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Yemen is the dark horse of the Middle East. Every so often it enters the headlines for one alarming reason or another-links with al-Qaeda, kidnapped Westerners, explosive population growth-then sinks into obscurity again. But, as Victoria Clark argues in this riveting book, we ignore Yemen at our peril. The poorest state in the Arab world, it is still dominated by its tribal makeup and has become a perfect breeding ground for insurgent and terrorist movements. Clark returns to the country where she was born to discover a perilously fragile state that deserves more of our understanding and attention. On a series of visits to Yemen between 2004 and 2009, she meets politicians, influential tribesmen, oil workers and jihadists as well as ordinary Yemenis. Untangling Yemen's history before examining the country's role in both al-Qaeda and the wider jihadist movement today, Clark presents a lively, clear, and up-to-date account of a little-known state whose chronic instability is increasingly engaging the general reader.

A panoramic, provocative account of the clash between British imperialism and Arab jihadism in Africa between 1870 and 1920 The Ottoman Sultan called for a \"Great Jihad\" against the Entente powers at the start of the First World War. He was building on half a century of conflict between British colonialism and the people of the Middle East and North Africa. Resistance to Western violence increasingly took the form of radical Islamic insurgency. Ranging from the forests of Central Africa to the deserts of Egypt, Sudan, and Somaliland, Neil Faulkner explores a fatal collision between two forms of oppression, one rooted in the ancient slave trade, the other in modern \"coolie\" capitalism. He reveals the complex interactions between anti-slavery humanitarianism, British hostility to embryonic Arab nationalism, \"war on terror\" moral panics, and Islamist revolt. Far from being an enduring remnant of the medieval past, or an essential expression of Muslim identity, Faulkner argues that \"Holy War\" was a reactionary response to the violence of modern imperialism.

Long description: Studying Jihadism is an endeavor facing several problems. For many researchers and the reading public it is difficult to accept that Jihadists do have a theology of their own and not some kind of ideology. Understanding that a phenomenon of communication that is done to a large extent in Arabic is not to be understood if research is done communication translated into or written in English. Saying it is al out there in the Internet without understanding Internet communication will help to understand terrorist phenomena like Jihadism. Ignoring that there is Jihadism IS and al-Qa'ida will guarantee that research will not be able to see the broad range of Jihadism. Last but not least, research not interested in the technologies, practices, etc., Jihadists use to commit terrorist attacks, cannot claim to study Jihadism. The contributions in this book provide knowledge in all these fields: based on Arabic language sources, theological aspects, Internet communication, groups usually ignored, the role of infographics, technical aspects, and covert and intelligence actions.

While there is no evidence to date that the indigenous inhabitants of Arabia knew of holy war prior to Islam, holy war ideas and behaviors appear already among Muslims during the first generation. This book focuses on why and how such a seemingly radical development took place. Basing the hypothesis on evidence from the Qurʾān and early Islamic literary sources, this book locates the origin of Islamic holy war and traces its evolution as a response to the changes affecting the new community of Muslims in its transition from ancient Arabian culture to the religious civilization of Islam.

Jihad (struggle) is a holy war to defend Islam against non-believers and non-Muslims.Jihadists are holy warriors.The intellectual father of jihadist Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, who was executed in Cairo in 1966, made the message crystal clear: Jihadism (jihadist terrorism) is a \"permanent Islamic world revolution\" aimed at decentering the West to.

Exploring the increasing impact of the Internet on Muslims around the world, this book sheds new light on the nature of contemporary Islamic discourse, identity, and community.The Internet has profoundly shaped how both Muslims and non-Muslims perceive Islam and how Islamic societies and networks are evolving and shifting in the twenty-first century, says Gary Bunt. While Islamic society has deep historical patterns of global exchange, the Internet has transformed how many Muslims practice the duties and rituals of Islam. A place of religious instruction may exist solely in the virtual world, for example, or a community may gather only online. Drawing on more than a decade of online research, Bunt shows how social-networking sites, blogs, and other \"cyber-Islamic environments\" have exposed Muslims to new influences outside the traditional spheres of Islamic knowledge and authority. Furthermore, the Internet has dramatically influenced forms of Islamic activism and radicalization, including jihad-oriented campaigns by networks such as al-Qaeda.By surveying the broad spectrum of approaches used to present dimensions of Islamic social, spiritual, and political life on the Internet,iMuslimsencourages diverse understandings of online Islam and of Islam generally.

This book analyses the Islamic State (IS) within a comparative framework of past Sunni jihadist movements. It argues jihadist failure to overthrow Muslim apostate states has led to a progressive radicalization of violent Islamist terror networks. This outcome has contributed over time to more brutal jihadist doctrines and tactics contributing to a total war doctrine strategy targeting Muslim apostate states (the near enemy), non-Muslim civilizations ( the far enemy) and sectarian minorities (heterodox Muslims and Christians). These extremist tendencies have been building for over a generation and have reached their culmination in the rise and fall of the Islamic State’s caliphate. Given past tendencies the emergence of yet even more radical Sunni jihadist movement is probable.

Osama bin Laden's demise in May 2011 marked only the symbolic end of an era. By the time of his killing, he no longer represented the Robin Hood icon that once stirred global fascination. Ten years after the 11 September 2001 attacks, jihadi terrorism has largely lost its juggernaut luster. It now mostly resembles a patchwork of self-radicalising local groups with international contacts but without any central organisational design - akin to the radical left terrorism of the 1970s and the anarchist fin-de-siècle terrorism. This volume addresses two issues that remain largely unexplored in contemporary terrorism studies. It rehabilitates the historical and comparative analysis as a way to grasp the essence of terrorism, including its jihadi strand. Crucial similarities with earlier forms of radicalisation and terrorism abound and differences appear generally not fundamental. Likewise, the very concept of radicalisation is seldom questioned anymore. Nevertheless it often lacks conceptual clarity and empirical validation. Once considered a quintessential European phenomenon, the United States too experiences how some of its own citizens radicalise into terrorist violence. This collective work compares radicalisation in both continents and the strategies aimed at de-radicalisation. But it also assesses if the concept merits its reputation as the holy grail of terrorism studies. The volume is aimed at an audience of decision makers, law enforcement officials, academia and think tanks, by its combination of novel thinking, practical experience and a theoretical approach.

How threatening are al-Qaeda and the Islamic State? In Jihadism Constrained,Barak Mendelsohn suggests that although jihadi terrorism is a serious challenge, it must not be exaggerated. Transnational terrorist organizations and jihadi transnational groups in particular face three central challenges: How to create a polity that is based on religious affiliation when most people identify with national and sub-national identities? How to generate political effects across borders? And how to produce unity among all components of the transnational movement? The book argues that transnational jihadism has been struggling on all three fronts. Success of armed nonstate actors hinges on their ability to mobilize the masses, but transnational jihadis persuaded only a tiny fraction of the world's Muslims to abandon their other identity markers and support a faith-based global polity that promotes an extreme interpretation of Islam. As military pressure endangers cross-border activities, jihadi groups introduced local branches only to find that such localization undermines their transnational agenda. Jihadi groups also lack a viable plan to turn armed success in separate states into cross-border political effects. Finally, jihadis regularly fall into internal conflicts. These conflicts are exacerbated by the use of Islamic discourse that renders compromise and reconciliation particularly difficult.