Rise Of Islamic State Research Articles

Constructing the ‘good Muslim girl’: hegemonic and pariah femininities in the British Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) agenda

Since the rise of Islamic State (IS) in 2014, British Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) policy, Prevent, has increasingly focused on the appeal of jihadist ideology to Muslim girls. This article considers the case of the Bethnal Green girls, who migrated to IS territory in February 2015. Using the concepts of hegemonic and pariah femininities, it shows how gender intersects with religion, race, and class in British PVE to construct the ’good Muslim girl’ as both an aspirational figure that young Muslim women should seek to emulate and the norm against which signs of radicalisation can be measured. The article concludes that the articulation of this neoliberal subject via PVE is deeply problematic in theory and practice: gendering the ‘signs’ of radicalisation, offering neoliberal solutions that fail to account for intersectional structural oppressions and disciplining pariah Muslim femininities in excessive ways.

Joking about Jihad: Comedy and Terror in the Arab World

Joking about Jihad: Comedy and Terror in the Arab World

Islam and Statism: At the intersection of the State of Medina, Modern Statism and the Islamic State

Since the Arab Spring and the rise of Islamic State, it has become a topic of discussion whether there can be a state based on Islamic principles or values. This paper argues that in modern times there cannot be a state claiming to be Islamic. So the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or simply the Islamic State were all misnomers. After the Hijra in 7th century CE, the short lived State of Medina incorporated some of the Islamic principles and it too did not last long enough so as to appreciate the feasibility of a State that was Islamic. However, this paper doesn’t deny the fact that the States cannot espouse Islam as a directive principle in their state policy or declaration of Islam as the state religion. Nonetheless, it is argued that no state can be Islamic post the peace of Westphalia (1648). Therefore, in the 21st century there cannot be any actualization of any Islamic State unless the postcolonial history is normatively challenged. The so-called Islamic state that emerged in Syria & Iraq was a coalition of rebel forces and Mujahideen groups that tried to form a caliphate based on Islamic socio-politico and economic principles, however a futile attempt. For any new Islamic State or a caliphate to emerge, the notion of Westphalian demarcation of boundaries stands as the greatest challenge against it.

The End of the Sahelian Exception: Al-Qaeda and Islamic State Clash in Central Mali

ABSTRACT Until the beginning of 2020, the Sahel was something of an exception with respect to international rivalry between jihadists. This came to an end when violent clashes involving supporters of Al-Qaeda and those affiliated with the Islamic State were recorded in central Mali. The violent escalation that has taken place between Katiba Macina and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara in the inner Niger Delta should be framed as a battle between a dominant power whose position has begun to be contested, and a rising challenger trying to exploit the situation. More specifically, the rise of Islamic State appears directly connected to the material and symbolic crisis of the system of governance established by Katiba Macina in the area under its control. As the result of a process that cuts across various developments in the recent history of Mali, the conflict between the two jihadist movements threatens to unlock a new and more violent phase in Mali’s longstanding crisis.

Anatomies of Revolution

Recent years have seen renewed interest in the study of revolution. Spurred by events like the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, the rise of Islamic State, and the emergence of populism, a new age of revolution has generated considerable interest. Yet, even as empirical studies of revolutions are thriving, there has been a stall in theories of revolution. Anatomies of Revolution offers a novel account of how revolutions begin, unfold and end. By combining insights from international relations, sociology, and global history, it outlines the benefits of a 'global historical sociology' of revolutionary change, one in which international processes take centre stage. Featuring a wide range of cases from across modern world history, this is a comprehensive account of one of the world's most important processes. It will interest students and scholars studying revolutions, political conflict and contentious politics in sociology, politics and international relations.

The United States influence in Iraq’s post-Saddam reconfiguration of power:

In 2003, the United States of America started a reconfiguration process of Iraq’s political-economic structure. After the overthrown of Saddam Hussein, the United Nation Security Council stated that an international coalition should act in Iraq as a Provisional Authority which was led by the USA, whose responsibility was to rebuilding Iraq (Resolution 1483). For 14 months, the USA formally governed and reformed Iraq’s structure, declaring that its objective was to develop a “new Iraq”. The 2005 constitution marked the consolidation of this new political regime, transforming Iraq in a federal and democratic country as aimed by the USA agenda. But how this new framework of statebuilding worked out for Iraq? Despite the effort, almost fifteen years after the USA formal occupation, Iraq remained politically unstable. The maintenance of insurgent groups against international interference, the rise of Islamic State, the resumption of Iraq Kurdistan interest for independence are some examples of today’s political crisis in Iraq. This paper aims to present how USA executed the reformulation of Iraqi political structure since 2003: changing the political regime, prohibiting any Baath affiliation and action in Iraq’s political theater, and articulating the rise of political partiesthat historically opposed Baath’s government.

Beyond ‘brotherhood’ and the ‘caliphate’: Kurdish relationships to Islam in an era of AKP authoritarianism and ISIS terror

ABSTRACT Since the rise of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP), Islam has come to play a more prominent role in public and political spheres in Turkey. This paper draws on ethnographic data gathered in Istanbul and Diyarbakir between 2013 and 2015 to highlight Kurdish attitudes to Islam. Following the electoral success of the AKP amongst Kurds in the general election of 2007, Kurdish actors have sought to incorporate Islamic sensibilities into their political offering in order to appeal to Kurdish constituents. Amid the AKP’s recent authoritarian turn and instrumentalization of religion, and the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), many Kurds have sought to redefine their relationship with Islam to clearly demarcate distinctly Kurdish religious and political spaces.

Policies and Politics Surrounding Islamic Studies Programs in Higher Education Institutions in the United States

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the long and checkered relationship between Islam and the West entered a new phase. The sense of suspicion and denouncement that swept through the public sphere of many European countries and the United States was accompanied by major changes in governmental policies and a shift in the politics in each country that has witnessed or suffered from the repercussions of these attacks; this has been exasperated further by the rise of Islamic State (ISIS). This study uses different types of data sources and focuses on the previous academic work on establishing institutions of higher education within an existing unique context to examine the challenges that these institutions face on both the policy and political levels due to the prevailing current geopolitical climate vis-à-vis Islam. While focusing on the present and offering some insights into the future, this paper provides a base for a more comprehensive historical overview of the main policy changes by creating a timeline of key changes in the policies and mapping the significant events that have had an impact. It is designed to investigate challenges and opportunities of Islamic higher education institutions and programs from a policy perspective and within the changing political governmental agenda specifically in the United States, and it offers a preliminary analysis of the dynamics of these evolving transformations. Considering the emerging need to revisit these institutions and the more recent recurring calls to reform existing Western Islamic studies programs, this paper fills another gap in the literature by providing some recommendations.

Violence-producing Dynamics of Fragile States: How State Fragility in Iraq Contributed to the Emergence of Islamic State

ABSTRACT In the post-Cold War era, “Jihadi-Salafi Groups” (JSGs) have emerged as significant “violence-making” organizations. Almost all JSGs have emerged in highly fragile states. The literature on the state fragility-terrorism nexus, by focusing exclusively on whether state fragility is a cause of terrorism or not, has failed to consider the broader impact of state fragility on the emergence of JSGs. The role of state fragility as a condition of the emergence of JSGs, in particular, is mostly overlooked in the literature. This paper, adding state fragility as a condition variable to the causal model of the rise of JSGs, fills this gap. The empirical basis of this research includes a single case study examining the relationship between state fragility in the post-Saddam Iraq and the formation of Islamic State (IS). By adding a new variable to the causal model of the rise of IS, this research makes a strong within-case inference concerning this case. Although the empirical basis of this research includes a single case study, the analytical framework developed in this paper has possible implications for studying a larger number of Jihadi-Salafi groups.

Khomeini's Theory of Islamic State and the Making of the Iranian Revolution

The Iranian Revolution is one of the most influential events of the late twentieth century, with far-reaching consequences that still echo through the rise of Islamic state. Drawing from both primary (interviews, autobiographies, documents, and data) and secondary sources, the paper shows that Khomeini's doctrine of the Guardianship of the Jurist played a decisive role in the making of the Iranian Revolution by changing the goals and strategies of the religious opposition from reforming government policies to establishing an Islamic state. Khomeini's doctrine was first published in 1970 in his treatise, Islamic State. The paper argues that Khomeini's ideological innovation can account for the sharp contrast between the outcomes of widespread protests in the early 1960s and the late 1970s: they both shook the Pahlavi regime, but the former protests dissipated, while the latter culminated in the Iranian Revolution. Expanding the scope beyond Iran and Islam, the paper explores the role of ideological innovations in the Russian and American Revolutions, and discusses the potentially critical role of ideological innovations in democracy movements in Islamic countries.

Revisiting hypermedia space in the era of the Islamic State

ABSTRACTHypermedia space—the notion that discrete media technologies connect to create a communicative space with multiple access points and socio-political uptakes—has now become a commonplace to the extent that it is a naturalized, hence unproblematic assumption, in research on the social and political impact of digital media. Inspired by the work of the Canadian international relations theorist Ronald Deibert on hypermedia (1997), I initially developed the notion of “hypermedia space” (Kraidy, 2006; Braman & Mallaby, 2006) before the advent of social media, to analyze the expanded space and flow of communication between various media--blogs, mobile telephony, digital cameras, online videos, electronic newspapers, and satellite television. That networked communicative environment I defined as hypermedia space, was used to theorize hypermedia events (Kraidy, 2010), and recently advocated incorporating “old media,” including the human body, in hypermedia space, to get a comprehensive vista of contemporary mediation (Kraidy, 2016). In this article, I take stock of what the notion of hypermedia space might mean in light of key developments in the Middle East in the last decade—namely the Arab uprisings and the rise of Islamic State. I then offer some thoughts on emerging areas where hypermedia space could be applied.

Analyzing the Onset of the Iraqi Civil War 2004 from the Perspective of Inclusive and Exclusive Elite Bargains

Being one of the bloodiest internal conflicts since 1945, the Iraqi civil war unleashed disastrous dynamics in Iraq and the Middle East, which set the course for the current chaos in Iraq and the rise of Islamic State. This dissertation analyses the civil war’s onset in 2004 from the analytical perspective of inclusive and exclusive elite bargains. It hypothesizes that the exclusiveness of Iraq’s elite bargains for a political settlement after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow is the major cause of the civil war. A range of examined elite bargains from August 2002 until June 2004 illustrates the exclusiveness of the bargains. US officials based the post-Saddam political order on a small coalition of actors who had lived outside of Saddam-ruled Iraq for decades and had, therefore, no support base in the country. Kurdish actors are evidently the exception. At the same time, a number of influential key figures were excluded from the bargains and barred from any participation in the new political settlement of Iraq, leaving them without stakes in the stability of the country. This study finds out that excluded actors have indeed been at the core of the insurgent activities that led to the civil war. The bottom line of this dissertation is that the applied explanatory model, though it cannot explain Iraq’s internal disorder in all its facets, provides an essential tool to analyze the civil war onset in 2004.

Prosecuting Crimes of International Concern: Islamic State at the ICC?

The rise of Islamic State (IS) has fundamentally altered the conception of terrorism, a development which international criminal law is arguably unprepared for. Given the scale and gravity of the group’s crimes, questions abound as to how those responsible will be held accountable. In the absence of significant domestic prosecutions and short of the establishment of a dedicated accountability mechanism, the International Criminal Court (ICC) stands as the forum of last resort in which IS members could stand trial. Such a proposition is not without significant challenges, however. This article addresses some key issues facing any potential prosecutions from the perspective of: (i) jurisdiction; (ii) applicable crimes; and (iii) modes of liability. First, as Syria, Iraq, and Libya are not States Parties to the Rome Statute, the available avenues for asserting jurisdiction will be assessed, namely: a Security Council referral; jurisdiction over so called ‘foreign fighters’ who are State Party nationals; and jurisdiction over attacks on the territory of a State Party and whether they could be considered part of a broader series of criminal acts in IS held territory. Second, as there is no crime of terrorism in the Rome Statute, the question of prosecuting acts encapsulated in a systematic campaign of terror through existing provisions will be assessed. Third, the regime of accountability at the ICC will be analysed in light of IS’s purported structure and the crimes with which it stands accused. Focus will be directed to those responsible for the propagation of genocidal propaganda and individuals who provide aid or assistance to IS which contributes to its crimes. These questions are far from theoretical. The UN has designated IS a threat to international peace and security. There follows an expectation that international criminal law should play a role in tackling one of the major criminal concerns of our time and ensure that impunity for those responsible for IS’s atrocities is avoided.

Culturalism and the rise of the Islamic State: faith, sectarianism and violence

This paper looks at the ways in which culturalist discourses have influenced our understanding and representation of the rise of the so-called Islamic State. It argues that, in keeping with older narratives on the motives of ‘bad’ Muslims, its political and economic objectives have been overlooked and/or downplayed. Instead, I propose, there has been a strategically efficacious focus on its appeal to Islam, on its sectarian rhetoric and on its use of violence. By continuing to emphasise the ethical over the political in these ways, the culturalism that underpins the dominant representation of the Islamic State’s emergence has, I conclude, served three key purposes – the mobilisation of the ‘good’ Muslim, the exculpation of Western foreign policy and the legitimisation of force.

The downfall of Daesh in the Middle East and implications for global security

Territorial losses of Daesh, or the Islamic State (IS), in Iraq and Syria have led many to conjure the demise of the global terrorist organization. Conditions on ground, however, are ripe for the recuperation of the organization. The presence of extra-regional players, the widening Shia-Sunni divide, the failure of Iraqi and Syrian governments to stabilize the conflict-hit regions and a timely decision by Daesh to activate its sleeper cells in different parts of Europe, Asia and Africa could very much benefit the organization in recovering from battlefield losses or heralding the fourth wave of global jihad. This, then, could further augment the global implications of the rise of IS, including revival of Cold War era “proxy-ism”, refugee crises leading to fissures among the community of European nations, the intensification of the sectarian conflict in the Muslim world and “lone wolf” terrorism in the West. The paper seeks to map the possibility of Daesh’s recuperation in light of the “terrorist lifecycle” and how this would impact the global peace in general, and in South Asia in particular.

Regional turmoil, the rise of Islamic State, and Turkey's multiple Kurdish dilemmas

This article traces the interrelationship of the roles played by Turkey and by various Kurdish non-state actors such as the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Kurdistan Workers Party, and the Democratic Union Party, in the current turmoil in Syria and Iraq. It considers their varying perspectives on Islamic State and other jihadi groups, the tensions between the region's Kurdish non-state actors, and the differences between them in their relationships with Turkey. The background to these differences is explored, as is their impact on relationships with other actors, most notably the US. The article concludes by noting that Turkey as a regionally powerful and coherent actor, and the Kurds as a distinct ethnic group with aspirations to self-determination, will continue to be powerful elements in the region's politics.

Islamic State, the United Nations and the Fragility of the Rule of Law

The rule of law is in crisis. The crisis’ epicenter is in Iraq and Syria, but it also sends shockwaves into the international legal order and in national legal systems further afield. The crisis escalates rule of law challenges from the initial ‘war on terror’ after the attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001. These challenges are direct insofar as organizations such as Al-Qaida or Islamic State reject the existing system of government at national and international levels. The challenges are indirect insofar as the reaction of the international community may itself undermine the rule of law. The first part of this paper gives an account of the rule of law. It describes three dimensions of the rule of law: the existence of a state of legality; the adherence to modal principles of legality; and the promotion of a culture of legality. Each of the three dimensions is useful to assess the rule of law in a given jurisdiction and to consider direct and indirect challenges. The second, third, and fourth parts of the paper set out the ways in which the rise of Islamic State, and the UN Security Council response, pose challenges to the rule of law. In direct terms, Islamic State’s seizure of territory challenges the existence of the (national) state of legality in Iraq and Syria and also the international state of legality in the Middle East. In indirect terms, the UN Security Council response does not respect the modal principles of legality that constitute the second dimension of the rule of law. Two principles illustrate the point: that laws should be clear and understandable; and that they should reflect natural justice. The culture of legality in and across states may also come under challenge in both direct and indirect ways as a result of action by Islamic State and by the UN Security Council. A full assessment of this final challenge would require a lengthier examination of legal culture than is possible here. On this point, therefore, the paper merely postulates the challenge for further exploration. The paper’s conclusion is that the escalation of the crisis caused by Islamic State renders vulnerable the stabilization of collective power to which the rule of law is central. This potential destabilization requires us to consider the fragility of the rule of law in the ‘wars on terror’ in the twenty-first century. The prospective longevity of current conflicts on cultural, ideological, and religious grounds may reverse the narratives of progression in national law and in international law and relations since World War II. The danger is not of a return to anarchy but to a state in which the law serves to legitimize exercises of power but does little to constrain that power.

Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the New Sunni Revolution

Patrick Cockburn, <i>The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the New Sunni Revolution</i>

Book Review:The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution by Patrick Cockburn

Book Review:The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution by Patrick Cockburn

Military twists and turns in world politics: downsides or dividends for UN peace operations?

Russia’s challenge to the post-cold war order, and the rise of Islamic State have resulted in a call for increased military spending among NATO members. Despite the increased demand for UN peace operations, any expansion is unlikely to benefit the world organisation. Instead we see an increasing reliance upon regional organisations like the African Union, European Union and NATO, in particular, for robust peace operations. An analysis of Western states (France, Germany and the USA) suggests that future investments in weaponry, technology and staff will primarily benefit NATO and the EU, but not the United Nations.