Below is the epitome of — if you do not mind me saying — academic porn. Here are some articles from both publications that interested me:
At the beginning of the 1980s, the idea of armed jihād against Israel was not only promoted by renegades from the Muslim Brothers in the Gaza strip, but also by former Maoists of Fatah in Lebanon. After the pull-out of most PLO-fighters from Beirut in 1982, a group around its spokesman Munīr Shafīq formed the Brigades of Islamic Jihad which were subsequently responsible for attacks in Israel. In a posthumously published booklet, two activists explained their reasons for their turn from Maoism to Islamism. The following article exposes the activists’ trajectory and the stages of their ideological and religious conversion. According to their own narration, the former Maoists at first came to the conviction that Islam was a factor for mass mobilization and then individually adopted Islam to become practising Muslims.
This article problematizes the general assumption about the inherent anti-Sufi tendency of the Salafiyya by looking closely at the thought of the Syrian Salafi thinker Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī. The primary text analysed in this article is a brief chapter of Qāsimī’s book Dalā’il al-tawhīd, entitled Butlān al-hulūl wa-l-ittihād (The Invalidity of Incarnation and Union). Here Qāsimī discusses the notions of hulūl (incarnation) and ittihād (union), and defends the idea of wahdat al-wujūd (unity of being) attributed to the shaykh akbar Ibn ‘Arabī which led Qāsimī to stand up against the shaykh al-islām Ibn Taymiyya who accused Ibn ‘Arabī of being a heretic. This article discusses Qāsimī’s defense of Ibn ‘Arabī within a broader context of the Salafi approach to Sufism. In this context, the case of Qāsimī presents us with an insight that the Salafis took a more nuanced position than is sometimes supposed. We will conclude with a brief reflection on how we could situate Qāsimī’s view of Ibn ‘Arabī within the ongoing debate about the relationship between the Salafiyya and Sufism in more recent scholarship.
The article explores ideological fault lines among Sunni Muslim militants (jihadists) in Europe since the mid-1990s. It argues there have been disputes among the militants about whether to prioritize local struggles or Al Qaeda’s global war, and about the legitimacy of launching terrorist attacks in European states offering political asylum to Muslims. It concludes that Europe’s militants have become more ideologically unified in conjunction with the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Mohammed drawings, seeing European countries as legitimate and prioritized targets, and identifying with Al Qaeda.
The aim of this article is to analyse terrorism and the phenomena linked to it in East Central Europe. In comparison with a number of other regions of today’s world, this area can currently seem to be a relatively “terrorism-free zone.” Although the number of terrorist attacks committed in this territory is insignificant, this does not mean that the risk of terrorism is entirely negligible in the region. This text explains some historical determinants of the current situation and describes the consequences both of regime change in the countries in question and of their foreign policy decisions after 1989. I also analyse the importance of East Central Europe as a logistical space for international terrorism (weapons procurement, stays of terrorists, etc.). I characterise the threats of Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorism in connection with the pro-American and pro-Israeli policies of East Central European countries, especially after 9/11, assess the risks posed by the domestic extremist scenes in those countries that have a relationship with terrorism, and take notice of the accusations of terrorism that have been voiced in international politics. On the basis of this data, I then provide an overview of the importance of East Central Europe for the contemporary study of terrorism.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has positioned itself at the vanguard of a media revolution in which terrorist groups both create and frame news events to an unprecedented extent. Through the publication of its e-magazine Sada al-Malahim(The Echo of Epic Battles), the organization has sought to mobilize both Yemeni and non-Yemeni Muslim, Arabic-speaking audiences to carry out violent jihad. This article utilizes the concept of collective action frames to analyze Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s media output, identifying the organization’s grievance narratives, ideological justifications for violent actions, and means to strengthen its credibility among its intended audiences.
The current age of technology, mass communication, and globalization makes networks analysis an especially useful tool for understanding cell-based terrorism. Some concepts from traditional networks analysis may be especially relevant. The Strength of Weak Ties hypothesis (SWT) is particularly promising and will be used here to demonstrate the usability of traditional networks analysis for studying modern terrorism. The findings suggest that the strength of weak terrorist ties may improve Al Qaeda’s operational capabilities despite the group’s decentralization following the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan beginning in 2001.
Australian interests have been considered viable targets for Islamist terrorists since at least 2001, and Australians have suffered from attacks in Bali in 2002 and 2005, and Jakarta in 2004 and 2009. Moreover, Australian citizens have been involved in militant Islamist networks since the late 1980s, and similar to other Western countries in recent years there have been examples of “home-grown” plots to carry out domestic terrorist attacks. This article seeks to clarify the nature of the contemporary security threat within Australia by analysing the involvement of Australian citizens and residents in Islamist terrorism, both at home and abroad. The results build upon previous research findings revealing that while the profile of Australian jihadis is unique in terms of its exact manifestation, there is overall conformity with generally observed trends in Islamist terrorism in other Western countries.