TerrorismAre we really seeing the rise of a ‘new jihad’?
Europe is witnessing a worrying surge in acts of violence perpetrated not by “aliens” or foreigners, but by its own citizens — but this is not new. Various Islamist movements over the years have learnt from previous groups’ failures to protect themselves and have survived by aborting centralized hierarchical structures and opting to work in “cells” with little or no direct contact to a central organization. If this is indeed the principal strategy behind the various violent, extremism-motivated actions taking place in Europe, then the continents’ security services should know not to look for centralized command structures which simply won’t exist. As new terrains and individuals emerge to incubate and cause havoc, the concepts they use and the actions they take will keep evolving – as they have done for decades now.
In a BBC interview just after the recent Manchester suicide bombing, French scholar Gilles Kepel offered a three-stage chronology of the development “jihadi” activism. The first stage he identified emerged in 1979, around the time of the Iranian revolution, and failed to mobilize the pious masses. It was followed, he says, by a second stage, largely defined by the notorious acts of al-Qaeda.
Now, Kepel’s analysis goes, we are living in a third stage, one that began in the mid-2000s with the 2004 publication of Abu Musab al-Suri’s The Global Islamic Resistance Call. Al-Suri’s writings point to many of the distinctive organizational and strategic features of recent attacks in Europe and elsewhere, in particular the “individual jihadi” – commonly referred to in the media as the “lone wolf”.
So is this really the rise of an altogether new type of extremist threat – or is it simply a phase in a much longer trajectory?
There are some misconceptions and conceptual problems that must be cleared up here, not least the inappropriate use of the term “jihadi”. To continually describe groups such as al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State (IS) as “jihadis” is to grant them Islamic legitimacy, something the vast majority of Muslims around the world deny them.
In theological terms, jihad literally means “struggle” in the path of God. The “greater” jihad is the struggle to be a good Muslim, as enacted everyday by the millions of pious Muslims across the globe in acts such as getting out of bed for prayers at dawn and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. The “lesser” jihad, meanwhile, is armed struggle in the way of Allah.
Yes, specific movements have reinterpreted concepts of jihad for their own temporal needs. But to understand this is to acknowledge that there are no definite beginnings or ends to the vague concept of a jihadi “mission” – there are only constantly evolving practices, strategies and understandings.
This is where Kepel’s chronology runs into trouble. His overall analysis isn’t entirely without merit, but using such strict categories is a serious simplification. By conflating all violent Islamist action into three discrete phases, Kepel risks reducing all violent action during these periods into a single monolithic “jihadi movement” that simply does not exist.
