6 - Networks, Careers, and Jihadist Ideology

Summary

This chapter provides a series of quantitative tests for my argument that blocked ambition is a meaningful factor in the choices of some clerics to preach violent jihadism. The primary data set for testing these propositions comes from the biographies of 200 clerics sampled from the Internet, described in Chapter 4, and the writings produced by these clerics, which I use to measure their rhetorical support for jihadism in Chapter 5. Using a series of statistical models, this chapter demonstrates that there are important correlations between these two data sets.

By combining cleric jihad scores with biographical information about the clerics, I test competing explanations for why some clerics adopt jihadi ideology. My primary focus is on testing whether markers of blocked academic ambition can predict which clerics will adopt jihadist ideology. There are many possible ways that cleric ambitions could be blocked, but I test two especially likely possibilities: that would-be clerics’ ambitions are blocked when they lack strong educational networks that will help advance their careers and when they are unable to obtain or maintain insider positions in the state-run religious and educational institutions of the Middle East. I show that there are strong correla- tions between cleric networks, career paths, and ideology, as my theory predicts.

I use a variety of methods to show that correlations between cleric educational networks, career paths, and ideology are robust. The data allow me to reject some alternative hypotheses about cleric radicalization that are not consistent with the statistical results I present here. However, there remain several different pathways to jihadism that are all consistent with these correlations. I thus employ qualitative case study evidence to further test these competing explanations. To do so, I examine biographies and secondary sources to determine when and why fifteen clerics chose to adopt jihadism.

Finally, I bring evidence to bear on another observable implication of my blocked ambition theory – that jihadist-leaning fatwas are popular with Salafi Muslim audiences online. This offers one explanation for why a cleric who fails to break into an insider career track, or who is expelled from the ranks of insiders, might to turn to jihadism.