Suchergebnisse

Tawhid was a militant Islamist group which implemented Islamic law at gunpoint in the Lebanese city of Tripoli during the 1980s. In retrospect, some have called it 'the first ISIS-style Emirate'. Drawing on two hundred interviews with Islamist fighters and their mortal enemies, as well as on a trove of new archival material, Raphaël Lefèvre provides a comprehensive account of this Islamist group. He shows how they featured religious ideologues determined to turn Lebanon into an Islamic Republic, yet also included Tripolitan rebels of all stripes, neighbourhood strongmen with scores to settle, local subalterns seeking social revenge as well as profit-driven gangsters, who each tried to steer Tawhid's exercise of violence to their advantage. Providing a detailed understanding of the multi-faceted processes through which Tawhid emerged in 1982, implemented its 'Emirate' and suddenly collapsed in 1985, this is a story that shows how militant Islamist groups are impacted by their grand ideology as much as by local contexts - with crucial lessons for understanding social movements, rebel groups and terrorist organizations elsewhere too.

When the convulsions of the Arab Spring first became manifest in Syria in March 2011, the Ba'athist regime was quick to blame the protests on the ""Syrian Muslim Brotherhood"" and its ""al-Qaeda affiliates."" But who are these Islamists so determined to rule a post-Assad Syria? Little has been published on militant Islam in Syria since Hafez Assad's regime destroyed the Islamist movement in its stronghold of Hama in February 1982. This book bridges that gap by providing readers with the first comprehensive account of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's history to date. In this ground-breaking acco

"Little has been published on militant Islam in Syria since Hafez Assad's regime destroyed the Islamist movement in its stronghold of Hama in February 1982. This book bridges that gap by providing readers with the first comprehensive account of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's history to date. In this ground-breaking account of Syria's most prominent, yet highly secretive, Islamist organisation, the author draws on previously untapped sources: the memoirs of former Syrian jihadists; British and American archives; and also a series of wide-ranging interviews with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's historical leaders as well as those who battled against them--many speaking on the record for the first time. Ashes of Hama uncovers the major aspects of the Islamist struggle: from the Brotherhood's radicalisation and its "jihad" against the Ba'athist regime and subsequent exile, to a spectacular comeback at the forefront of the Syrian revolution in 2011--a remarkable turnaround for an Islamist movement which all analysts had pronounced dead amid the ruins of Hama in 1982"--