affects several countries since the emergence of Al Qaeda in the late 80's, gave birth to the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham/Levant (ISIS/ISIL) established as a Caliphate in 2014. Despite the ISIS official military defeat in 2019, the Jihadi-Salafist current - whose history goes back a long way, is currently behind a number of attacks whether collective or individual, claimed by known organizations or committed in isolation. In our perspective, we try to apprehend the attraction power of the Jihadi narrative issue taking the Theory of Social Representations as a paradigmatic framework. This implies that we dont consider the Jihadi current membership as the manifestation of a deviation from normality or optimal rationality, but as the expression of a certain common sense resonance. More precisely, and taking the case of the Tunisian context, the success of the Jihadi narrative is explained by its effectiveness as an interpretive grid and as a guide for action, making it possible to re-anchor a reality lacking in meaning. This hypothesis of a re-anchoring implies that anchoring as described by Moscovici as one of the two processes at the origin of the social representations formation (with the objectification process), could be not only as a familiarization of the strange by inserting it in an already known pre-existing frame, but by substituting to the frame itself, a new one, in order to be able to insert familiar objects which would have lost their sense precisely because of the old frame itself. This hypothesis could offer a theoretical and heuristic perspective allowing the anchoring process to be conceived as a circular and non-definitive process.

scholarly journals ‘Islamophobia Kills’. But Where Does it Come From?

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Scott Poynting
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Islamist Terrorism

This paper examines the global provenance of Australian Islamophobia in the light of the Christchurch massacre perpetrated by a white-supremacist Australian. Anti-Muslim racism in Australia came with British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Contemporary Islamophobia in Australia operates as part of a successor empire, the United States-led ‘Empire of Capital’. Anti-Muslim stories, rumours, campaigns and prejudices are launched from Australia into global circulation. For example, the spate of group sexual assaults in Sydney over 2000–2001 were internationally reported as ‘ethnic gang rapes’. The handful of Australian recruits to, and supporters of, IS, is recounted in the dominant narrative as part of a story propagated in both the United Kingdom and Australia about Islamist terrorism, along with policy responses ostensibly aimed at countering violent extremism and targeting Muslims for surveillance and intervening to effect approved forms of ‘integration’.  

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