Suchergebnisse

The 1998 attacks against US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam attest to al-Qaeda's durable presence in Africa, yet Islamist-inspired radical organisations in the continent have gained much attention of late, the result of their campaigns of insurgent and terrorist violence directed against the state in Algeria, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti and Kenya. These groups include Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Harakat Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine. This book explains why the Idea of Jihad is alive and well in sub-Saharan Africa, even after more than thirty years of Western and global efforts to curtail it, and how most important organisations are formed by the interaction between the often under-estimated local and global dynamics. Stig Jarle Hansen has been researching African radical violent Islamism for more than fifteen years and is well placed to explain how and why such groups emerged, whether they manifest any specific traits compared with other violent Islamists, and what is likely to be their impact beyond the African continent. He also discusses the response of African and Western governments to this phenomenon.

"In The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington argued that the borders between Western and Islamic civilizations would one day become the loci of cultural conflict. The statements of Osama Bin-Laden would seem to support this view. "This battle is not between al-Qaeda and the U.S.," he famously said in October of 2001. "This is a battle of Muslims against the Global Crusaders."" "These specially commissioned essays critically examine the virtual and actual borders of Islamic civilization. Contributors concentrate on local dynamics and whether they support or contradict an emerging global confrontation between Islam and its Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and secular neighbors. They consider borders that host Muslim majorities (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Somalia, Pakistan, and Turkey), those that have significant Muslim minorities (Philippines, Nigeria, and India), and those that reflect new faultlines created by migration to France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Spain or by advances in technology." "Essays explore the rise of international Salafi jihadism and whether it can be traced to countries that straddle the Islamic and non-Islamic world. In conclusion, the contributors argue that mechanisms far more complex than those described in Huntington's Clash of Civilizations influence many border regions, suggesting that, while poverty and institutional failure heighten religious awareness and practice, the actual effects of these phenomena are entirely different."--BOOK JACKET

This article explores mechanisms fostering cohesion in jihadist organizations in relation to territorial presence. This article takes four types of territorial presence as its point of departure: (1) a clandestine network-based presence; (2) an accepted presence where the organization is tolerated by a state; (3) a semiterritorial presence, where the organization is allowed some control between phases of enemy offensives and withdrawals; and (4) a relatively permanent territorial presence, where the organization fully controls the territory in which it has bases. The article argues that each of these types of territorial presence opens up for different ways for organizations to create cohesion. Cohesion mechanisms thus vary according to type of territorial presence.

This article explores the social mechanisms that lead to the emergence of suicide attacks in new theatres, as well as factors influencing the frequency of such suicide attacks, by studying one of the states in which suicide attacks have most recently occurred – Somalia. The article argues that a suicide attack in the Somali setting seems to be a well-planned reaction to diplomatic or military moves by opposing parties in the conflict. However, it also poses that the initial emergence of suicide attacks in Somalia is grounded in ideological elements new to Somalia. The article thus argues that while frequency variations in suicide attacks are best understood as the result of rational calculations within an organisation, ideological elements and organisational belief systems have to be explored in order to understand the initial adoption of suicide attacks in Somalia. ; Publisher PDF