Who’s afraid of the vulnerable terrorist? Framing violent jihadists’ life and intimate relationships

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article looks at a sample of academic articles in the field of terrorism studies and international relations to explore the ways in which marriage, sexual activity and close relationships in jihadist groups are framed, imagined and investigated. Despite the scarcity of research being conducted on the subject, this article reveals that, in the study of terrorism, the issue of intimate relationships is the object of two trends: on the one hand, the themes of sexuality and marriage are in fact present in the field, only exclusively through the lens of sexual victimisation, violence, abuse and romantic manipulation. On the other hand, intimate relationships are often dismissed as not being worthy of in-depth investigation when not related to violence. Together, these two interdependent trends create, using the words of Butler, a “silent and melancholic discourse”, which downplays the subjectivity, banality, and vulnerability of the life experiences of subjects involved in jihadist groups. Using the learnings of queer scholarship, the article posits that the ways in which the intimate life of individuals involved in jihadist movements are portrayed and ascribed a perverted characteristic matter in how vulnerability is distributed and how the subjects are apprehended in academia and beyond.