Introduction: Suicide bombers in historical and theoretical perspective -- Nationalists and Baathists -- The jihadi Salafis -- Suicide terrorism in the Iraqi insurgency -- The ideology and theology of martyrdom -- Martyrdom mythology in Iraq -- Arab fighters in Iraq -- European Muslims in Iraq -- Implications for theory and policy -- Appendix 1: List of Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq, 2003-2006 -- Appendix 2: Names and nationalities of known suicide bombers in Iraq -- Appendix 3: Zarqawi's men -- Appendix 4: Al Qaeda's evolution in Iraq
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jrv2019112265 ; Islamists in civil wars often prioritize their factional conflicts above the collective goals of their movements. They end up fighting and killing each other despite having mutual state adversaries and shared normative commitments. This reality raises an intriguing puzzle. How can Islamists justify fratricidal practices given the ubiquity of Quranic scripture and prophetic traditions that prevail upon them to unite and refrain from infighting. This article explores two religious narratives that rationalize violent infighting between Islamist factions. The Victorious Sect narrative depicts rival Islamist factions as insufficiently Islamic by harboring political pluralism and nationalism in their ideological platforms. These deviations from orthodoxy are proof of their ineligibility to lead the Islamist movement. The other narrative depicts rival factions as modern day Kharijites or Muslim extremists that must be repelled and driven out of the Islamist movement because they undermine its legitimacy. Although these narratives do not necessarily drive factional struggles for power, they are important because they rationalize and publicly justify the highly controversial act of Islamists killing one another in their quest for movement supremacy.
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2017.1389726 ; Why do rebels kill each other? When confronting a formidable regime, rebels often descend into warring factionalism rather than forge unity across their ranks to reap the advantages of cooperation. This article tackles the puzzle of inter-rebel fratricide. It explores power and resource competition arguments, and contrasts them with ideological mechanisms that can drive inter-rebel violence. It argues that ideological extremity is central to rebel fratricide. Rebel organizations with common ideological origins can still compete with each other based on their degree of centrism and extremism, making them ideologically distant. This proximity-distance paradox makes their cohabitation mutually threatening. Ideological challengers from the same family tree are particularly threatening to one's group cohesion, and if successful, guarantee one's political marginalization within the broader movement. Extremist groups are likely to respond to these threats with fratricide, while ideologically centrist ones will rely on other strategies such as balancing, outbidding, or defecting to manage their rivalries. Algeria's civil war, 1992–2002, is a plausibility probe case study that illustrates these causal mechanisms. The study contributes to a burgeoning literature on the role of ideology in armed civil conflicts.
In: Political science quarterly: a nonpartisan journal devoted to the study and analysis of government, politics and international affairs ; PSQ, Band 131, Heft 3, S. 648-650
Reviewed is Kamran Bokhari and Farid Senzai, Political Islam in the Age of Democratization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). ; The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743816000660