Islamist Terrorism in the Context of Contemporary Hybrid Wars

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.

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

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.

Political Rhetoric and Hate Speech in the Case of Shamima Begum

The relationship between political rhetoric and hate crime has been a topic of growing concern in recent years, with the narratives promoted by politicians widely seen as legitimating and inspiring hate crime as well as soothing or inflaming the tensions that result from antecedent hate crime events such as terrorist attacks. The potential return of so-called ‘IS bride’ Shamima Begum from a Syrian refugee camp in 2019, following her high-profile departure four years earlier, led to intense debate within the UK, particularly over the controversial removal of her citizenship by Home Secretary Sajid Javid. As an Islamist terrorism case with clear gendered dimensions, the Begum case was well-positioned to function as a hate crime trigger event. The divisiveness of this case was reflected in partisan political argument within the UK, and accompanied by high volumes of toxic and Islamophobic social media discussion alongside input from a variety of UK politicians. This paper offers a qualitative analysis of the political rhetoric promoted in the Twitter accounts of leading UK politicians in response to the citizenship decision, and subsequent developments between February and April 2019, such as the death of Begum’s child and the granting of legal aid to support her ongoing legal challenge. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of politicians’ online rhetoric, this study aims to establish the contribution of UK political rhetoric to the hate speech discourses that emerged online in response to this case.

Western Jihadism

This book tells the story of how Al Qaeda grew in the West. In compelling detail, Jytte Klausen traces how Islamist revolutionaries exiled in Europe and North America in the 1990s helped create and control the world’s deadliest terrorist movement - and how, after the near-obliteration of the organization in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, they helped to rebuild it. She shows that the diffusion of Islamist terrorism to Europe and North America was driven, not by local grievances of Western Muslims, but by the strategic priorities of the international Salafi-jihadist revolutionary movement. That movement nevertheless adapted to Western repertoires of protest even as it agitated for armed insurrection and religious revivalism in the name of a warped version of Islam. The jihadists—Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and their many affiliates and associates— also proved to be amazingly resilient. Again and again, the movement recovered from major setbacks. Appealing to disaffected Muslims of immigrant origin and alienated converts to Islam, Jihadist groups continue to recruit new adherents in Europe and North America, street-side in neighborhoods, in jails, and online through increasingly clandestine platforms. Taking a comparative and historical approach, deploying cutting-edge analytical tools, and drawing on her unparalleled database of up to 6,500 Western jihadist extremists and their networks, Klausen has produced the most comprehensive account yet of the origins of Western jihadism and its role in the global movement.

Religion and International Relations: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?

The article surveys the recent scholarly study of religion and international relations/International Relations (ir/IR). The focus of the article is on two discrete periods: pre-9 September 2001 (‘9/11’) and post-9/11. During the first time period, Iran’s Islamic revolution (1979), the civil war in former Yugoslavia and Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ (1993) were major foci of attention. The second period saw a large number of scholarly accounts following the 9/11 attacks on the USA, with a sustained focus on the international securitisation of Islam. The article also briefly surveys the position of religion in IR theory. The article concludes that following the recent diminution of the threat to the West of Islamist terrorism—subsequent to the apparent demise of Islamic State and the fragmentation and dissipation of al Qaeda—the study of religion in IR theory needs to take better account of changing circumstances to arrive at a better understanding of how religion impacts on international relations/International Relations.

Do journalists differentiate between Muslims and Islamist terrorists? A content analysis of terrorism news coverage

We examined how Muslims are depicted in connection with Islamist terrorism and to what extent journalists use undifferentiated coverage – that actively links Muslims to terrorism – and differentiated coverage that actively differentiates Muslims from terrorism. Drawing from research in journalism studies and from terror management theory, we examined media-specific and event-specific predictors using a quantitative content analysis (12 quality/tabloid newspapers from three countries, N = 1071 articles). Results reveal that undifferentiated coverage occurs in almost every other article. Differentiation occurs much less. Tabloids use undifferentiated and differentiated coverage in fact-oriented and opinion-oriented articles. Quality news only do so in opinion-oriented articles. Proximity of a terror event resulted in more undifferentiated and less differentiated coverage. Results have important implications for journalism practice, terrorism research and intergroup relations.

THE 2020 FRANCE ATTACKS: A FRAMING ANALYSIS OF U.K. AND U.S. NEWSPAPERS

The 2020 France attack regarding the controversial issue of the public portrayal of Prophet Muhammad’s caricature had created havoc all over the world. This research focuses on how the 2020 France attacks-related issues were portrayed in the media in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the United States (U.S.). This analysis aims to determine the dominant issues covered, the news slant, and the newspapers' tone and framing regarding the 2020 France attacks-related issues. Using content analysis, the data from news articles and feature articles collected from two mainstream online daily newspapers, which were The Independent from the U.K. and The New York Times from the U.S. were examined. This study also aims to compare the differences between the U.K. and U.S. media in framing and reporting the 2020 France attacks-related issues. A total of 56 news articles were analysed, from which three major issues were reported in the newspapers during that period. The most frequently reported issue was the Islamist ‘Terrorism’ in France issue. The findings of the study indicated that the news slant of both newspapers was significantly different. The Independent's news slant was balanced towards both France and Islam, while The New York Times' news slant was against Islam.