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Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Richard Jackson
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Abstract

The term ‘Islamic terrorism’ has become a ubiquitous feature of Western political and academic counter-terrorism discourse in recent years. Examining over 300 political and academic texts and employing a discourse analytic approach, this article attempts to describe and dissect the central terms, assumptions, labels, narratives and genealogical roots of the language and knowledge of ‘Islamic terrorism’ and to reflect on its practical and normative consequences. It concludes that for the most part, political and academic discourses of ‘Islamic terrorism’ are unhelpful, not least because they are highly politicized, intellectually contestable, damaging to community relations and practically counter-productive.

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Government and Opposition , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , 2007 , pp. 394 - 426
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2007

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References

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36 Wiktorowicz, Quintan, ‘A Genealogy of Radical Islam’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 28 (2005), p. 75,CrossRefGoogle Scholar emphasis added.

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49 The narrative of al-Qaeda's role in funding, arming, guiding and coordinating ‘local jihads’ into a ‘global jihad’ against the West is described in detail in Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 25–59.Google Scholar

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53 A few of the numerous ‘new terrorism’ texts include: Hoffman, Inside Terrorism; Laqueur, The New Terrorism; Ian Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism, Santa Monica, CA, Rand Corporation Publications, 1999; Charles Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The New Global Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 2003; and Russell Howard and Reid Slayer (eds), Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment, Guildford, McGraw-Hill, 2003.Google Scholar

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66 Baran, Zeyno, ‘Fighting the War of Ideas’, Foreign Affairs, 84: 6 (2005), p. 84, emphasis addedCrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Husain Haqqani, ‘Islam's Weakened Moderates’, Foreign Policy, 137 (2003), pp. 61–3.

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71 In one of the most cited texts on religious terrorism, Mark Juergensmeyer states that ‘the young bachelor self-martyrs in the Hamas movement … expect that the blasts that kill them will propel them to a bed in heaven where the most delicious acts of sexual consummation will be theirs for the taking’, Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, p. 201. In fact, a surprising number of ‘Islamic terrorism’ texts, in discussing the Islamic tradition of martyrdom, mention the ‘seventy black-eyed virgins’ in paradise, with its implicit promise of sexual fulfilment, as being a primary motive for suicide bombings. See Wiktorowicz, ‘A Genealogy of Radical Islam’, p. 93.Google Scholar

72 See Esposito, John, ‘Political Islam: Beyond the Green Menace’, Current History, 93: 579 (1994), pp. 19–24.Google Scholar

73 This point is powerfully made in Denoeux, Guilain, ‘The Forgotten Swamp: Navigating Political Islam’, Middle East Policy, 9: 2 (2002), pp. 56–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarDenoeux argues that the term ‘fundamentalism’ is particularly misleading when applied to Islam because the word has connotations derived from its origins in early twentieth-century American Protestantism. See also Zaheer Kazmi, ‘Discipline and Power: Interpreting Global Islam: A Review Essay’, Review of International Studies, 30 (2004), pp. 245–54; and M. E. Yapp, ‘Islam and Islamism’, Middle Eastern Studies, 40: 2 (2004), pp. 161–82.

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78 See John Esposito and John Voll, Democracy and Islam, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996; Niaz Kabuli, Democracy According to Islam, Pittsburgh, PA, Dorrance Publications, 1994; and Anthony Shahid, Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 2001.Google Scholar

79 World Values Survey data from 1995–2001 support this finding, discussed in Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, ‘Public Opinion Among Muslims and the West’, in Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and Marion Just (eds), Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government, and the Public, London, Routledge, 2003. In other words, the problem would seem to be not that Islam is antithetical to democracy but that repressive regimes, often with the support of Western powers, have suppressed democratic movements.Google Scholar

80 Esposito, ‘Political Islam’, p. 23.Google Scholar

81 Mumtaz Ahmad, ‘Islam and Democracy: The Emerging Consensus’, Milli Gazette, 2 October 2002, quoted in Takeyh and Gvosdev, ‘Radical Islam’, p. 94. Ahmad also notes that several Islamist parties have revised their opposition to women holding political office. Similarly, Schwartz notes that when Islamist parties have gained mainstream political influence, their political stance has often evolved in strikingly moderate and pragmatic directions. Schwartz, ‘Misreading Islamist Terrorism’, p. 280.Google Scholar

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83 Halliday, Two Hours that Shook the World, pp. 46, 78. See also, Burke, Al-Qaeda, p. 32.Google Scholar

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85 Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, New York, Random House, 2005, p. 4.Google Scholar

86 Ibid, pp. 4, 17, 139, 205, 210. Pape's findings are supported by recent ethnographic research. See Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill, New York, Columbia University Press, 2005.Google Scholar

87 Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 93, 97, 110, 115, 121–5, 163. Other studies that question the relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism include: Stephen Holmes, ‘Al Qaeda, September 11, 2001’, in Diego Gambetta (ed.), Making Sense of Suicide Missions, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 131–72; Ariel Merari, ‘The Readiness to Kill and Die: Suicidal Terrorism in the Middle East’, in Walter Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1990; and Sprinzak, Ehud, ‘Rational Fanatics’, Foreign Policy, 120 (2000), pp. 66–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Pape, Dying to Win, p. 216. Sageman similarly suggests that ‘from all the evidence, many participants joined in search of a larger cause worthy of sacrifice’, Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 97.Google Scholar

89 Halliday, Two Hours that Shook the World, pp. 129–31. See also, Barkwai, Tarak, ‘On the Pedagogy of “Small Wars”’, International Affairs, 80: 1 (2004), pp. 19–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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91 Jason Burke concludes that bin Laden's ‘grievances are political but articulated in religious terms and with reference to a religious worldview. The movement is rooted in social, economic and political contingencies.’ Burke, Al-Qaeda, pp. xxv–xxvi. See also, Peter Bergen, Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001, p. 242; and Ayoob, Mohammed, ‘The Future of Political Islam: The Importance of External Variables’, International Affairs, 81: 5 (2005), p. 955.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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93 Pape, Dying to Win, p. 104, emphasis added. A similar picture of Hamas can be read into ‘Interviews from Gaza: What Hamas Wants’, Middle East Policy, 9: 4 (2002), pp. 102–15;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Henry Munson, ‘Islam, Nationalism and Resentment of Foreign Domination’, Middle East Policy, 10: 2 (2003), pp. 40–53.

94 See Copeland, Thomas, ‘Is the New Terrorism Really New? An Analysis of the New Paradigm for Terrorism’, Journal of Conflict Studies, 21: 2 (2001), pp. 91–105;Google Scholar and available at: http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org.uk.

95 Mark Sedgwick argues that al-Qaeda is more easily explained in terms of classic theories of terrorism as developed by nineteenth-century Italian anarchists than in religious terms. Sedgwick, Mark, ‘Al-Qaeda and the Nature of Religious Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 16: 4 (2004), pp. 795–814.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

96 See Wiktorowicz, Quintan and Kaltner, John, ‘Killing in the Name of Islam: Al-Qaeda's Justification for September 11’, Middle East Policy, 10: 2 (2003), pp. 76–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97 Annually, terrorism results in up to 7,000 fatalities globally, which is less than half the number of people murdered every year by handguns in the USA alone. As a threat to individual or national security, terrorism ranks far below state repression, small arms proliferation, organized crime, illegal narcotics, poverty, disease and global warming. There is a growing literature that challenges the terrorist threat narrative. See, among others: Richard Jackson, ‘Playing the Politics of Fear: Writing the Terrorist Threat in the War on Terrorism’, in George Kassimeris (ed.), Playing Politics With Terrorism, New York, Columbia University Press, 2007; John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them, New York, Free Press, 2006; and Sprinzak, Ehud, ‘The Great Superterrorism Scare’, Foreign Policy, 112 (1998), pp. 110–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98 See Brian Jenkins, ‘Will Terrorists go Nuclear? A Reappraisal’, in Harvey Kushner (ed.), The Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium, London, Sage, 1998.Google Scholar

99 See Burke, Al-Qaeda; Bergen, Holy War Inc.; and Hegghammer, Thomas, ‘Global Jihadism after the Iraq War’, Middle East Journal, 60: 1 (2006), pp. 11–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarMarc Sageman, a former US Foreign Service officer based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, has stated: ‘I was running those guys in Afghanistan. The foreigners did no fighting whatsoever. They claim credit because the Afghans did not write the history … The fact is that they were only involved in one small skirmish.’ See ‘The Forum: Alternative Views of the Terrorist Threat’, International Studies Review, 7 (2005), p. 677.

100 See Winkler, In the Name of Terrorism and Croft, Culture, Crisis and America's War on Terror.Google Scholar

101 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, revised edn, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

102 Hurd, ‘Appropriating Islam’, pp. 26–7. See also Euban, ‘Killing (for) Politics’, p. 8.Google Scholar

103 Yee, ‘The Causal Effects of Ideas on Politics’, p. 97.Google Scholar

104 Jeroen Gunning points out that the ‘secular prejudice’ – the attitude whereby any expression of religiosity is treated a priori as irrational and dangerous – has underpinned a great part of the social scientific research on social movements, and in particular, studies of Islamist movements. See Jeroen Gunning, Hamas in Politics: Representation, Religion, Violence, London, Hurst, forthcoming, 2007.Google Scholar

105 See Winkler, In the Name of Terrorism.Google Scholar

106 These findings came from a Pew Research Center poll, reported in ‘Survey Highlights Islam–West Rift’, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/5110364.stm, accessed 27 June 2006. Other polls show that between 48 and 66 per cent of British Muslims feel that relations between Muslims and non-Muslims had deteriorated since 11 September 2001. See ‘Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism’.Google Scholar

107 The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia released a major report on 18 December 2006 entitled, ‘Muslims in the European Union: Discrimination and Islamophobia’, which details the nature and extent of the phenomenon in the EU. The report is available at http://eumc.europa.eu/eumc/index.php.Google Scholar

108 Scotland Yard, for example, published figures showing a 600 per cent increase in faith-hate crimes in the period immediately following the London bombings. See Alan Cowell, ‘Faith-Hate on Rise in UK’, International Herald Tribune, 4 August 2005.Google Scholar

109 See the poll data in: David Luban, ‘Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb’, in Karen Greenberg (ed.), The Torture Debate in America, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 35; Alisa Solomon, ‘The Case Against Torture: A New U.S. Threat to Human Rights’, Village Voice, 28 November–4 December 2001, available at http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0148,fsolomon,30292,1.html, accessed 26 March 2006; David Morris and Gary Langer, ‘Terror Suspect Treatment: Most Americans Oppose Torture Techniques’, ABC News, available at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Polls/torture_poll_040527.html, accessed 24 March 2006; and Will Lester, ‘Poll Finds Support for the Use of Torture in War on Terror’, Washington Times, available at http://washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20051206-114042-3526r, accessed 24 March 2006.Google Scholar

110 This point is made in Richard Jackson, ‘Language, Policy and the Construction of a Torture Culture in the War on Terrorism’, Review of International Studies (forthcoming, October 2007).Google Scholar

111 Esposito, ‘Political Islam’, p. 23.Google Scholar

112 The EU recently announced that as a result of long consultations with academic experts, it plans to review expressions such as ‘Islamic terrorism’, ‘Islamist terrorism’, ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘jihadi’ and expel them from the next edition of its dictionary – largely for the reasons expressed in this article. See ‘EU Removes “Islamic Terrorism” from its Dictionary’, Zaman Online, 12 April, 2006, available at http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=31952, accessed 22 May 2006. Similarly, an internal Foreign Office–Home Office draft report on countering Islamic extremism in Britain recognized that ‘a change of language’ was required. The report noted, for example, that ‘the term “Islamic fundamentalism” is unhelpful and should be avoided, because some perfectly moderate Muslims are likely to perceive it as a negative comment on their own approach to their faith.’ See ‘Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism’.Google Scholar