Category: Guest Post

GUEST POST: Some Inchoate Thoughts on Ideology

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

NOTE: As with all guest posts, the opinions expressed below are those of the guest author and they do not necessarily represent the views of this blogs administrator.
Jihadology.net aims to not only provide primary sources for researchers and occasional analysis of them, but also to allow other young and upcoming students as well as established academics or policy wonks to contribute original analysis on issues related to Global Jihadism. If you would like to contribute a piece, please email your idea/post to azelin [at] jihadology [dot] net. Pieces should be no longer than 2,000 words please.
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By Joshua Foust
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens wrote a provocative article for Foreign Policy, in which he argues that Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-Yemeni preacher working for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is “the most persuasive supporter of jihad for Muslims in the West.”
Under any circumstances, this would be a difficult argument to make: persuasion is notoriously difficult to quantify and measure. Even in discourse studies, measuring the influence or persuasion of individual figures is difficult: there is first-mover bias (in which one is important not because of any merit but merely because one said it first), and any number of other phenomenon that contribute to one’s influence in unpredictable ways. Politicians hire PR consultants, management consultants, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on “messaging,” and still cannot consistently predict reaction and electoral outcome.
Marketing firms try this as well: planting the desire for a product, or persuading consumers to purchase something they might not need but might definitely want. Marketing, too, is notoriously unpredictable—for reasons few people acknowledge or explain one quirky, off-beat commercial like the Old Spice Guy is a raging success, while a similarly quirky advertising campaign like Burger King’s is an expensive failure.
This is because, at the end of the day, it’s rare that people are “persuaded” to do anything. As humans, we tend to seek confirmation of our beliefs and wants and to ignore contrasting information—and there is a rich field of studies in cognitive psychology to back this up. In other words, most advertising—and most political messaging—is really about reinforcing beliefs and wants one already has, and providing a means to express justification for them.
In that light, describing Aulaqi as “the most persuasive” doesn’t make any sense. There is no way to prove such an argument. And indeed, in Meleagrou-Hitchens’ article, his evidence never rises above the circumstantial: some people read something on the Internet, and then they acted. They liked a speech, and then they acted. They read some manifesto, then they acted. This is correlation, to be sure. But is is not evidence of persuasion.
Meleagrou-Hitchens’ argument rests on the belief that Anwar al-Aulaqi possesses a unique capability to radicalize Westerners. Appealing to the publication of Inspire, the English-language magazine produced by AQAP, which has suggested Muslims carry out lone-wolf terror operations, Meleagrou-Hitchens argues that this is the crux of Aulaqi’s influence on radicalizing Westerners. His evidence amounts to interrogated statements by a few people who were arrested trying to commit murder: they enjoyed reading Aulaqi, he argues, so therefore Aulaqi persuaded them to commit violence.
Such an argument is logically backward. Why did these people decide to read Aulaqi in the first place? Roshonara Choudhry, one of the people Meleagrou-Hitchens cites as an Aulaqi inspiration, was not a radical in 2008. Yet, in 2009, she began to download Aulaqi’s sermons, eventually claiming to act upon them. What everyone who claims Aulaqi thus inspired her act ignore, including Meleagrou-Hitchens, is why she began to download Aulaqi’s sermons in the first place. I suspect it goes back to the conceit behind advertising, political messaging, and so on: people are not easily persuaded, but they are easily reinforced. I can’t answer what changed, but something happened where an otherwise adjusted young woman starts reaching out to an Internet preacher demanding violence. There is no evidence to support the assertion, however, that it was ideology, and specifically Aulaqi’s talents of persuasion, which directly inspired her to stab an MP.
The heart of my problem with discussing Islamist ideology is that I don’t understand how it affects behavior. Behavior is a complex process. It is the result of a number of causal factors, including constraints, signaling from peers, intent, and capability. All of those must come together in order for a behavior to occur. Ideology can be a contributing factor, as it is a form of signaling and constraint — making some behaviors appear to be acceptable, and some not. But this happens in an unpredictable way, and the fact we all acknowledge here (namely, that some people choose to act and most do not) should tell us that it is not a simple process to describe or predict.
The assumption behind the ideology discussion appears to be that behavior is a gun, and ideology is a trigger. That is, you have a person, they accept ideology, and then the output is behavior (in this case, violence). But that just isn’t how people work, and using some basic logic and self-knowledge can reveal that. We are not mono-causal creatures, even in relatively simple matters like choosing where to eat lunch. In particularly emotional issues, like religion and death, I would argue we are especially bad at explaining our beliefs and behavior (and there is actually a substantial body of cognitive science literature that argues people are reliably unreliable in accurately explaining their decisions).
We react to our environment, we respond to peer pressures, to community norms and signals, to physical and social constraints on behavior, and so on. Ideology can, potentially, be one of those contributing factors — as a means of signaling and of establishing justification for certain behaviors. But to say that ideology causes behavior is difficult if not impossible to prove — not only can we never get inside someone’s head to say, conclusively, why they did something, but we know, from neuroscience, that people cannot explain their own behavior consistently. And still, you’re left with the lingering question of why this specific person reacted against ideology while the thousands of others who were exposed to it did not.
At best, ideology is a woefully incomplete explanation for why terrorists chose to commit terror. But to argue that it is so important requires a standard of evidence that is, in practical terms, impossible to achieve.
Joshua Foust is a fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net.

GUEST POST: Juhaymān al 'Utaybī and the Siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin


NOTE: This is the second guest post at the al-Maktabah – المكتبة Blog. As with all guest posts, the opinions expressed below are those of the guest author and they do not necessarily represent the views of this blogs administrator. That said, I hope you enjoy the post and as always comments are welcomed! In addition, if you are interested in posting an article or research paper feel free to contact me through email.
This guest post is a summary of Marissa Allison’s senior thesis, which focuses on three aspects of the Siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. First, Allison describes the intellectual origins of the movement led by Juhaymān al ‘Utaybī. Second, Allison covers the events of the siege, and third, the influence al ‘Utaybī’s thought and movement had on later “jihadist” thinkers and groups. If you would like a full copy of Allison’s senior thesis, which I highly recommend, you can contact her: marissa [dot] allison [at] gmail [dot] com. This post will provide a flavor of Allison’s summary by pasting the introduction below and the rest will be in an embedded Scribd file after the introduction. Also, I would like to acknowledge J.M. Berger of IntelWire who first put us in contact.
Allison is a recent graduate from the University of Mary Washington where she received her B.A. in History and was awarded a certificate in Middle East Studies. This summer, she is studying Arabic in Oman with a Critical Language Scholarship from the State Department and in December, she will also travel to Pakistan as a Research Assistant to Dr. David Cook of Rice University to conduct research on mysticism in radical Islamic groups. While attending Mary Washington, she participated in study abroad programs in Costa Rica, Jordan and Egypt and also traveled to Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. She also served as an Arabic media research intern with the global intelligence network Stirling-Assynt, a research intern at the Palestine-Israel Journal in Jerusalem, and in a Baghdad Embassy virtual internship.
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Copyright Notice: The summary paper is copyrighted by Marissa Allison and may not be reproduced or cited without prior permission from the author.
Introduction






Thirty years after Juhayman al-Utaybi stormed the Grand Mosque at Mecca, it remains both one of the most poignant and least understood events in modern Middle Eastern history. Both because of the anniversary of the event and because of a general interest in Islamic militancy rising from the attacks of September 11, a new body of literature on this topic became prominent. This new literature considered this storming of the Grand Mosque as one of the first stepping stones on the road to transnational jihadism, culminating in al-Qaeda’s prominence and September 11. This literature is represented by the most recent book and the only book focusing solely on the topic: The Siege of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov.
However, my research portrays the Siege of Mecca in a different light. This research shows that Juhayman al-Utaybi’s movement was Saudi-specific, rather than transnational, and highlights the array of lingering influence of this event both within and outside of Saudi Arabia.
My research covers some of the details of the event, then explains why and how it occurred, and the final and most prominent part will show the great impact that this event has had in the past, and continues to have.

Summary of Senior Thesis- Militants Seize Mecca
[scribd id=32751515 key=key-yta0jctwxmklf4cihah mode=list]

GUEST POST: Response to post on Counter Narrative and AQ

Posted on by Aaron Y. Zelin

NOTE: I recently received an email from an individual who would like to remain anonymous since he works in the government. In it he provides his own take on my recent blog post about counter narrative strategy and al-Qā’idah. He agreed to allow me to re-post his comments here since I thought it would be fruitful to continue the conversation. The opinions expressed below are those of the guest author and they do not necessarily represent the views of this blogs administrator. That said, I hope you enjoy the post and as always comments are welcomed!
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I’m not deep into the theological arguments for or against the Al Qaeda worldview, but I’m a pragmatist and will point out a few things.
1. I really liked Jarret Brachman’s position that Al Qaeda and their associated groups should be labeled “Qutbians” to bluntly insert a human into their idealogy and see how many religious scholars can be found to argue against Qutb.
2. Brachman’s research into the mindset of the jihadist forum readers shows that:

A) Qutb is still the most widely read “theologian” by jihadists (hence calling them Qutbians) by a wide margin.

B) Al Qaeda and their supporters react immediately to threats to their worldview as seen in their responses to the rejection of their ideology by Dr. Fadl and the LIFG.

3. There is already a small counter-narrative as noted above. I don’t believe a U.S. counter-narrative will have a great effect on the current crop of committed jihadists. It may help reduce the number of available recruits but it would more likely affect their support base and erode some supporters.
4. The same philosophy professor who cited the need to agree on definitions in order to engage in constructive debate also stated that you can’t debate belief (faith) because faith has no basis in empirical fact. No matter how you couch your arguments, true believers (i.e. committed jihadists who believe that the non-Muslim world is at war with Islam and who see the world as a binary — dar ul harb or dar ul Islam) cannot be reasoned with because they cling to blind faith. So who is the counter-narrative trying counter?
5. What the U.S. and the Western world says about Al Qaeda and others not being Islamic may have a positive effect and reduce the so-called “home grown” extremists because of the volume of the message locally. What the U.S. and the Western world says about AQ will likely have no effect in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. because of the number and volume of voices who denounce the western world.
6. These loud voices are heard from childhood in the madrassas of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and are a trusted voice compared to the voice of the Western world. Part of the challenge is getting the Muslim world to denounce violent organizations and what seems to occur more often is the Muslim world embracing the violent organizations.
7. The “rehabilitation” programs, as exemplified by the Saudi program, attempts to establish a counter-narrative and to rehabilitate those who see violence against those who do not share their beliefs as a valid program. The Saudi counter-narrative carries more weight than a U.S. counter-narrative would have and the Saudi program boasts an 80-90% success rate… of those that agreed to attend. Even if those percentages are correct, they’re likely misleading. Of the number of people who engaged in “jihad” over the past twenty years (meaning those Muslims who traveled to another country and received combat training), how many actually continued to support violent jihad cause over the long-term? That was a rhetorical question, the number is small. Of the thousands who filtered through training camps in Afghanistan over the decades, only a very small number continued to actively engage in supporting violence. So are the Saudis convincing a bunch of people who aren’t committed to violence to not be committed to violence? Good success rate to publicize with little effect of the overall levels of violence. The hard-core guys never even showed up.
As always, making simplistic blanket statements in a complex world is dangerous, but my gist is that we do need to strike up a counter-narrative, but we must understand that our narrative will have little effect globally without other, more trusted Islamic voices stating the same. Even then, a committed core will continue to decry those Islamic voices as apostates who have joined with the infidels to steal the resources of the true Muslims and to enslave the righteous.