1. Political Islam and Revolutionary Violence

2. Religion and Nation Supernatural, Transcendent
Role of doctrine and ethics
Self and Other
Apply nationalism theory to religion
What is the relationship between nationalism and Islamism? Between ethnicity and Islam?
A challenge to the nation? Or a prop of it?

3. Holy Texts: An Instrumentalist View
'[As a Jew] if you are in favour of peace with the Palestinians, you can cite the case of King David, who gave away land to the King of Sidon. Equally, if you are against making peace...you can find material in Deuteronomy 25, which enjoins war to the end
No connection between religiosity and support for violence in Muslim world

4. Holy Texts: A Perennialist View
Islam: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him"- hadith
Not unique to Islam: "ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves" – Exodus 34: 13-17
**Commentary pertaining to jihad and martyrdom
'Anyone who can read passages like those quoted above and still not see a link between Muslim faith and Muslim violence should probably consult a neurologist'- Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 23
Connection between support for religion in politics and support for violence

5. Holy Texts: An Ethnosymbolist View
Interpretive theologies can acquire rootedness over time
Political interpretation of jihad persisted due to anti-colonialism
Political interpretation of crusade fell into abeyance after Wars of Religion (Toft 2007)
But crusade and jihad are resources that can be unearthed in the future
Holy texts are symbolic resources

6. Premodern Fundamentalism?
Corruption of clergy
State as usurping functions reserved for religion
Foreign domination (Mongol, Crusader, Persian?, Ottoman?)
Idolatry: state and its religious officials, schools and structures
Empire vs umma of true believers
Masses should rise up and eject the foreign infidels and their idolatrous traitor governments

7. Premodern Defenders of Orthodoxy
Kharijites – (from 650s) - small sect that believed that rule should be by the book and not the law. Should be no imamate
Ibn Hanbal ( ) – Traditionalist. Literalist. Rejects dominant (Persian) Abbasid syncretism of Hellenistic traditions and mysticism of Sufi cults
Ibn Taimiya (d. 1328) – A Hanbali cleric. Treatises like 'statecraft according to shari'a'. Parents fled the Mongols to Syria. Defended Sunnism from heterodoxy, sufism and foreign influence. Declared a fatwa on Mongols and insisted that religious figures and the shari'a play a political role – His work has influenced many schools including contemporary political Islam

8. Secular Nationalism
"For five hundred years these rules and theories of an Arab sheik, and the interpretations of generations of lazy, good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and the criminal law of Turkey... Islam, this theology of an immoral Arab, is a dead thing."
Lands seized, clerical power attenuated
Dress Laws: riot in Qom, 1963, hundreds killed

9. Shiite Revolution
Iran

10. Hizbollah, 1983.
Shia of Bahrain, Iraq (??)

11. Instrumentalist
Coalition of leftist and religious forces at first ('Quranic Marxism')
Shah's corruption
Bazaari merchants and ulama bypassed, had their interests threatened
Ulama had their own economic and power centre in the mosques and source of income

12. Ethnosymbolist
Could not have happened without history of Shi'ism in Iran
Safavid Order – Safavid empire, 16th c
Shows that quietist faiths can become active
Islamic resources: texts, hadith – point to moral righteousness of overthrowing secular oppressor

13. Cultural, but Modernist
Shariati reinterprets traditional Shi'ism in a revolutionary, activist way
Khomeini influenced by his ideas
Fundamentalism involves a stripped-down, reformed Islam
Islamism as modern

14. Sunni Islamist Revolution: Act I
Soviet-Afghan War,
Jihad and martyrdom
Saudi and Pakistani connection
US-Saudi funding
100,000 volunteers from 43 countries

15. 'Blowback' Jihadism could not be controlled
Pakistani and Saudi contradictions: Islamist, yet nation-states
Idea to vent Salafi-jihadi energies abroad
Came back to haunt Saudis, Pakistanis, Americans
Azzam, bin Laden – create Al-Qaeda
Peshawar madrassas create Taliban

16. 'Blowback' & Failed Sunni Revolution: Algeria
FIS, 1989
Wins, 1990 with 54% of vote in municipal elections
1992 – govt cancels poll, arrests 40,000 FIS
Civil War

17. Role of 'Arab-Afghans' Groupe Islamique Armee (GIA)
Kabul Mosque, Algiers
Target secular intellectuals, those connected to regime
Kill conscripts, monks, civilian takfiris
100,000 killed in Civil War
hijacking and summer bombing campaign in France

18. Sunni Islamist Coup: Sudan
Al-Turabi's influence. National Islamic Front
Nimieri and creeping Islamisation, 1980s. Shari'a 1983
War with South, reconciliation attempt
Islamist Coup, Omar Hassan al-Bashir

19. Sunni Islamist Coup: Taliban, Afghanistan

20. Failed Sunni Islamist Coup: Egypt
Muslim Brotherhood repressed in Egypt, 1960s. Qutb executed.
Al-Jihad
Sadat assassinated, 1981
Many attempts on Mubarak's life
Gamaat Islamiya, Luxor Massacre, 1997

21. Other Theatres Intifadas in Palestine (1987-93; 2000-6)
Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb
Al-Qaeda in Iraq (Zarqawi)
Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP)
Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Af-Pak region
Movements also in Malaysia, Indonesia (esp. Aceh), Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir..

22. Impact of Jihadism on Patterns of Global Violence
Since 1940:
90 percent of the ten civil wars fought within a religion involve Islam
73 percent of the 32 conflicts in which the parties differ by religion involve Islam
58 percent of states gripped by religious civil wars had a Muslim majority (Toft 2007)
2 of 64 terrorist movements were religious in the 1980s, this jumped to 46 percent by (Philpott 2007)

23. Key Social Strata
Western-educated elite – affected by modern Islamism, failures of Marxism and Arab nationalism
'pious middle classes' – traditional strict Islamists in towns and cities
Rural masses – Sufi or heterodox Islam, but population not receptive to secular nationalism.
Radicalised by population explosion and rural-urban dislocation

24. Other Issues Islam as nationalism or apocalyptic-chiliastic faith?
Just the gunmen (ie Arab-Afghans) or popular support?
Religion more violent than socialism, nationalism?

25. Has Jihadism Failed? Sunni Arab Regimes crush Islamists
Islamist vote stuck at 15 pc in Arab-Muslim core
Only successful Islamist parties are moderate
Violence leads to lower support for jihad at home: Algeria, Egypt…
Or just an ebb – and the possibility of renewed violence again