Islamic Jihad Research Articles

Islam and Salvation in Palestine: The Islamic Jihad Movement

This study traces the rise of the Islamic Jihad, its ideological platform, and its relations with other political forces both within and outside the Palestinian arena. The study provides a basis for a wider discussion of how Palestinian Islamists deal with the challenge of peace created by the Oslo Accords, particularly the shift of the PLO from a liberation movement to a sovereign entity with coercive power.

Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam

Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam contains nine chapters, the first ofwhich is a well constructed introduction that refers to various aspects andfunctions of jihad within the Islamic system of thought. This chapterintroduces the reader to pertinent vocabulary of the jihad doctrine, settingthe stage for the material throughout the book. Through the vocabulary, theauthor adroitly strings together a variety of texts in subsequent chapterswhich all utilize terms and concepts such as dar al-Islam, believers vs.unbelievers, takfir (declaring someone an unbeliever), expansionist jihad,defensive jihad, jihad as international law, greater and lesser jihad, andmore. The chapters that follow the introduction present six Islamic textstranslated from Arabic and Turkish, and the book concludes with two of theauthor's previously published articles on jihad. The aim of the book is toprovide basic reading material on the doctrine and to highlight the variousaspects of jihad and its development through the ages ...

Israelis versus Palestinians

Michael Brecher is R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science at McGill University and Director of the International Crisis Behaviour Project. He has written several books on the Arab-Israel conflict, including the prize-winning The Foreign Policy System of Israel. Irving Brecher is Emeritus Professor of Economics at McGill University. He was a member of the first Board of Directors of the Montreal-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. Among his publications is Human Rights, Development and Foreign Policy: Canadian Perspectives. To everything there is a season, And a time to every purpose under the heaven:... A time to kili, and a time to heal;... A time to [hate], and a time to [love]; A time for war, and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1INTIFADA II IN CONTEXTIt is easy to despair at the turn of events the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken since late September 2000: persistent violence; wanton killing and maiming by both sides, mostly of civilians - men and women, children and the elderly; escalating anger and hostility; and an increasingly rigid mindset on the part of leaders on both sides, which makes compromise and concessions even more difficult than usual. The most tragic and disquieting result of Intifada II is the shattering of trust - a fragile, carefully nurtured, intangible gift of the Oslo agreement of September 1993.On the Israeli side, the peace camp has been decimated; and the mood of disappointment after Yassir Arafat rejected the most farreaching Israeli offer of terms for a 'final status' agreement - Ehud Barak at Camp David in July 2000, enriched at the follow-up talks in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001 - has been captured by the near-universal lament among Israelis: 'We do not have a partner for peace.'(1) Moreover, a widespread feeling of personal insecurity descended upon Israel, despite its vast military superiority over the lightly armed Palestinian police, security forces, and militias. Thus, Israelis of all political persuasions have rallied behind Ariel Sharon, one of Israel's most controversial military and political leaders. Less than a year earlier, he had been considered unelectable as prime minister after a formal Israeli commission of inquiry found him 'indirectly responsible' for the 1982 massacre of Palestinians by Christian militia forces in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon.On the Palestinian side, scepticism about the ultimate fruits of the Oslo agreement gradually gave way to mass frustration on three fronts. First was the slow pace of the transfer of territory to the Palestinian Authority (PA) - Prime Ministers Benjamin Necanyahu and Barak had both refused to implement the third phase of with-drawal by Israeli forces, a formal commitment undertaken by Israel in the United States-brokered Wye agreement of October 1997. Secondly, the primary goal of an independent state seemed even more remote with the perpetuation of Israel's occupation of most of the West Bank and a considerable part of the Gaza Strip, the latter never considered a part of the historic Land of Israel. Finally, there was no visible material improvement in daily life. Indeed, the situation had worsened, especially during periods of 'closure' following a suicide bombing or some other act of terror committed by Palestinian foes of any accommodation with Israel - Hamas and Islamic Jihad. At such times more than 100,000 Palestinians whose livelihood depends on employment in Israel are prevented from entering the twice-'Promised Land' (by the British, to the Palestinians in 1915 and to the Jews in 1917). All that Arafat needed as a pretext to launch a new Intifada was a highly visible provocation by 'the enemy.' Sharon, then leader of the Likud opposition, duly provided it with his demonstrative visit in September 2000 to the Temple Mount/Haram-al-Sharif, the holiest shrine for Jews worldwide and a holy place for Muslims. …

From Oslo to Bethlehem: Arafat's Islamic Message

When town after town of the West Bank and Gaza passed into Palestinian Authority (PA) hands following the Oslo II Agreement (1995) that was designed to facilitate the transition from Israeli occupa tion to Palestinian self-rule, Yasser Arafat, president of the PA, began to manifest some surprising traits in his statesmanship. Most notable for someone viewed as a secular leader is his profound Islamic commit ment, which harks back to his membership in the Muslim Brethren in Egypt during his formative years. The issue of Islam is of particular interest, due to Arafat's attempts to juggle between new-found pragma tism as a statesman (who has, to all appearances, chosen the road of political settlement with Israel, at least prior to the resumption of the intifada in the fall of 2000), and his innate propensity for doctrinal and vindictive rhetoric. Arafat must strike a balance between his pro claimed obligation to compromise—requiring him to set aside some of his long-held Islamic convictions which had helped him mobilize Pales tinian public opinion behind him—and his need to placate his most dangerous opposition, namely, Hamas1 and the Islamic jihad (holy war), which refuse to shed the very same convictions Arafat once held, continuing instead to embrace and profess them openly. This essay will examine whether Arafat is in fact bound by one par ticular set of principles (with the other being merely tactical rhetoric), and whether he espouses any particular ideology only when it appears to him at a particular time to best reflect his and his people's interest. In other words, is there a way to read between the lines of his ambigu

The reconstruction of Palestinian nationalism: between revolution and statehood

Part 1 Introduction - nationalism and Palestinians: Palestinian Israeli conflict and nationalism nationalism as an ideology of boundedness space and time homogenization and state-building national identities - self and other, nation/ethnicity as family key issues and analytical scheme discussion on method. Part 2 From elite to mass based revolution: factionalism and early elite mobilization formulation of Palestinian nationalism great revolt and popular proto-nationalism catastrophe and dispersal arab nationalism as dominant discourse 1948-1967 nationalism of al-Fateh PLO between nationalism and patriotism, between unity and liberation - Arabism and Marxist fronts, struggle, revolution and exile, institution-building, class, gender,m refugees, Arab states and PLO, steps towards shifting goals and strategies 1974. Part 3 From intifada to self-government: Israeli politics towards occupied territories Palestinian politics prior to intifada - West Bank, Gaza intifada - institution-building and leadership organization, nationalism of intifada, end to intifada Islamism as counter-discourse - as an organisation, Islamic Jihad, Islamist movement and Palestinian nationalism, Islamic movements and struggle. Part 4 State-building and peace process: state building - institution-building and political structure, revolution versus state-building state-building - is country to be made - agreements - the best of worse, Fateh - state-building party and internal opposition leftist opposition - long term solution - a democratic state in all of Palestine Islamism - agreements - we are true owners of Palestine, long-term solution - we have to get rid of Israel from this area reformism - agreements - will retain authority. Part 5 Palestinian identity - border construction: denial state to struggle to suffer identities in negotiation -remnants of Arabism, identity betrayed, Islam, nationalism and identity - Islam is main thing Palestinian national authority - official nationalism - we don't have magic stick -leftism and PNA - it is so limited, so poor, so bad, Islamism and authority - if they don't succeed, are people to fill gaps, reformism and authority - there is much to be hoped for internal conflicts - official nationalism - Hamas are our brothers inside-outside - have to change their mentality. Part 6 Perceptions of other. (Part contents).

Conditions making for success and failure of denial and deception: Nonstate and illicit actors

Deception is integral to illicit organizations. Cover is a strategic necessity that, at a great cost in efficiency, allows illicit organizations the opportunity to achieve their objectives. The revolutionary organization is, in fact, an alternative reality that seeks to be invisible except when it needs to propagate a version of the truth and to bolster the impact of its armed operations. In the case of the truth, remarkably little deception is deployed. The revolutionaries consider their faith to be inviolate and convincing, without need of apology or equivocation. Reality is often visible. Islamic Jihad preached the truth, the IRA hid it for two years and the Sicilian Mafia makes the hidden truth yield public respect. In operational matters, much that takes place underground is focused on maintenance, supply and distribution, command and control, and communication that needs to be hidden but need not otherwise be duplicitous. Secrecy apart, most operations focus on obvious targets. Strategic deception is rare.

Poetics of Security

On October 23, 1983, at around 6:20 a.m., there was a suicide attack against the U.S. Marine battalion in Beirut. A lorry-van loaded with an estimated four thousand pounds of explosives was driven and exploded inside the military headquarters, killing 260 American marines and resulting in the withdrawal of the multinational force from Lebanon. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. Later, it was revealed that a security camera had captured the truck crashing through the perimeter fence into the entrance lobby. After routine technical treatment, the experts managed to recover, and subsequently released to the media, the face of the driver seconds before he detonated the explosives. The look of that face was very unexpected, and for some deeply shocking. The driver was smiling.1 Poetic death, maimed corpses, disabled bodies, a cinematic relic, and a mesmerizing sign were the parting gifts of our brotherin-arms. Mementos of a security mess, loaded with the heavy burden of a tragic event and armed with their own mind-blowing expositions. The driver's haunting smile - no longer his - is ours to interpret. It has already been seen to invoke a variety of conditions: the heroic defiance of extraordinary faith; the blissful martyrdom of the blessed; the irrationalism and fanaticism of Islamic militancy; the psychological state of high narcotic consumption. But as a visual narrative not reduced to self-evident storytelling, it surpasses the conventional dichotomies of us/ them, religious/ secular, Christian/Islamic, Eastern/Western, rational/irrational, and psychological/praxeological. This snapshot of the other face of incarnated terror, riding unsafely but secure in its mission, captures a picture that remains ever-ambivalent, both sublime and dangerous, beautiful and violent. It is eminent that someone can approach certain death with such serenity and peace of mind; it is alarming that

The Movement of Islamic Jihad and the Oslo Process

The Movement of Islamic Jihad and the Oslo Process

The Movement of Islamic Jihad and the Oslo Process

The Movement of Islamic Jihad and the Oslo Process

Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam. Rudolph Peters

<i>Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam</i>. Rudolph Peters

Making Peace with the PLO

This is a timely and engaging book about the secret peace talks between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It is a detailed case study of Israeli decision making that produced a sea change in Israeli policy in a period of serious challenges to Israel from Islamic militants within and outside Israeli-controlled areas. Mak.ovsky underscores that a signif­icant factor in Israel's dramatic shift toward the PLO was the latter's promise to control and repress Islamist mi1itants, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The book gets its detailed and highly nuanced portrayal of the Israeli and PLO decisions from a number of interviews with Israeli and PLO officials, Israeli academician, and trained and critical observers of Israeli politic . The author presents a highly complex picture of the dynamics between Yitzhak. Rabin and Shimon Peres and the impact of the domestic environment on Rabin's calculations to enter into negotiations with the PLO and Arafat. The sections on Israeli domestic politics and the relationship between Rabin, Peres, and Yossi Beilin are essential for any comprehensive understanding of how Israel is likely to pursue future negotia­tions with Syria and the PLO in Rabin's absence. The book starts with a quick survey of the historical background of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict Although significantly weakened by the Israeli inva­sion of Lebanon in 1982, the PLO was not destroyed and Israel failed to reduce its support in the occupied areas (p. 6). The intifada not only saved the PLO from political oblivion, it asserted the importance of the inside, nondiaspora Palestinians in the struggle against Israel, which Arafat i currently trying toundo. The American-sponsored Madrid peace talks allowed Arafat to get afoothold in the negotiations as part of the Jordanian delegation. The Shamir governmentargued that negotiations were limited to "personal autonomy" for thePalestinians, a position the Palestinian delegation flatly rejected.The second chapter focuses on the background that got the Oslo process started.Initially, the PLO asked the Norwegians to get involved in order to start adialogue between them (PLO) and Israel. International academic conferences ...

Two Surveys of Islamic Civilization

Book reviewed in this article:The Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: Rudolph PetersThe Last Great Muslim Empires: History of the Muslim World: Hans J. Kissling et al

Jihad in classical and modern Islam: a reader

Jihad or Holy War is very much alive in the Islamic world, and plays a prominent political role. Western observers usually associate jihad with fanaticism, while Islamists emphasize its mission as a crusade against drugs and other societal scourges. This updated edition has a new chapter on jihad in the 21st century to help clarify the wider soc

Reviews

Fighting demonization with demonization, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. London: Little, Brown and Co., 1996. x+622pp. Notes. Ind. £20.00. Feistiness, clamour and protest, Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes, Living with Racism. The Black Middle‐Class Experience. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994. xii+398pp. Notes. Ind. $25.00. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ira Glasser, Anthony P. Griffin, Donald E. Lively, Robert C. Post, William B. Rubenstein and Nadine Strossen, Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex. Hate Speech, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. New York and London: New York University Press, 1994. ×+299pp. Notes. $26.95. Stephen Small, Racialised Barriers. The Black Experience in the United States and England in the 1980s. London: Routledge, 1994 (Critical Studies in Racism and Migration). viii+247pp. Notes. Bibl. Ind. £12.99 Fascist morsels, Roger Griffin (ed.) Fascism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 (Oxford Readers). xviii+410pp. Bibl. Ind. £9.99 (pbk.). Academics reading Jews, Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb (eds.), The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995. 335 pp. Notes. Index. Illus. £18.95. Grasping the nettle of liberalism, Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination. A Social and Cultural History. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. xiv+366pp. Notes. Bibl. Ind. £14.99 (pbk.). Melting pot or pot of stew?, Clint C. Wilson and Féliz Gutiérrez, Race, Multiculturalism, and the Media: From Mass to Class Communication. 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA, London and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995. xvi+274pp. Notes. Bibl. Ind. Illus. £15.50 (pbk). Understanding the Islamist movement, R. Hrair Dekmejian, Islam in Revolution: Fundamentalism in the Arab World. 2nd edn. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995. xvi+307pp. Appends. Notes. Bibl. Ind. $16.95. Ziad Abu‐Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994 (Indiana Series in Arab and Islamic Studies). ××+168pp. Notes. Bibl. Ind. £9.99 (pbk.). Walid M. Abdelnasser, The Islamic Movement in Egypt. Perceptions of International Relations 1967–1981. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1994 (A Publication of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva). ×+308pp. Bibl. Appends. Ind. £45.00. The Jews of Renaissance Italy, Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans, from the Italian by Anthony Oldcorn. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994. xiv+320pp. Notes. Ind. Illus. £23.50. Minority v. majority, Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts. Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993. xii+427pp. Append. Notes. Ind. Maps. Tables. $37.50.

At Face Value: Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad. . Ziad Abu-Amr.

At Face Value: Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad. . Ziad Abu-Amr.

Fi Masadir al Turath al Siyasi al Islami

This is perhaps one of the most useful books I have come across inrecent years. In an age when almost every Middle East or Islamic studiesspecialist is obsessed with "political Islam" or "radical or fundamentalistIslam," and when the western mass media and below-average media specialistson the Muslim world try to explain "the rage of Islam" to theiraudience, this book is a forceful reminder that the political language ofcontemporary Islamic revivalism is grounded in a historically establishedand rich Islamic (political) tradition. It also reminds us that in order to dojustice to the political principles of the modem Islamic movement, boththe academics and the media specialists must familiarize themselves withthis rich and historically constructed tradition.The author's primary intention is to document and discuss the mainsources (i.e., writings) of Islamic political thought from the first centuriesto the present. To 'Arif, the Islamic theory of knowledge and practice,which is based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah, has worked as a catalyst thatenabled the Muslim mind to construct a unique political theory that takesinto account changing sociopolitical and historical conditions. As a result,"political thought" has always formed the crux of Islamic thinking in generaland has never been divorced from the unique evolution and progressof Islamic civilization. What this means, in effect, is that for a modemscholar to carry out research, let us say, on the concept of jihad in Islam,he/she must trace the concept to its earlier sources and study it in its epistemologicaland historical evolutions. Concepts do change, depending on ...

Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad, Ziad Abu‐Amr

Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad, Ziad Abu‐Amr

The Nationalist Dimension of Islamic Movements in Palestinian Politics: Hamas, From Religious Salvation to Political Transformation: The Rise of Hamas in Palestinian Society. . H. H. Ahmad. ; Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad. . Ziad Abu-Amr. ; Hamas: Palestinian Politics with an Islamic Hue. . Ahmad Rashad.

The Nationalist Dimension of Islamic Movements in Palestinian Politics: Hamas, From Religious Salvation to Political Transformation: The Rise of Hamas in Palestinian Society. . H. H. Ahmad. ; Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad. . Ziad Abu-Amr. ; Hamas: Palestinian Politics with an Islamic Hue. . Ahmad Rashad.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Civil Society in the Middle East, Volume I, edited by Augustus Richard Norton.War and Peace in the Middle East: A Critique of American Policy, by Avi Shlaim.Beyond Alliance: Israel and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Camille Mansour.Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad, by Ziad Abu‐Amr.The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World, by Gilles Kepel.Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East, by John Bulloch and Adel Darwish.Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication Culture and the Iranian Revolution, by Annabelle Sreberny‐Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi.Don't Kill the Messenger: The Tragic Story of Wells Hangen and Other Journalistic Combat Victims, by Charles Arnot.A Persian Requiem, by Simin Daneshvar, translated from the Farsi by Roxane Zand.

Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad

Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad